Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Online Marketing Consultant

Just a few links I found from around the ‘net this week:

• Social thing - organize all your social media websites into one lifestream. Signed up for private beta, looking forward to an account so I can explore this a little further.
• Google Trends for Websites - Now you can view Google Trends for websites. Really nice information, but I’m not sure competitors are going to appreciate this. I’ll have to see what I was doing last June - take that Sempo
  
• Google continues it’s uptick in search market share - Not surprising, but Yahoo also increased. I’m assuming this is due to their recent press associated with the Microsoft (non)deal. Microsoft dropped, which is again, not surprising.
• MySpace underwent a redesign - Not sure if it will stop the slide in global traffic, but once these things start in the world of online, users are usually quick to jump ship for “the new hot thing”.

So I’ve been watching Live Earth today, which is absolutely fantastic. I really hope they release this concert on DVD, since they’ve only been showing bits and pieces from each concert.

What I don’t appreciate is Microsoft’s pompous move to put something like this up:

I assume they put this up because environmentalists tend to be more into big corporate solutions (IE) instead of home grown or open source programs (Firefox). Thank you Microsoft for reinforcing one more time why you always seem to screw everything up.

So the other day, my friends at SmartUSA sent me a nice email about “Thank you for attending our Chicago event to test drive Smart ForTwo’s.” That was really nice of them I thought. But wait, I didn’t test drive any Smart ForTwo’s. In fact, I meant to attend that event, but didn’t have time that weekend to make it there at all.

Email marketing lesson #1: Don’t assume. It wouldn’t have taken very long to vet a list of people who DID attend and send them one email and send everyone else another, “Sorry, we missed you in Chicago. Maybe next time…” Although, I know what they were trying to do, it should have been more personalized/customized.

I also received an email from Kayak.com telling me about great summer vacation deals. Great I thought! Oh, cheap flights to SFO, Oakland, Miami, and Chicago? Wait, they knew my default airport is O’Hare. Why would they include Chicago in this email? Why not try and sell me on another destintation, NOT Chicago.

Email marketing lesson #2: You have the data - use it. Kayak knew well enough that my default airport was O’Hare, so it’s pretty safe to say that I live/work in Chicago or the surrounding area and probably do not need a travel deal to Chicago. Instead, they could have further customized the message to remove my home airport and replaced it with another sales message. I used to do this ALL the time at my previous employer. We used every little piece of information to customize email and print communications we sent out. Kayak should do the same.

Just a few handy tips to remember when implementing an email marketing campaign. There are tons more here:

• Tips and Best practices
• Constant Contact Learning Center
• Microsoft Small Business email tips

Anything I forgot? Let me know in the comments.

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:

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Hooray! Hooray! Windows Vista is about to launch. insert cricket sounds

Why does it seem like nobody really cares about the launch of Windows Vista? I mean, when Windows 95 launched you had “Start me up” and when XP launched you had hoopla and grandeur associated with a societal revolution. So why don’t I feel like people are going to be running out and buying a new computer based solely on the operating system. Two words: Broadband Internet.

Prior to XP, the internet was young. Amazon and Yahoo were considered “advanced”. Now we have Flickr, NetFlix, YouTube, MySpace, DropSend, BackPack, Gmail, Google Calendar and million other web services that offload the functions of the desktop to online. One example: Gmail. Even if Microsoft gave me all the functionality of Outlook for free in a desktop application, it still won’t provide portability. I can check my email everywhere with Gmail, I cannot with a desktop application, until Google launches a desktop application The only caveat I would give for using a desktop application for this is, the lack of integration between Gmail and Google Calendar for setting up meetings and reminders, but that is getting better each day.

File sharing has often been a nightmare with 95 and XP and can be accomplished with a few short clicks using DropSend. Flickr allows me to store all my digital files online with a few clicks. This is available via XP, but I have to set up all kind of security and firewalls to prevent anyone else from getting in besides me.

What are the two saving graces for having everything on your desktop?

1. If the internet goes down, I still have all my stuff immediately available.
2. It’s probably faster to access and view your files, but in a few years, as broadband speeds increase, this will be less of an advantage.

So Microsoft, if you’re reading this. I’ll see you in a year or two. In the meantime, I’m glad you got a few things right in Vista.

