You know the battle: AT&T vs. Verizon. The two popular mobile phone providers are in a very public war with each other, each pointing out the shortcomings of their rival while boasting about their own unique selling points. This post is about AT&T and their use of a time-honored tactic: competing by solving a non-existent problem.

There’s A Map For That

The AT&T vs. Verizon war really started to heat up when Verizon took a shot at AT&T and the iPhone. Since AT&T/Apple had been doing so much promo for the 100,000+ applications available for the iPhone, Verizon decided to take them down a peg. Turning around the "There’s an App for that" slogan to "There’s a map for that", Verizon took a swipe at AT&T’s flaky coverage. The idea: you can have all the apps in the world, but since AT&T’s coverage stinks, who cares?

It was an awesome campaign. It actually pointed out a problem that all cell phone users can identify with.

I remember wondering what AT&T was going to do to counter the campaign. I couldn’t believe what the response was:

The above video is just one example, but AT&T’s big idea was: Sure, our coverage might stink, but you can talk on the phone and surf the web at the same time.

Now think about that. Forget about the commercials or your loyalty to a particular brand or phone, and just ask yourself which is more important to you:

1. Coverage- being able to place calls and use you phone’s data plan wherever you are.
2. The ability to talk on the phone while being on the web.

While I admit I don’t have any statistics on hand, I’d have to guess that most people would go with coverage. And to extend the example even more, if Verizon’s claims are correct, it really doesn’t matter if you can talk and browse at the same time on AT&T, since you won’t have coverage anyway!

Solving Problems That Don’t Exist

Now, it might sound like I’m picking on AT&T here, and that’s absolutely true. But it’s not the first time a company has tried to promote a product/service by hyping a feature that solves a non-existent problem. Think of ANY infomercial you’ve ever watched.

The snuggie is a pretty good example. The problem they apparently solve: the need for a blanket with sleeves (as opposited to a sweatshirt). Watch the beginning of that video to see just how annoyed the actors were at life before the snuggie came to town.

So is this tecnique a good thing? A bad thing? A thing at all?

Personally, I don’t like it, as it seems sleazy to me. But hey, maybe it actually works. And in that case, who am I to judge?

Twitter is down, presumably due to a DDOS attack, and facebook is really sketchy today. While checking out blogs like TechCrunch and Mashable, I noticed a pattern….the people that have just "launched" the "new social network" called Knoyce are trying to capitalize on it.

On the Mashable post entitled "Facebook Down. Twitter Down. Social Media Meltdown,"a comment from someone named Tim:

press release about twitter and facebook going down http://bit.ly/14GNm4

Which leads to a press release:

Twitter & Facebook are Down….Knoyce.com is thriving!

Twitter and Facebook down….people joining Knoyce.com, the newest social media network that works!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) – Aug 06, 2009 – With the recent issues of Twitter and Facebook, many people worldwide have been acquiring about the new social media network Knoyce. Knoyce recently launched on Tuesday August 4, 2009 and has already reached many people everywhere. From the United States to Canada, South America, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Berlin, London, Serbia, the United Kingdom and many more, people are loving what Knoyce has to offer.

For those who are tired of the continual problems that Twitter and Facebook have every other month, go to http://www.knoyce.com and become a part of something "better than just nice…" but KNOYCE!!!

Read more about what Knoyce has to offer @ http://bit.ly/uwHHA

They’re spamming other posts as well, like on the updated Mashable post:

apparently the new network Knoyce.com is the only site thats working right now http://bit.ly/14GNm4

Which again links to the same garbage press release listed above.

Why is this getting me so worked up? Because Knoyce isn’t real. It isn’t a "new social media network". It’s just a NING NETWORK. Anyone can create a network on NING for free, and there are some really good ones out there. I really enjoy SocialCigar.com and Sysadmin-Network, both NING sites. But they’re not claiming to be new social networks.

If you check out the link from the press release that tells you "more about what Knoyce has to offer", it brings you to a wordpress.com blog that says:

After much anticipation, Knoyce has released it’s new social network site to the public for all to join. There have been many registered users that have taken well to the site and are already running with it. Some of the new members on Knoyce have already began tweeting about Knoyce and one member in particular, has already invited over 300 of his friends and family.

Right. Much anticipation, and someone invited his friends. Whoa.

