Marketing Pilgrim

FeedBurner, an RSS management utility that was purchased by Google a few years ago, has long offered an RSS-to-email service. One of its major drawbacks, however, was that as an RSS publisher you could only set one subject line. So every email from your feed (generated and sent daily) had the same subject line.

The lowly likes of us regular bloggers complaining in the support forums didn’t have much of an effect. The only solution offered until now was logging in every day and manually changing the subject line to match your post—not fun.

But after Darren Rowse’s open letter to FeedBurner two weeks ago on ProBlogger, things are finally changing. Today, the Google AdSense for Feeds blogs announces that “Happiness is more subject in your subject line.” And it’s true!

Now the interface under Publicize > Email Subscriptions > Email Branding offers this “hot tip”:

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It appears the Federal Trade Commission is continuing its sloth-like race to enact new standards for bloggers that don’t currently disclose compensated endorsements.

The AP does its best to make bloggers out to be "quite different" from the "journalists" that work for mainstream media–and therefore must all be on the up-and-up, right? So, I’ll spare you the fluff and cut to the chase:

New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers — as well as the companies that compensate them — for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts of interest.

It would be the first time the FTC tries to patrol systematically what bloggers say and do online. The common practice of posting a graphical ad or a link to an online retailer — and getting commissions for any sales from it — would be enough to trigger oversight.

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Today, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Wordcamp RDU event–one of many events held around the world for WordPress users.

I gave a presentation outlining my advice for search engine optimization (SEO) for WordPress. I only had about 30 minutes–and had to cater to both newbies and advanced users–so I focused on what I felt were the most important topics.

I’m sharing my SEO for WordPress presentation below, but keep in mind that my presentations are about 30% of what’s on the slides, and 70% of what I convey verbally.

PS. Some of the advice I gave can be found in these previous blog posts:

• 21 of the Best WordPress Plugins for New Blogs
• Blog Marketing Tips #1: How to Optimize Blog Post Titles
• Blog Marketing Tips #2: Increasing Traffic with Killer Slugs

Now this is a neat idea. Public relations firm MWW Group has launched a mobile app that lets you quickly read the top blogs in the areas of PR, marketing, and social media.

Called M.Insight, it’s basically an "install and forget" RSS reader that includes 54 blogs across 6 different categories–although you can add more blogs and categories, if you wish.

Watch this video for more details:

I’m impressed by this for two reasons. One, it’s a great little application that I’ll certainly use on my iPhone. Second, MWW has added their own news feed to the default, so they’re using the application to help promote their services. Smart!

PS. You’ll find Marketing Pilgrim’s feed, strangely enough, not in the "Marketing & Branding" category, but the "Advertising" one.

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I know what you’ve been thinking: man, I’m tired of reading unfounded rumors reported as news. Yeah, me too. Really, I am. So let’s fix this. Let’s stop reading blogs—I mean, you know all they do is just post anything that comes into their heads, foundation or not—and stick to the venerable guardians of all truth, the mainstream media. They would never run a thinly-sourced story or publish rumors, and we know that every word they write is as from the mouth of God.

Okay, you may have picked up on my sarcasm. What I really meant to say is that truth these days is a highly collaborative endeavor. I can’t possibly corner the market on that, and beyond my network of sources-who-shall-not-be-named (and how’s that for “journalist integrity”?!), I don’t hope to find all the facts. I have to run with what I can find fast, and hope that we can find the full set of facts as commentators come forward. Oh, and I guess we should hope that people read the comments, too, if I can’t find the time (or enough interest) to do a followup.

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One of the major usability issues with Google Blogger has long been making the millions of blogs hosted on the service searchable on an individual basis. While the Blogger header bar featured a search box, many bloggers didn’t want the Blogger-branded bar “cluttering” their blog.

A year ago, Google first started testing a solution—a search box that could be placed in a sidebar. Like in WordPress, the search box was available as a sidebar widget (”Gadget”)—but only in Blogger in Draft. At the same time, Google announced an embeddable comment form in Blogger in Draft.

