Posten och Google förenar sina varumärken för att nå ut till landets småföretagare. På en timme ska en småföretagare kunna sjösätta en kampanj med reklam som träffar deras målgrupp både i brevlådan och på nätet. Det är målsättningen när ett samarbete lanseras i dag.

For those of our readers not versed in Swedlish – that’s what they speak over there, right?  – here’s a translated version:

By combining their services to the Post and Google offer a package that allows small business owners define an area for direct-distributed advertising through Google Maps. direct-distributed advertising through Google Maps. By pre-made templates you can use their own material item, press and distribute in the area of your choice. The next step is to then buy keywords that allow ads with a link to your own website show up in searches on the web. Also online you can do geographic restrictions on which computers ad to appear.

By combining its brands and combine the availability of 4.3 million mailboxes and 25 million searches made on the web from Sweden every day, hopes to capture new customers to the services they already have. Direct mail is a familiar medium to small businesses. Direct mail is a familiar medium to small businesses. Buying the keywords you are less familiar with.

- Many people are interested in an online presence, but there are only a few percent of Sweden’s 500 000 small businesses that use keywords in their marketing, says Google’s Country Manager Sweden Stina Honkamaa.

Now here’s the really interesting part of the article:

- Sweden becomes the first of this cooperation, but if successful can we safely to other countries as well.

Could the U.S. be next?  Might make sense for a postal service immensely struggling with operational budgets.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

Facetiousness aside, please vote.  A lot of great men and women have sacrificed and continue to sacrifice to allow us to enjoy this great country and our freedom.  Voting truly is your patriotic duty.

Follow along to see how you can get more out of your favorite social media (and other) platforms this Election Day 2010.  Update 2: A video walk-along of most of the sites discussed here at the end.

foursquare: I Voted Badge

Foursquare has one of the more interesting applications this year and might even find a way to gain broad use if it can keep up with these types of ideas.  They’re encouraging you to check in at your local polling places.  If you live in a rural area – don’t worry.  Unlike facebook – which uses Google Maps (see below) – you can actually check in at your actual polling station.

Alternatively, you can also just shout out “#ivoted” from any location and pick up your badge.  This is a smart move to pick up folks in case they don’t check in right away or there are any problems with foursquare finding a location.  However, it also shows just how easy it can still be to game them, making measurement of your social media campaigns more difficult, depending on the metric.

Once you check in, you’ll get an email (click on the screenshot to enlarge) with the subject line “foursquare: You just unlocked the I Voted 2010 badge! Hooray!”  Hooray indeed.  The circle at the top of this post is their badge.

They’ve developed a pretty interesting interactive map with some other cool features on their site.  So far, Florida looks to be the runaway winner so far in terms of usage, but to be fair, polls have only been open in the East for about 60-90 minutes depending on the state as I type this.  West Virginia?  Well, looks like I’m the only one so far.  Oops – three people have joined in.  Perhaps it’s unfair to say that the typical foursquare user might not be an early morning voter.

Other interesting things you can see – total number of check-ins, number of different voting venues checked into, and gender breakdown.

Biggest downside?  They’re embed code for the map doesn’t seem to be working – I’ve tried three different browsers They only have two width options, one of which is too large for some sites, such as this one.  Here’s an embed of (most of) the map:

<br /> style=”border:none; overflow:none;” scrolling=”no”>

facebook: Today is Election Day

If you’re in America, when you log into facebook this afternoon – because you’re not playing farmville at work, right? – you’ll notice this box at the top of the page:

When you click on it, it will take you to the Poll Locator tab of their election headquarters.  Click on the screenshot to the left for a bigger version.  For most people this will work, but not everyone.  It relies on Google Maps / Places Pages.  If your polling place has a Places Page with a physical location, sweet.  If not, you’ll just need to tell them you voted without entering in your specific location.

Privacy Concern Alert: Am I the only one concerned with how  they find your polling location,  however?  Click on the thumbnail to the right.  It asks you to enter your home address so they can look up your polling location.  Convenient, sure.  But do you really trust facebook – remember, you’re signed in – or Google with your private information?  If you want to use this, I’d recommend putting in another home in your vicinity, or better yet, the address of your polling location.

They also have some other tabs on their U.S. Politics page where they’ve added some links and embedded some apps for more resources.  Nothing earth shattering.

