Why Twitter should monetize with advanced features for users
Feb 24, 2009 Social Media Marketing
As Twitter has been gaining more popularity, there has been lots of talk about what Twitter should (and shouldn’t!) do to monetize their service. One, that seemed to be given a bit of credibility, was the idea of charging businesses for their Twitter accounts. But, as you can imagine, that opens a whole can of worms as to what exactly counts as a business. Does that mean @jenstar would be considered a business Twitter account because I also use it for networking? What about my @jensense or @jenniferslegg which are strictly for keeping people updated on my new blog posts. Or would it be reserved for the evangelists of companies, such as @Starbucks or @Comastcares? But then what about @MajorNelson or @MattCutts, because while they are personal Twitter accounts, they are certainly evangelists too.
So how else could Twitter make money? Give the users something they really want, and many would be willing to pay for it! Give the option for a premium or power user version of a Twitter account… I know I would pay for one and I am willing to bet plenty of others would too. But what should a Twitter Power User Account have?
Advanced Stats
Wouldn’t you like to know who is checking out your profile? Or know which of your followers are actually logging in regularly and read what you tweet? Or how many people view your twitter feed each day, and of those people, who is already following you, who decides to follow you, and who bounces. Now, before all the privacy advocates start jumping up and down, it could be an opt-in or opt-out, or it could also be in the form of a generic bar graph along the lines of 47% of your followers log in at least 5 times a week down to 2% of your followers haven’t logged in for the past month.
Advanced Privacy
What about if you could change privacy settings more like Facebook? Like maybe you don’t want to have your updates protected, but you would like to have it so that people have to be logged in to view them? And while you’re at it, why not advanced search settings too… maybe you don’t want your tweets indexed? Or only allow your followers to search your previous tweets? That might be especially handy for those who like to tweet on controversial topics but don’t neccessarily want random people to search for their “strong opinion keywords” simply so they can come along and @reply you something nasty for whatever your stated opinion happened to be.
Suggested Users
Facebook recommends that I friend people because many of my other friends are friends of theirs too. Why not the same kind of idea, but based on who I follow. If half of the people I follow are following someone, chances are good I either know the person or know of him or her. There are still people I happen to run across on Twitter that have been tweeting for a month or more, but I had no idea they were there. Twitter does offer this for brand new users as they are signing up, albiet seemingly only listing those with “celebrity status” and who already have high follower counts (think in the neighborhood of 100,000 followers), but having this available to the entire community at all times would be good, especially if they listed those with a lot less followers. Have it as a “27 of the people you follow also follow @whoever. Would you like to follow @whoever too? Yes / No”.
Adding a @comment tab
Wouldn’t you love to know that someone happened to bring your @name up in a tweet somewhere? Well, right now, if it isn’t first in the box and showing up as an @reply in your home page, summize, RSS or some of the apps are the only way you are going to know unless someone points it out or you happen to be following them. Twitter itself doesn’t alert you.
Add a ReTweet button
Yes, the favorites and replies icons at the right side of every tweet is handy. Why not add a Re-tweet icon too, to make it easy for people to RT, and which automatically adds the RT (or whatever funky symbol is the consensus at the time, lets standardize it!) and the @name you are retweeting, along with the text. Yes, cut and paste is fairly quick, but Twitter should promote the retweet and make it amazingly simple for to do it. Because Twitter also has the advantage of the fact RT builds the community spirit when everyone is retweeting important things others have said.
Adding a ReTweet tab
Add a tab that lets me know I have been retweeted. Sure, if someone retweets a blog post of mine, it will show up in my Google Analytics (sometimes) but it would be far handier to make it easy for me to know, without doing the @jenstar summize search or RSS. I use Twitter on the web frequently (and I noticed plenty of people doing the same in sessions at SMX earlier this month) so it would be handy to have it all-in-one without having to go to an app, a different webpage or an RSS to find it.
Set power users apart
Give power users something that makes it obvious they have ponied up and paid for a power user subscription, whether it is a shiny gold star next to the twitter name or a badge of some sort in the sidebar. Because not only does it make those who have paid stand out a bit more, it also makes it obvious who hasn’t paid… and I am sure more than a few would pay up simply because they don’t want to be seen as the one who hasn’t gone the power route amongst their peers!
Shhhh button
We have all had it happen… someone just starts to really starts to annoy us. Perhaps someone is ranting on about something you couldn’t care less about at a rate of 8 tweets a minute, and there appears to be no end in sight. Or maybe someone is out for a night out with copious amounts of alcohol and their nonsensical tweets combined with bad humor are annoying. Or maybe they have just released a tool/app/ebook/blog and are spamming your Twitter feed about it (Note: if you think this might be you, read Ten Ways to Market Your Blog on Twitter Without Being a Spammer) You don’t neccessarily never want to see them tweet again, nor want them to know you secretly find them to be completely annoying by unfollowing them, but at the moment, you have had enough! It would be great to be able to temporarily ignore their tweets for 1 hour, 6 hours, 1 day or even 1 week, after which they will start appearing in my Twitter stream again. Tweetdeck does allow you to sort users, so you could avoid this, but it is still annoying no matter how you slice or dice it… especially if you happen to get that person’s tweets sent directly to your mobile!
Do the ones I follow follow me back?
I personally don’t care if I happen to follow people who don’t follow me back, but others I know will go and unfollow those who don’t follow them back on a regular basis. But it would be also handy to spot those people (who shall remain nameless!) who constantly follow people, then immediately unfollow, in hopes that you will follow them back (and yes, some of these people have followed then immediate;y unfollowed me multiple times. Not sure how people can tell this if they are being followed by someone? If you wanted to see if I am following you, go to my main Twitter page (ie. http://www.twitter.com/jenstar), look to see if there is a “message jenstar” option listed in your right sidebar under actions. If I am not following you, it will simply say “block jenstar”. And lacking in followers? Here is Why People You Follow on Twitter Don’t Follow You Back.
Block #whatever in my Twitter stream
Sure, a bunch of my friends are at whatever the latest conference, event, or gathering, so my entire Twitter updates list is filled with all the people I follow having a great time somewhere I am not. So I would like to be able to block anything with #keyword so I don’t have to spend my entire evening being envious. Or just use it so I don’t have to see things like the running #oscars commentary if I decide to spend the time working instead 
Advanced and/or quicker support
If you have ever tried to send a support request to Twitter, you will know the 5-7 days they say it will take them to respond is such an underestimate. I sent in a report on a guy with a topless (and very young looking) girl in his background on his Twitter page, which is against the Twitter rules. I sent a request 25 days ago asking Twitter to look at it, and it is still languishing ”awaiting assignment to a help desk operator”. It would be nice if power users had the ability to get priority on their support requests… because 25 days is kind of rediculous for a support request that is actually to help keep Twitter clean.
So in reality, this is also my Twitter power user wish list. Yes, I do know there are a variety of tools that do some of the above, but there isn’t an “all-in-one” tool that saves a user for going to different sites or apps to do it. I would quite happily pay to have it as an all in one option, and support Twitter financially in the process, and I know many others would too - so long as it was priced right. And this would also avoid the whole issue of whether or not Twitter should add advertising to the site.
Besides, I know I would love to have all these shiny new options to play with on Twitter 
Follow me at @jenstar on Twitter.
How to prevent competitors from seeing your AdWords ads
Feb 20, 2009 Pay Per Click
For whatever reason, you might decide you don’t want your competitors from seeing your AdWords ads. The reason can be as simple as suspecting your competitor might be clicking on your ads or perhaps a competitor keeps stealing your ad copy. Or you could just want your competitor to be searching for the golden keywords and not see any of your ads in sight, giving them the false sense of security that you must have pulled all your AdWords ads. And, of course, there are more nefarious reasons why one might want to do this
By preventing your competitors from seeing your ads, it can also help preventing bidding wars for your best converting keywords. If Ad Ranks are equal between you and your competitor, top dollar wins. And if your competitors sit at their desks, checking their best keyword phrase and see themselves firmly planted at the top, they won’t bid higher and displace you from the top… even when the rest of the world clearly sees you at the top. It wouldn’t be the first time an advertiser sees their positioning data in AdWords and assume it must be some kind of glitch, or something to do with quality score, because when they search they can’t see anyone else’s ad above their own. And if they can’t see you are above them, they won’t start trying to outbid you, which means not only are you preventing your competitors from seeing your ads, you are also saving money by doing so.
