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Product Placements with Nobodies?

posted on September 28, 2009

Let me guess: you’re looking for a way to get your clients’ products placed in all kinds of media—but you can’t afford any celebrity endorsements. Well, if you’re okay with your products being hawked by nobodies, you might be in luck, according to an AdAge article on Udorse.

Okay, at first it doesn’t sound so appealing: pay everybody and his dog for taking pictures of themselves with your products sounds like a good way to bankrupt yourself. But naturally, these people aren’t pulling in the same endorsement fees the big stars are.

But the real genius of the system isn’t from paying people to be pictured with your product—it’s the implementation. Udorse automatically uses Facebook photos for images with tagged products. Join the system and tag the product, and you’re taken to a short endorsement form to fill out.

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How Many Ads Make $1 Billion?

posted on September 28, 2009

twitter-logoNow that Twitter has been able to convince some pretty wealthy folks that their little ol’ 140 character deal is worth in the range of $1 billion it’s time to get down to brass tacks. What does that mean? Since people now have this huge number in their head there will be continued and likely more vocal calls for Twitter to at least reveal some plan to generate revenue worthy of that valuation number. Hey, it’s the Internet though so maybe not!

AdAge is pretty convinced that this is something that needs to be addressed sooner than later.

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Marketers (Still) Taking Facebook Seriously–With Good Reason

posted on September 28, 2009

It’s always great when the mainstream media realizes (again) that something is big—like social media marketing or Facebook. The Wall Street Journal posted an article Friday on the popularity of social media marketing on Facebook. Okay, so really they were reporting about the Social Data Summit in New York Thursday.

At the summit, Facebook’s social graph was the brass ring—everybody wanted a way to tap into the friend data and relationships in Facebook, but most users aren’t happy with sharing that information. Beacon, Facebook’s efforts to leverage friendship data and connections for people (and selected advertisers), will officially come to an end once a court approves a class-action settlement.

It’s little wonder Facebook friends are so highly prized to marketers—according research firm Nielsen Claritas, Facebook’s audince is a far more affluent demographic these days than that of the former social media king, MySpace:

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The Secret to Andy Beal’s Reputation Management Success?

posted on September 28, 2009

Late last week, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Jennifer Lindsay to discuss online reputation management, Trackur, and, well, life in general.

Mid-way through the interview I give up the secret to my success. :-)

You can listen to it via the player below:

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New Study: One Word Describes Affiliate Marketing via Social Networks – Craptastic!

posted on September 28, 2009

If you’re an affiliate marketer, 2009 doesn’t hold much growth for you, but Forrester predicts a healthy rise in spending after that–through 2014. In fact, US affiliate marketing spend will increase to $4 billion over that 5 year stretch, realizing a very healthy 16% growth rate.

However, if you’re hoping Facebook, Twitter, and others social networks will be your secret to success, you may wish to think again.

Sixty-two percent of US online buyers use social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace.com for communicating and keeping up with friends. Only 2% of US online buyers have purchased products through social networking sites. Affiliate sites get paid based on transactions they drive, not simply click-throughs. Thus, affiliate sites currently experimenting with social networks may be getting traffic from these sites, but they are sending very few qualified leads to marketers. Little money will therefore change hands in this scenario.

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Washington Post’s Social Media Guidelines Get Posted

posted on September 28, 2009

WashingtonPostVAcoverWhat is probably most ironic about the story that you are about to read is the fact that a journalistic icon, the Washington Post, is trying to maintain control of its staff while it can’t even keep an internal memo from going public. Having made that observation from the start you can see that this is not going to get any better for them.

The information that has hit the media stream is the social media guidelines that have been imposed on the staffers of the Washington Post as the newspaper tries to hold on to some shred of integrity in the new world order. paidContent.org has ‘received’ a copy of the entire directive. Some highlights:

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Cup of Joe: The Danger Of Being Oz

posted on September 26, 2009

Thursday marked the 70th anniversary of the film classic The Wizard of Oz. One of my favorite parts of the movie is when Dorothy discovers the true identity of the Wizard. This scene is symbolic of many political and social truths in our society.

Coincidentally, we saw this same scene play out in the Internet marketing industry this week. On Wednesday, Seth Godin, launched Brands in Public. In short the program aggregates mentions of brands from different social media sites to a single page on Godin’s Squidoo. While Godin claims that he consulted many brand managers about this idea and they all supported it, there was a barrage of criticism from folks in the Internet marketing industry. Most of the criticism drew attention to the fact that Godin himself has been a champion of transparent marketing tactics such as “permission based marketing” however, this program seeks to leverage the hard work of other brand builders with out their permission.