I quite like some of Alex’s products, I have been critical of most of Jared’s and I suppose I am neutral on Brian’s as I have never bought any.

Hyper lazy affiliate banner

In theory it is like a simplified version of Zemanta with an additional option to check to see if a reciprocal pingback link has been published.

There are lots of options to get rid of most footprints the problem is people are lazy and leave the defaults.

Thus you get nice footprints like this

<p><!-- pingbacker_start --><br />
<h4>Related Blogs</h4>
<ul class='pc_pingback'>

The other problem is people are greedy.

Rather than choosing the most related posts they add as many as they can – a numbers game, and may or may not keep the links.

I am referring to extreme greed.

• Is the plugin legit? It is just a tool
• Can it be abused? Most certainly
• Are idiots abusing it? Without a doubt
• Is it blackhat? Not necessarily

If you want to test the plugin you get it as a free download from an exit pop sequence if you visit the site via the banner above.
I don’t think as a tool for finding relevant links it is a bad thing, and if you are automating content aggregation in some legitimate way then those receiving (genuine) (relevant) (followed) links aren’t going to complain too much.
With a lot of creative thought something like this could be turned into a very crude Techmeme clone built on WordPress.

With a free business model reliant on goodwill, community and the viral dissemination of free content, paid for by SEO & Viral traffic seeing advertising, it is a pretty viable concept.

It is quite possible that the direction they have taken is what works best for them as a technology company and is what their customers expressed a willingness to pay for, and based on Eric Ries’s article today, they went through various questionaire and testing phases to reach their eventual public service offering.

But lets flip things around a little

Alien Marketing Concepts

• Build a landing page with a presentation on it and an opt in form, and also include reciprocal links to all your business competitors.
• Drive PPC traffic to a Dmoz listing that includes not just your link, but also all your competitors
• Pay for traffic to a landing page you can’t split test effectively
• Encourage viral distribution of your marketing materials which then link to a site containing content from all your competitors
• Using a lead capture process that doesn’t use your own lead capture forms with your autoresponder, possibly with a confirmed/double opt-in.
• The purpose of creating an infographic is to drive links to Flickr

A Different Perspective

• Build a landing page with your presentation on it, and all links and actions on the page benefit you directly as a marketer.
• Drive PPC traffic to a landing page you have full control over, and any viral distribution of your content creates a traffic funnel directly to your properties… only
• Have complete control over your landing pages – create 10 different versions of your presentation materials and split test their performance.
• Lets be honest – viral distribution of content rarely happens without a push – that takes time and money. You want to maximize your ROI with complete control over the funnel, and benefit directly from any links.
• This isn’t dodgy leads from a conference where you don’t know whether you have permission to send them marketing messages. You want a clear process that works with your autoresponder directly, and the ability to immediately market and segment the traffic, maybe even sell without human intervention.

The Biggest Failing Of Slideshare

Free Embed

This is a presentation from one of the people I most respect in tech, Dave McClure, because he “gets” marketing – it is quite possible 50% of the visits I have made to Slideshare have been to view updates, though most of the time I have viewed presentations on his blog, or followed a tweet.

3 links to Slideshare
Dave has been driving traffic to his presentations

But that is fair enough… it is a free service, we can all be kumbaya for the greater good of the community.

Pro Branded Channel

Only 2 links… one to a banded channel – the branded channel is the only place with a link back to Edelman… and it is nofollow.

This presentation has been fairly popular

There has at this time also been 150 tweets, 72 Facebook shares, 159 Facebook Likes & 67 Slide Embeds

What an amazing marketing success and branding exercise for Edelman Digital, after all the first point raised in the presentation is:-

1. Marketing in the age of streams

Your customers, consumers and employees are no longer only visiting static Web pages but participating in conversations which increasingly occur off domain in “streams” flowing from Facebook, Twitter and even apps. In order to catch them, you must be highly relevant in their streams.

Which has resulted in zero comments on their original blog post

… and not ranking for the title of their own blog post

David Armano does a little better with his blog post, which was a syndicated (and attributed copy) of the original with a further 5 comments, 33 Facebook likes.

Lets see a comparrison between Slideshare & Edelman

Now imagine all those Tweets and Facebook shares had been directed to the Edelman blog post concentrating the viral message to a single point.
I haven’t analysed all the sharing activity, but I exect a fair number didn’t link directly to Edelman in any way shape or form.

