Posted on

I Read You, Little Pilgrim

Don’t worrry, I’m not quoting John Wayne. I’m simply stating that one of the search marketing blogs I read is Marketing Pilgrim. Andy is having a little “readership survey” that pays survey takers with a free link, plus a free entry to win $500 cash (hopefully USD). I figure I have a 1 in 50 chance in winning. It also means Andy is paying about $10 per survey taker.

The reason I use MarketingPilgrim.com is because they tend to cover stories quickly and deviate just the right amount from your standard search marketing publication. If I look at my feeds related to search, I have about 5 that are what I’d call news filters and Marketing Pilgrim is one of them. I love these news filters because it saves me a lot of time (much better than reading through hundreds of blogs and pubications).

Posted on

Linkedin Adds Profile Photos

You can now add a photo to your LinkedIn profile. I suggest you use a professional looking headshot. Unlike other social networks, racy or promotional photos won’t be well-received and could result in a loss in present or future connections. Adding a photo is very simple: just go to your profile page, click add photo where the empty box is displayed, then browse the file, upload and make sure the cropping works, then save. Shouldn’t take more than 30 seconds and shows that your connections are a plugged-in early adopter.

Posted on

Radiohead In Rainbow Changing the Music Industry But With Poor Online Execution

I love seeing people using the Internet to change entire industries. Radiohead is geared up to do so by releasing their latest album, In Rainbow, as a download for as little or as much as the fan wants to pay. I tried to play some of their music with the best weighted keyboard 88 keys I could find on the market and the sound is priceless.

They are taking a gamble that people won’t download it for free, or they figure those people will find a way to get it for free anyway. This History related info helps you in the music history.

I love the idea and hope the best for Radiohead as this will make a big impact in the music industry, but was a little disappointed after I visited the site. From a search engine and usability standpoint, Radiohead made some major mistakes that might come back to haunt them. Let me list out some of the mistakes and explain the possible implications. Music is just not a sound or rhythms its influence on our brain than any other experience.

Radiohead In Rainbow Site mistakes:

  • 302 redirected their existing site homepage (radiohead.com) to new site: www.inrainbows.com, but…
  • www.inrainbows.com 302 redirects to www.inrainbows.com/Store/Quickindex.html
  • The more logical site domain, inrainbow.com (no “s”, which matches the album title) wasn’t registered, purchased or used. Instead a domain parker will receive lots of traffic.
  • Title tag for In Rainbow site mainpage is “Radiohead”
  • Site mainpage only has images with no search engine readable text
  • 2nd page only has images no search engine readable text and same title tag
  • 3rd page only has images no search engine readable text and same title tag
  • Home links go to the 3rd page
  • Shopping cart very awkward & buggy (keeps losing track of my order)
  • Grammar mistakes confusing
  • Amounts only shown in British Pounds
  • Question mark help icon doesn’t provide any help or explanation
  • There is actually a 1 GBP minimum, that’s $2.04 more than free
  • There is actually a 99 GBP limit. Want to be an extreme fan and buy it for $1,000? Too bad.

Radiohead In Rainbow Site Mistake Implications:

  • With the 302 mistakes, not only are they begging for a search spammer to hijack their site traffic, but they are linking to a page that they will probably change URLs over time.
  • With all the search engine & readability mistakes, they will essentially allow standard retailers and online stores to steal away their direct payment opportunities by allowing them to rank higher for their own album and even site.
  • The usability issues will also turn people back to iTunes or other dealers.
  • Their main site may suffer rank decreases and traffic losses for a long time.
  • The download for free concept won’t be given an honest shot, which may deter other artists like Dave Matthews, Pearl Jam, REM, Metallica and other likely candidates from trying a similar experiment.

    • Regardless of the mistakes I list, this will be an effort worth watching for those in the music industry, movie industry or any other industry where self-distribution online could be a big opportunity.

Posted on

Facebppl Experiment

As more and more people start using Macs, I forsee an increasing # of people accidentally typing in things incorrectly due to the keyboard differences. To track this, I’m going to use Facebppl as a source of data on commonly misstyped terms. Facebppl is the keyboard shifted over one letter for the right hand equivelant of Facebook. I noticed the .com domain is already registered which is a sign that this may be a somewhat common mistake.

Besides facebppl, a couple other common, but strange ones might be: g,ao; or gpp;e or fppf;w or even uajpp.

I appreciate your patience in reading this weird post. I’ll report back on the stats later.

Posted on

Simpsons Movie Marketing Impressive

I’ve been impressed with the marketing tactics The Simpsons movie has employed. Back in July, by word of mouth I heard about the Simpsons 7-11 promo where select 7-11s were transformed into Kwik-E-marts including one in my hometown, Seattle (shame on the 7-eleven site for removing the page from their site) where you could buy pink donuts, buzz cola, krusty-os, etc. (I still think they should have made Duff beer).

Then, last week before I went to see the movie, I visited the official simpsons movie site which also had some great viral marketing elements built in. For example, you can create your very own Simpsons character. Here’s my Simpsonized family:

simpsons characters

They made it really easy to create avatars, jpgs, video and other web elements that you could add to your blog or social networking profile. I love it when movies go beyond creating a site that only contains a movie trailer and a couple stills. Allowing your fans to promote their love for your movie is a smart marketing tactic, learn more here. Massive marketing still works for Hollywood, but it seems like the movies that are most successful rely mostly on Word-of-Mouth. For the best course in google ads go through the site. Why not use the web to promote word-of-mouth activity?

The movie was also enjoyable. As a filmmaker, I loved the beginning. Television actors & movies are often considered undesirable for feature films because the audience is used to seeing them for free. In true Simpson’s style, they actually poke fun at the audience for paying for the movie during the first 30 seconds of the film.

Taking your business online can have its benefits, but it can also increase the risk of scams and security threats. Follow https://www.sapphire.net/open-source-intelligence-osint/ to help protect your business from cyber threats. A single cyber-attack could seriously damage your business and its reputation.