The PInterest Icon

I would like to replace the Google Plus icon that I have on some of my websites with  Pinterest icon. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, right? Wrong.

First question, should the Pinterest icon make them "Follow" my pinterest page or should it pin an image onto their Pinterest page? Are these real possibilities?  It's a little like the Facebook share vs like question.  Or the Twitter follow vs Tweet question.

If you want to do a "Follow me" on Pinterest, here's a simple tutorial on pinterest following me.

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Advertising & Captchas

It had to happen. I love it. I wish I had predicted it. I was just joining a forum and was at the stupid "human verification" phase when I try to decipher some weird letters and prove that I'm smarter than a spam bot.

What did I see? An advertising-based captcha!!!!

Advertising on a Captcha - How cool is that!

Advertising Expeirts Wanted?

I'm not looking for someone to place ads, I'm looking for the opposite type of expertise.  I run a few websites that show some ads. Our volumes are huge, literally many tens of millions of page views per month. We ran ads from a few different networks. I'm looking for someone with expertise in helping us set up and run our advertising networks.

Background.
Our biggest site is SpellingCity.com. We run sites on the inside pages.  The site's data is available on Quantcast.

Networks that we use:

Google Adwords - PPC
Intergi - CPM
Burst - CPM
ValueClick - CPM
Adify Ligit - CPM
ereflect - PPA
Brightserve - management service. Not being used anymore.
CPM Booster
AOL’s Advertising.com
Criteo - retargetting technology

Youtube Video Transcripts New!

I was just looking at a cool series of embedded videos with a homeschool Question of the week.  I embedded it below, it ran originally on the Lets Homeschool Highschool Community site.

Then I was checking out the YouTube stats on it (views, where embedded etc) and I saw something new. An Interactive transcript. Is this a transcript that the user uploads or is the a YoutTube Technology Feature?

.Of course, what I'm really investigating is why, with such cool videos and content, there are still only 7 views this late in the week (Wednesday).  We should help them promote to the hundreds of views weekly, 5K is a reasonable goal.

The Transcript is New

Social Media Distinctions

Tumblr vs Facebook

I'm just beginning to understand some of this social media stuff.

I'd like to thank whoever sent me this  social media infographic!

It helps that they now refer to icons as icons instead of chiclets.


Here's a little effort to add some seo to bbat50. More info on:  KC Lavallee, KO Andrello,  and Team X-Treme Martial Arts Academy.

Social Media Metrics and Today's Symmetry

VocabSpellingCity is my favorite site (yes, I'm the mayor).

Social Media Metrics

 Social media-wise, I just noticed some symmetry: we have 25K FB fans, 2.6K Twitter followers, and 256 on Google Plus.  We have about 250K active email subscribers. 

Is this pattern common?

 Are the numbers moving in sync or is this unusual? 

Stay tuned....

Infographics - Clever Clever Marketing

Several times teach week I get an email that reads like this:
Hey John,

I recently developed another infographic that could be a good fit for your site. I just wanted to reach out and share.  It highlights and illustrates how harsh the job market and soaring tuition cost is making it hard for college students upon graduation

You can check it out here:

Title: Graduated and Living at Home
Graphic/Video: 
Let me know what you think,  I would love for you to publish it if you find it suitable for your site.

Basically, under the guise of a clever infographic, these spammers marketers send out thousands or tens of thousands or maybe millions of personal sounding letters to site owners trying to get some tiny percentage of them to put up their infographic which is, 0f course, marketing for their products and sites. It seem sto work pretty well. I think I'll create my own!.

For instance, would you be interested in posting on your site an infographic that'll help your site visitors understand the process of learning to read. Here's an infographic on learning to read.

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Blogging SEO Question

On this blog, there are two widgets that get users to see old articles.

One is the archives-based widget which first takes them to  a URL that involves the term "archive".  For instance:
http://learn-to-market-online116.blogspot.com/2011_10_01_archive.html. Then, by clicking on the article title, you get to the article with a URL that starts with the date:
http://learn-to-market-online116.blogspot.com/2008/12/marketing-plans-for-2009.html .  This is I believe that cannonical url for the content on that page.

Another way of getting to that content is through the tags or categories widget.  So if I click on social bookmarking (4), i get a page titled 'http://learn-to-market-online116.blogspot.com/search/label/social%20bookmarking" which has links through titles to http://learn-to-market-online116.blogspot.com/2010/07/how-many-and-which-social-media-icons.html.

Here's my question: Is one widget any better for SEO than the other? Does having both help or hurt.
Secondly, the URLs all have the date added to them. Is that good or bad? Do I have control over it?