Wow! 2007 seemed to just fly by. Who would have believed that Yahoo and AOL would merge to create an even more bloated media conglomerate with little to offer besides Flickr. The market loved it for a few days, but then soon realized there was not much in terms of user and customer base. Google continued to dominate in search, taking market share from Yahoo and Live.com, but others started to get in the game. ChaCha.com became the lazy man’s search engine having someone else do the research for you, but it turned out to be a lot of fun to just mess with the ChaCha search reps [insert YouTube video here] and people realized that the search reps were just pushing the PPC advertising instead of legitimate search results.

Myspace made some strides with a new user interface, but continued to see it’s numbers dropping off as more and more users move to niche markets and more private venues, instead of announcing everything to the world. It appeared that CyWorld and MySpace were on the verge of a merger to create the world’s largest social networking site, but it’s unsure why talks fell apart. The CyWorld asking price of $2.8Billion proved to be just too much for Rupert Murdoch.

Vista launched to much fan fare, but sales were sluggish for the first few months of the year, especially with the numerous reported security holes and the lack of a real reason for users to upgrade their systems already. Microsoft did enjoy an initial spike in traffic on Live.com as part of the integrated functionality of Vista and Live.com, but users soon jumped ship after Google launched an add-on to push all Vista search traffic through their site.

Apple launched their iTV product which did very well with initial sales, but really exploded when they partnered with NetFlix and Tivo to deliver on demand television shows and movies. Apple’s iPhone is doing extremely well especially with the integration of iTunes and their lightweight MacOS, which allows for browsing and email.

Well, I think that pretty much covers it. 2007 was pretty good, but it looks like 2008 is looking to be even better. 3-D TV, Next Gen Internet, and the 2008 Scion.

UPDATE:  Predictions for iPhone and iTV (Apple TV) have come true. Stay tuned for further updates. Myspace interface redesign? Yahoo and AOL merger? We’ll see.

My sister called me recently asking “My trial for Microsoft Office expired, what can I do?”

Being the ever helpful brother that I am, I suggested she forget the MS Office and go download OpenOffice. I have written previously about Microsofts Fumbles and how they need to get on the free web app train asap, lest they lose out to numerous startups. If you are looking for other totally free online word processors, check these out:

• Google Docs
• Zoho
• Ajax13
• WriteBoard

Did I forget something? Let me know in the comments.

In another of my recent articles, I mentioned that Microsoft is missing out of the search market bigtime. This week, CIO magazine published an article talking about Microsoft’s plans for Web 2.0 and how they are not that far behind.

It talks about how using distributed computing and managing Web 2.0 services will divide IT managers time and efforts over multiple services and cause more headaches than it will solve. To quote from the article:

“[CIOs] feel like cost and complexity weigh them down,” says Ballmer. “I want to make sure we’re eliminating that cost and complexity and letting them focus on taking advantage of new innovations and things that can add value to the company.”

Steve Ballmer? Selling less cost and complexity? When has Microsoft ever sold anything less than overly complicated? True, it’s easy to hop on the Microsoft bashing train, but they have less than a stellar record for ease of use and costs that are too high for the average consumer. This is especially true in a distributed Web 2.0 world, where I can download Ubuntu, OpenOffice, Firefox, and Thunderbird and have a home office up and running in little time and no cost.

So what exactly is Microsoft not doing in the Web 2.0 world? Well for one thing, they are asleep at the wheel in terms of development. Yahoo and Google are busy buying up start ups left and right like Flickr (Y), Writely (G), iRows (G), etc. etc. and building their online office suite overnight with distributed development that is light on its feet and easy to upgrade, instead of huge sluggish development cycles like the Big M. Microsoft did launch Office Live earlier this year, but that requires a Live account and for the user to have purchased Microsoft Office. Well let me run right out and drop $149 on something that I will only use at most 50% of the features, when Google and Yahoo are providing free online utilities to do exactly what I need.

But if Microsoft is working on all cylinders, you can expect to see full integration of web and desktop in Windows Vista, where a user can create a document on their home PC, save it online, and edit it later from work or another computer all with no limited hassle. This can already be done with Google’s apps and several other online office suites, such as Zoho. We’ll just have to wait and see if Redmond is so clever.