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Leapy Goodness, February 29

posted on February 29, 2008

Happy leapy goodness!

Get leapin!

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23 Comments

New Affiliate Marketing Tool Debuts at Affiliate Summit

posted on February 29, 2008

Affiliate Summit, a conference for affiliate marketers and affiliate managers, just ended in Las Vegas. I usually attend but I didn’t go this year. Gary Marcoccia at AvantLink told me about a new affiliate tool that debuted at the Summit, that I wish every affiliate network had. AvantLink is a smaller network of affiliate programs.

The tool is called the Affiliate Link Encoder (ALE) and it makes the process of adding affiliate links automatic. Any time you link to a product or service with a merchant in Avant Link’s network, a piece of javascript automatically changes the links redirects it to an affiliate link. As an affiliate this would make my job much easier, because it’s so tedious to change your links one by one.

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Free Guide: Seven Step Online Reputation Crisis Plan

posted on February 29, 2008

Over at the Radically Transparent book site and blog, we’ve uploaded "Your Seven Step Online Reputation Crisis Plan." The book contains an entire chapter on repairing your online reputation, but this article is a good primer–and will tide you over until you get a chance to order the book. :-)

Here are the first two steps:

1. Check the facts

Quite often there are two sides to any story. Before you start responding to accusations made online, take the time–but no more than an hour or so–to assess the situation, gather the facts, and evaluate the appropriate response.

2. Determine the impact

Decide if the attack on your reputation warrants a response from you. Is the attack coming from someone influential? Is the attack spreading quickly? Are many new voices joining the attack? Answer “yes” to any of these questions, and you’ll likely need to respond.

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“Search Monkey” and the Interest Beneath the Boredom

posted on February 29, 2008

By David Snyder

Yahoo! unveiled a new project named “search monkey” at the SMX West being held in Santa Clara, California.

The project is a set of open source tools that allow publishers and users alike to enhance search results as they pertain to a particular web site. Basically these tools give publishers a way to refine their search results in Yahoo.

Sound familiar?

If the project does, it is because Google unveiled a similar project in May of 2006 called Google Coop Subscribed Links. Google’s program was not very successful in terms of popularity and use, so the question that begs to be asked is how Yahoo’s project will differ?

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Pilgrim’s Picks for February 29 – Collector’s Edition

posted on February 29, 2008

This is a very special "collector’s" edition of Pilgrim’s Picks–why? Today is February 29th which, as you know, comes around as often as a London bus–once every four years.

While single men stay holed-up in their apartments in fear, the rest of us are free to enjoy these picks.

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Caving to a Blogger’s Demands? Advice from Corporate America

posted on February 29, 2008

Lenovo’s David Churbuck is on the social media frontline for the computer manufacturer. Every day he engages customer gripes which range from flaming batteries, dead pixels, and even the company’s Chinese government involvement.

Having interviewed Churbuck for Radically Transparent, I already knew that he has a wealth of common-sense advice for Fortune 500 companies who wish to engage bloggers and other citizen journalists. So, I’m excited that he’s shared some of his wisdom with Jeremiah Owyang–who graciously gave Churbuck space on his blog to share his thoughts.

In partly pedantic jest, I suggested the type of topic I’d like to discuss is: contravening corporate policy by privately resolving a blogged customer support issue and having the blogger publicly state the solution and thereby set a precedent for all future complaints

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Google Gives Homeless Free Voicemail..for Free!

posted on February 29, 2008

I’m not quite sure how you give away something for free that’s already free, but that’s what Google’s GrandCentral team is doing with Project CARE.

The initiative is designed to help San Francisco’s homeless get back on their feet–by giving them a free GrandCentral voicemail number employers can reach them on. They’ll also be able to keep in contact with local medical clinics.

TechCrunch claimed the announcement was just a re-hash of one made two years ago, then along came GrandCentral co-founder Craig Walker with a clarification: