Tweet memories

OK, so I thought Twitter was for the birds. Finally Dianna Huff (@diannahuff) convinced me to spread my wings and fly. (Acrophobia and all!)

So, now I find myself tweeting and retweeting. And, lo and behold, I soon found some of my posts retweeted!

At first, I responded in kind and got into a loop of retweeting retweets. Then  I noticed posts saying "Thanks for the RT." And I wondered if there was an official protocol for responding to a retweet. A Google (not Twitter) search, turned up an interesting dilemma. It seems that showing simple gratitude can be the road to hell paved with the best of intentions!

Thanking someone for a retweet also leads to your Twitter stream quickly filling up with thanks, which slowly push down the original, insightful and unique content that got you those retweets in the first place. If you thank everyone who retweets you, you’ll alienate those who are following your account closely and you’ll start to see fewer retweets… which means fewer thanks, and, ultimately fewer followers. Not usually a good Twitter goal.

See the whole article: When Should You Thank Someone for a Retweet? - AllTwitter

I'll thank you for your opinion. Might even retweet it....

Don't get me wrong. I love Google

King Kong vs. Godzilla was kid stuff. The real battle of the titans is between The Lord of Redmond and The Masters of Mountain View.

I got a newsletter the other day from Paul Myers warning of the financial tsunami heading our way from the seismic shift caused by Google's latest algorithm change. Then I read Dianna Huff's analysis of the new Google: The Panda Update: Unique Content Rules, People

An hour or so later, I read in the Wall St. Journal: "Feds to Launch Probe of Google."

Where are we heading?

My favorite line in Lord of the Rings is when Treebeard sees the destruction Saruman has wrought preparing for battle, and he says:
"A wizard should know better."

Dianna Huff tells it like it is

If you're wondering why your website isn't getting traffic, please read this.

I never met Dianna Huff. But we're friends. Not Facebook friends. Actual friends. We virtually "met" when I was hosting a blog "show" for IAOCblog. Since then we've kept in touch. I guess that proves she's right about the need for social media. (Disclosure: Dianna still hasn't gotten me to actively use Twitter. But eventually I'll wind up there... kicking and tweeting.)

Dianna really lays it on the line in this blog post on el cheapo websites: Your Website is Worth More than a Cup of Coffee. If you have a website or are planning one, read it. But don't read it while you're drinking your coffee. You might spill it.

Strategies to Increase Sales Now — Free Ebook

Postscript to my last post on how to get more traffic to your website -- Download this free ebook from Dianna Huff (no registration required). It's a marketer's field guide to the unnatural wildlife of YouTube. Twitter. Blogs. Podcasts. White Papers. Search. Direct Mail. Trade shows. Webinars. Networking. TV commercials. Prints ads. LinkedIn. Facebook and Digg.

So download this ebook and get out there.

Five B2B MarCom Strategies to Increase Sales Now

Quick tips to increase traffic to your website

"Prospective clients can’t call you if they don’t know you or your Website exists," says B2B marketing expert Dianna Huff. So she put together a handy primer for getting traffic to your website. The quick start guide includes tips on SEO, Viral Marketing and more.

Once you get them into the tent, Dianna offers advice on how to keep them there, with "content that answers their unspoken questions" and increases trust. Read it here: How to Increase Traffic to a B2B or Consultant's Website

Dianna Huff's MarCom Strategist: CYBRA Uses Humor and Video to Sell the Sizzle of Bar Code Software

Dianna Huff has followed up her blog post CYBRA’s “MarkMagic” Videos Deliver Humor Plus Product Benefits with a detailed case study in her newsletter the "MarCom Strategist."

Dianna interviewed your humble servant. She wanted the whole nitty gritty story: the whos, whats, wheres, whys and hows... so she could give her readers enough information to plan their own viral video campaigns.

