Jason+: A Blog about WordThink

Super Bowl XLVIII!  Football madness !  Who's gonna win?  The Denver Broncos or the Seattle Seahawks? Who cares?!  It's the Super Bowl ads we're after (as marketers). Superbowl Ad Links: Preview Super Bowl Ads Use the links below to pre- or post-view Super Bowl ads, and be the hip, cool ad guru at Monday's water cooler huddle. YouTube Ad Blitz - YouTube's preview, watch, and vote extravaganza of all the best ads. The #1 recommended site to watch Super Bowl XLVIII ads, after the game. Hulu Ad Zone - Hulu's competitive site to YouTube with teasers and full ads of the Super Bowl.  ( Shhhh... right now, it's actually better than the official YouTube! ) Superbowl Commercials 2014 - another mega site that has teasers for Super Bowl ads.  NFL TB Super Bowl Ads - a playlist that will 'be populated' with the top commercials as they are released. To stay really up-to-date, just click here , which is a pre-built Google search for 'Super ...

Google Analytics , of course, is the powerful, free metrics tool provided by Google itself. But since all the smart user interface people work at Apple and all the English majors work at Facebook, the user interface and linguistics of Google Analytics need some translation. Here's my tongue-in-check explanation of the left column in Google Analytics, click around and read my translations on what these elements really mean. Google Analytics - (Un)Lost in Translation Google Analytics ~ Are we there yet? Who came to our party? Why did they come? What did they drink? Did they leave without paying? Demographics ~ Did old people visit our site? Men, women, children, or people from Florida? Interests ~ Really amazing stuff about your visitors, that if you enable with the nifty, updated tracking code you still won't really see, because Google Analytics ain't Facebook, people. Geo ~ Strange word in Google Analytics for what language your visitors speak, and their location, wh...

Today's marketing word is FUD , or Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt . According to Wikipedia, it was coined in 1975 by Gene Amdahl, a former IBM employee turned entrepreneur. So FUD has an illustrious history, and deep tech roots. Let's investigate some recent FUD examples in Internet marketing. FUD and Google, Bing, and Yelp Enter Google, Bing, and Yelp. As marketers today we often depend on one, or all, of these companies to interact with customers and generally "get the word out." All three have a free platform (e.g., SEO on Google and Bing, free listings on Yelp), and a paid platform, a.k.a. advertising.  And all three worry a lot about people "gaming" the system to get better free positions, and all three would really rather have us all just give up and advertise. FUD 's first letter, "F," could also stand for FOLLOW the money . Recently, Google, Bing, and Yelp have all engaged in a little FUD : sowing fear, uncertainty, and dou...

Thomas Friedman , who is one of my favorite New York Times columnists, writes that the "digital divide" is disappearing: soon everyone (or nearly everyone) across the world will have a computer screen and Internet access...  So the real divide will become the "motivational divide." Those who are motivated to continually learn, to continually push themselves, to take advantage of new opportunities and build new skills - these people will be the winners.  He takes all of this from futurist, Marina Gorbis , by the way. Says Friedman: In that world, argues futurist Marina Gorbis, the big divide will be “the motivational divide” — who has the self-motivation, grit and persistence to take advantage of all the free or cheap online tools to create, collaborate and learn. ( http://nyti.ms/J3puIR ). Internet Marketing and the Motivational Divide Much of what I teach about SEO, Social Media, and even AdWords is technical: how to do this, how not to do that, how t...

Jeff Bezos of Amazon demonstrated a masterful control of public relations by appearing on "60 Minutes" and announcing Amazon's intent to create delivery drones . Couch potatoes of the world immediately leaned forward at their TV's or streaming Internet devices in cheers: now, popcorn and candy bars could be delivered via the air, in mere hours... Making it every more unnecessary to get up off the coach. Amazon Drones and Purple Cows Marketing Guru Seth Godin in his book, Purple Cow , argues that the ordinary is risky, but the extraordinary - the Purple Cow - at the edge of the road is not only the thing that will make you stop but the thing that will sell more...  What?  Stuff. Amazon's drones may make it to the real world, or not. But in the day before "Cyber Monday" to be featured on "60 Minutes" and to be able to garner massive FREE public relations' buzz about delivery drones...  That was priceless (to use another marketing slo...

Reviews on sites like Yelp, Google+ Local, Urban Spoon and even Amazon.com are incredibly important to many businesses. If you have a restaurant, you probably already get this. But even if you are a DUI attorney, a divorce attorney, a hair salon, or even a product that isn't local but sells on Amazon, reviews matter. More than ever. Every businessperson who needs reviews realizes that reviews are hard to get.   Why? Because, first and foremost, if you do nothing, the most likely people to review your product will be the angry consumer . For example, I have had a terrible customer service experience with Verizon, and I hate that company so much that during my copious spare time... I am thinking: angry blog post.  Contrast that with some very tasty local restaurants here in Fremont: I had dinner, it was excellent, I went home.  Little emotional energy to induce me to write a review. Angry people often write reviews.  Happy people not so much. As a business...

I am not an expert on picking stocks, though I do dabble in the stock market. One of my favorite ideas is that "Stocks climb a wall of worry ." As someone who teaches social media marketing , consults on it, and has many, many inside connections to real small business marketers "in the trenches" struggling with how to spend their ad dollars, I wanted to share some thoughts about my "wall of worry" about Twitter, Twitter Marketing, and the Twitter IPO. The Wall of Worry About Twitter and its IPO ROI. The ROI (return on investment) for nearly everyone I deal with is always the best for SEO. SEO, of course, is getting to the top of Google or Bing for free, and the reality is that generally speaking when people are ready to buy something they go to Google (or perhaps Amazon) but not Twitter. The ROI on time on Twitter marketing is weak, at best, for more companies. Wall of worry #2: A worrisome sign if there ever was one: who will advertise when the ROI ...