Disqus - Latest Comments for joshklein

Re: 7 Free or Cheap Ways to Effectively Promote Your Business Online

joshklein — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:31:25 -0000

Nice article! I'm glad you find my 10 Rules helpful.

I've got to give a "hell yeah" of support to your LinkedIn section. It gets way less coverage than the other social networks, but for business, it's great.

Re: Where does social media fit in a marketing plan?

joshklein — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:40:00 -0000

You got it chick!

Re: Where does social media fit in a marketing plan?

joshklein — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:39:47 -0000

Thanks for your thoughts, Lisa.

Re: Back to Digital Reality

kenburbary — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 08:37:13 -0000

I had the same reaction when doing the research. When was the last time you had a conversation about Myspace with anyone? Yeah, it's been that long! :) But as I wrote in the post, the numbers are still quite substantial for some properties.

Re: Quitters

fredwilson — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 14:49:49 -0000

good point about myspace.

Re: Quitters

joshklein — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:23:14 -0000

An interesting take, and I do think you're right that the importance of quitter numbers are overblown. But I also came across an interesting post today called "Back to Digital Reality" that cites some other numbers from Forrester & comScore, and helped bring me back to the current landscape.

Search is, of course, still dominating, both in attention and in spend. But more interesting to me was the realization that Myspace is more popular than Twitter. I had to do a double take there. I suppose it's hard for those of us in silicon alley (or valley) to see on a day to day basis, but Myspace is still quite the force from an attention standpoint, even if not a technology standpoint.

We're still in the expansion phase of social media, where people are discovering it for the first time every day. At some point, that has to end, and social media becomes a mature concept, where every new visitor to Twitter, Facebook, or whatever, is already familiar with the idea of creating a profile and connecting with like-minded individuals.

The real question is: at that point, what happens?

Does the fragmentation of online persona persist, does a Twitter or Facebook win, does openID or an alternative gain momentum, and does subscriber attrition -- quitters -- overwhelm new member rates?

Back to Digital Reality: http://www.kenburbary.com/2009/08/back-to-digit...

Re: Back to Digital Reality

joshklein — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:04:58 -0000

I think your point about Myspace is of particular interest to the digital marketing crowd. We tend to assume -- especially in agency-land -- that people are using the same tools as us; that Myspace went the way of Friendster (or that no one watches Nascar). It's always important to take a step back, put down the iPhone, and look at the actual numbers. Of course, having that vision of the future of digital ain't bad either.

Re: Preview: Saving Magazines

p2p_editor — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:12:59 -0000

Niche content magazines, membership magazines, and magazines that provide extremely high quality general interest content are still doing ok. Examples:

niche: Science News -- although they have changed recently to adopt new internet-based practices, their paper mag is still great.

membership: Toastmaster (the membership mag of Toastmasters, Int'l) -- the content is kind of mediocre, but they have a captive audience. People are members (or not) of Toastmasters, Int'l for reasons having nothing to do with the magazine itself. That is to say, their circulation is not strongly correlated with the qualityof their content or the quantity of their advertizers.

high-quality: National Geographic -- last I checked, they're still publishing and still doing well (although this is only perception; I have no actual data to back that up). Their content is essentially impossible to emulate, so people keep subscribing.

Re: Preview: Saving Magazines

joshklein — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:56:13 -0000

Thanks Jason, nice thoughts here. That question was not intended to be in closing -- well, only closing for the preview. The real meat of the manifesto is going to be in answering that question.

You're absolutely right that some specific examples are in order. I'd love to use a Fortune 500 example, but I don't think there really are any in the sense I'm talking about, although there are great lessons to be learned from the "direct response" businesses.

In terms of smaller companies, I should go to my old example of Wine Library / Gary Vaynerchuk, the wine retailer turned internet video superstar.

What about examples on the other end of the spectrum - do we know any magazines that are already doing it right?

Re: Gary Vaynerchuk - Twitter Brings the Thunder with…Search Twitter...

joshklein — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:37:28 -0000

Hey Gary, I don't mind the commercials before your videos, but this one was for "Holidate", a new series on Soapnet. I think it'd be fair to say your audience for these posts is the business community, so reality television and soap operas are a poorly targeted fit.

I know you can crush it and do better! You must have some ad sales people over there?

Re: 20 SEO tricks for launching a new website

johnfewell — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:40:58 -0000

But that isn't SEO, that's a way of increasing referrals. Which, if you link to your site from your wikipedia user page, you're likely to get very few of.