Links – especially editorial links cost a lot of time = money.

Social Currency

Edelman have a huge amount of social currency to play with – the co-author Steve Rubel has a very popular Twitter account, a popular blog etc, and as a very early adopter I am sure a large percentage of anything he Tweets gets picked up by bots that can help magnify the social proof.

Topsy actually shows 109 Tweets, but only 34 of those are looked on as influential.

I would look on this at least as a partial failure… the big problem is that this is probably the most popular Slideshow Edelman have published on Slideshare.

All Roads Lead To Rome… Via Timbuktu

I understand social media isn’t direct marketing – you can’t control the message all the time, or where it takes place.

9 months ago I layed out a lot of this in emails to Slideshare via their advisor & investor Dave McClure when they launched their initial pro offerings… where you might pay $7 for a lead generated by a Slideshow on your own LinkedIn profile.

This new offering is a vast improvement, I am sure it will drive a lot of business – but is still not the offering it should be. Or it is not the product offering I would envision as being ideal…

It may well be ideal for Edelman clients where the development of a landing page or posting a blog post takes 3 committee meetings, 2 rounds of golf, and signoff from the legal department.

However my opinion is you are effectively paying to promote Slideshare rather than driving visitors into an optimized sales funnel.

Update

I spent a little more time digging around for a good video sample to share from a Pro account holder.

The only problem is I should really flag it as a potential copyright violation as it was created by the guys at Royal Pingdom… maybe used with permission or Jess3 were the creative agency that created it.

Just over a year ago I wrote my first and only guest post, as an entry into Marketing Pilgrim’s annual competition.
At the time when I published the article, I joked that “I had been robbed“, you wouldn’t believe the number of comments suggesting a way to get my revenge, file DMCA, report to Google or recover my “stolen” article.

Climbing The Heights Of Mount Google

When you set out to climb a mountain, or rank for a competitive keyword
term, some methods are effective.

This is a simplistic look at climbing the heights of Mount Google.

Human Pyramid

A human pyramid might be suitable for those low hanging fruit, but this
method is unlikely to help you scale great heights. Not only is it hard to
gain great height, but the weak construction is easily eroded by
competitors.

Photo credit: S@TS

Belay or Blogroll

Whilst exchanging blogroll links can help lift you up to a certain level,
they can effectively anchor you to your peers. From an SEO point of view
they are more about securing your position than lifting you higher.
If you have achieved a certain height, there is nothing wrong with pulling
up a few team mates. They can then aid in a push for the summit, which can
be a very lonely solo trek.

Photo credit: dfinnecy

Grappling Hook

This is the “gizmo” mindset, that specific tools can blast your website or
blog to prominence, maybe as a clown from a circus cannon, or to scale the
walls of the Vatican in Mission Impossible.

Whilst I am a fan of some forms of automation, and it can achieve
significant results, those results are often short-lived.
Whether it is trackback and referrer spam, automated social bookmarking,
directory submission software, or other quick fix, the writing is on the
wall before you even start, only many are too blind to see it.

Not everyone gets a safety net, or is Ethan Hunt.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Teamwork

Teamwork is often the most effective method, especially if one member of the
team is already at the top of the mountain, and can pull you up.

Photo credit: JasonRogers

V.I.P. Ticket

It might not convey the same bragging rights, or sense of achievement, but
if you are a “big hitter” working for a major corporation, or have plenty of
funds to grease the wheels, there are faster ways to the top.

Photo credit: Photo Monkey

Highest Mountain

Don’t try to climb the highest mountain from the start, it will always end
in failure. Start on lower slopes, build experience, and if possible gather
together a solid team to help you scale the higher slopes of Mount Google.

Then again, who wants to be top of the mountain, and why am I writing a
guest post ;) Pull me up Andy!

2009 Competition

The 2009 Competition has just reached the judging stages – batch 1 & batch 2 – there are some good articles to read on all kinds of online marketing

Followup

As a guest article, I was a little disappointed in the results. Not so much my results in the competition, but overall traffic, appeal to Stumbleupon visitors, etc.

I deliberately chose a different style of article, more images, light weight/broad appeal content, but with a deeper message that might have not quite sunk in for readers.

I am going to try another attempt at the same article using diagrams and more specific wording soon.