Marketing Pilgrim

It’s coming soon, that day where we throw off the corded shackles and declare our independence from all things hard-wired. No longer will we have to sit at our desk to get email, be at home to get our phone calls or lounge in front of the TV just to watch American Idol. Mobile Dependence Day is fast approaching and ExactTarget is here to tell us all about it.

Subscribers, Fans and Followers #9, gives you the inside look at all things mobile and it does it with a sense of humor rarely seen in statistical works. Hey, they make their pie-charts out of actual pies. They also made the nifty graphic you see here (I’m just borrowing it.) Their point, is that the mobile phone is a modern-day Swiss Army knife. An easily pocketed tool that can get you out of almost any jam. Though, I don’t think you can use it to open a bottle top, but you can us it to pretend drink a glass of beer.

To balance my opinion that being just like Facebook will not help Google+, here’s a cartoon that sums up quite nicely why that may be all some people need as a reason to use it.

As Mike Masnick points out, by simply not being as “evil” as Facebook, Google+ may win.

We shall see.

So, last night, I lost about an hour of my life trying to figure out how to use Google+, the search engine’s answer to Facebook.

I’ll admit, it was an exciting hour. It always is when I get my hands on something shiny and new. But, after the initial euphoria of being invited to be one of the lucky early adopters, I closed the Google+ tab in my browser and headed over to Facebook.

Here’s why.

Have you seen the Toyota car ads where they mock other car manufacturers for saying their car is “comparable to a Toyota” or “has the same features as a Toyota?” A few choice soundbites, then it’s suggested that you may as well just buy a Toyota. And that’s the problem Google+ is going to face. If all it aims to be is the search giant’s answer to Facebook, then why shouldn’t I just keep on using Facebook?

How much money did you spend at a local, independent business this week? Books from a used book shop instead of Amazon? Fruit from a farmer’s market instead of a grocery chain? Perhaps you hired a local handyman to fix that leak in your sink.

Independent We Stand says that if every family spent $10 a month at a local store, $9.3 billion would be returned to the local economy. That’s more money for schools and roads and fire equipment. That’s money to put a park on a vacant lot or create a safer environment for you and yours.

The initiative thinks that more people would buy locally if they truly understood the impact, so they’ve created an online widget that makes it crystal clear. Visit IndependentWeStand.org, and click on the economic impact calculator. Enter your state and choose the metro-area nearest you and get ready to be amazed. Those dollars really add up fast.

Did you know that if you include Google Adsense on your website, you are likely to rank higher?

We’ve heard this rumor before from prominent SEOs. It makes sense. Google stands to make more revenue by promoting websites that display its ads. Exciting? Yes.

But completely not true.

Well meaning folks spread a lot of Google myths that can harm your SEO efforts.  Sometimes they come from your boss or even an Internet hack trying to make a quick buck.

Earlier this month SEOmoz released the 2011 version of its Search Engine Ranking Factors. This year’s survey contained a number of new insights, but also debunked a number of Google myths that have persisted far too long.

Google’s talk about marketing’s concept of the zero moment of truth for consumers which occurs between the time that they first see an ad for a product (the stimulus) and when they purchase is not new to the company but how they are talking about it is. In a nutshell it’s the product research phase. This moment is a redefinition of the more traditional first moment of truth model to fit the Internet age we live in.

OK, so not exactly groundbreaking in theory but Google is handling this idea differently than they have others. In fact, aside from the usual video treatment below they have produced an ebook (PDF) full of research for marketers to support this idea. In other words, Google is now playing the research as PR game. Oh happy day.