Re: Don’t go to business school?

joshklein — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:29:50 -0000

No they don't, but it's probably true. Good point! And also a good point that the need for an MBA in the 80's was probably quite different.

Re: Business Ethics and Economic Efficiency

joshklein — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:28:47 -0000

Thanks for the response, Shaun. I'm glad I finally got someone to disagree with me ;)

Re: 20 SEO tricks for launching a new website

joshklein — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:24:14 -0000

Thanks John. You make a good point about nofollow, but a human visitor can't tell the difference, so I don't think they're necessarily of no value. I've had 38 visits averaging 3:23 time spent on site from Wikipedia, so I'm glad for the links even if Google doesn't care!

Re: Don’t go to business school?

mdaniels — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:47:19 -0000

damn yo--a comment from the venerable Seth Godin!

Re: Business Ethics and Economic Efficiency

joshklein — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:16:43 -0000

I suppose it's not an externality in the technical sense of the word, but it is a demonstration of the way our set of business laws around "at will employment" don't quite get it right (though it could be the best we can do, who knows). Capital and labor can both terminate a working agreement at any time for any reason, but capital is far more mobile and has a broader range of options.

Re: Don’t go to business school?

joshklein — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:21:33 -0000

I think the same can be said of any line of education, though. Professors teaching economics rarely have policy experience in government or in business, art professors are usually not famous painters, and so on.

Is everything besides engineering and science unteachable?

Re: Don’t go to business school?

joshklein — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:17:36 -0000

I appreciate the opportunity cost argument, but one thing I had never considered -- that Broughton describes as one of the most important takeaways, and possibly worth the monumental cost -- is the personality change, the "life lesson", of his experience. It's a curious question to wonder if part of the value of that business school education is in demystifying and demythologizing business itself.

Of course, that's the same kind of lesson I get from reading your (and Guy's or Fred's) blog.

Thanks for stopping by, Seth!

Re: Confirmed: Digg Just Hijacked Your Twitter Links

joshklein — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:44:00 -0000

Digg has never been interested in catering to the desires of content publishers, and I think Digg's response to "Digg is no longer a valuable source of traffic for me, I will not use it" is exactly their intension.

As I've written about, Digg is for the mindless internet entertainment of 18 to 28 year old males who spend their 9-to-5's avoiding work and enjoy a good Mad Magazine now and then.

This isn't a pro or con, just an IS. Anyone serious about capturing more than false fleeting traffic wasn't bothering with Digg before, and won't bother with Digg now.

Re: The anatomy of an effective product sales page

joshklein — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:12:29 -0000

I think that value proposition and promise is in the title, "The Four Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich". As for the positioning, I think this book was written with broad appeal in mind, but Tim pushed that work downstream when he went out and marketed the book to his close network of blogging contacts in the productivity and surrounding fields.

I think a product sales page has a lot in common with a book's front cover; the job of the front cover is to get you to read the back, and the job of the back is to get you to read the flap or introduction, which is meant to get you to buy.

With the sales page, you don't necessarily have to walk a customer all the way through the sales funnel, just make them take that next step. If you can get a sale, great - if not, it doesn't necessarily mean the page missed the mark.

Re: The anatomy of an effective product sales page

Simone — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:15:38 -0000

Thanks Josh.

Re: The anatomy of an effective product sales page

joshklein — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:54:24 -0000

Well Tim did win an award from WIRED magazine as the best self-promoter alive (or something like that). Tim is definitely pushy.

I could try to post more about testing - what would be interesting about it to you? I'll try to answer your questions in a post :)

Re: The anatomy of an effective product sales page

joshklein — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:51:42 -0000

Those hidden prices are a symptom of being a big company; the person whose job responsibility is to get you to sign up has zero interest in whether or not you stay a customer, nor the the person whose job responsibility is to keep you a customer care if more people sign up (in fact, less people signing up means less work).

No, this strategy doesn't work in the long term, because it pisses customers off. But it certainly works as far as that manager is concerned, the one whose job is to get you to sign up (and who cares if you stay).

But is that really marketing?

Re: Writing a blog worth caring about

joshklein — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:00:19 -0000

Ha, well I have to give credit for "internet marketing dickishness" to Merlin Mann (again). I sure wish I had come up with that line, though.

Re: Writing a blog worth caring about

joshklein — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:59:45 -0000

Thanks George, glad you enjoyed!