Marketing Pilgrim Published: "Google+ and Gmail Take First Tiny Step" plus 5 more

Posted: 23 Aug 2011 06:06 AM PDT

Normally, it wouldn't be right to say that something done in the Internet marketing and social media world is just a tiny step. Heck that reeks of understatement and maybe even, gulp, the truth.
Well, yesterday Mark Streibeck whose Google Profile gives an indication what his days might be like at Google.
I am managing Gmail frontend development. Which is complex and interesting enough. But with the launch of Google+ it got so much more interesting.
announced that you can now see recent Google+ posts from a Gmail user. Over at Google+ he reported

A first, tiny step: view recent Google+ posts in the Gmail people widget!
You can now see the most recent Google+ post that the sender of the email shared with you in the Gmail people widget – see screenshot below.
BTW: +Bella Kazwell is a tech lead on the Gmail team and +Steven Bills is the engineer who implemented this particular feature. Oh, and before you ask, 'unicorn' is what we nicknamed our internal Gmail test environment. I.e. the Google+ post here from Bella is pretty much the first one that was ever served from Gmail!
Again, this is just the first launch – look out for more!

Here is what it looks like.

Of course this will only get more interesting moving forward and likely a bit more confusing. It's hard enough rifling through emails without having someone yelling "Post!" to distract you from the task at hand. Maybe that's just me.
Another question that usually arises here is when this feature will be available in mail through Google Apps which has been getting the redheaded step-child treatment in Google's social moves thus far despite the wide call for integration of these services.
So Google continues its march toward tying all of its disparate parts together into something that will help us all get better.
What's your take?

Marketing Pilgrim's Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information.

New York Mets Take a Swing At Social Media, Connecting Fans and Selling Tickets

Posted: 23 Aug 2011 05:41 AM PDT

OK, first I have a confession. I am a New York Mets fan (all you other Mets fans can say "Hi, Frank" because admitting this addiction is hard considering the state of the team). Not only a Mets fan but one from birth. That means a limited amount of success (I was at Game 7 in 1986 at their old home Shea Stadium when they won their last World Series) and a lot of heartache (name just about any other day in any other season).
So I was pretty interested to get this email announcement from the team.

As a sports fan, it's interesting to watch the intersection of the game and the communication with fans. There has never been more access to players than there is now through social media channels but where the real magic happens is when real people meet other real people in person for real.
I read a post recently by a social media giant who talked about how he doesn't hang out with people that much locally because most of his friends are online. That is one of those interesting yet somewhat sad commentaries on what social media does. It can connect yet somewhat isolate people in the very same breath.
Sports, however, is all about the game and the experience. TV is good to follow an entire season, which I do from my home in the southeast through MLB's Extra Inning package just to remind myself of the thrill of victory (on too rare an occasion) and the agony of defeat (in disproportionate amounts) of being a Mets fan. The best memories, at least for me, are tied to being in a seat at a ballpark taking in the experience. The smells, the people (sometimes one in the same), the game destination and more make it so much more real and memorable.
Now, if I choose to through social media, I could follow some of the goings on at Citi Field in Queens on Friday. I don't follow athletes (it's just not my style) but I may just for this event on Friday to see what is done to use social media to close the loop between fans, the in-stadium experience and a player.

It's good that social media can help share information. There is benefit to that. When it can enhance an experience that a person can have, however, at a live event then it is helping do more. It's at this point that social media adds true value.
Of course, this kind of interaction isn't confined to sporting events. The trick as marketers is to try to bring brands and otherwise 'normal' experiences to life through the use of social media. A brand would have a hard time creating the type of environment that a live event can unless of course they are connecting themselves to that event through sponsorship etc.
It's this opportunity that makes the idea of sports sponsorships a whole new ballgame. No longer is it just putting a name on a stadium. Now, by having your brand there you can reach out to current and potential fans of your brand and get them when they are completely immersed in something special to them. As a marketer could you ask for anything more?
What other sports related uses of social media have caught your attention? Have any of these efforts ever helped you to decide to go to a game or interact in a new way with a team or a brand?