I honestly believe that this is a massive prank by someone saying "I bet I can get a bunch of fools to join my fake social network, and I can do it without spending a penny. I’ll build a free NING network, and I’ll put up a wordpress.com blog, then I’ll put out free press releases. I’ll get publicity by spamming a bunch of blogs. It’ll be hilarious."

To that, my friend, I tip my hat to you. I think the Knoyce concept is pretty funny. Very nice.

You know you may have a problem when you see something when driving and think "Wow. That’s a good example of search engine optimization." You are certain that you have a problem when you then take a photo of said location and blog about it.

The photo:

I apologize for the quality of the image. It was rainy, I was using my iPhone and I was in a moving car. Not the optimal conditions.

I saw the location as a web site, and the entrance you see here is their home page. The other entrance is right by the white car you can see underneath the sign. That’s a landing page.

Here’s what we see on the home page:

1. Vegetables Flowers and Plants- This is their page headline, and they’re using an <H1> tag around it.
2. Northshore Flower Exchange- This is their page title and the name of the site
3. Plants and Flowers- This is their subheadline. They believe that the majority of people searching for what they offer use the words "Vegetables flowers & plants", but know that some people search for just "plants and flowers", leaving out vegetables all together.

On the landing page they have the same sign as #1. It feels like a landing page, as you can’t actually get into the parking lot there. You have to follow the call to action and drive around to get in. I’m reasonably certain that if they had a third road-facing side, they would have another large sign that says "Plants and Flowers". You know, for A/B testing purposes.

Way back in January while I had some free time and was contemplating my next job, I decided to start a meetup group. And in contrast to my usual style I decided to give it a name that actually makes sense: The Boston-Area Startup Marketing Group. At the time, I was consulting out of betahouse in Cambridge and I was inspired by all the entrepreneurial energy surrounding me. I was watching insanely talented people building amazing things, and I asked “what’s your number one challenge in turning ____ into the next big thing?”

The answer I heard most: “Nobody knows about it.”

It’s true. Most solo or small team tech entrepreneurs don’t have the time or resources they’d like to devote to marketing and promotion. There just aren’t enough hours in the day or people to do it. Startups with dedicated marketing people are in a better spot, but still face the same problems of time and resource allocation. With thousands of sites to promote a startup online, the following questions arise:

• Which sites are worth the time?
• Where’s my audience?
• What kind of content are they looking for?
• After taking the time to blog, podcast, etc., how do I put it where my prospective users will see it?

With those questions in mind, I decided to present “Getting Your Startup Found Online” as our first meetup. Since the presentation is very tactical and focused on content promotion and light on strategy, I took a step backwards:

Though blogging, podcasting and promotion are fun, they need to take place in the larger context of a marketing plan. Otherwise you’ll drive yourself nuts by just throwing content out there to see what sticks. In our case we started with a list of our main objectives. In short: what is the goal? For example, if you’re a B-to-C startup focused on user acquisition, give yourself a target user number.

After we had solid, actionable objectives, we moved on to the buyer personas. At this point we wanted to really get to know our prospective buyers. We looked into things like:

• Age
• Industry
• Title
• Online behavior
• Goals
• Day-to-day tasks
• Decision-making abilities

Of course, this is different for all startups, but the goal is the same. You want a deep understanding of who your targets are, where they go online and how they make the decision to buy (or join/subscribe/download) what you have to offer.

We then focused on our Company Persona, giving us a clear picture of:

• How we want to be perceived by our customers
• What tone we’ll use
• What colors we’ll use
• How we’ll set ourselves apart from everyone else

The persona exercises then led into our keyword research, which fed into our content plan. And with the majority of our content planned, we moved onto my favorite part: SEO + Promotion or Getting Noticed Online.

Well, you need to start somewhere, and I can’t think of a better place than google, yahoo, crunchbase, killerstartups, vator.tv and the like. These are directories that usually take some time to index your site, but are important sources of residual traffic.

Next, you’ll want to grab some land. We’re talking about twitter accounts, flickr accounts, friendfeed, vimeo, youtube, stumbleupon, delicious….the works. These will be important when it comes to promotion.

Now it’s time to find your audience. Where do they go online? Do they participate in LinkedIn groups? Ning networks? Facebook? Reddit? Forums? Go out there and find out where your target users are hanging out, and find out what they’re talking about. This is NOT an open invitation to spam people. Instead, find out what problems they have. Find out what they’re looking for. Find out how you can help with what you’re going to offer.

Now get out there and create some compelling content! Shoot some video. Get blogging. Fire up a podcast. Start producing content and you’ll start to see what works.

