Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Social Media Consultant

So recently, I was inundated with the “Digg Effect“, which if you are unfamiliar is similar to the Slashdot Effect, in that your site goes through the following process:

1. Your site is discovered by someone.
2. They post it to either Digg or Slashdot.
3. Your site is flooded with traffic, which it either handles without a hiccup or crashes disastrously.

My site handled it fairly well in that it didn’t go down completely, but definitely choked at times. Below is a screenshot of the Digg post that made the site crash:

Click for full version
Click here for Digg Page

So what does the Digg Effect look like graphically?

As you can see, my traffic is not really on par normally with what Digg can drive to a website. I realized I had been “Dugg” when I walked away from my desk and half an hour later, my email box had “25 new comments” to be moderated for my blog. Normally, I get one or maybe two, but never 25, let alone 90. The range of comments also surprised me as the diverse nature of Digg’s audience.

So what can a marketer take away from this?

If you are going to give users the ability to “Digg” or post your content to a social networking site, make sure it’s the content you want them to post. In this case, I “dugg” my own article, which I always do as a good blogger. The result is exactly what I wanted out of Digg, which was to drive traffic and links to my site to inform users, get out my own opinions/brand, and maybe make a few dollars off Adsense. However, let’s think for a moment about the worst case scenario, which is often how a Digg thread starts:

I’m a disgruntled web developer at Company X. I post an internal memo online about a product release date that will be missed on Company X’s website. One of our users finds that memo and Digg’s it. Ten minutes later, I have half the users on Digg looking at this memo and our stock plunges 15%.

Don’t think it can happen? Look at Applegate. It’s because of Digg, blogs, and other social media that this “information” spread as fast as it did. So the bottom line for online marketers is that sometimes it’s an excellent idea of what tools to provide your users, but at the same time, make sure your information security is such that you can mitigate this kind of risk in case you do enjoy the “Digg Effect”.

To learn more about link baiting, social networking lead generation, or link building using Web 2.0, feel free to contact me anytime.

2 comments

Just a quick little announcement that I have recently updated my RSS feed to Feedburner status.

Please update your reader accordingly with the Feedburner goodness:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/chicago-usability

So I’ve been seeing these Chrysler ads lately touting 30 mpg as “great fuel economy”.

Does this strike anyone else as ridiculous? I know this guy thinks so. I mean, this is the 21st century. According to this source:

After 1920, mpg seems to have stayed in the range of 13-15 mpg until federally-mandated fuel economy standards were enacted in the 1970’s. As a result, fuel-efficiency increased from 13 mpg to 21 mpg over the next 25 years (after 1970).

For me as a scientist, futurist, and technologist, I find this fact offensive. In almost 90 years we have moved from 13 mpg to 30 mpg? That screams of laziness, complacency, and lack of American ingenuity. The Prius is getting 60 miles per gallon in the city and 51 on the highway, which is still pretty impressive, but where’s the real vision? Why not 100 mpg? 200 mpg? 500 mpg?

The next focus after getting the fuel economy to admirable standards would be to make it economical for the average person to be able to afford them. That really will be who wins in the US auto market. Or you can just go car free. Thoughts?

Update: This got dugg. BOY HOWDY!

Hi All,

Announcing today, I am starting the city usability project. The City Usability project is a pet project of mine whereby I will analyze the ten most populous cities in the US and their websites in terms of usability. My plan is to then move on to how city offices, buildings, transportation, and other tax payer funded resources are not meeting the best standards or practices for usability or ADA standards.

If you’d like to help out, I’d love to get some other people involved, as I can really only speak to what I find on the internet, recall from previous trips to New York and Seattle or my day to day interactions in Chicago. If you have a story to tell of how you were not able to figure out a city map, get on a bus with your wheelchair, find the city office you were looking for, or any other problem where you thought there would be an easy solution, but some interface kept the information or experience from you—let me know.

Also, if you are a graphic designer, I am looking for a cool logo I can use on the site. Let me know if you are interested. Check back here and CityUsability.com for future updates.

You can always contact me at jeff@jeffwoelker.com or info@cityusability.com.

According to a recent EIA announcement:

“Retail regular grade motor gasoline prices are projected to average $2.81 per gallon this summer, 3 cents below the average of $2.84 per gallon last summer, according to forecasts released today by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) in the April Short-Term Energy Outlook. Retail diesel fuel prices are expected to average $2.82 per gallon over the summer, down 6 cents from last summer’s average price of $2.88 per gallon.”

Well, gas prices nationwide are already at $3.19 per gallon and the summer hasn’t even started yet, so by my calculations this estimate is in the ballpark of doesn’t make any sense at all. I mean, look at these numbers:

Image copyright of GasBuddy.com

As you can see, last summer, gas prices peaked in May and stayed steady for most of the summer and then rose again in August and September with the problems associated with Hurricane Katrina. And with some minor extrapolation on the data provided by GasBuddy, it looks like if there is a minor hint of a gas shortage, crisis, or some other weather related problem gas prices could easily shoot to $4 or beyond. Even if it doesn’t necessarily hit $4 per gallon, $3.97 is pretty darn close for my tastes.

So really, what is the point of this concern over numbers and reports? Essentially, I’m telling you to drop your current means of transportation and:

• Take public transit
• Buy a bike
• Walk to work
• Ride with a friend
• Buy a hybrid vehicle
• Drive less
• Drive smarter

Do what you can. You’re wallet will thank you and the environment will thank you.

