It kinda makes me blush to get letter like this - she sent it out to several thousand people on her combined mailing lists.  I have no idea how many people will join the Web Analytics Association to vote for me but I sure appreciate the support! 

Letter below: 

Thanks Robin!!!  Here goes -

What can I say?  I'll do what I can to develop standards for SEO and SEM, Engagement Metrics, RIA Application Measurement standards,3D Virtual Worlds Metrics standardization and anything else the WAA wants me to work on.

Thanks again, for the support Robin!

I wrote this post several weeks ago regarding Peach Direct and GE Money Bank that was highly critical of both companies.  Since then the situation has changed and I have decided to rewrite the post in light of new developments.

Originally I ordered two laptops and a monitor on December 11th 2006 and had been billed for the entire order even though I never received the order.  After several interactions with Peach Direct and GE Money Bank, the situation was resolved in the last week to make it up to me.

Peach Direct had some supply chain problems late last year that caused about 153 customers to not get their orders in a timely way (I got this info from someone at Peach Direct who I spoke with) - demand outpaced supply and they were unprepared for it - including Call Center employees and contractors that had not been trained for this situation.

As I left it, Peach Direct, woke up, started fixing these problems and tracked down every one of the 153 people, including me, and resolved the issues - one by one.

I won't say that Peach Direct is blameless here - or that someone should not fall on their sword for this, but they have really tried to bend backwards now to be nice.

In the spirit of reciprocation - I've decided to remove my story about Peach Direct and leave it as a situation that's been resolved and hopefully won't happen again to anyone else who orders from them.

I've been hammering away at my clients and former clients on how they needed to move towards a Social Media approach if they were going to have any real hope of increasing conversion rates. 

Particularly, the Architects I have dealt with have such horrible conversion rates (rates that are often explained by the length of the buying cycle for this sector, but have as much to do with lousy creative as anything else).  But how does a site that has no experience in developing Social Media tools or building communities suddenly do that?   I mean, it's one thing to know the sickness, another thing to apply the cure successfully.

Enter KickApps.

KickApps is a way to build social networks for sites that would never, in a million years, know how to build one like Mascord.com and my former client, The House Designers.  It still takes imagination and creativity to build on the community, but now, sites that want to,  can build a whole social network, with all the full blown Social Networking Tools while still retaining the look and feel of their own sites plus the ownership of the communities of each site builds.

Especially, in the case of large email list, like The House Designers has (their most valuable asset, in my opinion) a Social Network built around the email list could be, if done right, more effective than any other single thing they've ever done (hint).

Sites that use KickApps?  Alot of them… such as UndergroundOnline Beta, MyAFL, NationalLampoonCollege, Procter & Gamble's TAG Body Spray, TrekkiesOnline, WUAB Cleveland's My43.net.

Here's something I "grabbed" from the Trekkies site - something the Architects would not know, in a million years, how to do, but which, with KickApps, would be easy as pie to "Steal" a Architectural House Plan - and have your fans stick it all over the place … see what I mean? 

First I'll show you three User Generated Videos, One from Star Wars, one of Kirk and the other of Spock -  and then the Widget that was used to grab it - created easily with KickApps.  You just need the "content" but when you "unleash" your fans, there's usually plenty of content!

Just think of how "creative" some of your "fans" can be.

 Above: User Generated Video of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker

Above: User Generated Video on "Kirk".

Above: User Generated Video of "Spock".

And here's the Widget (below).  There's a lot of creativity out there - people, your fans want to contribute to your brand - you just have to learn how to allow them to.  In fact, I wrote about this with the Pontiac Island Study in Second Life a couple of days ago at the Virtual Worlds 2007 Conference.

How do you get started? Follow the instructions here.

In the past month or two I have written about tools like Collarity and KickApps that have, creatively employed, have a much greater potential to increase conversion rates than any combination of SEO or Paid Advertising can hope to match - that is truly my belief - that's why I have continued to harp on this with my current and even former clients.

In the case of the Architects, they'd have to really sit down with me and plan this all out, brainstorm mainly - just because you have the tools doesn't mean they solve your problems  - Social Media needs to be built around what your site does, what your community already does.

That's right, each site has a community - even if they don't realize it- in fact, there are several communities that come to a site - and - more and more, Branding has become the way a company provides tools to enable it's commun
ities to have a 2 way conversations and to talk with each other.