Mobile App Advertising Metrics

Mobile App Advertising Metrics

I'm looking for some basic metrics and info on how advertising revenue works for mobile apps.  

- How much does one make by having a company's app listed in my app with a link to the app store? Do people pay for the placement? The Views? The clicks? The purchases?

- What about other types of ads inside apps?

For instance, on the web, I'm familiar with placing ads on my webpages that earn based on:

- total page loads.  So everytime the page loads, or every thousand times is the usual metric, we might earn $2.50. This is called $2.50 CPM. Of course, some ad placements and websites earn a lot more, others earn less. Big vendors are Valueclick and Tribal Fusion.

- pay per click.  On these ads (usually Adsense), we get $0.15 (or whatever) everytime someone clicks on the ad. Over thousands of users and page impressions, this averages out and produces a eCPM (equivalent of a CPM). 

- pay per action. These are the affiliate programs where they pay if the user registers or signs up.  I've stopped using them since I've only found one that out performs (on a eCPM basis) CPM or PPC advertising and generally, I've wasted lots of time trying them.  The one that I use pays $25 per sale on a $49.99 product.

- preroll videos - These videos are embedded at the start of a game or video (or in the middle) and pay on a CPM basis.  Some pay if they just start to roll, others pay only if they are totally viewed. They tend to get really high CPMs.  Say $25

Can anyone summarize how this works, who the vendors are,  and what the numbers might be for childrens' educational mobile apps?

Inapp promotion but not inapp purchases

In app app promotion

I've noticed on TempleRun that they have an in app promotion of their and other people's apps.

I wonder how this business relationship works?

 Doeducational apps have such things?

Messaging on Google Plus

This turns out to be really difficult to figure out. I've found a description of DM on G+.

Google+ does not have a Direct or Private Message feature built in, but there is a slightly less obvious way to send a message that only one other person can receive and read. To send a direct or private message on Google+, just start typing an update in your Stream on Google+ like usual. However, you’ll choose to share that update with only that one person whom you wish to receive your private message. Then, right after you send it, click the triangle in the upper right hand corner of the post you just sent to reveal options for the post, and select Disable reshare. This will prevent the recipient from sharing the private message with anyone else, which would make it not private.

Additionally, Google+ users have the option to include a feature to allow others to email them right from their Google+ profile. Users who enable this function will have a Send an Email button underneath their profile picture. This button can be limited to the user’s circles, extended circles, custom defined users, or anyone on the Web. As a result, you may only have limited ability to send an email to other Google+ users as a way of sending a private or direct message. If you want to enable this function for yourself so others can send you an email via Google+, just visit your own profile and click the blue Edit Profile button, and then click the email button under your photo.

Read more at http://www.lockergnome.com/social/2011/07/11/how-to-send-a-direct-or-private-message-on-google/#uFaBzzCuIdY6B78Z.99

you click someone's name to open the profile and just below the profile photo , there's a "Send an email", which constitutes a DM since you have to have a gmail account to have a g+ profile, and as everything is integrated...NO THERE IS NOT A SEND AN EMAIL LINK UNDER THE PROFILE PICTURE!!!!

My Online Identity

I haven't yet read a good article that helps me understand my many different online identities.  Here's a quick list.

Facebook. I can login to a lot of sites with my Facebook credentials. I'm not sure if this means that my Facebook identity for others to see includes these places that I join? When I join and comment there with Facebook, does it show up on my Facebook wall?

Twitter.  There's very little that I understand about this.

Disqus - I've seen this around for awhile and never really understood it. I just clicked on one of my comments on a blog done through Disqus and found out that all my previous comments, done with the same email, are immediately available. Worse, I sound like a broken record usually making the same point, despite the topic. Embarrassing.

Google - I use to have a gmail account, a blogger account, and a Youtube account. They seem to have somehow merged. So far, they still seem separate from my Google Plus identity but I'm frankly, pretty confused by all of this. These accounts also have control of my Adsense, Adwords, and Analytics accounts.

Wordpress - Some of my wordpress accounts, not sure if they are the hosted or wordpress.com ones, seem to be useful as an identity when I want to comment on blogs.

Other identities such as digg and de.lic.ous and stumble upon and of course, AOL and yahoo, all seem to have disappeared.

The History of Seaching on the Web

Here's a funny thought...History happens!

Initially, to find something on the web, we went to directories. There were many directories. The top ones might have been Yahoo, AOL, and DMOZ.  Then, Google came along with their concept of search. The directories started declining and search dominated with Google, Bing, and Yahoo being the big long-term players.  New trends that have emerged that may or may not turn out to be historical:

1.  Search for Videos. I've heard that Youtube is now the number two place for searches (after Google).

2. Social search. Ask your friends on FB or Twitter or ask on Google and get input from your friends' likes.

Will these overwhelm search as we know it?

