News came out last week that Google and Twitter have struck a new deal to put real-time tweets back into Google’s search index. The companies aren’t providing much in the way of details about the deal at this point, and it’s possible that they never will, but they did confirm the deal, and indicate that it will go into effect in a few months. Do you expect to benefit from the deal? Years ago, when the two companies had a similar relationship, Google had a search feature called Realtime Search, which displayed a set of scrolling results at the top of the search results page on some queries (typically newsy ones). The feature didn’t rely solely on Twitter. It incorporated other sources, but it was clear that Twitter was the one that really mattered, especially when the whole feature went away upon the expiration of the companies’ initial deal. Ever since that fell apart, Google has been lacking in the real-time department. In the early days of Google+, it seemed like Google thought it might be able to replace Twitter with its own real-time content, but obviously that never materialized to the extent of what Twitter has to offer. Meanwhile, Google would continue to index tweets in its regular search results, but it would never be able to index them in real time, and the ones it did index would only be a small percentage of the larger tweet pool. Eric Enge’s Stone Temple Consulting released some new findings about how Google indexes tweets currently, which provides some insight into how things may change when the new deal goes into effect. His team analyzed over 133,000 tweets to see how Google indexed them, and found that about 7.4% of them were actually indexed, leaving 92.6% completely left out of the search engine. That tells us a great deal right there. Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” As we’ve discussed in the past, Google is essentially failing that mission without Twitter’s firehose. Today, the world’s information is coming at us in extremely rapid fashion, and as far as public information goes (Facebook is working to do more with the non-public stuff), Twitter is the best provider of that rapid-fire info. How can Google possibly succeed in its stated mission if it’s only organizing a little over 7% of that information? Stone Temple’s findings suggest that Twitter accounts with larger follower counts are getting more tweets indexed, though it may be only a correlation. Enge says he doesn’t think Google is looking specifically at follower count, but that other signals are affecting which profiles get indexed more (i.e. links to those accounts’ profiles). Either way, he notes, more value is clearly being placed on the authoritative accounts. Out of the accounts with over a million followers that the research looks at, there were 13,435 tweets with 21% of them being indexed by Google. Out of 44,318 tweets in the 10K to 1M follower range, only 10% were indexed. For 80,842 tweets from accounts with less than 10,000 followers, just 4% were indexed. Stone Temple says images and/or hashtags seem to increase a tweet’s chances of getting indexed with percentages registering higher than average. Mentions, on the other hand, register negatively. It also points to another of its studies, which showed that links from third-party sites have a significant impact. “Google still loves links. 26% of the tweets with an inbound link from sites other than Twitter got indexed. That is nearly 4 times as much as the overall average rate of indexation,” Enge says in the report, adding that link quantity correlates highly with a tweet getting indexed. They found that out of 21 accounts and 91 tweets with with over 100 inbound links, 46% were indexed. The number goes down the less inbound links there are. Those with less than ten links only saw a 7% index rate. Be sure to check out the research for additional findings.