Teaching the Next Generation of Internet Marketers

Posted: 23 Aug 2011 04:33 AM PDT

Full Sail University is the sponsor of Marketing Pilgrim's Social Media Channel.
It's not news that marketing has made a huge shift to digital in the past 10 years. It's also clear that many higher education institutions are still struggling to adapt their marketing curriculum to reflect the changing nature of the industry.
David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR, finds it so bad, in fact, that last year he went so far as to call many marketing professors criminals because they weren't teaching up-to-date material in their classes.
That is unfortunate, because in this economy, there is [a] demand for talented and educated Internet marketers. Simply Hired Job Trends, for instance, show that job postings with 'Internet marketing' in the title have increased 180% since November 2009, while 'social media marketing' has grown 301%.
However, today's college graduates – particularly those in fields like Internet marketing – need more than just a general education. They need to have acquired the skills that will help their employers succeed.
Take a look at the job postings here on Marketing Pilgrim. Most of them identify very specific requirements for applicants – SEO, Social Marketing, Mobile, Email, E-Commerce, and Analytics. Employers want practical knowledge and the ability to implement immediately. And, with specific – and current – skills being not only in demand, but also near-mandatory in today's marketing world, it's essential that one's education is based around those skills. Unfortunately, many traditional marketing courses – built around dated textbooks and calcified orthodoxy – are not.

However, that certainly does not mean that Internet marketing cannot be taught in a formal educational environment. Chris Thompson wrote about this compellingly in his post on learning SEO at school. Successfully teaching Internet marketing does requires innovation, though.
Full Sail University provides more relevant education to the next generation of Internet marketers by letting go of the need to keep doing things the way they've always been done. Innovative education not only engages students more effectively, but also ensures that what they're learning is what's relevant in the workplace.
This means abandoning the old textbook-lecture approach and replacing it with something that facilitates knowledge-building in a more meaningful way. Doing so requires:

Educators who are willing to do the hard work of staying current in their discipline.
Changing the core philosophy that educating today's students can take place the old way.
A willingness to use non-traditional learning materials like blog posts, videos, podcasts, games and other more current information instead of relying on out-of-date textbooks.
Institutional flexibility in permitting curricula to be adjusted as necessary to reflect the current environment.

For instance, the faculty of the Full Sail Internet Marketing Bachelor's and Master's degrees take a very practical, real-world approach that allows students to not only learn marketing concepts, but also to build strategies and see tactics in action. In these online programs, lessons, discussions and assignments are adapted frequently to reflect the rapid pace of change in the industry, and the educators have embraced the fact that teaching in today's world means being innovative and creative.
Companies don't just need Internet marketers, they need marketers who can make an impact from day one. Unfortunately, only a small minority of educational institutions are equipping graduates with the real-world skills employers need. By improving and innovating the educational approach to contemporary marketing, institutions can produce a better outcome for themselves and, most importantly, for their students.

Rob Croll is Department Chair for the Internet Marketing Bachelor's degree program at Full Sail University, and the Course Director for Search Engine Optimization there. He also owns Marlannah Digital Marketing, a consulting firm that works with small- to medium-sized businesses and non-profits. Rob was named one of the Top 100 Marketing Professors on Twitter and has had numerous articles published both online and in print on a variety of Internet marketing topics. You can follow Rob on Twitter @rcroll.

Skype Gets into Group Texting

Posted: 22 Aug 2011 12:23 PM PDT

Skype, who is in the processing of being bought by Microsoft, just did a little buying of their own. They plunked down a rumored $85 million for group texting company GroupMe.
The GroupMe app was designed to solve a very basic problem — group decision making. If you've ever tried to plan a night out with four different you understand the issue. Fred calls Joe and suggests sushi, Joe calls Mary who says she doesn't like sushi, so Joe texts Fred to say pick somewhere else, but in the meantime Fred is on the phone trying to talk Louise into coming out for sushi with him, while Mary texts Louise telling her Fred's a loser and they're all going for pizza. Next thing you know it's 10:00 at night and no one has left the house yet.
Now, with the GroupMe app, Fred, Joe, Mary and Louise can all get their own private mobile chatroom where they can hash out the details in time to beat the dinner crowd (and with a 50% off coupon from Foursquare!)
According to FastCompany, GroupMe already handles more than a million messages a day, and they turned down a $30 mil offer from Twitter. Seems like Skype is a better fit anyway as both companies are more about two-way conversation. Twitter thinks they're two-way, but mostly, they're not.
GroupMe with or without Skype is an excellent tool for the small business as it allows all the members of the team to get on the same page at the same time. As far as using it for marketing, there are possibilities. Lollaplooza set up a GroupMe number for folks attending their music festival. Kind of like a Twitter event hashtag, but more direct.
For the time being, GroupMe will continue business as usual but the goal is to add their functionality to Skype's system. It all goes to Skype's ultimate goal which is to become the switchboard for all of planet Earth. And if we ever discover intelligent life on other planets, we'll probably use Skype to contact them, too.
Do you use GroupMe? I'd like to hear about your experience.

