Does anyone else ever feel like me when reading content online that too many writers take too long to get to the point? I’m annoyed by long introductions in blog posts. People feel like they need to give me a synopsis of the history of what they are about to write and tell me why what they are about to write is important. Get to the point.

Or maybe my attention span is shrinking. According to the trends tab in my Google Reader: “From your 98 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 3,466 items, starred 0 items, shared 67 items, and emailed 5 items.” I do most of my reading on Tuesdays with an average of 1068  items that day and my favorite time of day to read articles is at 7 p.m, with an average of 818 items. I guess it’s easy to see how the average American could consume 34 gigs a day.

Most of these barely count as reading (Photobomb, Punknews.org, FreeAppAlert, etc.). But in the case of actual articles, I see a title and decide quickly weather or not it’s worth reading further, in the case I do end up reading further, I skim and pick out ideas and move on. Engaging headlines help, so do pictures, charts and lists. Long winded introductions don’t.

Some examples:

Mashable: As the news industry looks to reconstruct its suffering business model, the journalists of today must reconstruct their skill sets for the growing world of online media. Because of cutbacks at many news organizations, the jobs available are highly competitive, blah blah blah.

PPCHero: Testing your ad copy and your landing pages can significantly improve your paid search efforts. Of course, building a solid keyword base, creating an optimized account structure, and executing a well-planned bid management strategy are also crucial. However, testing blah blah blah

Hubspot: Calls to action are the gateways that your visitors must click through to become leads. If your calls to action aren’t optimized and attractive to your visitors, they are less likely to complete the actions you want them to on your website. Creating a great call to action isn’t simple of course, blah blah blah

Choose wisely the metrics that you use to define success.

Pick a bad metric to measure and you’ll adopt poor methods. For example, if high average time on site or page views/visitor is the metric you choose for gauging the success of your site you may end up with a bunch of visitors who are annoyed with how long it takes them to find anything.

Or if having a huge amount of visits is your metric of choice you may be tempted to use spammy techniques to get traffic; is it better to get a click and then annoy someone, or better to only reach the people who care?

I think a good question to ask is, therefore what? “I want to double the amount of email subscribers to my site,” therefore what? “So that I can get more sales.” Howabout seeing if you can improve your conversion rate from 1% to 2% on those currently in the subscriber list, which also doubles the amount of sales your email subscribers generate, and in the process creates loyal customers that will have a desire to generate word of mouth for you and  improve their lifetime value?

There are reports on how many videos Hulu streams but how come they don’t tell us how many views individual shows are getting? Usually TV shows are quick to point out which ones are getting the highest ratings on TVs even though the way ratings are derived is anything but exact:

Nielsen is making an assumption using a sampling statistic based on 5,000 homes what the approximately 113 million U.S. television-viewing homes are watching.

Yet online, exact amounts of viewership is much more possible. Hulu knows exactly (almost exactly depending on the constraints of their web analytic providers) how many people are watching which shows, how many people drop out and watch shows only half way and they also know the mix of shows people are watching. For example, they would know that a high percentage of people who watch the Simpsons also watch Family Guy, etc.. Sure, Hulu has their “most popular videos” category but they don’t show how many views to substantiate their claim of what is most popular.

You would think they would advertise things like, “Come see the most viewed show on Hulu!” but they don’t, why not? They are hiding something. I bet there is some conflicting data between what the Nielson ratings show and what online shows and they don’t want their advertisers to know about it. And their “most popular videos” category is probably anything but the most popular. I think they cherry pick which clips they want people to watch more of based on which shows demand the highest costing CPMs.

What if Arrested Development is the most popular? But since that show is not airing on TV they don’t want people to like it more, they want people to like The Office more so they can get those people to tune in on Thursdays to sell more advertising. Is their new show Community, which is on the top row for most popular, among the most viewed? Doubtful, I bet they want more people to be exposed to the show since they have a lot riding on it becoming a success. Does Hulu take stocking fees like in supermarkets where networks pay them to put their show on the homepage? Maybe.

For sure they have some good reasons why they don’t reveal which shows get the most views.

