Dot Tom

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Last year as the recession took hold my employer took drastic action cutting back the marketing team.  I was out of a job. In 25 years of working, it was the first time in my life that I needed unemployment benefits. While I didn’t keep an exact count, I suspect that I applied for over 300 jobs in the past 11 months. I’ve worked with at least 20 recruiters; done 150 phone screens and probably 100 face-to-face interviews. Today, 347 days after my search began, I start a new job with a great company that I’m very excited about!

Understanding how difficult the job hunting environment is now I would like to extend a hand to those who are currently looking for a job with 5 recommendations that I hope will help.

1).  Make Every Moment a Learning Opportunity
While I’m writing with a focus on the online marketing world, I think this applies more broadly as well.  Every conversation, all the research you do on a prospective employer, all the vendors they use, and every strategy they employ is an opportunity to add to your toolkit once you’re employed.  However you don’t unearth any treasure without digging.  All of the prospective employers I spoke with ask for feedback on their site and some required a formal presentation. Peel back their source code and look for analytics packages, advertising partner tracking codes and vendor partners; evaluate their PPC programs, Affiliates, CSE partners; evaluate their user experience, key site features, third-party tools used, taxonomy, key products, pricing, value proposition, branding; use tools like Compete.com to get a sense of their traffic and evaluate the best of their competition with the same rigger.

Undoubtedly in your interview you’ll share what you’ve learned with a viewpoint on the pros & cons of what you’ve found.  But equally as important, ask questions that probe more deeply and give you further insight into the business strategy and tactics.  If their doing something innovative that’s working, take note.
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In celebration of my 500th bookmark on Delicious.com I wanted to offer a Delicious Top 10 Countdown.  With the average user saving 30 bookmarks I’m somewhat of an extreme – Yet for all those who haven’t discovered Delicious, I want to tell you point blank, your missing out on a huge resource that will benefit you personally and professionally.  For kick’s I’ve added my Delicious Tag Cloud to the navigation above if you’re interested in visiting any of my favorite 500.  Here’s my top 10 Countdown:

The Top 10 Reasons Why YOU should use Delicious.com?

Because it’s Owned by Yahoo!  “That’s not a good reason Tom!  What the #@!* are you thinking.”  It’s a simple fact that if you don’t support the competition you’re going to slip into a dictatorship where Google-bots rule the world.  Do you really want that? Your probably one of those guys how goes on Yahoo Answers and replies with a link to Let me Google that for you!  Don’t let the bad man bother you Mr. Yahoo, I still love you and am eternally devoted to Delicious!

Delicious gives you universal access to your bookmarks from any computer so you can remember all the stuff you can’t remember without wasting your own memory.  No it won’t help you to remember to take out the garbage, but it will lead you to the most interesting content on the Internet on the topic of taking out the garbage!

The non-hierarchical classification system allows you to use as many reminders as it takes to help you remember how you classified your precious link in the first place.  Now I just hope I can remember the tag I used, no worries, I’m bound to remember one of the 20 tags I used… see you really can use 20.

If you don’t trust your own judgment about what’s worth bookmarking you can use Delicious.com to research what others are bookmarking so you can follow the crowd.  Hmmm, “follow the crowd”, “take a note, Tom”, he said rhetorically to himself, “this could be a terrific aggregator of popular opinion, wow and imagine the SEO benefits – This is a really great tool isn’t it”?

With over 5 million users and 150 million bookmarks you aren’t alone in your inability to remember everything that’s available on the Internet off the top of your head.  So you should feel as I do, completely normal in your senility!

“You get what you pay for?”  Well, in this case you get way-more because it’s totally FREE to use.  But that doesn’t mean it didn’t come at a price.  Let’s assume that you invested 10 minutes of your time to qualify something as a worthwhile bookmark to save and share.  Let’s assume your time is worth an average of $25/hr.  That means that I’ve personally invested approximately $2000 in Delicious, for ME and YOU!  With over 150 million bookmarks, people have created a focused Internet resource worth more then $600 million.  When was the last time someone invested that kind of cash for your benefit?

All the links are publicly viewable but you can make links private if you want to!  Ok, ok, I know where your mind is drifting, don’t go there!  Honestly some things are best left private – Do you really want to see my Gastroenterologists’ web site?

Regardless of whether you use Firefox, IE or any other browser for that matter, you can have your bookmark resources at your fingertip with Delicious browser toolbar applications.  NO! This doesn’t cost anything either, but thanks for reminding us all about how cheap you are!

I use to travel a lot on business and you know how it seems that virtually every flight you take these days is delayed, so while I may only fly now a few times a year, I’ll be damned if I’m ever going to sit one second longer in an airport then I have to.  Delicious is just the ticket to quick reference on those obscure but useful resources in situations like that!  Now what was that tag I used for the Flight Tracker site, oh yah, flight_tracker…   What’s more you can access their beta Mobile site from your phone or PDA.

And the #1 reason why you should use Delicious.com is to clear your head of all the minutia filling it so that you can relax, enjoy life and perhaps use all those extra brain cells to be more creative and innovative in your life.  You can rest assured that your treasure of great links is safely ensconced at Delicious.com.