After you vote, you’ll see this screen at the top of your profile page, with the number of facebook voters updating constantly:

Your first status update will then feature the vote button facebook made for today.  This post doesn’t have enough pictures, so here it is to your left.  They’ll also add a line next to the button that says, “Justin has voted in the election.”  I haven’t verified yet, but they may use your actual name and not mine.

Google Poll Locators & More

The Poll Locator mentioned above in the facebook section is a Gadget made by Google.  Again, I wouldn’t use my actual home address if I were you, but here’s an embed so you can see it.  Note, their default prompt reads, “Get your voter info! Enter the *full home address* where you’re registered to vote, including city and state:”  We changed it with our own warning since we actually care about privacy and think it still exists.

Google also has an election center, which will update with news throughout the day.  You can enter your location to get info on just the elections you actually voted on.

twitter Searches

Twitter doesn’t offer anything per se for the election, but several places are doing some cool things with their searches.

NY Times twitter Map

The coolest visual one is a map from the NY Times.  It shows how Senatorial and Gubernatorial candidates are being discussed throughout the day.  If  it could show sentiment, it would be even better.

While you’re there, you ought to check out FiveThirtyEight.  There’s some editorializing that you’ll either love or hate, but no place has proven better or taken a more transparent approach to interpreting poll data to handicap political races.  Great maps and historical timelines for every House, Senate, and Gubernatorial race in the country.

C-SPAN twitter Tracking

C-Span’s gone to the trouble of tracking all the candidates in the House, Senate, and Governor races.  If the candidates are tweeting, C-SPAN’s publishing them.

Yahoo! Ask America

Yahoo! may have killed off their search program, but they’re still doing some neat things.  One of these is their Ask America Midterm Election News Forum.

If you like discourse (or shouting incoherently), check out Ask America.  You can choose forums based on state or topic and go to town.

Political Apps for Your Phone

Briefly, many good ones exist and App Scout has done a good job compiling them.  If you’re looking for good political apps for your phone, I’d start there.

LinkedIn

Finally – our friends at LinkedIn.  They’re not doing anything for the election.  That’s the way they should play it since it’s a business focused social media platform.

Parting Thoughts on Personal Political Messages & Social Media

If you’re using social media for your business in any way, shape, or form, you should strongly consider not discussing your personal thoughts about the election and candidates today (unless you work for an organization that is involved in the process itself and is partisan).  More people voted for the losing Presidential candidate in 2008 than the winning candidate in 2004.  Spouting off opinions – especially when done with venom – is a great opportunity to tee off half of your potential or existing customers.

And here’s the video:

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

The world is made up of two types of people – those who think Barack Obama is the Messiah, and those who think he’s a very naughty boy. In amongst that lot are a curious group of Web 2.0 evangelists who think the election was really a win for social media.

Whatever…

Obama’s campaign obviously used the tools at his disposal wisely and correctly amongst various demographics. Good marketing relies on horses for courses – his utilization of the pony express to tap into the Amish community was just as inspired as setting up a facebook page. Oh, and never mind the fact that he had more money at his disposal than a small third world dictatorship.

There’s some lip-smacking irony, though, in the news that Obama (do I have to call him President-elect? What’s the protocol?) might not be able to use his Blackberry while in office. No, it has nothing to do with John McCain spitefully revoking licenses on the device he allegedly helped invent, but concerns about security and the Presidential Records Act. It also probably looks a little dubious if you’re caught texting Scarlett Johansson under the table at the some G8 get together.

Reports suggest he may find his Blackberry habit particularly difficult to kick. So, in order to calm the cravings, he’s looking to be the first president to have a laptop in the Oval Office. I hope he doesn’t intend on using it to record his weekly addresses to the nation on YouTube. I think the Commander-in-Chief can afford to forego authenticity in the form of jittery lo-res camera work and other amateur production values.

I presume we also won’t be subject to any tweets referencing boarding Air Force One while feeling giddily pumped about meeting Gordon Brown.

Now if you’re excited enough by Obama that you’d like to work in his administration serving the American people, there’s a section of the President-elect’s transition Website – Change.gov – that allows you to formally apply.

Does anybody know how you used to apply for this kind of work in the good old days?

