| LED Digest 2568: Marketing and Morality |
|
|
|
==================================================
The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom www.WillMaster.com/Master : the LED's Key Sponsor Master Series Software - Get Connected with Your WebSite www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. January 14, 2007 Issue no. 2568 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ===== NEW ======================= <Moderator Comment> ~ Bring It New! --== Web Marketing and Morality ==-- ~ Mari Bontrager "...how do you see that marketing on the web is affecting our moral conclusions?" ==== CONTINUING ================= --== The Paid Links Scam ==-- ~ Greg Robbins "...you're off beam with comments on whether a link is any form of endorsement..." ~ Big Bill "[Yahoo Directory links] aren't sold. They're earned." --== How I Shop Online ==-- ~ Nathan Holley "...you should be approaching [Amazon] as a marketing opportunity." <Moderator Comment> --== LED Subscriber Benefits ==-- ~ William Bontrager "[The LED] has its own group sense, somewhat akin to a slightly dysfunctional family..." ========= NEW ===================================== <Moderator Comment> This is a perfect time to change directions on the list. Things are slowing down according to the usual cycles, and it's a good time for new topics. So let's hear some :) We haven't heard from our oracle, Edwin Hayward, who usually graces us with his yearly predictions. His 2007 predictions are here: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1688/55/ If anyone else wants to jump in, please do so. More importantly, please bring some new topics to the list. What's important to your online efforts in 2008? -Adam PS - read Nathan Holley's post below under "How I Shop Online" for some killer marketing tactics for Amazon! PPS - we have a new sponsor I'd like to introduce. Dirk Johnson has spent a lot of time and effort on the LED (and elsewhere) writing about his particular method of linking. While you may not agree with everything he says, you have to admire his experience and efforts in this regard. His company, DomainDrivers, is now offering a directory link submission program that merits your attention: http://www.domaindrivers.com/directory-submissions.html ---------------------- From: Mari Bontrager Subject: Marketing and Morality Last weekend's New York Times carried an interesting article titled "The Moral Instinct". http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html Because my mind has been consumed with learning more about marketing recently, the connection between marketing and moral instinct immediately jumped out at me. Our moral conclusions affect marketing and Marketing affects moral conclusions. I would posit that life on the web has produced its own set of moral distinctions, ie it feels much more "ok" to bash someone in a public web forum than to bash someone face to face in a public meeting in a convention hall. Given this, how do you see that marketing on the web is affecting our moral conclusions? Will our concept of what seems ethical and moral on the web begin to change what seems ethical and moral in our face to face dealings with each other? What do you think? Mari Bontrager http://www.willmaster.com ========= Begin Sponsor Message ========= Grab your Visitor's Attention In Two Seconds Flat Attention Ticker makes them notice! Scrolling text banner is perfect for Special offers...News feeds...Syndication to other sites ... $49 one-time purchase--and use it forever http://bontragercgi.com/programs/AttentionTicker/ ========== End Sponsor Message ========== ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Greg Robbins Subject: Paid links I usually agree with a lot of Michael's [Martinez] arguments, but I think you're off beam with comments on whether a link is any form of endorsement - or at least chose a very poor reference: ---------------- 'Web sites have ALWAYS linked to other Web sites for the sake of connectivity - that is what the World Wide Web is all about. To be part of the Web you have to link to other Web documents or be linked from other Web documents. Endorsements are an entirely different matter. Saying that links between Web pages constitute endorsements is equivalent to saying that any two cars sharing the same road endorse each other. Just because two houses are built on the same street such that either house can be reached by walking along the street from the other does not in any way imply that the houses endorse or recommend each other.' [extract from http://www.seo-theory.com] ---------------- Organisations will say they don't endorse a site's content if they have no control over it, particularly where they have some level of legal or moral responsibility to give sound advice. They have however selected sites to link to out of the thousands of possibilities available and in most cases will have chosen those that they feel are most appropriate. I don't say that every link on my sites are to 'good' or reliable sites, but they are to ones I felt are relevant and /or useful. In search engine terms, that's an endorsement that the link has value - it is not an endorsement that I would agree with every scrap of information. (ie before I changed job, I operated a trade union website and as a courtesy had links to the education authority and other trade unions - if they did not update their contact information or gave advice I disagreed with - I