I will develop a plan for KickApps for my current client, Mascord.com around http://www.mascordlivingspaces.com/, becasue they are my client, but I given a hint of what the direction could be for many sites.

Granted, there is some advertising that is shown by KickApps, you can buy it back from them, but I'd like to see an option where you pay extra not to have any advertising shown or to show your own.  Otherwise, I have nothing but good things to say about  KickApps.

Hopefully this will not become another example of the Path Not Taken.

I have known Frederic De Schryver for about 4 years, through my activities with Search Engine Workshops .

Recently, Frederic came out with a unique product that monitors the Google Top 10 ranking for a keyword phase vs. your AdWords campaign position and shuts down the AdWords ad if your listing is in the top 10 results (it sounds like this is configurable - maybe it's the to 4 positions, or the top 6, you decide).   The software will also turn the keyword campaign back on if your listing drops below the threshold.

Here's a short explanation and a online video of Frederic De Schryver explaining his new system:

"…We believe we have developed something innovative and exclusive. We receive regularly requests from customers to stop the bidding on keywords when their site appears in the top X in organic results. This to save AdWords expenses."

1. There's mixed opinions about weather AdWords is better left on or shutdown when you have a natural search result - it's been shown that Organic + Paid is more than equal to the sum of both (1 + 1  = 4).   However, till now, there was no way to turn off the Paid Placement when you had organic results on the top - now you can.
2. With Google and Yahoo! making more and more money by being in between the transactions (while often not providing that much additional value) any way you can lower the price of running your campaigns is worth looking into.

Glad that I heard back from an old friend, Frederic De Schryver of OptiSeo.be, who certainly sounds busy (wish there was an English version of his site so I can read all the details of this software, services and case studies).

I wish Frederic good fortune with the launch of the new AdWords software.  For more information about OptiSeo.be and the new AdWords software contact Frederic De Schryver at fdeschry@optiseo.be

I just did it - took the Survey on Web Analytics that Eric Peterson set up -  I got a couple of emails about it but did not have the time to do it yesterday - but when I read June Li's post about it - I realized I needed to do it now - http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=353583551869

"…Eric T. Peterson, on behalf of Web Analytics Demystified, is seeking participants for a web analytics industry survey designed to identify some of the challenges faced when analyzing web sites.

If you are a web analytics user, practitioner, vendor, and consultant, read on. Directly from Eric, here's more about the survey, and two special offers:

This important study is the first of its kind to inquire about specific attitudes towards web analytics usage across a wide-range of participants. This research will be used to create FREELY AVAILABLE industry benchmarks covering many previously unexamined aspects of the web analytics industry and your participation is VERY IMPORTANT.

The survey can be found at the following URL:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=353583551869

We need this data and the questions that Eric Peterson asked were very relevant to what I've run across in Web Analytics work - so I'm looking forward to seeing the results of the Survey.

June Li wrote about my coverage of Virtual Worlds 2007 yesterday - I was so busy that I had not time to post about it till now.  I interviewed June Li last year shortly before EMetrics Summit as part of my coverage of conference speakers.

June covers a Second Life in Toronto recently - "Locally last week here in Toronto, AIMS held a well attended event, "The Marketer's Road Map to Second Life", for newbies to those more engaged in-world".

And then she quotes my coverage of Virtual Worlds 2007 -

"…Second, onto the Virtual Worlds conference and Marshall Sponder. It's great to see the conference through the eyes of someone always seeking to effectively measure value. Check out Marshall's posts about:"

June Li also asked me to try to get the rest of the info about Rivers Run Red Metrics - and I did write Ben James at Rivers Run Red and ask for more information - but I'm not sure RRR is ready to show anything more just now.

"…..His interview with Ben James of Rivers Run Red. An interview in progress, with the intriguing comments about how Rivers Run Red uses learning from "Synovate to break down all 3D Virtual World interactions based on one of 8 reasons you might have had to come in the first place…" I hope Marshall does have an opportunity to finish the interview."

I think Metrics is becoming more and more of an issue  - people are just beginning to realize they need it to get the huge influx of business that is going to bring in the next 20 million residents of Second Life and other virtual worlds - but as yet, no one really has that much they can share - meaning metrics is at a beginning stage in the Virtual Worlds Community - which is actually a good place to be now - now would be the time to jump in.  Wait 6 months to a year more and the the first Wave will have already passed over you. 

It's a gut feeling and I have been right with most of my insights. Now is the time to jump in to 3D Virtual Worlds.

Anyway, the point of this post is to formally state that June Li will vote for me and is supporting me in the upcoming election starting next week to the Board of Directors of Web Analytics Association. 

Yes - you have my vote.  And you can say so. 

Thanks June!

Mike Moran is also voting for me as are several people at IBM who I work with on the Web Metrics team while Bryan Eisenberg and Gary Angel sponsored my candidacy. 

There's also many others who are joining, or trying to, so they can vote for me including Robin Nobles and John Alexander from Search Engine Workshops.

I went over the the Metaverse Meetup last night that was really, really, rocking!  I tried to take some pictures but hardly anything came out - I'm sure others will be posting pictures and I'll include links to them in a later post.

However, I do want to say a couple of things about yesterday - one that I'll be working on a internal Second Life Project providing Metrics at IBM and also met and some wonderful people last night as well as seeing some pretty amazing stuff at the Meetup.  I just got done emailing all the people I'm mentioning here - or I hope I have got most of them as I had several conversations last night.

CombinedStory - Boris Kizelshteyn - I met Boris at the Virtual Worlds 2007 conference earlier this week while talking with Ancient Shriner - Jared Freedman.  Boris is really nice guy and seemed to know a lot about the SL Community and it's really rich.  His company, CombinedStory, is actually right around the corner from where I work at IBM.  We were discussing getting me some SL immersion training and I learnt a lot from talking with him.

I also spoke with Melody Chamlee, of Ziff Davis who was really someone I can speak with - some one of like mind - I rarely meet someone who I am that tuned in with.  Hopefully Melody will get back to me with some questions for input she can use on some of her Ziff Davis articles.   I think Melody was also involved in one of the 4 projects we briefly looked at last night - www.DearIDea.net - I'll go into that in another post.

I ran into Nathanial Freitas last night again - he's the guy responsible for me being at Virtual Worlds 2007 in the first place! - had I not spoken to him at the Etsy party last week, I'd never know to ask for the Press Pass that allowed me to meet all the rest and know about all of this wonderful stuff - including the Metaverse Meetup that happened last night.

Funny thing, I did not immediately associate him with the party last week and feel really bad that he had to come up and introduce himself to me - I've met so many people lately sometimes it gets blurred - but as soon as he mentioned the Etsy party, I remembered, and we had corresponded last week.

I'll do a post or two about www.Cruxy.com, Nathanial's company very soon; we're setting up to meet in Park Slope soon where I'll interview him about www.Cruxy.com.   I will say that one thing people don't know about Cruxy.com is that it's hosted entirely on Amazon Web Services and Nathanial does not have to pay for any kind of hardware - I had no idea Amazon had gone so far into Web Services! I turns out Amazon did what HP and Sun talked about, years back.   But I'll leave that all for another post.  Meanwhile, check out www.Cruxy.com - especially if your a musician or artist (and I'll cover that in my art blog, www.artnewyorkcity.com ).

Also had a nice conversation with Jean-Ann Mills, an Events Producer for Electric Sheep Company in Second Life.  She said that planning an event in SL is just as involved as it is in real life except she does not have to worry about the food!  I told her….that's not true… Avatars need to eat too - just like the Pharaoh's of old - who went to the next life with all the most cherished objects of their physical life on Earth, including food. 

I also asked Jean-Ann to try to facilitate a meeting with Electric Sheep Company and me (she's an event planner - so maybe she can also help setup this "event") -so I can see their metrics backend. 

I need to see it before I can write about it (that is .. if they want me to write about it).  I had talked to Jerry Paffendorf and Sibley Verbeck over the last two or three days but nothing really concrete about a discussion over metrics - and I'm a Web Analyst - so I need to see what they're doing - especially now.

Ran into John K. Bates again, from www.EntropiaUniverse.com and we spoke again briefly last night - it was great to see the support the Virtual World Community has for all it's members.  I think John did a pretty good job of showing why someone would want to go into Entropia instead of, or in addition to Second Life.