Before you start dusting off your resume, you may want to make yourself aware of some of the hoops you have to jump through as part of the vetting process. The seven page questionnaire involves:

• 63 requests for personal or professional records
• Asking if you or a family member owns a gun (presumably an appended question inquires how hard you cling to it)
• Including links to all your blog posts and social networking pages
• Listing all your aliases and handles on the Internet

Obviously I’ll hand this over to you in the comments as to whether you consider this to overtly invasive and excessive.

Were the Stasi in East Germany ever this intrusive? Should your online pursuits be private and placed in a similar non-discriminatory category as religious views or sexual preference? Or is it just a case of sorting the wheat from the chaff before the FBI wastes valuable time sorting through applicants’ virtual dirty laundry?

Or is it just the type of change only men with overtly jealous partners can believe in?

Paul Woodhouse

Paul looks after the SEO side of things here at Direct Online Marketing as well as trying to work out the best social media strategies for our clients.

The target company who raised the ire of the plaintiff in this case?

From the San Francisco Chronicle, via Webmaster World via a tweet from pageoneresults:

The Target retail chain will make its Web site accessible to the blind and pay $6 million to visually impaired Californians who have tried unsuccessfully to use the site, under a settlement announced Wednesday.

The nationwide settlement, filed with a federal judge in San Francisco, is intended as a model for the retail industry, said a lawyer for the National Federation of the Blind, which sued Target in 2006.

The company must now equip its Web site, www.target.com, with an embedded code [ed note: ALT tags] that can be read by software to provide a vocal description of the page, and links that allow a blind person to navigate the screen with a keyboard instead of a mouse. The improvements are supposed to be completed early next year and will be monitored by the National Federation of the Blind for three years.

In its lawsuit, the federation accused the company of violating federal and state laws that entitle the disabled to equal access to business and government services.

In a key ruling, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel…said the American With Disabilities Act requires removal of all barriers to “a disabled person’s ‘full enjoyment’ of goods or services,” quoting from the 1990 law.

That’s a little longer than I normally go with quotes, but there’s a lot of good information here.  Let’s break it down to the most basic levels:

SEO Basics: The ALT Tag

When you go to seo school*, the first thing you learn after school orientation and the SEO General Theory 101 is probably the title tag.  Or at least it would be if I ran the curriculum because I see this neglected so often.  Around lunch time, you’d learn about the alt tag.

* No such thing, but imagine if there were – it would be filled with 18 year olds blowing off link building classes because they were too hungover from the kegger at Sigma Epsilon Omega on Thursday night.

An alt tag is an extra piece of html code you can use to give an image or other type of multimedia file a description.  Sometimes it shows up in a pop up box when you hover your mouse over an image.  Without delving deeper into seo basics (you haven’t paid your tuition yet), just accept that it is a good thing for making your Web site search engine friendly.

ADA-Friendly Web Development

The alt tag, short for alternative text, wasn’t really developed for SEO purposes (most of the things seo practitioners utilize aren’t).  Their benefit was to developers so that they would know what the heck an image was supposed to be without having to pull it up visually.

Armed with this piece of information, the Americans with Disabilities Act was extended to include Web sites.  People who are visually impaired have special computers that can read to them what the rest of us see.  They can also describe images…if they have an alt tag.  Therefore, all government sites require ADA guidelines such as the use of alt tags for all federal contracting work.

Whether and how this actually extended to non-government Web sites in the real world was pretty much up in the air…until yesterday.

Your Take-away of the Day*

Use alt tags. They help with your natural rankings, the blind / visually impaired access your site (and purchase if you’re a retailer), and your developers.  They also keep you compliant with what is looking increasingly as if it will be mandatory ADA guidelines, meaning you can find a better way to spend your $6 million.  If I could come up with a con, I would.  Even with content management systems, the ability to add alt tags is pre-built in.  No excuses!

* wanna go play by the bay, eat some hay, whaddya say, I just may.  That’s a Happy Gilmore reference; I’m not trying to imply that blind people (or federal regulators) scream at golf balls. Although some of them probably do just like the rest of us.  I hate golf.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

Just when I thought I had said all I could say about the WVU eMBA scandal from an online reputation management perspective, I was sent a link to this article:

Interim WVU president has big goals — but don’t count on him blogging

Big thank you to Jason Keeling for sending out this article from the Charleston Daily Mail via twitter.  Oh and if you’re into that sort of thing, feel free to follow me on twitter.  We can discuss hopes and dreams 140 characters at a time.