rom a regulated “bionic pancreas” study to parent groups hacking medical devices, diabetes treatment enters a new era. “I’m feeling funky right now,” Aimee Jose says, glancing at her “bionic pancreas” for a status check on her blood sugar levels. “The number here says that I’m fine, but I don’t feel fine, so I need to confirm it.” Jose, a certified diabetes educator and nurse at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, has had Type I diabetes, a disease affecting as many as 3 million people in the United States alone, since she was 12. Click here to read the full Article
Washington – The American Postal Workers Union announced today that the 200,000–member organization will “vigorously oppose” the merger between Staples and Office Depot. “We will urge the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to block this monopolistic and unlawful merger now, just as they did 17 years ago,” said APWU President Mark Dimondstein. “And we call on Congress to weigh in with the FTC and the Department of Justice to stop it. “A Staples takeover of Office Depot would lead to higher prices for consumers and store closings that would affect employees and customers alike,” Dimondstein said. “There are new grounds to block this combination as well,” he added. In the past year, over the objections of the APWU, consumer organizations, civil rights advocates and teacher groups, Staples has begun offering mail services at its retail stores. In doing so, Staples has replaced highly-trained USPS workers with its own unskilled, low-wage employees. Concurrently, the USPS has reduced hours in some post offices and encouraged customers to use Staples stores instead. In documents obtained by the union, the Postal Service outlined plans to transfer USPS work to Staples in order to reduce employment and hours of service to the public in neighborhood post offices. “The transfer of living-wage jobs to low-wage, poverty-level jobs is not in the public interest,” Dimondstein said. “Staples is an anti-worker corporation, and we don’t want to see its reach expanded. We will vigorously oppose this merger. It’s bad for workers and bad for consumers.” APWU will begin reaching out to allies in the civil rights and labor communities to join the union in opposing the merger. Since January 2014, the American Postal Workers Union and its allies have been staging protests at hundreds of Staples stores in opposition to the retailer’s deal with the U.S. Postal Service to offer postal services. A boycott of the office-supply store, which began in April, is ongoing. For more information visit Stop Staples.com. * * * Tags: President,Stop Staples!,’Stop Staples!’ Contact Information Sally Davidow Communications Director 1300 L Street NW Washington, DC 20005 202-842-4250 sdavidow@apwu.org – See more
Is it really possible to become a world class copywriter in just 30-days? One of the most famous letters in the illustrious Gary Halbert Letter is titled “Hands on Experience.” Gary goes over, in extreme detail, the process he would use learn copywriting, as if he was starting again from scratch. His most mysterious instructions are as follows: I want you to get a copy of the following ads and direct mail letters: “Do You Make These Mistakes In English?” “What Everybody Should Know About This Stock And Bond Business” “The Nancy L. Halbert Heraldry Letter” “How To Burn Off Body Fat, Hour-By-Hour” “At 60 Miles An Hour The Loudest Noise In This Rolls Royce Is The Ticking Of The Electric Clock” “Why Men Crack” “How To Collect From Social Security At Any Age” “The Admiral Byrd Transpolar Expedition Letter” “The Lazy Man’s Way To Riches” Now that you’ve obtained copies of these ads and letters, I want you to sit down and copy them out word-for-word in your own handwriting. Now if you’re like me, you’ve read this probably a zillion times over, wondering the whole time: “Thanks Gary, but where the heck do I find all these ads in the first place?” So I’ve spent countless hours online trying to track each of these down for my swipe file. And to save you the trouble, I’m listing all of them right here. With one exception, each of the ads will open as either a JPG or PDF file: “Do You Make These Mistakes In English?” “What Everybody Should Know About This Stock And Bond Business” “The Nancy L. Halbert Heraldry Letter” “How To Burn Off Body Fat, Hour-By-Hour” “At 60 Miles An Hour The Loudest Noise In This Rolls Royce Is The Ticking Of The Electric Clock” “Why Men Crack” “How To Collect From Social Security At Any Age” “The Admiral Byrd Transpolar Expedition Letter” “The Lazy Man’s Way To Riches” And here are 9 bonus ads for your swipe file: The “Billion Dollar Salesletter” for Wall Street Journal Gary Halbert’s “Tova” ad Halbert’s “Amazing Diet Secrets of a Desperate Housewife” Space ad by Eugene Schwartz Vic Schwab’s ad for “How to Win Friends & Influence People” “Astrology Today” ad by Ben Suarez David Ogilvy’s “How to Create Advertising that Sells” Gary Bencivenga’s “Lies, Lies, Lies” promo “Mercades Diesel” salesletter by Ed McLean In addition to above, here are more (free) educational resources to help you with your copywriting career: Gary Bencivenga Gary Halbert Clayton Makepeace Ryan Healy Bob Bly Ben Settle Ken McCarthy Info Marketing Blog Marketing & copywriting book reviews David Ogilvy’s famous speech about direct response: “We Sell or Else” Fantastic interview with David Ogilvy from 1977 Lastly, on the