The embeddable comment form moved to full-fledged Blogger in October, but the search box remained in Blogger Draft. Eight month later, the search box is finally joining the Blogger widget family.

To add the widget, go to Layout—Add a Gadget. Select search box. (The pop up window also gives a preview of the search results.)

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I’ve already covered in-depth the importance of getting your blog post titles right–they need to be engaging and keyword driven. Now I’m absolutely convinced that your post titles will become the most important aspect of any blog post–and we have Twitter to thank.

As an avid Twitter user, I’ve seen first-hand just how blog post titles have grown in importance. The ability to feed your blog posts to your Twitter stream and your readers’ passion to share your posts with their followers, have escalated the value I place on writing my post titles.

I don’t want you to miss out on this benefit, so here are some tactics I’ve refined over the past year.

Title Tactic #1 – Your Post Title Says It All

When your blog post title clearly explains the content of the post, you improve the chances that others will tweet and re-tweet your blog post. Take a look at this recent example:

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Google’s working on its Blog Search behind the scenes, according to emails from the head of the search quality group in Google’s New York office, Jeremy Hylton, and Search Engine Land’s Matt McGee:

Google’s changes are more about what powers Blog Search, not what it looks like.

“With [Thursday's] update,” Hylton says, “the whole collection of ranking changes provides a more authoritative set of results. I think it’s really a great set of bloggers talking about current events.”

Hylton says they’ll continue tweaking the algorithm and interface moving forward to improve the overall user experience.

Some of the changes, however, will be more visible: Google is also subtly updating how it displays the clusters of stories on the homepage. The new design is a bit more streamlined, shifting the blue-boxed images from the left of the clusters (old version) to the right:

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Does anyone else hear Judas Priest after reading that headline? No?

Um, anyway, the FTC has been cracking down on the newer methods of marketing, and social media marketing is not immune as SEOmoz’s general counsel, Sarah Bird, pointed out recently in an interview with Eric Enge. The new guidelines, available from the FTC, appear to threaten the future of SMM. The bottom line?

If you’re being compensated to talk about someone’s product, then you need to disclose it.

Rand Fishkin (you know, Sarah’s bossman) summarizes a few important points for us:

• Most SMM is okay: “Want to create accounts for your client or project at social sites, interact with the community under those accounts or build up popularity/followers? You’re in the clear, and can do so without saying who’s paying you or why you’re engaging in those activities.”

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It’s been slowly coming for a very long time. Google announced that they’d acquired FeedBurner back in May 2007. Only eleven months later (*eye roll*), in April 2008, the two finally began their integration. And now it’s complete.

Last night, FeedBurner was the same website. Today, feedburner.com redirects (with masking) to google.com and www.feedburner.com gives the Google login:

Once you sign in, however, you find the old FeedBurner layout. If you’re a FeedBurner user, you’ve probably seen the promptings to migrate your feeds to Google. As the above screenshot assures you, there’s still time. In fact, the front-page–only change may just be a ploy to reluctant or lazy users to migrate faster.

Have you seen this change?

Mike Morgan, the creator of the gripe site www.GoldmanSachs666.com (clever Number of the Beast usage there, Mike) did what many bloggers often talk about but rarely do; he went on the legal offensive.

Morgan set up this site at the end of March reports MediaPost, and received every blogger’s dream; a cease and desist letter from corporate America. In this case the lawyers for Goldman Sachs, who just yesterday made headlines by looking to repay TARP funds they received during the Great Bailout of ’09, were concerned that Morgan’s URL would infringe on their trademark.

In a move to help his cause Morgan has since filed a complaint in federal district court in the southern district of Florida stating

…that he owns the domain name GoldmanSachs666.com, which he uses “to display news and commentary” regarding the bank.

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The Associated Press is angry at bloggers and the rest of the Internet for that matter. It appears as if the AP is so enamored with their ability to come up with completely original material 24/7 that keeps the Internet news machine going that they think we should all pay for the privilege to read it and spread the word. Now, there was more than a little sarcasm there because as many folks in other outlets like AllThingsD, Daggle and more have pointed out that this vision the AP has of being the creator of all things printed is a little overdone.

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