I read this article thats ruffled some feathers lately about how SEO is not a legitimate form of marketing and I think what the article says is mostly right. Yet there are a few things about SEO in my opinion that make it worthwhile. In the article it says,

Look under the hood of any SEO plan and you’ll find advice like this: make sure to use keywords in the headline, use proper formatting, provide summaries of the content, include links to relevant information. All of this is a good idea, and none of it is a secret. It’s so obvious, anyone who pays for it is a fool.

This statement is absolutely true. Ranking better in search engines is no secret. All SEO comes down to three things: keywords on your site, other sites linking to yours and having your site code formatted correctly. People in SEO make a lot of hubub on all kinds of other stuff  other than those three things but in reality that’s all you need to do. A writer  for Search Engine Land who replied to the above writer makes a point that I think is very valid,

Still, sometimes people have problems. And the stuff that you think isn’t rocket science — that anyone knows — is indeed a mystery to others.

The fact that this information is well known doesn’t limit it’s value and won’t keep people from wanting someone to use that knowledge on their behalf. There is plenty of information out there on how to change the oil on your car by yourself but that doesn’t make Jiffy Lube a con man. Stock brokers also come to mind as people who are paid a lot to use other people’s money in an industry over which they have no control.
Nothing is stopping businesses from learning the best practices on how to get the most out of their website but they choose to pay experts to do it for them, so what’s wrong with that?

I think the correct way to do marketing, or the way the current landscape demands, can be explained using a metaphor having to do with comparing advertising to a rocket ship:

Whats Wrong With Big Rocket Ships (AKA Traditional Advertising):
1. Traditional rocket ships are big, complex and are explicitly designed to be controlled. These design requirements result in a huge increase in their cost and complexity, and decrease dramatically the probability of the success for the mission. Likewise, a traditional marketing plan is made to be as big and encompassing as possible. Since there is so much riding on it, the marketing must be controlled. With rocket ships and traditional marketing plans, it’s make it or break it.

2. A Rocket ship uses 80% of its fuel in lift off. Once it gets past the lift off stage its pretty much on its way. Likewise, it takes 80% of the marketing budget to launch a new campaign before it has a chance at catching on. What if the idea is a dud and you can’t tell until  after spending 80% of the budget?

3.With the rocket ship costing so much money and taking so much time, it needs to be successful. Traditionally we are continually looking for a “hit” in advertising, something that will spread and become part of pop culture. While trying to predict the likely success of a chosen brand message being a hit, inordinate amounts of money and energy are spent, often, all in vain. Who knows what will be a “hit”? Nobody.

The Solution To The Traditional Rocket Ship Is Replacing It With Hundreds Or More Mini-Rockets:
1. Mini-rockets are cheap to make and launch. And since you don’t have to rely on only one to succeed dramatically well, they don’t need to be built in with fail-proof security and reliability (the reason why traditional rockets cost so much and take so long to build.)

2. Continually measuring the mini-rockets as they go, you can build on the ones that are working and cut back on the ones that aren’t in real-time. Having a budget split up this way allows you to not waste more money than is needed before cutting back on ideas that aren’t working. By relinquishing control, the mini-rockets would be on their own, only bothering to send back whatever they discover.

3. No one knows what is going to be a hit. It’s also hard to tell which demographic will best respond to any particular media. But you stand a better chance at finding a hit with a hundred estimated guesses at a dozen different demographics than one big idea. Then, after launching the multiple mini rockets, you  can let the data tell you which one is the best and continue to fund that one.

This strategy requires the brand to forgo the single-minded brand proposition and embrace long tail thinking. Every brand has more than one potentially ideal consumer. But the big rocket ship’s only option is to target one demographic broadly to capture as many people in that demo as possible. This creates a bland campaign that doesn’t resonate perfectly with anyone since it’s trying to attract as many people as possible by being broad. Targeting the “edges” of the tail instead of the masses, or “head” of the tail, requires narrowing your list down to those most likely, most interested people and ignore everyone else.With mini-rockets you can target very specific demographics with a very specific message. Sure, the amount of people you are reaching is less but your chance for success is higher. This is also much cheaper. Target a dozen different demos and try sending a rocket to them all. These smaller niches, in aggregate, can be composed of as many people as the “head” of the tail and stand a better chance of accepting and spreading your brand.

