New Google Products

It also doesn’t take long to realize that you may need to tag-team the Twitter account in order to interface with the customer in a reasonable timeframe. Using the default Twitter interface is tough to do. You have to share a login and it’s hard to tell who has posted what. Enter CoTweet!

CoTweet is a management and reporting tool for Twitter and Facebook. The standard (and also free) version offers many features like: scheduling, conversation history, email notifications containing your latest mentions, team collaboration tools, and easy access to Twitter follower profiles. It really allows users to divide the responsibilities and help each other without confusing what customers have been responded to, what comments have been logged, and what the landscape looks like.

It’s easy to start simple. Break up the responsibilities over a small handful of people, give each their own login to CoTweet, assign conversations to specific individuals, and watch as your customers are impressed with how quickly you can respond and meet their needs.

CoTweet Twitter Management Solution

Fiddler is a Web Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP traffic between your computer and the Internet. A little more simply put – It helps me see what click URLs the user goes through before landing at the destination.  It does a lot more, but as a marketer I primarily use it for that purpose.

A quick example: An online affiliate for your company or website has cloaked their URL, has it going through multiple redirects, and eventually lands on your website. You want to determine what URLs and redirect the affiliate is going through and what cookies or IDs are being dropped. With Fiddler running you will be able to log the traffic as you click on a link. You can then go back, review the logs, and see exactly what sites and URLs your connection and computer have hit.

This program is Windows only. I’m still looking for a good alternative on a Mac. Please let me know if you have some suggestions.

Fiddler Web Debugger

But this post is about another more recent commercial. One that has skyrocketed to the top of my “all time favorite TV commercials” chart. It’s the Old Spice “I’m on a Horse” commercial and it is the recipient of my second bnetty rave award. Congratulations Old Spice! Not only have you produced a very entertaining commercial, but you’ve managed to switch my purchasing habits from bar soap to Old Spice body wash!

I remember my Dad using Old Spice as a kid, and for some time their brand felt like it wasn’t for me. It was for someone… well… older. (no offense Dad) But with their recent set of commercials they’ve managed to install a sense of newness and well… man-ness. Like the guy on the horse says “Anything is possible when your man smells like Old Spice and not a lady!”

I’m on a horse

But I’m not here to rave about that (at least not today…) I’m talking about their latest marketing ploy to get users engaged and surface more of their low-price junk. (No… I’m not being mean. They even have a product called the “bag of crap” that sells for a buck. I have yet to purchase one though, as they sell out so quickly!)

One of their more recent marketing stunts (and winning a “bnetty rave” award) is the introduction of happy hour. Woot’s typical business model pushes one low-priced item a day until it is sold out. Occasionally they will also run with a “woot-off” and flow through dozens of sale items, each one retiring after they run out of inventory or it expires. But Happy Hour is a new spin. It’s just as the name explains… an hour of happiness (minus the alcohol) which includes a “woot-off” experience but only for one hour and usually later in the day.

This alone is brilliant. Catch users late in the day when they need a break and are willing to hit “refresh” a few times to see if that bag of California pistachios finally surfaces. The products rotate through, some fast some slow depending on the demand, but after one hour it’s over.

But they also added a marketing twist that I love. First off… you don’t know when happy hour will hit. It could be any day… and there is only one true way to find out. You have to follow them on twitter. As they so eloquently put it:

here’s only one way to find out: follow @woot on Twitter. We’ll be announcing Happy Hour there and only there. Yes, we’ve finally discovered a compelling reason to join Twitter. Turn up your nose at your peril. While you’re sitting in splendid isolation on Superiority Island, the more pragmatic of your fellow wooters will be feasting on deals the likes of which you can scarcely imagine.

I love it! Not only do you need to follow them on Twitter to catch wind of Happy Hour, but in order to make comments (as users usually do with woot items) users must tweet those comments to #woot. This pushes visibility to the woot brand and to their happy hour initiative. There are literally thousands of Twitter contest and campaigns, but this one is well thought out, original, and effective. Congratulations Woot.com! You are awarded the very first bnetty rave award!

woot happy hour

A quick solution is to use a gmail account as your test account and each time you need to test the process you simply adjust the email address as follows:

If your address is bnettymarketing@gmail.com you can simple add a plus sign after the name, include some additional text, and then followup with the @gmail.com.

Some samples:

• bnettymarketing+test001@gmail.com
• bnettymarketing+test002@gmail.com
• bnettymarketing+test003@gmail.com
• bnettymarketing+whateveryouwant@gmail.com

All of these email addresses will forward to the main account of bnettymarketing@gmail.com.

It’s a great way to test the process multiple times without having to sign up for dozens of email accounts.

visit gmail

The dashboard will show you Top Search Queries, Links To Your Site, Crawl Errors, Keywords, and Sitemaps. The “top search queries” shows the user not only what searches are most common in directing users to their site, but what their current position is in Google.

The “links to your site” section is just that. I shows what pages on your website are getting linked to on other pages outside of your site, and what those other external pages are.

The “crawl errors” section indicates what errors visitors are getting on your site and if they are HTTP errors, sitemap, not followed, not found, etc errors – great for troubleshooting your site or finding out why traffic to your website has decreased. Clicking on any of these errors also shows the user what those errors mean and help diagnose the website problem.

The “keywords” section shows the user their top searched keywords organized by significance. Clicking on any of these keywords shows the user how many times Google found the keyword on your website and on what pages specifically.

The last section of the dashboard is an area showing any existing sitemaps. A user can manually submit an XML sitemap to help the Google bots out and give Google some direction when indexing the website.

All of these areas can be expanded and dug into with much more detail. A user can even add the information to their iGoogle home page as a gadget, which is great for a quick glance at the health of your website. The dashboard is really only the beginning. A user can branch out into so many other areas and dig deeper into their website stats and health. Below is the navigational breakout:

• Site configuration
  • Sitemaps
  • Crawler access
  • Sitelinks
  • Change of address
  • Settings
• Your site on the web
  • Top search queries
  • Links to your site
  • Keywords
  • Internal links
  • Subscriber stats
• Diagnostics
  • Crawl errors
  • Crawl stats
  • HTML suggestions
• Labs
  • Fetch as Googlebots
  • Malware details
  • Site performance

Each of these areas give an overview and then can be broken out into more detail. If you manage the SEO for a website or are interested in tracking the performance and health of your website, I would certainly recommend jumping on the Google Webmaster Tools train.

visit google webmaster tools

There are plenty of customizations that the user can play with to manipulate the ad trafficking. Adjust it so certain ads only show up on certain pages or don’t show up on others. Or the administrator can adjust what time of day the ads are shown or if certain domains are removed from viewing ads at all. The customization is excellent and flexible.

Additionally OpenX has integrated the OpenX market into the offering. This allows the user to auction off ad inventory with no additional charge. So if the website owner has remnant inventory they can flip the switch at any time and start selling their ad space. Flip it back off and start pushing your own ads or content at any point. At the end of the day check your stats and see which ads are competing best and optimize from that point.

The initial integration does require some technical knowledge as you will need the following to install OpenX:

• A web server that supports PHP
• A MySQL or PostgreSQL configured database server

But fear not… they also offer a hosted solution. So if you don’t want to deal with installation and a hosted management you may want to check out OpenX Community Hosted where you can leave the hosting up to them and it’s still free for up to 100 million ad impressions per month. Additionally you can upgrade for more impressions, support, and customized solutions.

visit OpenX