Will Marlow - Digital problem solving

March 11, 2010

When is paying for software better than getting it free?

There are lots of awesome free tools on the Internet. And since I feel like I'm always recommending that people use free tools whenever possible, I thought I would lay out the case for paying money for certain tools. In my opinion, you should pay for an online tool whenever:

The tool you need is unique and you have no other options;
or
You're also buying the resources and expertise of the company supplying the software.

If you feel the same way that I do about this, you can do a lot with free software, and then you can save your money for the tools that really make a difference. Just yesterday I saw this blog post about how Google will provide free email hosting to institutions with 50 or fewer employees. (That means you can have a gmail interface, but it could come from you@yourname.com. That's a cool free tool.

Will Marlow co-founded AlumniFidelity to help his clients reposition their fundraising to benefit from Web 2.0 technology and marketing techniques. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Randolph Macon College, and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge. Read more about Will Marlow here, or email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

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Filed under // free hosted email Free software Google Google Enterprise software hosted email Software

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March 9, 2010

Two quick tips for using shortened links with bit.ly

Two things are important in a URL shortening service: (1) you don't want the links to ever "expire" (unless you do want this to happen) and (2) you want the link shortening service to provide some amount of analytics.

This is why bit.ly is currently the standard free service for most people who shorten a lot of links. Anytime you shorten a longer link with bit.ly you get a whole list of analytic data to tell you how many people clicked on the links; what countries they were in when they clicked; how many people picked up your link and used it elsewhere, and a few other things. Also, you can take ANY bit.ly link you see anywhere and add a "+" sign to the end, and it'll show you all sorts of data, like in this image. (I suspect that some quasi-famous Twitterers and bloggers don't use bit.ly exactly for this reason: they don't want to let the world know that their influence isn't as vast as they think it should be.)

Here's another cool thing you can do with bit.ly: you can create a custom bit.ly link to help telegraph where the link goes. For example, a link to my blog could be "http://bit.ly/willmarl" instead of a bunch of messy random characters.

The need to use link shortening services like this is one reason why trust is so important in the online world. If you don't trust me, or you don't know me, then you have no way of knowing if I'm trying to conceal a malicious link behind a bit.ly mask. This is why it's important to post regular, relevant updates on your blog or social media feeds. Trust is something that accumulates over time, and as more and more people begin to trust you, that accumulated trust becomes validation for new visitors who are meeting you for the first time.

Leave a comment on this blog below.

Will Marlow co-founded AlumniFidelity to help his clients reposition their fundraising to benefit from Web 2.0 technology and marketing techniques. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Randolph Macon College, and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge. Read more about Will Marlow here, or email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

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March 8, 2010

I was quoted in this story about Toyota's social media strategy

I just noticed that I was quoted in this news article about Toyota's social media strategy. I was interviewed because of my background cofounding AlumniFidelity, which helps schools and nonprofits execute modern online fundraising campaigns, as well as for my former profession advising political candidates on their communication strategies. You can read the full story here. If you want me to send you updates like this, or to receive new blog posts by email, just subscribe by putting your email address in the field below and clicking "subscribe."

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Filed under // AlumniFidelity Toyota Toyota recall Will Marlow

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March 8, 2010

Taking good pictures

Photography and videos are tremendously important for communicating on the Internet. Why? Because people do not want to read online. People consume information on the Internet primarily through videos and pictures, not written words. You can argue with me on this point all you want, but you're better off just accepting the fact that your message will reach more people if it's framed by pictures and videos. (If the New York Times needs to supplement its written words with pictures and videos, so do unknown bloggers and websites.)

This means that you would benefit tremendously if you equip yourself to take high quality, professional looking photographs on a regular basis.

Here's one of the biggest tips I can give you: often, the biggest difference between professional-looking photos and amateur photos comes down to the time of day. I was speaking with a veteran advertising producer who told me that he used to hate getting up at three in the morning to prepare for a photo shoot that had nothing at all to do with a sunrise, but the fact is, the quality of light two hours after sunrise and two hours before sunset is magical on film. Those two two-hour chunks of time are when 80% of important outdoor movie scenes and magazine pieces are shot.

If you want your pictures or videos to look professional, the early bird still gets the worm.

