For the first few days or weeks things go as planned, but then things slowly begin to unravel.  You start to notice a trend in missed days of note taking and the notes you do take appear to be written by someone else (we’ll blame them, since clearly you’d be able to understand your own writing).  Eventually, your fancy new notebook becomes the new notebook that’s lost somewhere, but your bag, or is your kid’s new doodle book.

Well, my (and likely yours) online brand presence notebook had a fancy new page added to it today.  A Twitter brand page.  This new Twitter brand page has the pleasure of lying next to your company website, blog, Facebook page, Google+ page and GetSatisfaction page and marks another opportunity for us to enhance our customers’ experience with our brand.

Features of the Twitter brand page include:

• a larger more customizable header
• added tweet control, so we can choose to keep a tweet at the top of our time line
• auto-expanding tweets, so we can display embedded items such as a photo or video without requiring the user to take action
• and the ability to separate our @ replies from mentions.

All of these features are great, but we now have another platform in which we must think about visual design, a communication strategy, calculating ROI and who’s going to be managing the effort.  It’s overwhelming and while an online brand presence may have similarities to our fancy new notebook from Target, it’s just not the same.  How a brand preforms online is mission critical to a business.  It’s what keeps the lights on and cannot be lost or left to the management of anyone.   EEK!

If you’re tactful and keep calm, a new page can represent another great learning experience and opportunity to connect with customers that is managed with the same ease as your company blog.

Here are (3) things to remember when determining your strategy for your new Twitter brand page:

1. Remember your audience- The audience for your Twitter brand page will be the same folks currently engaging with your tweets, Google+ and Facebook page.  This means you do not need to create new content or new campaigns.  You simply need to thoughtfully organize your existing content in a manner that leverages the new platform to the benefit of your business and customers.  Also, if you have not already taken note of this, it’s likely that you’ll find the type of engagement (questions asked, top clicked content, etc.) seen from your customers across various platforms/pages is the same.  The primary driver of what makes one person use Facebook versus Twitter to engage with a brand is personal preference for one platform over another, assuming your brand presence/content offering is similar on both platforms.
2. Keep your content interesting and relevant- When determining interesting look to your customers, not you or your employees, as you’re likely not your target audience.  For small business owners think about positioning yourself as an industry expert.  While we should all take time to promote our product, also dedicate a decent chunk of energy to education and support. Consider answering questions such as how to find the best product to fit a particular need, how to get the most out of a product or service and what’s new in the industry (even if your company isn’t on the bandwagon).
3. You have time plan and devise a strategy- The Twitter brand page is currently only available to select large brands, with no exact date yet on when they will be made available to the masses.  While you wait explore and learn from the brands that are now using the enhanced profile pages: @AmericanExpress, @BestBuy, @bing, @chevrolet, @CocaCola, @Dell, @DisneyPixar, @generalelectric, @Heineken, @HP, @intel, @JetBlue, @Kia, @McDonalds, @nikebasketball, @NYSE_Euronext, Paramount Pictures’ Mission: Impossible – @GhostProtocol, @pepsi, @Staples, @subwayfreshbuzz, and @VerizonWireless.  Note- you’ll need to use the new version of Twitter to see these enhanced pages.

All of this is happening within your customers’ home away from home, their inbox.

With them every waking hour (or sleepless night) and on every device, your customers’ inbox is a sacred place and it’s our responsibility as email marketers, business owners and communication managers to respect this sacrament.

How do we honor this sacrament you ask?  EASY.

Practice the Art of Communication.

• Send relevant content- Use your data and your common sense to ensure the content your sending each customer is a right fit.
  
• Be timely- If you’re offering a 24-hour sale, don’t send the promo email at 10 pm; two hours before the sale ends.
  
• Be accurate- This covers everything from not having spelling errors and broken links to ensuring the content of the email matches what your customer will find on your website, social media page, catalog, etc.

Stay Within the CAN-SPAM Act Lines.

This does not mean you must have a double opt-in process for your email subscriber list, but you definitely need to abide by CAN-SPAM’s main requirements, including:

• Don’t use deceptive subject lines- Using a subject line that reads “Free iPad today,” and an email body that talks about a new store opening is a definite no no.
  
• Tell recipients where you’re located- If you’re a small business owner just starting out, consider getting a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service.  Up to you, but you probably don’t want your customers to know your home address.
  
• Tell recipients how to opt-out and honor opt-out requests promptly- Hoops are great for circus folk, but you definitely don’t want your customers to have to jump through them in order to opt-out from your email list, so consider a one click unsubscribe process from within your emails.  Also, be sure to check your unsubscribe process frequently to ensure it works.