Although not the most recent of news, but I just found out about Google Website Optimizer, which is what I’m sure lots of marketers have been looking for to optimize landing pages for their ad campaigns. This is a great little tool that allows you to set up an “original” campaign landing page and set variables to test against, such as: copy block 1, copy block 2, headline 1, headline 2, image 1, and image 2. These are then thrown together randomly into combinations 1, 2, 3, and so on and provide metrics for you to judge against. Maybe you had your campaign ideally optimized using your original combination or maybe something will come out of left field that you completely overlooked. The Website Optimizer will provide metrics for each campaign and how it compare to your “original” test campaign.

One cautionary word when using the website optimizer, make sure to set limits on each campaign so you have standard data across each and also to make the budget small enough so as to not waste ad dollars, but large enough to ensure a valid test sample. My recommendation is to set aside 5-10% of the total budget for testing purposes.

Enjoy!

Microsoft launched their first venture into the Silverlight world today with Popfly, which is some kind of mashup thing, but I couldn’t get more information on it because it’s in private beta right now. Although I applaud Microsoft’s efforts to compete with Adobe and their Flash suite, I can’t see this catching on anytime soon. Flash is so ubiquitous that it even pushed QuickTime, Real Player, and windows movie files right out of the web space, with the exception of movie trailers. The only way Silverlight is going to get traction is if it can do all the following things:

Read more

Google launched their Transit trip planner two years ago in multiple cities, Seattle, San Francisco, Tampa?, Pittsburgh?, but sadly Chicago was not one of them. Currently, Chicagoans can use the CTA’s own Transit Planner with its lovely scrolling red announcement on the top of the screen. I have used the trip planner for several years and it definitely works and provides accurate information. However, its lacking a few nicer touches that I think Google could provide:

1. Maps – It would be nice to see where these routes go and what areas of the city they passed through.
2. Local Restaurants and businesses – With Google maps, you can search for things around certain areas or intersections. What if I wanted to get off the train along my route, grab some dinner, and then get back on. Centerstage does a good job of that with their Virtual L, but it’s still not as robust as it could be. The one nice thing that the CTA does provide is landmarks of the city. So if I want to go from Loyola’s campus on the north side to Chinatown, I don’t have to pick a specific address and can just go on the thing’s I already know. Google maps currently uses their search algorithm to do best guesses on addresses, unless you are very specific.
3. Exportability and Sharing – Currently Google has the ability to link to any map or route via Google Maps. This would be a nice feature for a route. For instance, my sister was just in town and it would have been nice to set up a route for her to take from Union Station to my place in Rogers Park instead of either writing it all down and making a mistake or trying to tell her over the phone.
4. A nice looking interface – Although Google is usually visually minimalistic, they do it for a reason – to present only the information you need when you need it. The CTA’s trip planner, although not gaudy, just has a clunky feel to it as if it’s a broken toy that still kind of works, but you can hear parts jiggling around on the inside when you shake it.

So Google, you did other major cities, what gives?

Great Maps:

• Chicago Transit Google Map
• Chicago Ipod Subway Map
• Dadnab – Plan your chicago route to look like a cell phone?
• PublicRoutes.com – These guys are actually pretty good, aside from excessive advertising
• NY City Transit Google Map

Or you can use these guys and see a bunch of ads during your trip planning. They do have a nice feature for when you walk out of your transit stop though, which is always a bit disorienting.

So I continue to get twice daily emails from Performance Bike. I know they are trying to do good, but the volume and inability to unsubscribe only angers me more. As I have noted in the past, it only takes one email communication to upset a customer enough to turn them off completely to your brand.

To further the situation, the “Report Spam” feature in Gmail doesn’t seem to care what I do. If I hit “Report Spam”, it moves that message to Spam and then the next day I get two more. I think we’re approaching a CAN-SPAM violation here.

Taken from the CAN-SPAM website:

It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method. You must provide a return email address or another Internet-based response mechanism that allows a recipient to ask you not to send future email messages to that email address, and you must honor the requests. You may create a “menu” of choices to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to end any commercial messages from the sender.

Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your commercial email. When you receive an opt-out request, the law gives you 10 business days to stop sending email to the requestor’s email address. You cannot help another entity send email to that address, or have another entity send email on your behalf to that address. Finally, it’s illegal for you to sell or transfer the email addresses of people who choose not to receive your email, even in the form of a mailing list, unless you transfer the addresses so another entity can comply with the law.

So what is my recourse here, send in a report to the FTC? They say to email spam@uce.gov, but I can imagine how inundated with spam that email address is on a daily basis. Shame, shame on the FTC as well for not obfuscating that email address on their own page.

Anyone have any suggestions?

ZAP World announced yesterday that as part of their worldwide rally in Las Vegas, they approached Dominoes to deliver pizzas using their Xebra electric car. I think this is a great marketing idea as well as getting to point of electric vehicles. Since most people drive about 40 miles a day to and from work, this is mode of transit (assuming bike or public transit is not an option) is perfect. Just get to work, plug it in, and you’re all set for the day.

Here are a few more links to some other related reason why electric vehicles or using alternate means of transportation is both good for the environment and good for your wallet:

• True cost of driving
• City Decongestion
• Biking and the environment
• Gas Price Calculator
• SmartUsa Touring the US
• SmartCar
• Amount of Gas Saved by Taking Public Transportation

Image copyright Zap Electric

And if you’re looking for fantastic Chicago pizza, order from Vince’s Pizzeria on Devon!