Recommendations (and no, I don't make a dime if you click these links and buy these products): I typically recommend that brand new photographers buy a Nikon D40 (shown in the picture above), because it has a fantastic auto-mode, but it will also let you switch to manual to learn much more advanced techniques and grow as a photographer. And I used to recommend that people buy the Canon HV30, but I don't shoot videos for fun the way I take pictures for fun, so that recommendation may be out of date. However, the number one reason I recommended that particular video camera is that it has an external microphone receiver, which let's you easily replace the cruddy built-in microphone with a much higher quality microphone - it amazes me that most camcorders don't have the capability of accepting an external microphone.

Will Marlow co-founded AlumniFidelity to help his clients reposition their fundraising to benefit from Web 2.0 technology and marketing techniques. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Randolph Macon College, and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge. Read more about Will Marlow here, or email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

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Filed under // D40 Digital SLR Nikon Nikon D40 online communications Photography storytelling Videography Videos

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March 6, 2010

Don't make assumptions

When it comes to building a website or any type of software, it's important to make as few assumptions about how you think people will use your product as possible. (This is especially important if you want to be taken seriously by veteran software developers and Internet entrepreneurs, who are very big on the concept of split testing everything (read about that here).

But what do I mean when I say that you shouldn't make assumptions about user-behavior? Here's an example of funny user-behavior that I wouldn't have predicted, but that I learned about today. Apparently there is a not insignificant number of people out there who think that every link on the Internet requires a double-click - in other words, they treat all links as if they were icons on a desktop, and they rapidly click them two times whenever they want to use them. This is harmless behavior, of course, because it doesn't prevent anyone from accomplishing their goals on the Internet. But there is an nearly infinite number other behaviors, some of which are harmful, and if you tried to guess them all in advance you'd fail miserably.

Here is an example of a more harmful behavior. Google redesigned its Chrome Internet Browser because they noticed that a lot of people were attempting to type search terms into the URL field. With a normal browser, that would be a very frustrating experience. Rather than trying to educate those folks on how to use the browser properly, Google simply enhanced their browser so that people could type search terms into the URL field.

The point is, people will use your website the way that makes sense to them, not you. And if you listen to what they have to say, you can make your website a much nicer place to be.

Will Marlow co-founded AlumniFidelity to help his clients reposition their fundraising to benefit from Web 2.0 technology and marketing techniques. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Randolph Macon College, and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge. Read more about Will Marlow here, or email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

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Filed under // Software development Web development Website development

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March 5, 2010

About this blog

I write this blog in order to help non-technical people who want to understand technical things. I do this because in the last five years, the line that separates technical and nontechnical roles has blurred for lots of people. Take journalists for example. Journalists shouldn't just write a story anymore. They should write a story AND promote it online to make sure that even if they're fired from their newspaper, they'll have an online readership that may follow them to their next assignment. That's a valuable asset.

There are tremendous opportunities for non-techies to expand their horizons, and my goal with this blog is to seek out complex topics (like search engine optimization, website development, formulas for viral marketing, online fundraising, etc.) and make them understandable and useful. (To be sure, one of the ways I do that is by leaning on people who are a lot smarter than me.)

The following questions guide me as I decide what to post on this blog:

Would someone at a business, a university, a startup, a corporate marketing office, or a nonprofit potentially find this information useful?
Would I personally regret forgetting the information?
Has the topic already been covered elsewhere in a similar way?

I definitely want to hear what readers think, and periodically I may post a (very, very short) survey to get feedback on how I'm doing. But if I don't do a survey, you can still leave comments, send me an email, or connect on Google Buzz or Twitter.

Will Marlow co-founded AlumniFidelity to help his clients reposition their fundraising to benefit from Web 2.0 technology and marketing techniques. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Randolph Macon College, and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge. Read more about Will Marlow here, or email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

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Filed under // Blog blogging

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March 3, 2010

I want to hear from you

Now that this blog is five months old, and now that I written over 85 posts that seem to have been well received by readers, I would love to hear from YOU, my readers/subscribers, to give me some feedback on how I'm doing.

When I first started, I didn't know if anyone would be interested in reading my blog, and I'm sincerely grateful for each of you who stops by.

If you have a moment, I'd love to hear from you in this anonymous, three question survey. Please click the link below and let me hear from you.