You can read the issue online here (don't forget to subscribe!): Dianna Huff's MarCom Strategist: CYBRA Uses Humor and Video to Sell the Sizzle of Bar Code Software

CYBRA's “MarkMagic” Videos Deliver Humor Plus Product Benefits » B2B MarCom Writer Blog

Dianna Huff takes a look at B2B viral videos... and gives two thumbs up (don't you hate that expression?... sorry, it was too tempting!) to "The MarkMagic Chronicles."

See her post at CYBRA’s “MarkMagic” Videos Deliver Humor Plus Product Benefits.

Also see CYBRA Goes Viral on System iNetwork, news and more for IBM AS/400, iSeries, and i5 Pros. And listen to the podcast Top Concerns, i for Business, PowerVM, and a Dancing Programmer by Chris Maxcer, news editor for System iNEWS and the System iNetwork.

Does SEO copywriting make for good copywriting?

The battle rages on at IAOCblog. SEO expert Dianna Huff throws down the gauntlet with Why Marketing Copywriters Make Great SEO Experts

Do you agree?

OK Morty, so who wrote it already?!

Ladies and gentlemen, here's the moment you've been waiting for....

Yesterday, I quoted a futuristic vision of interactive, consumer-based marketing. And I challenged readers to guess the writer. I expected people to guess Seth Godin or Doc Searls. The actual guesses ran from Al Ries, to David Ogilvy to "...it certainly wasn't Lasker or Hopkins."

Ladies and gentlemen, the writer of those words first learned about marketing delivering chickens for Izzy's kosher butcher shop in the Bronx.

He invented bound-in subscription cards in magazines. He changed marketing history by putting a little gold box in record club ads and getting people to hunt for the "buried treasure." (Did I hear somebody say "Interactive"?!)

Those words were written in 1996 by the "Father of Direct Marketing": Lester Wunderman!

What is Mr. Wunderman doing these days? Don't look for him in a shuffleboard game! Retirement isn't his style The king of mail order is still guiding the Wunderman agency. He also started blogging! And in his very first blog post, he said

The Industrial Revolution is behind us, and The Information Age has matured. Many of the old mass media are losing ground as we begin to provide information to smaller groups and even single consumers. The Internet has brought to the forefront the idea of interactive marketing. Millions of sellers and buyers are now involved in an increasingly personal dialogue. Marketing objectives are achieved not only by what we know but more importantly the increasing number of ways that we can use that knowledge.

Keep an eye on this guy. He's going places!

Book Review: "Turning Clicks into Leads," by Dianna Huff

When I first heard of SEO copywriting it sounded like a hodgepodge of New Age cyber-sorcery and subliminal advertising.

Vance Packard meets The Alchemist.

Like copy maestro Bob Bly, frankly, I was skeptical. Then I saw that Bob softened his stand and I decided to take another look. Which brought me to Dianna Huff's e-book, "Turning Clicks into Leads"

Huff manages to make sense of the world of SEO copywriting without confusing jargon (or forced humor). The book walks you through the basic concepts and gives you enough tools to try some basic SEO yourself. At least you'll never make such dumb mistakes again as using a slick graphic home page that looks good, but effectively blocks search engines from bringing you new customers!

Caught by a spam filter

I just wrote a comment to a post on Bob Bly's blog: What, Me Worry About Spam Filters?

Bob asked about what copywriters are doing to deal with spam filters. My answer is below. You won't see it on Bob's blog, though.... It got stopped as spam!

Bob--A few years ago, Chris Pirillo (Lockergnome) declared email dead. And it's partially true. But the solutions out there are part of the problem. They are set to kill anything that moves. My email program (Thunderbird) has flagged my own messages as "email scams." And I was only writing to a friend! Outlook Express routinely zaps email attachments (especially zip files--innocent or not). And some of my mail has gotten blocked because of my web host!
There are filters you can use to test your emails before sending. (Anyone know a good one?) But I think Diana Huff has the right approach. Carefully proofread your copy for likely trigger words and substitute more polite ones. Until those get flagged....
This problem has helped the growth of marketing through blogs and RSS. But the nasties have already muddied those waters with comment and trackback spam. Oh what a world!