So if you are wanting to block your competitors from seeing your AdWords ads, here are a couple of methods that will allow you to do this.
Geo-targeting against your competitors
Do you know were your competitors are located? Ideally, they are located in a less populated area where you can block a specific location or region from displaying your ads, or show your ads to other states only. However, if it is in a larger metropolitan area, such as New York City or Los Angeles, you have to take into account that you could be blocking a big chunk of potential traffic too.
There are two ways you can do this - by setting up campaigns for specific regions, or the far easier one of targeting all geographic locations, such as the entire United States, and then exclude specific regions. To exclude specific regions, you need to edit on a campaign level:
- On the Campaign Summary page, click the checkbox next to each campaign you wish to edit.
- Click Edit Settings.
- Click Edit next to Locations to change your campaign’s target locations.
- Once you’ve selected locations to target, click ‘Exclude areas within selected locations.’
- Browse the list of available areas and select those you’d like to exclude.
- Click Done excluding.
- Click Finished.
- Click Save Changes.
Don’t forget to take into account if your competitor has two partners located in completely different areas of the country, it is much more common than you think. If you aren’t sure, check whois data and “about us” pages. And if they have open profiles on LinkedIn or Facebook, many often list their locations, or if they are on Twitter, check and see if they have listed a location or have twittered something about their location recently. Or just ask others, someone is bound to know!
Do be aware there is the Ad Preview Tool which can work around your settings, as it allows advertisers to see ads in various countries and regions. But most advertisers tend to check regular Google results, and only use the Ad Preview Tool when making sure their own geo-targeting is working correctly.
IP Exclusion
You can exclude IPs two ways - by excluding a specific IP or my excluding an IP range. The first option is simple, just find out the IP of the person or company (many companies will share a single IP) and block that IP in each campaign. The option is somewhat hidden in your AdWords account if you don’t know where to look for it, but here is how to do it when you’ve signed into your AdWords account:
- Click Tools at the top of your Campaign Summary page.
- Click IP Exclusion under ‘Optimize Your Ads.’
- Select a campaign, and click Go.
- Enter the list of IP addresses to be excluded.
- Click Exclude IP Addresses.
The second option gives you the ability to block a larger group of IPs, since you Google only allows you to exclude 20 IP addresses per campaign. But of course, be careful that you don’t block an IP range that happens to cover half of your country, like this advertiser did ;) So use the IP range option with caution.
If you don’t know your competitor’s IP address, go back and check your email in case they have ever emailed you about something (especially handy if you have ever spoken on a conference panel with any of them). If not, you can use an old trick advertisers used when trying to determine if a competitor was the one engaging in click fraud on ads - have someone send an email to the company asking something, and see what IP is on the response. But whatever you do, don’t send the email from your own (or your company’s) IP address, because you never know, they might know your IP is actually you :)
You could also try sending an email with an embedded image and see what IP address(es) pull the image, but you will need a server not connected to your business to host the image and that also gives you access to the raw longs so you know the IPs that grab the image. But taking into account the number of email programs that automatically block all images, it isn’t that effective anymore.
You can also go through your logs and pull out any IPs that appear repeatedly over weeks, that always click your AdWords ad to get to the site. Even at one click a day, after a month that can really add up… and you can pretty much bet that it is a competitor (or someone that doesn’t like you!) who is doing the clicking. Regular traffic through AdWords will rarely show up to your site on such a regular basis, always using the ads to gain entrance to the site.
Some people suggest you block the IP the domain is not (ie. if I was a competitor, you would block the IP that jenniferslegg.com is on). However, this isn’t always very effective because in the broader scheme of things, just because my site sits on a particular IP doesn’t mean that it is the same IP I use to surf the net. It does work for some larger corporations depending on how their server and server access is set up.
Don’t forget that if competitors think you are being sneaky about your ads, there are always ways that they can discover what you are doing, although they might not realize you are doing it deliberately. If you have blocked by IP address, the IP could change, or perhaps they start working from home. It could even be something as simple as working from a coffee shop one day that means they will be using an unblocked IP, or working in a hotel room across the country. And with the 20 IP addresses limit, it would be nearly impossible to find all those IPs they are using.