Click here to take survey

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Filed under // Survey Will Marlow survey

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March 2, 2010

Can Twitter or Facebook really boost your search engine optimization (SEO)?

One huge myth is that if you use Twitter or Facebook to link to your website from your status updates, you'll increase your Google PageRank (in other words, your website will get pushed to the top of search results), because Google famously "counts the number of links" to your website to determine how "relevant" your website is. Lots of links = great search engine optimization, right? But you can think of the major Internet companies as co-conspirators in a plot to determine "relevancy," because back in 2005 they all decided that whenever someone links to a website in the "user generated content" area of another website, they would start inserting an invisible "nofollow" tag. This means that ALL links in a Twitter feed have a hidden "nofollow" tag embedded in them (same with Facebook), and this makes them invisible to search engines. To be clear, this means that the target of the link doesn't look any more attractive in the eyes of Google, Yahoo or Bing.

I know this will be painful for some people to hear, but if you use Twitter and get retweeted 50,000 times and drive tons of new visitors to your website, your search engine optimization won't change a bit because of it. This means that you need to be ready to engage those thousands of new visitors so that they become daily or weekly or monthly visitors who love your site and products.

PS - Did you know that the word "Page" in Google PageRank does not refer to "webpage," but to Larry Page, the Co-founder of Google and creator of the Google PageRank system? Just another fun Internet fact.

Will Marlow co-founded AlumniFidelity to help his clients reposition their fundraising to benefit from Web 2.0 technology and marketing techniques. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Randolph Macon College, and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge. Read more about Will Marlow here, or email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

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Filed under // Facebook Google Google PageRank Larry Page Online myths Search Engine Optimization SEO SMO Social Media Optimization Social media strategy Twitter

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March 1, 2010

Local businesses: you make your money at the margins with social media

If you're a local/community business, and you want to use social media to accomplish your business goals, the most important thing you should know is this: you make your money at the margins. In fact, in social media, you do everything at the margins. Why is this? Because not every customer will write a favorable review on Yelp. Not every customer will publicly become your "fan." Not every customer will comment or "like" your status on Facebook. But those customers who do all of these things will send the message to their friends and family that you're a great business. And when that message is delivered from a trusted source, it can be very powerful. So before you jump into social media, embrace the fact that you should paint with a light brush. You're working at the margins, and it's a profitable place to be.

Will Marlow co-founded AlumniFidelity to help his clients reposition their fundraising to benefit from Web 2.0 technology and marketing techniques. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Randolph Macon College, and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge. Read more about Will Marlow here, or email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

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February 27, 2010

How to apply the so-what rule to social media goals

The thing that separates a good goal from a bad goal is this: a good goal is something that you can take meaningful action to accomplish, and a bad goal is something that you have little influence over. One of my jobs is helping organizations develop social media strategies, and one of the biggest problems I see is that people set goals like the following, "I want to have 10,000 followers in six months," or "I want to have 30,000 blog subscribers in a year." The problem I have with goals like that is not that they are too ambitious. Ambition is GREAT. The problem is that those goals can only be advanced by tactics, and you need to implement the same or similar tactics whether you want 10,000 subscribers, 20,000 subscribers, or a million subscribers. In other words, those goals may be measurable, but they are not actionable.

For an example from my own social media strategy, my initial goal with my Twitter feed was simply to create an online place where people could get all the most important news and analysis about online communications, fundraising, education, and entrepreneurship. I wanted my Twitter feed to be a type of "resume" that would communicate to my clients and investors that I was immersed in the details of my company. That's something that I have complete control over. And once I was satisfied that I had accomplished it, I was able to think about adding other goals, such as creating a new pipeline for speaking engagements.

To borrow a phrase from my hero Avinash Kaushik, after you set any goal you should ask yourself: "So what?" If there isn't an obvious answer to that question, you should find new goals. Your goals shouldn't just be things that you hope will happen somehow someday, they should be like those little flags that tell the slalom skiers where to go if they want to win the gold medal in Toronto.

Will Marlow co-founded AlumniFidelity to help his clients reposition their fundraising to benefit from Web 2.0 technology and marketing techniques. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Randolph Macon College, and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge. Read more about Will Marlow here, or email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

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Filed under // blogging online communications Social Media social media goals Social media strategy

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