The Tags feature on Google Places inserted a yellow tag next to your Places listing on search results (see image). It cost $25 for this feature and when I tried it under a free trial I found it to be pretty useless.  For the $25 your paid for this feature you really didn’t get anything in return. Tags didn’t improve your ranking in local listings nor did it improve your visibility any other way. Other than hoping for more clicks, there was no other tangible benefit that I could see.

To be fair there was reason to hope for more clicks, but the clutter that Googles search results pages are turning into – that’s a pretty distant hope.  When I compared the stats from the month prior to using this feature against the month when I did use it, I found no difference. So, after a one month trail I stopped using Google Tags. I’m assuming enough people felt this way because I just received this in my inbox:

Google Tags to be retired on 4/29

Dear Google Places user,

At Google, we’re always working to innovate and improve ways for small businesses to get online and reach more customers. At times, though, we have to decide where to focus our efforts and which technologies we expect will yield the most benefit to users and businesses like you in the long run.

In that spirit, we are retiring Google Tags for all users on April 29, 2011. No action is required on your part, and your Places account and listing will continue to work as usual. Effective today, no new tags can be created, but all active tags will keep running to the end of April for free.

In your Places account, you’ll be able to see billing history until July 31st. If your tag is active, performance data will be available from now until May 31st. Historical performance data of inactive tags will be available in your dashboard starting May 2nd until May 31st.

You can visit our blog post and our Help Center for more information. There are still a number of options for you to reach more customers online, including our latest product for local businesses, Google Boost. Through the month of May, we are offering Tags customers like you $100 to try out Google Boost. Call 877-503-0841 Monday to Friday 8am-6pm to redeem your credit.

Thank you for trying Google Tags.

Sincerely,

The Google Places Team

Is anyone complaining about this? Your thoughts?

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This blog is not focused on the issue of the massive oil leak. However, this blog does pride itself on coming up with simple and innovative solutions to problems. I have demontrated my solution in a  simple diagram above. Please tell me why this is not possible.

Blogging: Never Before Have So Many People With So Little To Say Said So Much To So Few, originally uploaded by dullhunk.

Blogging: Never Before Have So Many People With So Little To Say Said So Much To So Few

I have seen this before, but as I’ve been working on two different blogs lately, I’m starting to understand this poster a lot more.

One of the things that irks me these days is the tendency for people to pronounce things dead. The idea being that some radical change is occurring  or has occurred rendering something obsolete. This old something must now in fact be pronounced dead. This pronouncement is given even though this old something has been so powerful in the past. In fact compared to this new thing the old thing has a demonstrated track record of high performance.

I’m sure there is a reason to think major changes are ahead that might permanently change things, but pronouncing things dead? Especially those things that have been mainstays for such a long time. Isn’t that taking things a bit too far.

So, here is a list of marketing tactics, techniques, ideas and thoughts that have recently been pronounced dead:

Jeff Gomez pronounces that “Print is Dead”

Marc Miller and Jason Sinkovitz pronounce that “Selling is Dead”

Michele Eggers asks “Is Marketing ROI Dead?”

Rick Aristotle Munarriz asks or states (can’t tell) “Death of Affiliate Marketing?”

And these are just a few examples. Over the years I’ve also heard the following:

• 60 second elevator speech is dead
• Personal Computer is dead
• Microsoft is dead
• Resume writing is dead
• Cover letter writing is dead

And recently I’ve heard a few people already pronounce that social media is dead.

And the biggest one of them all is when German philosopher Nietzsche announced that God is dead. Last time I checked he was the one that was dead.

photo credit: Shahram Sharif

Last week I attended a presentation by the good folks at Blue Bell Ice Cream at Gangplank HQ in Chandler, AZ. Let me begin by first saying that their ice cream is fantastic. I had never had it before, in fact, I had never heard of the company prior to this event. So, I really enjoyed the flavors I tried and went back for seconds. In case the FTC is reading this I have waited a few days before writing this so as not to give the impression that I was overly influenced by their ice cream.

The regional sales manager who was speaking kept talking about how the company is really traditional in its ways and is infused with old fashioned values. The point being that this is reflected in the quality of their product. I love these kinds of companies myself. He mentioned their employees are extremely loyal and stay on for long tenures, there have never been layoffs and the product is just awesome. One point he kept making though kept bugging me and from what I could tell it was bothering the audience as well. He kept talking about how slow they were to change and they have no social media strategy at all. Someday he proudly said, they might embrace social media marketing!

The audience, being overtly social media savvy, pounced on this remark during the question answer session. However, one person did make a very good point. He pointed out that by not having a direct social media strategy, yet engaging social media savvy audiences, the company was in fact harnessing the power of social media. So, instead of tweeting and enticing the audience to join its Facebook Fan page, the company was more authentic and being more real with its audience. Following a more direct approach would not necessarily be in line with who the company was!

Considering the number of tweets that went around that afternoon and the fact that food bloggers now have learned about the company I think there is truth to this observation.  In other words even if you don’t directly use social media tools to talk to your audience, you can at least participate in the social media community and get your message across that way. In many ways this is better because social media is all about being authentic and if this is you then this is you. Don’t do something you’re not comfortable doing just because all the other kids are doing it!