The “Big Idea” in marketing made sense years ago when the internet wasn’t here. It was wise advice when it came to writing a newspaper ad for example. If an ad said, “we have the best location, best service, best prices and best products,” chances are the ad isn’t going to be effective because the ad is throwing too big of a net and no one is going to believe it – no one is that good. So brands would create a “big idea” to help customers understand and remember as fast as possible for example, “our brand is the cheapest.” Thats big, it resonates with the those who want the cheapest and it has the ability to chisel a spot into the audience’s mind. Simple. Big. Believable (maybe).

Since the newspaper has such big reach, hundreds  of thousands of people would see the ad but only 5%, or less of them would really care deeply about finding the cheapest brand. So a brand effectively wastes money advertising to 95% of the people who don’t use cheapest as their main filter for making buying decisions but instead care about best quality, reliability, customer service, no-hassle buying, convenience, brand image, and a whole host of who knows what. But that’s OK because usually that 5% or less was enough to make it worth it.

So back then you advertised to as many people as possible, pitching one idea that doesn’t apply to everyone but still bland enough to cast the biggest net possible, hoping that your message does reach the people that you are intending it for. Today people are much better at avoiding ads they don’t want to see and are less of a mass and more a mass of niches.

Had the ability to target and measure the effectiveness of your media in real time existed back then, I doubt the “big idea” would  have ever been created. Back then you couldn’t accurately or affordabley target males 18-21 with HHI of $80,000 +, who like japanimation and Nine Inch Nails. That audience would have been too hard and expensive to find and wouldn’t have been big enough give a return on investment to justify the effort.

Not anymore.

Want to target stay at home moms, age 30 – 45, HHI $100,000, who are green conscience and like scrapbooking? OK. Why not choose the 10 most ideal micro-demographics and tailor your media just for them? They will find it super relevant and have a much better chance of connecting with the brand and spreading it to others.

I think there is a lot to be said about having a marketing strategy to create content/earn attention as opposed to buying media/buying attention. I’ve gotten used to most advertisements being  avoidable if I don’t want to pay attention to them, so when there are ads that I can’t avoid, like video pre-rolls or in shows on Hulu, I find that I have half the amount of patience with them and dislike the companies more as a result. Don’t try to force me to watch something I don’t want, which to me, does more harm than good. This is a good video below explaining the idea. From the video: “how can I help you accomplish the task you are looking  to accomplish versus interrupting you and distracting you from that task?”

When making a pay-per-click campaign, the goal is for your ads to show up only for the people that they are most relevant for. Hence, match type and negative keywords as a way of doing just that. But what’s the right combination of match types and negative keywords? Here’s my theory:

If you sell ballerina shoes, for example, bidding on the broad term ballerina shoes will result in your ad showing for the most random search querys such as:  “name of ballerina wearing red shoes in that one movie.”

So you may decide to you phrase match, as in, “ballerina shoes.” Impressions will go down, cost-per-click will go down, but your click throughs should go up as you’re reaching a more targeted audience. Run another Search Query Report in AdWords and you will see traffic coming from querys like: ballerian shoes pictures.

Obviously you don’t want your ad appearing for people looking for pictures. So you can choose Exact Type, as in, [ballerina shoes]. This way you’re only getting people searching for those two words in that order. Impressions and CPC will go further down but click thoughs should still go up (relatively) and conversions should also go up since you’re getting an even more targeted audience.

Now take a look at this (PDF):

Searches with 5+ words have increased an average of 10% year over year. People are using more words in their querys which  means your exact match bid on [ballerina shoes] will be missing a lot of potential customers since using only two words in a search query is down 5% year over year.

New strategy: Keep your exact match bid going on [balleria shoes] since the your average cpc on those keywords will be lower. Then keep the broad match keywords but load up on the negative keywords. Run Search Query Reports and look for all the words that don’t have to do with your product and add them to your campaign as negative words: -images, -free, -download, etc.

This way you can keep out the unrelated random searchers but keep attracting the people getting very specific with their search querys.

The app Shopsavvy for the Android and Redlaser for the iPhone are pretty sweet. With the iPhone 3GS you can use its video camera to capture a barcode, then the app shows you price comparisons for that product online as well as comparing the price to other stores near you.

