Dan London - Marketing & More

Google Plus is now in image ads. The Google Plus image looks a...

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 14:53:22 -0500

Google Plus is now in image ads. The Google Plus image looks a bit too large for the ads.

My Best for 2011

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 10:52:00 -0500

Best Book of 2011: The Postmortal by Drew Magary. A great book from a guy who writes about sports and everything else (mostly food, adult content and going to the bathroom) over at Deadspin and Kissing Suzy Kolber. The Postmortal book has none of that stuff. What is does have is a great story about the human race finding a cure for aging. People live forever (unless they get cancer or shot, etc.) and the world becomes a pretty horrible place. Read a great interview with the “Most Read Writer on the Internet” at BeatBeat.

Best Album of 2011: Breaks in the Armor by Crooked Fingers. The Archers of Loaf hit the road in 2011 as well as re-released Icky Mettle on Merge Records, but the latest solo album form Eric Bachmann was my favorite new album of the year. The sound is nothing like the Archers, but is highly recommended. (Also Recommended: Wild Flag.)

Best Website I Discovered in 2011: The Smoking Jacket. (Warning: Might be slightly NSFW*). This blog run by a team over at Playboy offers a number of posts featuring the women of Playboy, but those posts are outnumbered by better ones featuring stories about fantasy football, humor, news and more. You can truly say that you read “Playboy for the articles.”

*I read The Smoking Jacket via RSS on my iPhone so I do not know how NSFW the standard web-based site is. On a side note, a co-worker had no idea what NSFW meant. Can you believe that?

Best Prediction I Made that Came 66% True in 2011: I predicted that Bill Simmons, Chuck Klosterman and Will Leitch would start their own Sports/Pop Culture site this year. 2 out of 3 was pretty close.

Raleigh is now added to the Twitter trends city list.

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 09:15:31 -0500

Raleigh is now added to the Twitter trends city list.

AdWords Editor Updated to Version 9.7.1

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:09:09 -0500

AdWords Editor Updated to Version 9.7.1:

AdWords Editor has been update. Features include:

Faster downloading for large accounts, and faster cut, copy, and paste (including drag-and-drop).
A new tool for changing the capitalization of selected text in one step.
More AdWords settings available within AdWords Editor, including advanced location settings, user interest category targeting, and Wifi traffic targeting.

Google is now allowing users to block ads from a specific...

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 16:11:38 -0500

Google is now allowing users to block ads from a specific advertiser in search results after clicking and visiting the website.

ShareFile Jobs

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:06:00 -0400

ShareFile is hiring for a number of different positions.

Click here to apply.

We have been slowly growing for the past 5 years and have ramped up hiring in engineering and sales. We will have a number of openings listed soon in other departments so be sure to check back or follow me on Twitter for updates on listings.

Amazing article at The Atlantic on how baseball games were shown...

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 08:47:14 -0400

Amazing article at The Atlantic on how baseball games were shown to large crowds using manual displays, lights and puppets. The modern ESPN online gamecasts are very similar to how the games were shown to crowds back in the early 1900s.

There, a series of lights shone through the thin fabric indicate the progress and location of hits, base runners and fielders. At right in the photo are ball, strike, and out lights. This was not a one man job. Several controlled the indicators, one acted as announcer.

Google Analytics: Flow Visualization

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 14:22:45 -0400

Google Analytics: Flow Visualization:

Google Analytics has announced a pretty interesting feature, Flow Visualizatuion. This feature will enable you to analyze site insights graphically, and instantly understand how visitors flow across pages on your site.

Bing Inflating Search Numbers Through Promotion?

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 08:44:34 -0400

Bing has been running a promotion that rewards searchers with points that can be used to purchase items such as gift cards, vacations, contest entries and more. I have redeemed points earned through my Bing searches for Xbox Live points.

Over the past few months Bing’s PR staff, and some search professionals, have praised the search engine for increasing search share, but how much of it actually legitimate? In August it took 3 searches to earn 1 point and in September only 2 were required. The data below shows Bing’s September 2011 search numbers and a dip from the previous month.

How many people come to Bing, search for a random word, and then just click the related searches 20 times and get their allotted 10 points for the day? I do.

Since Bing has been running this campaign for quite some time now and has been gaining market share according to Venture Beat, how much traffic is actually from single searches and not incentivized searches with no real value?

Google Global Market Finder

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:51:31 -0400

Google Global Market Finder

Source

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 10:42:00 -0400

Source

Very clever Super Mario game created using a cardboard box.

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 11:06:32 -0400

Very clever Super Mario game created using a cardboard box.

Display creative checklist: building direct response ads

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:20:51 -0400

Display creative checklist: building direct response ads:

Google is has been pushing their display ad capabilities hard for a few years. Today’s AdWords blog has a great post on some of the best practices for direct response ads. As advertisers, we sometimes try to get too “cutsie“ with display ads and forget the basics.

Linking all of your AdWords accounts to Google Analytics

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 14:00:36 -0400

Linking all of your AdWords accounts to Google Analytics :

New feature from AdWords/Analytics announced today.

Starting today, you can now link multiple AdWords accounts to your Google Analytics account. The new data sources section in the Google Analytics account settings area makes it easy to use auto-tagging with multiple AdWords accounts and import your AdWords data into Google Analytics.

QR Code Roundtable

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 17:22:34 -0400

QR Code Roundtable:

Another great roundtable featuring JT Moore of ASPE and Greg NG of Freezerburns. In this episode we talk about QR code. They both love them, but I am a bit skeptical of major adoption.

Why you shouldn’t pause paid search even after organic...

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 16:20:11 -0400

Why you shouldn’t pause paid search even after organic success.

Think Insights with Google

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 16:17:52 -0400

Think Insights with Google:

Great monthly online news magazine from Google

A Few Quick Facebook Marketing Tips

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 09:29:02 -0400

I’ve had moderate success advertising via Facebook ads for b2b and b2c campaigns and thought I’d share a few tips that helped me succeed.

Create Tight AdGroups: Don’t target more than one audience in an adgroup. You might be selling the same product or service, but creating ads specifically to a group will help conversion.
Adjust Your Ads: Your ads might get clicks at first, but over time the CTR will usually decrease. Be sure to create new ads based off ones that have converted.
Use Google Analytics to Tag: Use the Google URL builder to track your traffic and conversions. Since Facebook killed their conversion code, Google Analytics is essential in determining success.
Watch It: No online advertising of any kind should be “set it and forget it” ever. Be sure to check your spend each day.

Feel free to ask any specific questions in the comments.

Part two of a marketing round-table with Greg Ng and JT Moore....

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 07:40:24 -0400

Part two of a marketing round-table with Greg Ng and JT Moore. We continue to talk about Google Plus in this episode.

Part one of a marketing round-table with Greg Ng of FreezerBurns...

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 16:26:45 -0400

Part one of a marketing round-table with Greg Ng of FreezerBurns and Brooks Bell Interactive and JT Moore of ASPE-ROI. We talk about Google Plus in this episode.