had not 'legally endorsed' the site, but I had given the URL more credibility.) Pages of course CAN exist on the web without external links. The arguments used are fallacious. I of course have no knowledge of whether USA courts interpret paid links to be within the scope of FTC rules on disclosure, but on balance would tend to feel that it would be sensible to include them as the honest approach. It is then the choice of SE how they value them. Just my twopennorth, Greg Robbins www.greentrad.org.uk -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Big Bill Subject: Paid links > Yahoo! does indeed sell links and even > Google employee Matt Cutts has confirmed > that Google doesn't mind the buying and > selling of links as long as there is a good > chance that some applications for links > will be rejected (they call this "editorial > review"). - Michael Martinez, LED Digest 2567 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1982/190/ Then they aren't sold. They're earned. Pay-for-consideration, which obviously includes an element of judgement on merit if some applications are rejected, is not the same as pay-for-inclusion. That's the distinction. Big Bill ========= Begin Sponsor Message ========= One Way Links to your Site, by the Hundreds? Yes! Get Traffic and Link Popularity to Your Site from Legitimate, General Interest Web Directories. DomainDrivers Makes It Hassle-Free. Details Here: http://www.domaindrivers.com/directory-submissions.html ========== End Sponsor Message ========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Nathan Holley Subject: Shopping online > ... this is one type of strategy that > customers are using to try and find "her > store." If you have a product that can be > easily price compared and price is the main > decision, you need recognize that people > are shopping you this way. - Rod Aries, LED Digest 2567 Great post Rod. Interesting stuff. I also use Amazon for reviews and to find related (or competing) products, with great success. Tonight I read that a lot of other people do the same thing. According to an article at NYT, 52% of online shoppers use the reviews at Amazon first! Commentary here: http://bokardo.com/archives/fifty-two-percent/ If you're an author or have a product featured on Amazon, get involved. And if you don't, you should be approaching it as a marketing opportunity. You should: - Get your Amazon profile going. Review products, add lists, create a blog (I think they have those for profiles), etc. - Get your blog syndicated at Amazon. They will syndicate an author's blog on the book page itself, with juice-passing links included. (This was something of a shock to me when I found it, to be honest. I'm sure I just gave away the ghost for some top-secret SEO somewhere.) - Join the discussions in forums surrounding your product category. There are many, many discussion forums at Amazon (find them via product pages). - Create well-thought out Guides and Lists. (Yes, I'm repeating myself but these are key). Use important keywords in your titles. - Get creative. Using your real name in your profile is smart, but I've seen some other additions - things like "author of" or whatever other selling point you think will benefit. Nathan Holley <Moderator Comment> These are great tips, thanks Nathan. Amazon can really be approached as an online marketing initiative in its own right (they even have an ad network! That's gotta be a first for an ecommerce site). As for the author blogs on Amazon (great tip, and great catch), they *used* to include outbound text links to authors' blogs free of nofollow. However, they've recently begun to (smartly) pass all outbounds through redirects. An example is here: www.amazon.com/Web-Analytics-Hour-Avinash-Kaushik/dp/0470130652 I'm not sure when this change happened, but it was sometime in the last 2-3 months. The SEO advantage may now be gone, but the traffic benefits remain, and can be considerable! Highly recommended. -Adam -------- new post - new topic -------- From: William Bontrager Subject: LED Subscriber Benefits One of the benefits of interacting with a community is the rubbing of elbows, so to speak, with those who have talents other than your own or who may be better qualified or more experienced at something. Recently, there was a thread in the LED about the willmaster.com sponsor ads and ways they might be improved. Shel Horowitz, of http://www.frugalmarketing.com/ and a copy writer of high ability, offered to help us out by writing an ad for us. You can see it in this issue, promoting Attention Ticker. Michael Linehan of http://www.marketing-alchemy.com/ gave us a draft of his The Website Alchemy Guidelines (a website development manual that will be on sale soon). It is a very good manual, like a full instructional course. Those are two examples of subscriber benefits. The LED publication has been around a long time. It has its own group sense, somewhat akin to a slightly dysfunctional family, at times, and sometimes like a glowing group with similar orientation. If you've been an LEDer for some time, you'll have found information worth many times that spent reading and responding to posts. If you're new here, give it a chance. You'll find nuggets of your own. Will Bontrager http://willmaster.com/ (c) Copyright 1995-2008 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists — that is why they invented hell." - Bertrand Russell (thanks to Mari for the quote today) |