Now that you have a great blog post, video, podcast, etc. it’s time to promote it. Go get a bit.ly URL so you can promote the link on twitter. Bookmark it in delicious and diigo. Add it on stumbleupon. Submit it to reddit and digg….but only in relevant categories.

I must admit, this is the oversimplification of the decade, but you’ll find more information in the video below. The goal of this presentation was to give a quick overview of my workflow when it comes to content creation and promotion. It’s definitely not one-size-fits-all, but it’s close.

If you’re interested in joining our meetup group, you can find out more here.

Here’s the presentation:

Okay, so I’m still trying to figure out this whole video thing and I’m not entirely comfortable with it. But I think this format is at least a step in the right direction. This is just a quick video talking about exactly two things:

1. Gmail Video Chat

2. Twitterank and Twitter Grader

So, here goes:

Related Links:

Twitterank Creator Speaks

Twitterank.com

Twitter Grader

So, it’s Friday, and that means it’s been a full work week since matchmine closed up shop. It’s been a crazy week full of talking with some great recruiters, networking with friends, and hearing from some really interesting companies that might have a good opportunity for me. 

As I am physically unable to relax for more than ten minutes at a time, I was psyched to get a couple of really good freelance projects. It’s been quite some time since I’ve done any side work, so I was really excited to get the chance to focus on one small project for a short time. 

I’m really excited to see what next week will bring. I’m hoping to go on a few interviews, and can’t wait to see what’s out there. Now it’s time to write a quick blogstring post on something that’s been floating around in my head over the last few days. 

This morning, NuConomy launched an API-based analytics suite for social media. The product, NuConomy Studio is free to use, and can be used through a WordPress plugin.

Ontop of the usual page views, unique visitors and other basic metrics, NuConomy Studio is measuring Flash, AJAX, and Silverlight applications. Though it’s been a while, I can tell you from personal experience: hacking at javascript code to make Flash-based apps fire page events is a nightmare. Any kind of metrics suite that works natively with web apps is welcomed with open arms.

From their press release:

By tracking engagement and site activity at the individual user level, NuConomy¹s module automatically builds rich behavioral profiles, or interest maps, for each user  such as who is posting comments on bikes or sharing music recommendations with friends. This level of detail gives publishers a deeper understanding of user behavior so they can optimize their sites and marketing messages for different audience segments, even different individuals.

Additionally, NuConomy features a two-way API that dynamically changes sites based on current metrics and insights, including the ability to show ads or push specific content relevant to a user¹s interests.

Free to use, NuConomy¹s web analytics platform gives businesses and bloggers access to advanced data intelligence that was previously limited to large corporations with extensive data analysis resources. Additionally, NuConomy is very easy to implement; generally it takes, at most, a few hours to implement site-wide. And plug-ins for WordPress, Movable Type, Community Server, and dasBlog mean that companies can begin tracking user engagement on these platforms instantly.

I’ve just installed their WordPress plugin, but since I have no data yet, I can’t really tell how good it is. But even without actual data I can say two things:

The Good:

I love the fact that the metrics dashboard is accessed through the blog itself. It’s amazing how much different it feels to have analytics accessible through the WordPress installation. Sure, it’s just an iFrame, but it just feels like an integrated part of the blog software itself.

The Bad:

After an initial inspection, it seems like NuConomy’s product doesn’t have up-to-date metrics information. Looking at the reporting suite at 5:30 PM EST, it says the data was updated 8:00 AM. This could just be a temporary thing, however. Let’s hope so.

All new social networks and community-focused services face the same challenge: attracting a loyal user base. Having the latest and greatest facebook+twitter+flickr+whatever is great, but worthless without an active community of users. While there are many different ways to run a user acquisition campaign, this article will focus specifically on using a contest to attract new users. We’ll look at one example of a contest created to drive user acquisition, and we’ll examine the social media tools used to promote the campaign. Though we’ll focus on a contest, the promotional methods described here can easily be used for any user acquisition campaign.

The Contest

As one of several user acquisition campaigns, my employer, matchmine, launched a weekly sweepstakes. A little background: the company is a media discovery network, helping partners recommend better content to their users based on the users’ media preferences. The contest was created to satisfy two goals: get users to register and send traffic to partner sites.