Blocking on the server level
An old school solution was to block competitors on the server level by blocking their IP address. However, this will do nothing to actually prevent competitors from seeing your ad, and even if they click the ad but don’t actually end up on your landing page because you have blocked them at your server level, you will still get charged for the click. You could still use it if you are trying to prevent a competitor from swiping a landing page, but don’t forget that your cache copy in Google will still reveal it.
The bottom line is that if any competitor suspects you (or anyone else targeting the same keywords) are up to something and is determined to see your AdWords ads, they will. However, the hope is that they won’t know you’re up to something and happily continue running their ads - preferably below yours, because they won’t realize someone is actually bumping them out of the top spot (especially if you are also using Position Preference to secure your top spot) - and be none the wiser that you are in the actually right there in the game with them.
Is your web dev team losing your PPC conversions?
Feb 18, 2009 Advertising, Pay Per Click
I was on a conference call today and I had said how many people misunderstand what click fraud actually is, and some mistakenly believe that just because a click doesn’t convert that it has to be click fraud. But in many cases, it had zero to do with the quality of the click, but instead has everything to do with the quality of the landing page.
So when was the last time you took a look at your landing pages, especially if you work in a company where you might handle the PPC but someone else handles actual on-page content and issues? I am willing to bet that many people would probably be surprised to learn that their ROI is so low because what they are presenting their visitors is, well, lacking.
A few days ago, I noticed @rogerdooley who twittered the following:
Clicked on an Infiniti Adwords ad, got a redirect msg telling me the Infiniti site had moved & 2 update my bookmark. Nice.
So, I did what probably a few people did… I went and Googled “Infiniti”. But since I am in Canada, I was geotargeted (and rightly so) to the Canadian Infiniti site. However, what the Canadian Infiniti site was just as bad, if not worse. Consider the fact that Infiniti has just paid for me to go to their website, since I clicked an AdWords ad. It is in their best interest to give me the most bang for their buck, so they can squeeze every bit of ROI out of me as possible. So what do I get instead of the Infiniti homepage? Or even a specific page about Infiniti? I got this:
Um, okay. And that was it, nothing in the background, that was the entire page, Now, I don’t know how much they paid for my click, but this is not the kind of user experience you want to present to your paid visitor. But I am willing to bet that whoever does their PPC ad campaign manager has no idea that this is the page that visitors are getting when they click an AdWords ad. And its probably because the web design team decided they wanted feedback on the site, without thinking about how it could impact other aspects of their online presence and promotion. And obviously the team wasn’t thinking about usability, only how to get as many people to fill out that survey as possible.
Usually, this is the kind of thing you display after someone has visited at least one page (or preferably 5!) on the site - whether I am a paid visitor or not - because you know what this makes most visitors want to do? You got it, click the back button. And I won’t get started about the fact it is a five minute survey… I suspect the % of visitors who actually go to the trouble of filling it out are pretty low.
It is worth noting that they must be tracking the results of their advertising, as the URLs include the ?gclid parameter. But their results must be pretty poor compared to what it was before they started giving everyone the survey page as the initial entry page to the site.
So, I wondered what exactly it was that @rogerdooley saw, because it couldn’t be worse than my user experience.
So here is the ad:
A pretty standard automobile AdWords ad. Nothing fancy, and note the InfinitiUSA.com display URL.
And this is what he got when he clicked:
But at least in his case, the website was showing in the background, albiet quite delayed. Now, this isn’t a very good user experience either, especially for a paid click. But, and here is the kicker, the actual ad clicked was already going to the correct destination URL, InfinitiUSA.com, so it wasn’t a case of a visitor being redirected, everyone was getting it regardless of whether came into the site via an outdated bookmark or not (which is a whole new level of poor usability!)
So, of course, I had to go to the original Infiniti.com site and got the same pop-up, but since they use cookies, I had to use a second browser to see it (the same happened with the Infinity.ca site too). So, since the assumption is that anyone who is working on the Infiniti PPC and web design visits the site frequently, they are probably not aware that the pop-up is hitting every single person who visits the landing page, regardless of their original URL or whether it was an AdWords click or not.
So the moral of the story, make sure you always know what the web dev team is doing on your site that could impact your PPC conversion rates, because that team has certainly dropped down their PPC ROI significantly. Or better yet, have a dedicated landing page that the dev team has strict instuctions to not touch or mess with in any way without clearing it with you first. Because with a little conversation between the two teams (and yes, I know it is often easier said than done, especially if one or both is outsourced), you can prevent this kind of problem from happening.
