Good Information: Drake Morton
OCTOBER 30, 2009
Despite the slowing growth of Twitter after its explosion earlier in 2009, many users still cannot get enough. Crowd Science reports that in August 2009, although only 27% of Twitter users posted daily, 46% checked for updates every day. Almost one in five social media users reported using Twitter in the past week.
 Good Read: Drake Morton
by Daniel Ambrose , Thursday, October 29, 2009
I first read of the death of email, by email.
I guess certain Wall Street Journal reporters will go far to get attention. If journalism is supposed to be provocative, it worked. The recent article ” Why Email No Longer Rules,” by Jessica E. Vascellaro, made the case that communicating through social media like Facebook and Twitter is so much more “for the way we live” — which just didn’t make sense, and drew many objections and comments. The subsequent follow-up blather from Vascellaro didn’t add any clarity, including a “non-scientific poll.”
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Very Important Read: Drake Morton
by Loren McDonald , Thursday, October 22, 2009
My previous column, where I shared personal experiences about assumptions others have made about my wife and me without knowing us, turned out to be the second most popular column I’ve written for Email Insider, as measured by the number of readers’ comments.
I intended the column to caution against assuming too much about your subscribers and customers. However, reader reaction confirmed my view that showing a human, personal side in email, blogs and other communications content will lead to greater engagement with your customers and subscribers.
Very Good Read: Drake Morton
by Aaron Goldman , Wednesday, October 21, 2009
And the beat goes on. What started off as 10 simple marketing lessons learned from Google blossomed into 15 and then 20 before seeding a full-fledged book (in-progress). From there, I dove into lessons from Google about product development. Today, I’d like to bring it up a level to what Google can teach us about general business practices. For my next topic, I think I’ll lighten the mood with we can learn from Google about dating — so start tweeting your suggestions now!
1.    Innovate or die. Google fosters a culture of innovation by allowing employees to spend 20% of their time working on non-core projects. And, for core projects, it puts a relentless focus on continuous improvement. Heck, in the past year alone, Google made 359 changes to its Web search product. I guess when it’s as easy as a click to switch from Google’s bread-and-butter product to a competitor, it had better keep innovating. Netflix is a great example of a company devoted to innovation. It runs a contest awarding $1 million to anyone that can improve its recommendation algorithm by 10%.
Good Read: Drake Morton
 by Judah Phillips , Friday, October 16, 2009
Companies are more dependent on solid Web analytical data to drive increased revenue and improved efficiency than ever before. Yet, most companies underinvest in the people and technology needed to deliver optimal levels of analysis. In my discussions with colleagues at industry events, it is not uncommon to find one analyst or a very small team of fewer than three analysts responsible for everything related to Wweb analytics, from soup to nuts. And by that I mean all vendor relationships, systems administration and maintenance, tagging specification/verification/QA, AB and multivariate testing, data collection, report creation/interpretation, stakeholder communication, and all analysis activities.
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 Good Read: Drake Morton
by Angela Hribar , Thursday, October 15, 2009
The important question during a downturn isn’t whether or not the economy will recover. It will; it always does. What’s important to ask is whether your company will be in position to surge as the economy begins to grow. To a large degree, the level of your success will depend on your marketing efforts and capabilities — what you have done during the downturn and what you put in place now to win business during the recovery. You will need to make strategic decisions about choosing new media, entering new markets, and positioning products.
Success will also depend on the timing of your efforts. Now is the time to establish marketing plans for the recovery-formulate strategies, design campaigns, make media choices, justify expenditures — so you are ready to go with an approved marketing plan as your company’s budgets open up and you have marketing funds to invest.
 A Must Read: Drake Morton
by Morgan Stewart , Wednesday, October 14, 2009
 You Need to Know How to Mix It Up!
Addition of Video eMarketing is essential!!
OCTOBER 13, 2009
Time spent on social networking sites is increasing steadily, taking users’ attention away from sites such as portals. According to comScore, the top 20% of social network users visit networking sites 2.4 times per day, on average, and spend 31 minutes on them—twice as long as the same users spend with e-mail or instant messaging. And that, in turn, means more time with ads.
The research firm’s “The State of Social Networks as a Media Platform” report found that more than one-fifth of online display ad impressions occurred on social networking sites in July 2009. That was more than double the display ads viewed on e-mail and entertainment sites.
Good Information: Drake Morton
by Gord Hotchkiss , Thursday, October 8, 2009
This week, I moderated a session at SMX about real-time search. Personally, I find the convergence of social and search to be perhaps the most significant trend of 2009. Social adds an entirely new dimension to search. Traditionally search has been used to find “what” you wanted to know more about. Social adds the dimension of time. Suddenly, relevance isn’t the only measure. Search now needs a “stale date,” a measure of the freshness of the results.
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Very Good Read: Drake Morton
OCTOBER 7, 2009
Despite the concerns of some consumers and privacy advocates, marketers have defended behavioral targeting on the basis that Internet users would prefer to look at relevant advertisements and offers.
But a study from researchers at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of California Berkeley School of Law and the Annenberg Public Policy Center reports just the opposite.
“Contrary to what many marketers claim, most adult Americans (66%) do not want marketers to tailor advertisements to their interests,” according to the paper. “Moreover, when Americans are informed of three common ways that marketers gather data about people in order to tailor ads, even higher percentages— between 73% and 86%—say they would not want such advertising.” (more…)