For a complete list of CAN-SPAM’s main requirements visit the Bureau of Consumer Protection or check out The CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business.

As a marketer, I never stop thinking of how and where a business can further their reach to promote their brand.

By pure chance, or at least I’m assuming it was by chance I think I found a place no one thought of.

Introducing marketing by CAPTCHA!

CAPTCHA for Advertisers

For those that don’t recognize the name CAPTCHA, I’ll define it for you. A CAPTCHA is a program that protects websites against bots by generating and grading tests that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot.

The other day I was conducting keyword research for an SEO project and had to enter a seemingly random string of characters before I could enter into the Google AdWords website. Usually the text is so random you never think twice about what you have to enter in the text-box. This time it was different.

Check out the image below for a real live CAPTCHA that I had to enter.

Now, I’m no math genius but what are the odds of having the string of characters ETrade showing up? Now, dig deeper and tell me the odds of getting it to ask for E*Trade. Notice the asterisk in between the E and the letter T? I would love to know the odds. Anyone care to guess?

I think it’s only a matter of time before we see marketing through CAPTCHA on public websites.

So there you go. If you’re a developer reading this, go build it and get to market first. You just might have a golden egg in your hands. Or, it’s a fluke that I saw it (maybe 1 in a trillion) and it’s a silly idea to think that companies will start promoting their brand using CAPTCHA.

With recent changes to the Google AdWords’ trademark policies it is important to know when competitor’s ads may show when a search is performed for your company’s name. Search advertisers are allowed to bid on specific keywords relating to your company, assuming they are a competitor, as long as they follow some rules.

Rule 1: They don’t mention your product/service on their site.
The exemption to this rule is if the advertiser is a reseller of your good or service. However, the landing page must be primarily dedicated to the sale or facilitation of the sale of the goods or services corresponding to your trademark.

Example: For the keyword search “sony computers” other retailers including bestbuy.com, staples.com, and newegg.com are displayed. Also, notice that the trademark is allowed to be used in the headline of the ad.

Rule 2: They don’t attempt to harm your reputation or product.
Dogging on someone else’s trademark will only hurt the relevance of the ad. Advertisers should keep the golden rule in mind, and they should be safe.

Rule 3: Don’t have comparisons with trademark infringements within the ad text.
A competitive claim would include implying that their product or service is better than yours. Examples of unacceptable ad text are “better than,” “faster than,” “beats.” The exemption to the rule is if the landing page displays evidence supporting the comparative claim.

In Summary

The lesson here is if you aren’t bidding on your brand terms, it’s likely that someone else will, if they aren’t already. So, two to-do’s you should add to your list are:

1. Start with a small budget and create an AdWords account today.
2. Register your trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

If you have more questions, view all advertising policies for AdWords. To keep up with all policy changes visit the AdWords Policy Change Log.

The change I’m referring to comes down to a single word… trust. Without trust your website will fail. Why? I believe it’s due to the rapid growth of using social signals in search.

Social Signals and Search

Think rank.

• PageRank – PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page, used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents… more ->
• AuthorRank - A system may receive a feed associated with a blog. The system may extract information from the feed and the blog and create a hybrid document based on the extracted information. The system may further use the hybrid document to determine a relevance of the blog to a search… more ->
• TrustRank - (PDF) TrustRank is a link analysis technique described in a paper by Stanford University and Yahoo! researchers for semi-automatically separating useful webpages from spam… more ->

Are you seeing it yet? If not, keep reading.

Trust and PPC

It was recently spotted by Vinny O’Hare that Google is running a test on PPC ads. This test is showing you the number of clicks on the PPC ads. What is not clear is if the number represents the number of clicks for that campaign, those search terms or that exact ad.

Image credit: Vinny O'Hare @vinnyohare

Steven Weldler also saw a similar test that Google says is running on a very small sampling of users.

Image Credit: Steven Weldler @SeoSteven

Recently, I had a phone conversation with two PPC reps from Google and they were almost giddy in their desire to have us add the Google +1 button to our site. Google sent emails to both our advertising department and PPC department in hopes of getting us to add the Google +1 button. In all correspondence with Google they made it a point to say that the behavior of Google +1 will play a part in organic search results.

Now do you see it? It’s called trust!

It’s Time to Build Trust

If you want to make money online as an affiliate marketer you better start thinking about how you’re going to build trust with your users.

Final example: Recently, Google made two major changes to its algorithm; first to target spammy/scraper sites, followed by the larger Panda update that targeted “low quality” sites. In response to the outcry from people claiming they were innocent and shouldn’t have been penalized, Amit Singhal from Google had this to say.

If the answer is no, you have no trust. Without trust your website will fail.