It also makes the case that you might want to periodically click on your AdWords ad in the serps from a virgin computer that has never visited your website, just so you can see what happens from a user experience standpoint, and make sure there aren’t any of the mistakes plaguing the various Infiniti sites on your own or client sites.
And Infiniti, if you need a new PPC or usability specialist, let me know
Are you losing traffic to Google’s new “Did you mean” change?
Feb 14, 2009 Google
Like most people, I do tend to type quickly enough that I can occassionally transpose characters or make a small typo. And since my Dell keyboard’s characters have almost completely worn off the keys, I sometimes end up shifting my typing left or right by a key. But on the whole, I am an extremely accurate typist.
And yes, I have always been a fan of Google’s “Did you mean” service where they will add an extra line above the search engine results, alerting me to the fact that I possibly mis-typed whatever it was I wrote. I have even sometimes been lazy, and knowing I made a spelling mistake still hit enter, knowing Google was pretty likely to know exactly what it is I meant…. that is until recently…
Now, when you do a search for something that Google thinks you mis-spelled, it includes the handy “Did you mean: keyword phrase” so you can click and get the correct results. But now it also goes a step further and instead of giving you the results of whatever it is you entered into the search box, it now drops those results down, and inserts the top two search results listing for whatever Google thinks you must have actually meant, instead of what you typed.
Here is an example screenshot below, using @netmeg’s example of her username, that is returning the annoying 2 search results for nutmeg before showing any results for what was typed in - netmeg.
Now, if you actually made a mistake with what you had searched on, say I had actually meant to type netmeg, it’s pretty convenient. But multiple times today, I ended up on pages for what Google decided I must have meant, instead of what I actually entered into my search. And if you know you spelled something right, and ignore the “Did you mean:” suggestion that is often given in that first two lines, it is pretty easy to hit one of the top two listings. I did it multiple times this evening, when whatever I searched for and whatever Google wanted me to see were similar (common with mis-spellings).
In multiple cases, I was searching for people’s names. And most annoyingly, it even does it when I search for a specific person’s name in quotes, to get the most exact match. And Google was batting zero, because not one of the suggestions was correct, what I had typed was correct and what I wanted. But they were determined to lead me into one of their “chosen” corrections instead, by displaying those above what I had actually asked Google for.
Thoroughly annoyed, I went off into the Google search preferences, but nada. Then I checked toolbar settings, and one of the settings looked promising, but it was only to make suggestions for mis-typed domain names, not search queries. Then @henkvaness suggested it was the “Query Suggestions” under the Google.com search preferences, but that only removed any search suggestions from appearing in the search box itself, nothing to do with eliminating the top two “did you mean” search results from appearing at the top of the search results.
What I find amazing in the netmeg case is that there are over 5 million results for netmeg, so it isn’t as if I stumbled on a keyword that might only have five hundred, or even five thousand results. If there were zero results for whatever I typed, feel free to give me something I might have meant instead. But honestly, Google, can 5 million pages all really mean nutmeg and not netmeg? (As a side note, when I searched for nutmeg to see what came up, it gave me three listings for nutmeg, then three listings below that for “nutmeg high”. Hmmm….)
But what if you were a company, especially one that might sound similar to a different company name, as often companies in specific industries are. How happy would you be to learn that not only is Google suggesting an alternative spelling of your company name, since it thinks the potential customer typed it into the search box wrong, and then displayed ANOTHER company’s site first, before your own… EVEN when the customer styped your business name correctly. Google is essentially sending your competititor traffic for free, all because of this new feature.
Ironically, someone asked Matt Cutts about it this week at SMX West on the Ask the Search Engines Panel, and he said that if enough people are searching on something, it would get corrected pretty quickly. However, I wish someone had asked about the auto-corrected results showing up before the results of what was actually searched for!
If I had the option, I would love to turn this feature off, and then those who make plenty of typos could leave it turned on if they found it pretty handy. But just how annoying do I find this feature? I am so aggravated and annoyed enough that I just turned back on my Yahoo toolbar after months (years?) of having it disabled, this coming hot on the heels of the fact the new version of the Google Toolbar also removed my most-loved feature ever. @netmeg will be pleased to know that while Yahoo suggests nutmeg, she is still appearing #1 in the search results at Yahoo.