The title’s a bit misleading, but good editors will sometimes do that to draw eyeballs.  That’s why this post was almost named “Naked Supermodels Bomb Panda Bear Orphanage.”

Here’s the money part to the article, emphasis mine:

Interim West Virginia University President C. Peter Magrath said he plans to focus heavily on [three items].

But don’t expect him to blog.Magrath’s predecessor, Mike Garrison, was the first WVU president to type out his thoughts about the university on a blog — jargon for “Web log.” The venture eventually ended up being a sounding board for his critics over the Heather Bresch scandal.

“I don’t believe in blogs,” said Magrath. “You get a lot of crap. A lot of stuff in the blogs really bothers me because it’s one of the things that’s hurting traditional mainstream journalism is that unqualified, untrained people suddenly start reporting on stuff and it starts getting legs and running.”

[Hits head off desk three times, takes advil, bangs head again.]

For a quick recap of the Heather Bresch scandal strictly from an online reputation management perspective, please see the following:

• Extreme Online Reputation Management: WVU, Mylan, & Governor’s Office Edition
• Update – WVU President Mike Garrison Emails Employees
• Governor Manchin Emails State RE: Daughter’s WVU MBA Scandal
  

Let’s do a quick recap with everything wrong here.  These are the comments I left on the article on the Daily Mail Web site along with some extra info since I’m not bound by a 1000 character limit here:

A couple common misconceptions in this article by both Mr. Anderson and President Magrath that are very, very common:

1. “The venture eventually ended up being a sounding board for his critics….”

   While technically accurate, this statement is misleading. People also defended President Garrison on his blog. He had an excellent opportunity to address his critics there, but waited too long to respond to the crisis and never responding to any commenters. He had people creating a conversation on his turf, but no involved parties were willing to making it a real conversation.  It’s sad to say, but I have had WVU officials agree with me that this will probably be a text book case on how not to respond to a crisis in today’s Web 2.0 world.

   Let me also be clear – having a blog was a good decision by Garrison, one he should be proud of.  It was the execution that was lacking.

2. “‘I don’t believe in blogs,’ said Magrath. ‘You get a lot of crap.’”

   I’m not going to be that guy that says, “What do you mean you don’t believe in blogs?  Do unicorns write them?”  A. I don’t want to demean President Magrath.  By all accounts he’s a really good pick by the WVU Board of Governors and I wish him all the success in the world.  B. That would be silly; unicorns would need gigantic keyboards to be able to type out a blog.

   The folks who attended the Next Generation Marketing series should already be light miming the words I’m about to type.  “Blogs” could be replaced in that sentence by any # of words. How many columnists, movies, songs…are truly good let alone great?  90% of everything is – in President Magrath’s words – “crap.”  Apologies to the fine folks over at firejoemorgan for stealing they’re analogy.  (Fair warning: don’t click that last link if profanity or sabremetrics offend you.)

3. “‘A lot of stuff in the blogs really bothers me because it’s…hurting traditional mainstream journalism is that unqualified, untrained people suddenly start reporting on stuff and it starts getting legs and running.”

   MSM has its place and is very valuable. And some blogging is done very dangerously and suffers from not having checks and balances. But on the whole, it has added to the discourse of our society.  Many important stories have only reached the public because of blogging.  Plus the traditional press has given light to many stories that should have stayed locked in a basement.

   Also, can we please put an end to this main stream media vs. blogging.  It’s just silly.  That’s like debating spaghetti vs. tacos.  They’re both awesome sometimes.  And sometimes really bad.

Here’s the main point I want to make, my flag in the ground if you will, which was also my flag in the ground at the Next Generation Marketing conference series this past spring:

The real question isn’t whether blogging is good or bad – it’s neither.  The conversation will happen.  The question is whether or not you want to join the conversation. It’s going to happen somewhere – why not take part and have your voice heard?

I sincerely wish President Magrath and everyone at WVU the best of luck in moving forward and representing our state proudly.

