by
5 Comments

Have a Facebook Page? Post on Tuesdays

posted on September 9, 2009

When the company I worked for got into email marketing, the perfect day and time to send an email blast was the holy grail. Can’t send on Monday because people are digging out from the weekend. Can’t send on Friday because people are thinking about the weekend. Can’t send first thing in the morning because people are just getting into the rhythm of work and not ready to think about emails. Can’t send in the afternoon because people are shutting down for the day.

If you’re in the same place with your Facebook page, ViTrue’s Social Relationship Manager has that holy grail: data. And, as it turns out, some of the same logic about email scheduling applies on social networks: in terms of click through, Facebook wall posts are most effective in the middle of the week.
vitrue social ctr
Perhaps even more important than when to post is when not to post: if you’re trying to get people to click, don’t post on Thursday, Friday or Saturday.

by
9 Comments

WordPress Acquires Grammer Gramer Grammar Checking Software

posted on September 9, 2009

I’ve always maintained that it’s dangerous to take a single Marketing Pilgrim post and assume you understand our sentiment and bias towards any one company. If you read yesterday’s criticism of WordPress, you’d think we were “automattic” haters.

Today, you’d be eating humble pie.

Automattic has announced the acquisition of After the Deadline, a service that provides spell checking, style checking, and grammar checking. Huzzah!

While I’m somewhat puzzled that WordPress.com users get After the Deadline baked-in, while us .org user are left once again with just a plugin, I still applaud the acquisition. Why? Because spell checking and grammar checking are the bane of any blogger’s existence!

by
6 Comments

Warning: Marketers Are Watching Your Children

posted on September 9, 2009

Watching MeCompanies that sell software to monitor your child’s online activity are double-dipping by selling the collected data to marketers, according to AP.

Not every software provider is engaging in the practice, but EchoMetrix Inc’s Sentry and FamilySafe brands are called out in particular. Because the software “listens” to the instant messenger conversations of kids, it’s able to package that information for marketers interested in learning of the latest trends of this young demographic. While this immediately sounds alarming, the companies claim there is no risk to the privacy of the children being monitored:

The company that sells the software insists it is not putting kids’ information at risk, since the program does not record children’s names or addresses. But the software knows how old they are because parents customize its features to be more or less permissive, depending on age.

by
2 Comments

Icahn’s Not the Only One: Bartz Selling Yahoo Stock

posted on September 8, 2009

icahnCarl Icahn’s recent Yahoo stock dump didn’t cause too much alarm—although he took a $125M loss, he still retains 4.5% of the company (and his board seats). But now Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz looks like she’s dumping stocks—and investors are none too happy.

As The Guardian reports, when Carol Bartz took the helm, she was given a $1M salary and $5M in stock options, as well as a promise of a $4M bonus if things went well. In two sales during these last nine months, Bartz has already unloaded $2M in Yahoo stock options.

Not exactly a sign of confidence. Yahoo’s general counsel, Mark Callahan, has also sold of a significant portion of his shares—$1.35M in five sales this year, twice as much as last year. Because bad things come in threes, I guess.

by
3 Comments

Google Giving Up ANYTHING for Book Deal to Get eBooks

posted on September 8, 2009

booksThousands of aspiring authors from around the world can now totally sympathize with Google—because the search giant is also struggling to get a book deal. Well, okay, so mostly they’re struggling to get regulatory approval of a book deal, and said book deal is more about licensing and ePub than actually breaking into the industry—but close enough, right?

Anyway, Google looks like they’re getting to the point where they’re willing to give up just about anything to get this book deal through the EU. The latest concession is to allow two non-US members onto a board to administer its digital books settlement. Bloomberg also reports that:

Books that are commercially available and under copyright in Europe won’t be considered out of print under a proposed settlement with U.S. publishers over the company’s book-scanning project, Google said in a letter to several publisher associations in Europe.

by
4 Comments

Shocking! Twitter is a Big Influence

posted on September 8, 2009

If the Hitwise data for Twitter usage in Australia is any indication of how the rest of the world uses the microblogging service, it’s growing in influence–insanely!

twitter_updownmkt

In the past 6 months:

  1. The number of Australian sites that send visitors to Twitter is up 479%.
  2. The number of Australian visitors to Twitter is up an equally impressive 460%.
  3. The number of  Australian sites that Twitter sends traffic to has increased to 17,000.

So, no real surprises here. Who didn’t know that Twitter had become a huge influence on the interwebz? :-P

by
39 Comments

Pay No Attention to the WordPress Hacking Threats; Look at the Shiny rssCloud!

posted on September 8, 2009

What would you rather have? A safe, secure WordPress platform that doesn’t require a half-dozen plugins in order to run effectively, or, faster distribution of your RSS feed?

If, like me, your vote went to option A, then you’re probably not going to be too thrilled about the latest update from the WordPress mothership. If you drooled over option B, then you’re probably a big geek and will need a change of underwear when you see what WordPress has in store for you.

WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg just flicked the switch on rssCloud–or RSS Cloud, or RSSCloud, take your pick–which means 7.5 million blogs now have the capability to push out updates in real time.