Yesterday was “#FollowFriday” on Twitter.  It’s a great chance to tell others about the most interesting people you follow on Twitter, the practice is growing in popularity.  I took the opportunity to visit a number of new and interesting people and came across @UtahNewsGuy, Leo Dirr.  @UtahNewsGuy doesn’t have a huge following on Twitter, although his following is huge compared to my own, but it’s clear that he’s one bright guy who thinks like a marketer!  When I saw a Tweet referencing a blog article by @UtahNewsGuy, Anatomy of a Successful Tweet, I couldn’t resist.  In simple language Mr. Dirr offers a very interesting strategy and analysis of a tweet he did which points to an article he wrote on the future of newspapers.

It’s clear from the blog post that the web site where his original article was first posted experienced an increase in traffic specifically from Twitter.  Any analytics package will capture general source stats.  Nevertheless, as a marketing guy I can’t help wanting to measure a little more precisely.  People use TinyURL.com all the time to embed a brief URL into twitter posts.  What’s really cool about TinyURL.com is that since you’re abbreviating the URL it doesn’t matter how long the original URL is, so adding tracking codes to the URL is a simple and powerful way of getting precise information on the impact of a Twitter post.

Regardless of the analytics package you use on your blog or web site you can tag a URL with tracking codes that will allow you to see exactly the traction your getting on that specific post.  Suppose for instance that @UtahNewsGuy’s publisher was using Google Analytics to measure results.  He could take the existing URL and add the following string: “?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=online&utm_campaign=newspaper_survival”.  This is captured in Google Analytics identify the Source, Medium and Campaign Name with accurate stats on the user sessions generated by that URL.  By take the combined string of the original URL and the tracking component and it would look like this:

http://www.utahstories.com/utah_newspapers_decline.htm?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=online&utm_campaign=newspaper_survival

By plugging this string into TinyURL.com I get:

http://tinyurl.com/cs53oh

As long as UtahStories.com is using Google Analytics (which they are) @UtahNewsGuy doesn’t need any technical assistance to add this string when he does his Twitter post.  All he needs to do is ask the analyst at his publisher to update him on the results captured in Google Analytics.  In fact by my creating this Tiny URL and you clicking on it, you’ll be automatically compiling UtahStories.com traffic data in their Google Analytics Reporting Suite.  Just remember that each analytics suite is a little different in convention but the principles remain the same.

I’ll post a tweet about this using @UtahNewsGuy’s technique with Google Analytics Tags myself and let you know what happens!  Visit me at @TomStockwell.

GoDaddy.com Invoice

Recently I received the e-mail seen on the right from GoDaddy.com announcing that they had automatically renewed the “Business Registration” for several URL’s that I own.  At first I was thinking that this was an automatic renewal for my domain names but this was not the case.  In fact GoDaddy.com had bill me for a service I had never requested.

I immediately called GoDaddy customer service and asked for an explanation!  The customer service agent told me that I had “chosen” to receive this renewal.  At which point I about blew a gasket!  B#&%$HIT! I never proactively requested any such service!  It may have been that I missed unchecking a prechecked box but that’s totally diffierent then me making a choice.  It’s possible that GoDaddy slipped this by me when I originally purchased the URL’s, as was the case with this guy.  Nevertheless, I never would have actively chosen to participate.

So I continued with the customer service agent asking, “What exactly is Business Registration anyway?”  It turns out that GoDaddy.com Business Registration is nothing more then a business listing service.  By Compete.com’s accounting the GoDaddy service halls in a paltry average of 23K+ visitor a month.  Perhaps that might seem like a lot to some but when you compare this to Yahoo’s Directory average of 50K or Google’s directory with 160K, or The Open Directory Projects 1.2 million or Business.com with 5.4 million visitors you begin to realize that even a $5 fee is a complete rip-off! Not to mention the unscrupulous practice of billing me first and begging forgiveness afterwords.

I guess that’s what pisses me off the most!  They reached into my wallet and took the money and then told me about it, almost as an afterthought.  GoDaddy’s customer service kept telling me this was “my” decision, my choice, not theirs.  Funny thing is that they didn’t automatically renew my domains, so why automatically charge me for this service?  Their customer service agent wasn’t the least bit apologetic.  How many folks do you suppose receive this e-mail and just accept it or confuse it for the domain renewal?  Far too many I’m afraid.   If you want to be a part of a real directory at no cost then get listed in The Open Source Directory for FREE!

In the end I got my refund, but I can’t help but wonder Dale Earnhardt, Jr, Danica Patrick or Canice Michelle endorse these types of business practices.  It’s all a little bit sleezy to me, but I guess that’s all a part of their brand strategy and they are remaining true to their core values.

Recently I had a great conversation with Lisa a senior e-commerce marketer.  Lisa observed that she hadn’t seen enough evidence that social media was relevant to her organization.  She raised some very legitimate concerns including the negative business impacts of customer criticisms; identifying resources to manage it once launched and how to tie sales back to e-commerce.
As our conversation continued I reminder her that her own site had launched product reviews last year – We all tend to forget the less sexy types of social media.  Lisa went on to share about a very interesting relationship with an important thought-leader in her industry that regularly mentions Lisa’s web site in his public speaking engagements and on his blog.  Later I visiting this guy’s blog and found dozens of links and references to Lisa’s web site.  Lisa wasn’t paying for this exposure except by making herself available to answer questions and sharing promotions as they occurred.  Of course that’s social media too, and very measurable.

Lisa mentioned that one of her competitors launched a “community” but she wasn’t terribly impressed.  In her view the community lacked innovation and leadership and failed to drive concrete business objectives.  Having a look at the competitor I found that while there were a lot of features, an active community with interesting content it seemed disjointed with more monologues then dialogue.  There didn’t seem to be that much direct interaction between the host and it’s visitors and while there were plenty of text links and banners leading to the corresponding e-commerce site none of the links were tagged for analytics reporting.  It’s little wonder Lisa was not impressed.

Lisa was also anonymously participating in industry related blogs and engaging in some other Twitter activities with industry leaders.  In spite of the unofficial nature of Lisa’s strategy, her organization seems to be benefiting, if only modestly from her social media activities.  What’s more Lisa doesn’t have to jump into the responsibility of managing a community or hire more staff to continue to make important and beneficial strides in her social media activity.  As Lisa  engages cautiously she just needs to continue to avoid three common mistakes…

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Professional Continuous Improvement Cycle

Today it’s imperative that you are continuously learning.  In rapidly evolving industries like internet marketing it’s critical that you not only stay abreast of strategic and tactical developments in the industry, you also need to address your own professional developmental needs to insure that you not only maintain but increase your value to your employer, remaining sharp and marketable.  But how do you prioritize and focus your efforts?
There are 3 priorities for your professional development that I would recommend regardless of your career path.

1. Identifying current professional development needs
   • For the role you hold today
2. Identifying future professional development needs
   • For your next career move
3. Keeping current
   • Industry trends, tactics and best practices
   • Business and competitive philosophy and strategy
   • Industry relevant economic research and trends
   • Industry relevant consumer research and behavioral trends

It is very common for people to move into different functional areas as their careers develop.  Even if you remain in the same department for your entire career there is nothing more valuable then someone who knows their job, can demonstrate transferable skills, offer cross-functional insight and is knowledgeable about topics that have direct impact on the broader business.  That’s a person I want to promote.

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Posthumous portrait of Christopher Columbus by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio.

When Christopher Columbus made his maiden voyage in search of a western route to the East Indies there were many similarities between that venture and the pioneers of social media in organizations today.  It’s an unprecedented request; potentially requiring significant funding & resources; a business case with research and data must be developed; and the project must deliver an attractive and measurable ROI!

It took Columbus more then two years to persuade Queen Isabella’s committee.  Central to his case was his estimation of the circumference of the earth and the argument that he could get to the east faster by going west.  There was also the promise of a huge ROI making Spain competitive in the Indies spice trade.

Once approved, Columbus set sail with the blessings of senior management.  Unfortunately Columbus drastically underestimated the earth’s circumference and assumed there was only ocean between Spain and the Indies.  He landed in the Bahamas. He also misinterpreted this data believing he had landed on the East Asian Mainland.  Nevertheless this voyage is remembered for many crucial discoveries and his subsequent travels benefited from improved metrics.

In the world of Web 2.0 the evolution of social media is well beyond any “Pre-Columbian Era”.  We stand on the shoulders of explorers that have gone ahead of us paving the way with ever more user-friendly and commercialized solutions.  The state of social media simply awaits inspired ideas, informed intuition, and strategic vision applied to unique industry needs to be the catalyst for further exploration and innovation.  In the future, today’s tools may seem as antiquated as a Model-T but unlike the advent of commercial auto industry, the roads are already paved for social media.

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Generic Cola Can - Jewel Supermarket

I read a very interesting post on the Branding Strategy Insider Blog that got me thinking about house brands and how beneficial they are to driving product innovation and in particular a product’s value proposition.  Granted house brands are often a lower cost version of a brand name but there is genuine innovation going on here.  There is no doubt that the manufacturing processes are being optimized, there are lower R&D costs, product components or ingredients are being changed to add to that cost optimization and of course they are being placed in head to head competition on retail shelves.  Nevertheless if the consumer chooses the house brand over the name brand, the price is only one component of that decision.

Twenty five years ago when “generic” brands first hit the marketplace, the “branding” was designed to tell the story that they were a cheap but serviceable alternative to the real “brand name” products.  The stenciled font used clearly identified them as taking very little effort in packaging cost and offered a tremendous value and price savings.  As a young couple my wife and I made ends meet with these un-branded brands.

Today even though our household income is substantially greater, house brands STILL fill our pantry.  Whenever we feel that a house brand is about equivalent to the leading brand we will invariable pick the house brand and typically save a bundle.

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