Frankly I’m not sure he should do a blog since he’s an interim president and has a lot of other work that needs to be fulfilled.  I just hope the next President will take President Garrison’s lead and bring the blog back to the office.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

Friends, you’ve already lost control.

Blogging and Control

I’m not going to delve into a larger discussion of online reputation management in this post since I’ve covered it a lot recently.  Instead I want to focus on one specific idea: commenting.

Note bene: I don’t think all blogs need to allow comments.  The Direct Online Marketing Blog didn’t at first.  But way more often than not, you get a better, richer experience for everyone when you allow your readers to contribute.

The thing to keep in mind is that the conversation will happen somewhere.  The only question is: Do you want your Web site / blog to be a part of that conversation – a place where you have great influence and some minor degree of control (e.g. using the bully pulpit in choosing what topics to write about, which comments to expound upon)?

Comments are such a blessing when they come.  Trust me – it can be difficult for those of us not posting sex tape videos of Mini-Me to get comments.  If they’re positive, you’ve just gained some powerful advocates.  If they’re negative, that can be great, too.

Negative Blog Comments

Let’s assume for a second that any negative comments are legitimate and not a competitor fake commenting.  We’ll come back to that in a second.

I often quote my old boss’ father who used to tell him, “You only get two chances to make a first impression: the first time you meet someone and the first time you screw up.”**

If someone brings up a legitimate complaint or other opportunity issue (some might use the word “negative” in place of “opportunity”), that means you’ve just won half the battle.   You now have the opportunity to respond to them in your house!  [cue any stupid Under Armor commercial circa 2006 - "We must protect this...blog"]

I guarantee if you’re able to take care of the issue – whether it was 100% your fault, 0%, or anything in between – you’ll come off smelling as sweet as Frosty-dipped honeysuckle rolled in cookie dough.  If someone keeps hammering you about something that’s been resolved, typically your community will come to your rescue.

Now, let’s go back to every business person’s favorite paranoia – competitors fake commenting.  Seriously, I know my share of snaky business people out there, but why is this what seems to keep 75% of people with whom I speak up counting sheep at night?

If folks are attacking you unfairly, you’ll have your chance to respond and likely will have the community backing you up to tell folks to shut their yappers and quit threadjacking (taking the comment trail to an unnatural place off topic).

Remember, you also have all the administrative controls.  You can decide that commenters must be approved for the first comment (strongly recommended), approved for all comments (like we’re doing for the WV Jobs Blog), or never (bad mistake unless you love comment spam).

You can even edit or delete comments, but you need to be very careful here.  If folks think they’re having their speech censured unfairly (and almost every time is seen as unfairly as the Constitution clearly mentioned blog comments in the Freedom of Speech section), they’re likely to rebel. If you’re a high traffic blog with lots of passionate commenters, it’s a good idea to have a comment policy spelled out clearly.

Federal Government Blogging

Think recognizing that you have no control and posting a blog with commenting functionality on your Web site is difficult for your organization? Consider federal agencies, who by their very nature are bureaucratic, hierarchical, and very large. The US government should be the last place to adopt blogging.

Yet many government blogs (with commenting) are running right now as a way to reach out to us taxpayers. Here are just a handful of ones that are active and writing in a conversational tone:

• TSA’s Evolution of Security. Comments galore, which one might expect from angry air travelers, which is exactly why it’s important for TSA to have one. Good on ya, mates!
• AIDS.gov Blog. This blog and the site as a whole are really addressing and utilizing new media.
• Library of Congress Blog. They’ve even partnered with flickr. Check out the cool old photo of America’s pastime.
• Gov Gab. This blog from the Office of Citizen Services and Communications utilizes multiple posters (one sure-fire way to alleviate the time needed to blog).

Note bene #2 – we do some federal contracting work, but not currently with the above agencies.

It’s not just limited to the US, either. You never know what world leaders are out there blogging.

** I keep meaning to do a full post about this, but want to touch on it before I forget.  I used that quote about screwing up in the Next Generation Marketing conference series this past May.  A couple days after we did the Huntington, WV seminar, one of the attendees sent me an email.  Adam Daniels of First State Bank said that he created a standard form letter for mistakes.  Now whenever someone at the bank does and oopsie, they have a process to follow and a form letter they can customize for a quick response.  How brilliant is that?!?  I already told Adam I’m stealing that idea.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?