This makes me think of all the cool things grocery stores could do if they harnessed the internet’s data collection and social networking abilities. A few ideas:

1. Grocery stores already keep track of purchases with their loyalty cards when you check out, why not share that information with the consumer? Give the customer a personal page on their website that shows their shopping habits and make recommendations like Amazon does – 90% of people who purchase Cool Ranch Doritos also buy Cherry Coke.

2. Being able to see everything that you have purchased and the quantity of what you have purchased would help you plan your shopping better. Like what Mint does for personal finance, you would know more accurately how often you need to buy milk. You could see pie charts that show you how much of your food purchases are made up of candy.

3. With more data, grocery stores could give highly relevant and targeted coupons designed individually for the consumer. With enough time the grocery store will know which kind of offers – buy one get one or % off – and on which products incentivize customers to buy. They could figure out that my cookie of choice is Oreos and any discount below 20% off won’t make me buy, but as soon as an offer comes for 30% off Oreos, I’m there. The store could effectively maximize every purchasers buying ability.

9. Brands could set up loyalty products for each of their items. Your 10th Kraft purchase gives you 10% off your next purchase of cheese.

7. Or how about instead of going through a checkout line you put your cart through a conveyor track, like an x-ray machine at the airport, that scans all your items immediately and gives you the price.  No more paying price checkers and no more lines.

8. Or, what if your fridge had bar scanners on the side of it so that it knew everything that you had in the fridge. It could tell how often you take things out so it would alert you if some food was about to expire soon. If you needed to go grocery shopping, just push a button on the fridge and have it print out everything you have run out of, or better yet, send it to your handset.

5. What if every time you put an item in your cart, a digital read-out of the total price of everything in your cart was displayed on the cart handle; take something out of the cart and the price goes down. This would be awesome for customers to be sure they weren’t spending too much while picking out the groceries. Of course, grocery stores probably like that we don’t know how much everything costs until we get to the check out line. But think off all the cool stuff you could do:

6. Supercook is an online tool asks what’s in your kitchen and then uses that information to provide dozens, if not hundreds, of unique dishes that you probably would never have thought of on your own. What if the grocery store kept track of what you put in your cart and gave you ideas of what dishes you could make while in the grocery store  – add Country Crock butter and Pace Picante Salsa, and you have all the ingredients you need to make zesty enchiladas.

4. Looking at the data you could tell in what order most purchases happen in. So they find out that statistically, after people buy meat, the next thing they buy is beer. Up-sell by placing selected items next to, or in-between the meat and the beer for that purchaser to see like barbecue sauces or beer coasters.

10. Let customers connect with other customers who buy similar things. Looks like you buy a lot of spices and ingredients, would you like to join a recipe community in your area? You BBQ a lot, compete in your local community cook-off.

Maybe some of this stuff seems a little too much big brother, but I would let companies know my purchasing habits in exchange for relevant coupons, food suggestions and insights to my food buying habits.

Saw this on TechCrunch this week:

Twitter [and Facebook] “will surpass Google [as a source of traffic] for many websites in the next year.” And just as nearly every site on the Web has become addicted to Google juice, they will increasingly try to find ways to get more links from Twitter. Because Twitter equals traffic…these Twitter links “convert better” than search links because they are often pre-filtered and come in the form of a recommendation from someone you are following.

This is a good point. Now that there are no more gate keepers to filter what gets published, everything gets published and we rely on filters (bloggers, friends online) afterwords to help us find the best stuff. Twitter is a great tool for networking with like-minded people to help you find the stuff you’re interested in. I rely heavily on the opinions of bloggers that I trust to point me to where the good stuff is at. This is the best reason, so far, for getting a business involved in Twitter.

P.S. Google has added a Creative Commons filtering capability to its Image Search results to allow you to find images without having to pay a stock photo company or steal an unlicensed picture from Image Search. The option isn’t currently available on the user interface, but you can enable the filter by adding a certain parameter to your search URL (in this case, just replace “mountains” with whatever you are actually searching for)

• For public domain images — http://images.google.com/images?q=mountains&as_rights=cc_publicdomain
• For images licensed with Creative Commons Attribution (that is, images you can use as long as you attribute the image back to the creator) — http://images.google.com/images?q=mountains&as_rights=cc_attribute
• For images licensed using Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike — http://images.google.com/images?q=mountains&as_rights=cc_sharealike

I got the image above from Wikimedia Commons. Nice!