Anyone else having major issues from this? Anyone having their company name being corrected with a competitor’s website showing up first? Judging from my Twitter feed, others are just as annoyed.
Should you hire a search engine marketing company based on the lowest bid?
Feb 5, 2009 Search Engine Optimization
With the economy tumbling like it has been lately, many people are looking for ways to cut corners, and one of those ways is to hire the lowest bidder. In fact, one company I read via CNN.com today is a new job site (Jobaphiles, primarily Boston jobs) that caters to employers wanting to hire based on who will do the job for the least amount of money possible.
Now, perhaps hiring employees based on how little they will work for can work in an environment where those lowball employees can be constantly monitored and prodded. And any company that uses the service has to be able to admit that there are certain risks that go along with the lowest bid. Some might work out, others might not.
But what about when it comes to your company’s businesses? Should you hire a search engine optimization or search engine marketing firm based on who will charge you the least amount of money? Well, my spam box is filled with offers of optimization for as little as $19.95 a month… but should you expect quality for $19.95? And not to mention quality, what about the risks involved? Do you want to risk your website going down in flames because the low bidder for your optimization contract is simply going to spam it out to get quick results in the short term, but painful results in the long term?
The key to hiring an SEO or SEM firm is buyer beware and do your research.
Did you get their name in an email?
If the company spammed you, run far, far away. If they are willing to send spam email for their own company’s services, how do you know they won’t send email spam to promote your company too?
Do they speak at SEO/SEM conferences?
Does the firm have speakers that attend and speak at conferences? If they are a speaker at Search Marketing Expo or Search Engine Strategies, especially if they have spoken at multiple events, chances are pretty good they are reputable (although tread with caution if they only speak on “sponsored sessions”)
Are the recognized in the industry?
Has anyone in the company been quoted in major newspapers? Appeared on television?
Meet in person
Meeting in person, or at the very least, talk on the phone with someone from the company. Much can be hidden in emails, not to mention how responses to you can be carefully constructed. It is not that easy to hide inexperience or lack of ethical optimization or marketing skills when talking in person or on the phone.
Recommendations
Ask others who they have used and if they recommend them. And the key is asking how long they have used the company’s services… if it is less than three months, any spam optimization might not show up. Try and ask for recommendations from those who have used the services of the same company for six months or more… and not just if they are happy with the results but how those results have improved.
Large company or independent?
There are equally skilled people who work at large companies and that work independently. And some of those “companies” are actually one man/woman shops that just appear larger than they really are. Bottom line, it doesn’t particularly matter, it is the skills and how they use them that really matters.
Ethical SEO/SEM
Do they practice ethical SEO/SEM? Well, ethical can definitely be open to interpretation and the bad apple SEOs will definitely lie and say they do :) Instead, look and see which sites they have optimized and do your research. Do the backlinks look clean or is there masses of blog spam? View the source on some client sites and see if there are any hidden surprises such as hidden divs or hidden text. Often some quick research will start to show if they are really practicing ethical (ie. not spam) SEO or not.
Search for each potential company’s name
Search for the company name and see what comes up. And make sure you go beyond the first couple of pages of search results - if they have bad reports showing up for their company name, they could have done reputation management to attempt to get those negative results lower in the search results. Or search for “Company Name scam” or “Company Name BBB”. Likewise, if it is an individual, search for his or her name the same way.
Price
Price can be a key indicator, but not necessarily a big clue. If you only get quotes from reputable companies, then going with the lowest bidder might not be a bad thing. But if the low bid is $19.95, let’s just say you’ll get what you paid for. While price could be a deciding factor when you have narrowed it down to a few different companies you liked, don’t let it be the ONLY deciding factor, as chances are good, you’ll regret it.
Spidey Sense
Is something not sitting right with what they are saying? Even if you can’t put your finger on it but something just feels off, don’t hesitate to go with another company based on gut feeling alone. How often have you had a gut feeling you wished you had followed? Same thing applies here.
Finding a reputable SEO or SEM can be tough, but because of the current economic climate, you could likely get more bang for your buck than you might have a year or two ago. But be wary when going the route of the lowest bid, because if you don’t do your research, it could bite you back bad.
