Terry Richards | Internet Marketing | SEO

Feb
5

Steve’s Lawn Mower DUI

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Dec
19

Exploit this glitch on Facebook

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Alright I wrote all of this crap up on Facebook Pages so I’m going to make you suffer. The good stuff is at the bottom.

How users will find a Facebook page:
• Brand search – Every Facebook user has a search bar located at the top right of their profile. If a user searches “Sprint” they will see the official Sprint Facebook page above any user profiles such as “Karen Sprint”.
• Fans’ profiles – A link will be added to our Facebook Page from any fans profile in their “I am a Fan of…” box.
• News Feed & Mini-Feed – Users will sometimes see a story in their News Feed when their friends become a fan of your Facebook Page. Any engagement with a Facebook Page will also be added to a user’s Mini-Feed (Facebook’s personal updates feed built into a user’s profile). Note: Facebook Ads enhance the distribution of mentions of your Facebook Page in the “News Feed”.
• Events – Facebook Pages allow for the creation of events such as marathons and conventions.
• Share – Fans who like your page can permanently post it to their own profile or invite particular friends to check it out.

Benefits of using Facebook Pages:
• Allow our branded page to be accessed by anyone.
• Automatically accept “fans”
• The ability to send communications to fans

How can we use Facebook Pages?
The ability to promote:
• Holiday special offers
• Contests, surveys, and quizzes
• Showcase our partners in the sidebar (http://www.facebook.com/joinred)

Creative Existing Facebook Pages

Tide:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/2x-Ultra-Tide-Presents-Americas-Favorite-Stains/10963072348

Tide does a great job of engaging their audience by encouraging fans to submit their favorite place to get stained. Tide also invested in production-quality video in which they interviewed regular people in public and asked them what they thought about Tide.

Apple Students:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Apple-Students/11147074409
It looks like Apple worked with Facebook to produce a custom Facebook page with flash integration. Apple promotes their “Wish List” application which allows for easy sharing of your most wanted Apple products.

Victoria’s Secret:
http://www.facebook.com/vspink
Victoria’s Secret Facebook page has many fans due to their strong brand but it doesn’t do a good job of engaging their audience in a fun & creative way. Note that Victoria’s Secret uses a call to action in the sidebar titled “Spread the word”

Ernst & Young Careers
http://www.facebook.com/ernstandyoungcareers
Ernst & Young does a great job of using Facebook pages in an untraditional way. Fans can post questions about careers with E&Y and H&R staff will answer in a timely fashion.

There seems to be a glitch I found in Facebook Pages that will allow you to get “followed” back links (via RSS content) when using the Simply RSS app within a Facebook Page. An example of this can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mobilediacom/11445289493 what a really fucking good link huh?

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Dec
14

Bush gets nailed right here… by a shoe!

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It’s a great day, Bush ducks from a shoe.

And this is from the top of Reddit

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Dec
12

Meet God by Trying iRepent V.2.0

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Ask god a question and ye shall receiveth the answereth.

Click here to repent to God

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Sep
28

PageRank = Luck Not Quality.

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“There are some questions that can’t be answered by Google”

Not that I’m complaining or anything about the latest PR update (Fri 9/26/08) but multiple connects of mine have reported undeserved quality/authority when compared against previous Google updates.

To this day I never used PR for anything other than an individual indicator when determining the value of a link. However, when Google decides to bless shitty content and propel it from a PR0 to a PR4 without ANY incoming links one must begin to think how the hell are they now determining quality?

Will it affect rankings? Most likely not.

Here’s a toast to us non deserving reapers of PageRank.

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Sep
23

Corporate Branding Gone Wrong!

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Over the course of the last few weeks I was fortunate enough to snap a couple images that has led to the creation of “Corporate Branding Gone Wrong”.

And here are the runner ups:

So there might be some truth to this one… I love me some HORS!

And that’s what I’d like to call false advertising.

Enjoy!

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May
13

Affiliates: bitch of the industry P.2

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Before we get into specific marketing techniques, I wanted to do another post to re-clarify the notion that affiliates really are handicapped from the beginning. Let’s take a moment to discuss the dynamics of the advertiser – network – affiliate relationship in greater detail.

Let me preface this by saying that, despite how this post sounds, I’m not anti-affiliate network by any means. By and large I think affiliate networks, and most affiliate managers, play by the ‘rules’ – not that there are any rules, really; we’re all in it to make money, and there definitely is a LOT of money to be made. More on that later.

Part one discussed how affiliates start at the bottom of the food chain. Many people agreed, some disagreed. Apparently NickyCakes (whom I met at ASW, and despite his online personality of being a know-it-all asshole is actually really nice and a cool guy) only works for two hours a day and plays video games, the rest of us that have realized any sort of success work our asses off probably work 10-12 hour days or more. I know I do.

So back on the the networks. Both the advertisers and the networks, like yourself and every other business in the world, are in it to make money and maximize their profits. Here’s how it works. First, the advertisers/merchants decide how little they can pay the networks for promoting their offer. Second, the networks decide whether it’s more profitable to run the offers themselves or open it up to their affiliates. If they open it up to affiliates, they pay them as little as possible to maximize their own profits. Simple concept. Read the rest of this entry »

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May
1

Affiliates: bitch of the industry P.1

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The first thing you need to know is that as an affiliate, you are the bitch of the industry. You need to forget everything you’ve read about how easy the affiliate game is, or how easy it is to make money etc and know this: payouts and pricing structures in the affiliate marketing industry are actually structured to make it extremely difficult to be profitable; as an affiliate the chips are stacked against you from the get-go. Diorex had written about this on his (now defunct) blog some time ago.

Why, little affiliate, are you the bitch? Because you are promoting advertisers offers; the key here is that an advertiser only reaches out to an affiliate network when they have either a.) saturated the market themselves or b.) can no longer scale their marketing campaigns effectively themselves. Taking that even a step further, networks generally only open an offer to the public if they don’t feel it makes sense financially to run it internally or exclusive to their top affiliates.

Look at it this way; When you are looking for offers to run, as you page through various offers on your network of choice, you need to remind yourself that there is a reason that you even have the opportunity to run these offers in a first place (see points A. and B. above). You are not special. They are using you.

In other words, they are letting you run these offers because everyone else is all out of ideas on how to market them; simple as that. You also need to remember that at this point, as an affiliate, you’re the one with capital at risk here. The Network gets paid either way, and the advertiser (depending on if it’s a CPA or CPL offer) most likely also gets paid, either way.

That’s why you’re the bitch. You have money at risk, a lot to lose, and a little to gain. Both the affiliate network and the advertiser have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

With that mindset in place it’s now time to think about how we can get one-up on everyone, including the networks, the advertisers, and your competition.

This post has been provided by Derrick Shields SEO & affiliate marketer.

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Apr
15