Starting with App Marketing

 My little company just launched its first app. So now, I need to spearhead our app marketing.  I started this morning by making a list of questions that I don't understand. Here's some of them:

1. Do review sites just review each app or do publishers need to contact all the different review sites?
2. What’s the link to review an app?
3. What’s the link to rate an app?
4. I think of our ipad/iphone app as being in the apple store. Yet it is also on Itunes (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spellingcity/id538407602?ls=1&mt=8).  How does the app store and itunes relate?

Answers:

Do review sites just review each app or do publishers need to contact all the different review sites?

While some review sites show some initiative (usually for highly anticipated apps), the vast bulk of us publishers need to contact each review site and ask for a review.  They'll put us in a line. If the app costs money, they'll want a coupon code for a free copy.  

What’s the link to review an app? What’s the link to rate an app?

Rating and Review is done within the iTunes store on your computer or App store on the device. The above is the link you would use, where they then can either rate directly within iTunes/App store, or sign in to write a review. 

I think of our ipad/iphone app as being in the apple store. Yet it is also on Itunes (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spellingcity/id538407602?ls=1&mt=8).  How does the app store and itunes relate?

This all ties together. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/spellingcity/id538407602?ls=1&mt=8 is our link that automatically launches iTunes if on the computer or the App store if on iOS device. It also brings up the browser page so you can read about it, useful if iTunes is not installed. 

  

Apple verifies that you have downloaded/own the app before you can write a review so sign in is required. 

iTunes is a central place for all content offered by Apple. You can reach the App Store there, movies, books, etc.. Whereas on iOS you use specific apps for features. 

Read more about our little app here with a page about our vocabulary spelling app.

  

Shared bookmarketing - The visual way

Heh, I'm trying to fiugre out how symbaloo works. It's a visual social bookmarking site!


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info on education, special needs, vendors, resources

Here's some great info on education, special needs, and homeschooling. Actually, it's not that. This is the table of contents from a website and my question is the following. How does Google feel about wholesale lifting the TOC from a website about anything, say education, and listing it on another site.  Obviously, it's not as slick as having a few hundred words of original text with a few content-appropriate links built into the text. But then, this is a lot like having a side bar link in a blog which is a natural and legitimate call out to another site.  How does Big G_  thing about this.

• ADD and ADHD
• Audio Books for Kids
• Autism and Aspergers
• Blog
• California Homeschool Info
• College Education
• Developing a Solid Math Foundation
• Dyslexia
• Early Education
• Family-Friendly Electronic Media Guide
• Gifted Children
• Good Books
• High Stakes Standardized Tests
• History of Teaching Reading
  • Learning to Read
  • What Works for Teaching Reading
• Home School Writing
• Homeschool
  • History of Homeschooling
  • Homeschool Facts
• Homeschool Online
• Homeschool Testing
• Homeschooling Special Needs Kids
• Hooked On Phonics
• Learn to Write Well
• Master Degree in Education
• Math Skills
• Media Literacy and Search Engines
• Music Education
• Preparing for the TOEFL
• Preschool Activities
• Spelling
• Texas Homeschool Info
• Writing Skills

New Social Media for homeschooling

In addition to the obvious, I've been looking at some social media lately.  Here's a few items that I think are interesting.

Mashups of blogs, forums, into one community. Check out the homeschool TV example blog post.
Weird graphical social media called Symbaloo about educational websites.
Tremendous opportunities to create homeschool blogs with wordpress on random domains.
There are plenty of forums about homeschooling some are distinctly Christian homeschool program (or Christian homeschool views), others are more about eclectic non-religious homeschooling.

Many Christian homeschoolers use Time4Learning because it provides an engaging effective education with interactive fun. Many Christian families have questions related to the worldview and philosophy of Time4Learning and how it fits into the education they are providing their children.

Here's  an embedded Symbaloo Webmix on Education

Time4Learning has created an online forum for their high school students which has a Facebook-like feel to it. It's called Time4Friends and is heavily moderated by homeschool parents.

Hows Google Plus and Search Working out?

I've noticed on a bunch of ads recently that there is a google plus hanging off it. When that happens within the context of a search engine, I guess it's a good thing or at least, nothing that I care about. But, when that happens in a content ad that is on my site, I think it is very confusing and something that I do NOT like.

Check this out, isn't this confusing?

The Google plus sort of floats so that sometimes its hard to tell whether it's about the advertisement or the website. Also, it looks sometimes like you are supposed to click on the G+, not the advertisement.

On another note, when did ads require you to fill in all this info before you could click on them? As a website owner, doesn't it make sense just to ban these?