The Prize: The winner of each week’s sweepstakes is given the choice of either

• Two tickets to the next New England Patriots home game
• A football signed by any New England Patriots player
• A $100 New England Patriots Pro Shop gift certificate

Promotion

After launching the contest on patriots.com, we identified several promotional opportunities to maximize our visibility and conversion rate.

1. Video- We shot a video that summarizes the contest, including how to create accounts on our partner sites. The video not only gave us an opportunity to succinctly explain a complex contest, it was also a great off site marketing tactic. We hosted the video on blip.tv, which is both a destination site and a publishing tool. End users go to to blip.tv to watch video, and publishers get free hosting from blip. Having the video hosted at blip gave us both a free place to host the video and a new audience that would not have been able to see the video if it was hosted in-house.

In the video, the presenter mentions the URL of the contest, and it appears on screen. This way, no matter where the video is viewed, viewers know where to go to sign up for the weekly sweepstakes.

Here’s the video:

2. Refer-A-Friend- Whenever possible, it makes sense to let the community itself expand your user base. In the context of a social network or messaging system, it makes sense for users to want to invite their friends, as they get more out of the service when people they know are there. But in a contest, inviting friends seems counterproductive: why ask your friends to sign up when each friend registration reduces your chance of winning?

We solved that problem with additional entries. Let’s use an example here. We’ll say that Frank signed up for the contest. Wanting to have the best shot at winning, he decided to invite 5 of his friends to sign up. When all 5 signed up, Frank got an additional 5 more entries. By shifting the incentive to invite more people to sign up, we gave all users motivation to promote the contest.

A great example of a social service that does this well is thesixtyone.com, a music discovery site. The site gives users points for actions like listening and rating music, and also gives incentives to invite friends to join.

3. email- Ah yes, email. When a user signs up for the contest, we immediately send a confirmation email, telling them how they can earn additional entry in the contest. Each week, we also send an email announcing the winner and reminding users how to gain additional entries.

4. Friends and Family- Once the contest was launched, the first promotional activity was what we called a “friends and family” round. We encouraged all employees to send a message to their contacts to tell them about the contest. This served dual purposes: First, it gave us a chance to receive feedback from people we know personally. Second, it helped us identify any glitches before promoting to the masses.

5. Twitter- Once we felt comfortable with the way the program was working, we encouraged employees to mention it on twitter, using a shortened URL from bit.ly. Using the bit.ly url, we were able to measure clicks from twitter, along with metrics on retweets and other twitter users using the same link.

6. Facebook- Our company set up a facebook page and group specifically for this purpose. We linked to the contest on both, and encouraged friends of the company to sign up and spread the word.

7. Company Blog- As soon as the contest was launched, I posted on the company blog, giving details on how to win. I also included the embedded video.

8. Bloggers- Finally, given the fact that we’d instituted a refer-a-friend feature, we decided to extend referrals to bloggers. We compiled a list of bloggers focused on the New England Patriots, and sent them a note about the promotion. If they were interested in posting about the contest, we would create a special URL for the blogger. That way, any reader that signed up for the contest as a result of clicking the link in their blog post would give the blogger an additional entry.

All of these promotional techniques can be utilized in any user acquisition program. Whether you have great prizes to attract the masses, or simply have a great product in need of a user base, using these social media tools is a great first step in driving user signups.

Folks, I need your help.

My father is a huge Steelers fan. I do not hold this against him. I got tickets to last year’s Pats vs. Steelers game and brought him with me. We had a great time. This year I couldn’t get tickets, so he went online to try to find tickets.

There was a gentleman on Craig’s List offering seats for face value. My dad contacted him, and was told to send him a money order. Sure, I was extremely suspicious. But after a cursory check on the guy’s email address, I didn’t see anything. He went ahead and sent the money order. You can probably guess how this ends.

About a week later, the guy emails my dad, telling him he hadn’t received the money order. My dad let him know it was sent, and the seller suggested sending another money order.

At this point, my dad sent me the email trail. I looked up the fellow’s name and address (here in MA) and found him to be a known scammer. Someone that sells tickets he does not have.

The guy is calling my father daily, asking for another money order. I told him to wait. I told him he should not immediately confront the scammer, and that he should somehow contact authorities, as this guy is wanted for paypal, ebay, and sports card fraud.

So my question is this, my friends: What should my father do in order to catch this thief? Who should he call?

There are dozens of people out there on forums posting his name and trying to find out how they can catch him. I have the address the money order was sent to, and he will continue to call my dad, albeit from a blocked phone number.

What should we do?

Thank you!

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