Us social media folks need to relax sometimes and learn a few things from the old timers!

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Last Fall I posted about a home break-in following Twitter updates. Now a similar one from Facebook. This even though awareness is rising on the responsible use of status updates (via All Facebook):

When the “Please Rob Me” site launched last month, I wouldn’t have guessed that under a month later, there would be an actual burglary resulting from a status update. Unfortunately for Keri McMullen, $10,000 of items were stolen thanks to a status update that tipped off burglars that she would be away from her house. Minutes after Keri left for a concert, one of her “friends” that she hadn’t spoken to in a long-time robbed her house.

The developers behind the site PleaseRobMe.com were intending to spread awareness about the dangers of posing status updates with your location. While participating in a panel at SXSW, one attendee told us about how he had to worry after his friend posted a status update about being out of the country and named the friends he was with. While nothing happened to the individual, it’s becoming increasingly clear that posting your whereabouts present a significant risk.

My policy is:

• to never give real time updates about vacations (Wow only day 2 of 15 day vacation on South Beach)
• to never give exact location during odd hours (I’m at 123 Main Street, 11.29pm)
• to never give exact plans (Leaving home in 20 mins.)

What are yours?

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I often get asked if I’d be willing to blog on behalf of a company. The conversation usually goes like this:

Client: We need to get some more traffic so we got a blog.

Me: Well great. Blogs can be very effective.

Client: But the problem is we haven’t been updating it as much.

Me: That’s not good. You need to be committed to it if you want it to work.

Client: Would you be willing to blog for us? As a ghost blogger of sorts.

Me: Lets see if there is a different way to make this work for you.

There are many reasons why I hesitate. Here are my top four reasons:

Writing is Work – I’m not a natural writer. I can’t sit in front of a computer and write about just anything. There is a reason why I loved math class in college – because you don’t have to write much in math.  So, if I write it takes a while and it has to come straight from the heart. Otherwise its too hard for me and I won’t enjoy doing it.

Authenticity – I don’t like to pretend. I can’t pretend to blog about how much I love this and that when I don’t. If I can’t be me then I can’t blog for you, because you are not me and I’m not you.  When I have tried to blog for others in the past it has not worked and I don’t enjoy it. You won’t either and most importantly your audience will see right through it and won’t connect with me or the blog.

Expectations – I’m married so I know how expectations can suck you dry. Most companies have very unreasonable expectations on their blogs. Even when I tell them how it works they don’t seem to hear what I’m saying. I just don’t like getting notes from the VP of Marketing every two weeks asking why only two people commented on such and such post.

Voice – Blogs work when you’re real and authentic.  Not everyone in your marketing hierarchy understands that so it becomes an issue as things get going. Usually someone higher up finds a blog post and complains about the content or makes suggestions to re-write the whole thing. The most common re-write requests I’ve dealt with is when an old school VP says there is not enough of a dicssuion on product benefits. Then he goes on to suggest that offers and discounts be mentioned IN EVERY POST. Yep, that’s when I shut down.

There are other reasons, but these are my main ones.

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I’m going to stray a little from the regular topic of this blog, because this particular issue is close to my heart. It’s about helping build a school in Nepal. As you may or may not know, that is where I’m from. When my friend Shishir recently wrote to me about America’s Giving Challenge I got excited and wanted to whatever I could to help. Shishir is trying to win $50,000 from this challenge on behalf of a school that he’s helping build in Nepal. He works with Sarvodaya USA and they’ve done amazing work in Nepal.

The competition counts the number of people who donate. Multiple donations count multiple times, so if you want to give $30 you may want to consider giving $10 a day for three days. That would count as three donations. You get the point.

So, lets put Nepal on top guys! Click here to donate.

Here is more information about the school Sarvodaya hopes to build with these funds.

The day Kanchan, 7, was born, her father passed away. Several months later her mother went abroad for a job and never returned. Kanchan grew up with her grandmother, 70, and uncle, a retired health worker. Needless to say, life has been very difficult for the family. But when it came to educating Kanchan, they turned to a local community school – Jyotidaya. Jyotidaya provides free education to Kanchan and 40 other children. In addition,  about 300 children who would not have access to quality education currently benefit school’s services.

• National model that examples by the power of community’s collective action. (could be replicated in other communities).
• Alternative to expensive private school and low quality public schools.
• 1 in 8 children, mostly orphans and children from poor family study for free.
• About 300 children benefit from Jyotidaya’s high quality education.
• 100% students who have taken SLC have passed, compared to less than 50% from public schools.
• Students participate in community service and development through shramadana. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38Fd1g2PXLE
• New infrastructure will allow the school to bring innovative educational systems that integrates spiritual traditions with modern and scientific learning processes.
• Planned new construction building will use local materials such as adobe and bamboo, it will be one of the most environmentally friendly school building in Nepal. A model that promotes the use of low cost, local and traditional methods of construction.
• The school will also integrate perm culture and sustainable agriculture programs to inspire young people to take productive life style.
• New buildings will provide facilities to train public school teachers and parents in rural area to begin the transformation process of Nepalese education system.

If you can’t give, please at least forward this blog post to someone or write about it on your blog and give a link back.

I sincerely appreciate your help!

Photo used under creative commons license from Jeff Bauche on Flickr