Briefly spoke to Adam Broitman of Morpheus Media - his company sounds like the place to go if you want to get a basic implementation in Second Life and don't have a ton of money to spend.  I'm going to try to plug that service to some of my SEO clients, like www.Mascord.com that really should consider SL but haven't been willing to take the plunge.  Most of the Architects I've dealt with are kind of the conservative sort - then they wonder why the conversion rates are low or the audience is not broad enough. Seth Godin has the answers - it's just that few really want to listen to them and follow through to the logical conclusions.  What can I say … I'll keep plugging away.

And Mike Moran, who was not at the meetup, but comes into this context because of one thing he says in Chapter 6 of his new book, as yet unpublished, about Doing it Quickly.  A lot of these SL ideas I'm proposing could be doing quickly and not very expensively …. but the idea, as Mike proposes, is to do things in a small way first, and Quickly…and fail often to succeed in the long run. 

I think Mike Moran has a message a lot of people need to hear - about metrics, conversion process and Trying new things Quickly …. Testing.  I think Second Life projects, that I'm proposing is are a way in - to address the low conversion rates - or at least, to build Branding - which is what sells the Architect's plans anyway…. so maybe now, when I say, go into Second Life - I have resources and people I can send my clients to.

I spoke with Peder Burgaard at the dinner last night before the MetaVerse Meetup and he's doing a research Project and had worked with several at IBM and I offered to help him with in any way I can with people I know at IBM.  Peder had some really good ideas and I'm sure we will correspond.

Honestly, I can't be totally sure  Dan Benzakein is not the guy living in Paris who I spoke with yesterday or someone else I spoke wit the day before at Virtual Worlds 2007.  I think it's the former, not latter; in either case, we had a great conversation - both cases.

And I think I was speaking with Prokofy Neva, manager of Raven glass Rentals a couple of times over the last 3 days - and we had a nice conversation about Metric last night at dinner.

And at the end of the long evening - I saw the 4 projects being talked about at the Metaverse Meetup, including a Wii interface to Second Life that is pretty neat and Open Sourced that was just thrown together in the last couple of days.

Yes, Momentum is moving very quickly in Second Life - now might be the time to jump in - that's my prediction …. the time is now.

If you wait 6 months or a year, you'll be behind the wave.

I posted earlier on Darren Rowse at ProBlogger Meetup in NYC - March 29th, 2007 - well, it's the 29th, I went and I had a lot of fun - but did not take any pictures.

Who was there that I spoke with besides Darren Rowse and his wife:

• - My friend Sebastian Wenzel - www.Webanalyticsbook.com
• - Valeria Maltoni from www.conversationagent.com - nice lady
• - Mike Levin of Connors Communications and www.hittail.com
• - Jason Van Orden, Podcaster, Author and Speaker
• - Annie Frisbee of www.Zoom-in.com
• - Carissa Brayman of www.thefind.com
• - Robert Gorell of www.grokdotcom.com
• and Several Other People including a lot of nice looking woman.

Anyway - after about 3 hours of this, one diet coke and some wine, I left with Sebastian and we took the train back into Brooklyn together and discussed business and SEO.

Long day, time to sign off.

I'm going to give a chat about SEO in Second Life (though I have to admit, no where was SEO discussed in the last 2 days at the Virtual Worlds 2007 conference that just ended this afternoon).

I'll put SEO/SEM in context with what I know and have learned about Second Life and include some metrics information I picked up recently.  Actually, we may change the name of the Chat to reflect more Branding and Conversion type activity).

Robin Nobles, John Alexander Martin Preece have been really supportive of my candidacy for the Web Analytics Association.  I've been a chat moderator for Search Engine Workshops for about 4  years, but lately I haven't done as many chats - I'll try to catch up now.

Plenty of good reason to do this - mainly to shore up Microsoft AdCenter.

"…The rumored hypothetical purchase price is $2 billion. Forget about that for a moment, the acquisition would make Microsoft much more credible in the minds of advertisers than it has been to date and would also give a boost to AdCenter by association. In other words, brand and other marketers reluctant to commit to AdCenter might be more inclined to do so if they’re already working within the company via DoubleClick and can be cross-sold."

As Microsoft and Yahoo continue to improve, make themselves more attractive as alternatives to Google AdWords and AdSense, it may slow down Google's growth.