Facebook Falters While StumbleUpon Races By

Posted: 22 Aug 2011 11:10 AM PDT

StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp, was all a Twitter on Friday when he got the news that StumbleUpon now drives 50% of all social media referral traffic in the US. The added bonus, they crawled up over Facebook to do it.
Here's a chart that proves it:

Hmmm. . . interesting. It may be true that numbers (and social media CEO's) don't lie, but they have been known to bend the truth. In this case, I think we're comparing apples and tomatoes, so the numbers aren't really what they seem.
People go to Facebook to do a lot of things. They catch up with friends, post photos, play games, join groups and share links.
At StumbleUpon, people only go to do one thing — share links. All of the favoriting and friending at SU is all designed to lead the user back to stumbling (ie, the process browsing through a random list of URLs). So even if SU has fewer members than Facebook, it doesn't matter because they're entire raison d'être is link sharing.

I'm not trying to take anything away from StumbleUpon. I like them and I believe they're on the rise again, but these figures are like saying more people watch video on YouTube than on Facebook. I don't even think of SU as a social network. It's a highly sophisticated bookmarking site whose competitors are Digg and Reddit, not Facebook.
Having said all of that, I still recommend the use of StumbleUpon for pure traffic generation to your websites and blogs. A large amount of referred visitors aren't going to convert but if you get one new customer out of it, it was worth the few moments it took to post the link.
And congrats StumbleUpon, no matter how you quantify it, it's clear that you're on an upswing and that's good news all around.

Science, Not Guesswork, Will Bring Social Media Out of the Dark Ages

Posted: 22 Aug 2011 11:06 AM PDT

For a full hour of ground-breaking social media science, data and myth busting, be sure to register for HubSpot's Science of Social Media webinar. HubSpot is the sponsor of Marketing Pilgrim's Inbound Marketing channel.
It's easy to get sucked into soft-focus, touchy-feely social media advice. Stuff like "engage in the conversation," "hug your followers," and "have a personality." And it's often not easy to disagree with myths like these, since they "seem right" and nobody wants to be the guy that says "punch your customers in the face."
The same thing was happening with medical advice centuries ago. "Common sense" approaches to health care led to things like magical tonics and bleeding. Not only did these things often not work, but much of the time they actually did more harm than good.
But then medicine came out of the dark ages through the scientific method and practitioners and researchers began to use real data to understand what worked and what didn't. Beyond "common sense."
Social media needs to come out of the dark ages now too. We need to start using the mountains of real data and the scientific method to conduct real experiments to learn what actually works.
Science isn't perfect. Neither are statistics. Correlation and causation, tortured data and faulty experiment design are all real dangers. But even questionable science is better than just guessing.

Relying on "years of experience" is just as dangerous as sheer guesswork. Years of experience is basically using a very small data set, with serious selection bias issues to generate anecdotal evidence and then running with it. It's better than nothing, but it's nowhere near as good as objective research that uses sample sizes north of tens or hundreds of thousands or even millions of data points.
And fuzzy, nebulous advice like "personality is important" or "be interesting" is totally worthless. It's like saying "be cool." It's far too broad, subjective and weakly defined to actually mean anything. This kind of advice doesn't give anyone real direction. It just "sounds" right, and so it's easy for the masses to cheer for.
But we're in business to make money, not friends, right? I'm not interested in what's popular, I'm interested in what works. Are you?