issue of finding your first clients…I’ve found the resource below to be extremely helpful in my copywriting career: How To Get Your First Copywriting Client in 14 Days or Less If you found any of this helpful, please drop me a line by sending me a quick email. P.S. If you’d like to learn even more about how to write copy that sells, I recommend you join the private Copywriting Code membership site. It’s packed with valuable copywriting lessons, and more are being added all the time. Click here to check it out. Related posts: Top 5 Issues of The Gary Halbert Letter Your Favorite Sales Letters of All Time? 7 More Ways To Get (and Keep!) Your Prospect’s Attention in Your Lead Who to Read, Who to Study… Two Killer Opening Lines for Your Next Sales Letter or Ad The Ryan McGrath Click her to the get the reset of the Article
Twitter is laying out plans to make money from the millions of people who see tweets all over the Web but don’t actually use Twitter. The social media company is planning to sell ads within streams of tweets on other publishers’ apps and websites, people familiar with the matter said. Twitter laid out its initiative to media buyers in a presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the people said. It isn’t clear which publishers are on board. The presentation at CES made references to ESPN’s SportsCenter app and Flipboard. ESPN and Twitter have had talks about the idea, but so far haven’t finalized a deal, one person familiar with the situation said. Executives from Flipboard could not be reached for comment. Twitter would share the revenue from the ads with the publisher, the people familiar with the matter said. A Twitter spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. Click here to read the full article
The idea has been gaining traction for months as some early adapting publishers have touted audience engagement as a powerful tool for selling ads. Recent developments — including advertisers’ growing disdain for banner ads that are never seen or clicked on — suggest the idea may be catching on at an accelerating pace. Last month, Google issued a report that said 56% of ads it serves aren’t “viewable,” a term that suggests ads are too far down on the site or that readers aren’t scrolling down far enough. The result reinforced the notion that display ads are deeply flawed, says Jonah Goodhart, CEO of ad tech firm Moat. (USA TODAY is a client of Moat.) “Advertisers want the time and attention of the right audience to get the right message across,” says Tony Haile, CEO of web traction research firm Chartbeat, who’s been one of the loudest proponents of the quality-over-quantity approach. “To date, they’ve been given proxies like page views and click-through rates. We should value and deliver exactly what they want: (readers’) time and attention.” SEEKING SUPER JOURNALISTS This month, Gawker– known for aggregating and respinning highly viral stories with its own sharp voice – told readers its front page will be updated less often to give selected stories longer shelf life on its most prominent piece of real estate. Borrowing a retro play from newspapers, Gawker said its main page will be used more like a front page, displaying what its editors consider to be the best reported or simply most engaging stories — the ones often lost in the shuffle because of a constant flow of new posts. In the new arrangement, the highlighted front-page stories will be accompanied by larger images and headlines. Other stories will be placed on “sub-blogs” that pertain to the story topic – a tech story on Valleywag.com, for example. “Traffic will take a hit,” Gawker editor in chief Max Read says. “Page views is one measure, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.” Click Here to read the rest of the story
Legendary McCoy Paper Performance for those who demand the best-of-the-best in Print. We all heard the phrase “I want something different” or “I want a special paper” or “I want a special Feeling when I hold it in my hand” McCoy Paper is the answer. When you want to be seen as a true leader, no other fine paper will make you look as good as McCoy. And thanks to more reasonable pricing, it’s never been easier for your brand to look its best. Infused with premium ingredients and backed by Sappi quality assurances, McCoy is the fine paper all others are judged by. Nothing else compares.
The purpose of a coating is to protect the printed piece from dirt, smudges, fingerprints, scratching, etc. Coating also provides scuff resistance. And, yes, it can improve the visual appeal of the piece by providing a glossier and smoother finish. Protective coating provides surface protection for that postcard you did for your top account to arrive looking the way it looked when it was mailed. Printers who are aware that the postal service delivers a licking that keeps on ticking to printed pieces – and use that info to sell against unaware competitors – have an advantage.
Paper bags are one of the most utilitarian items in our culture. They house lunches, groceries, and the goodies we purchase at retail stores. Before there were paper bags (or sacks if you live in the mid-west), one either brought their own container, usually a basket, or a shop owner rolled and glued some paper, known as a cornucopia, to hold one’s purchase.
Direct Mail v. Email: No Contest! By Nancy Scott on April 4th, 2013 A few weeks ago, a direct marketer asked me about the value of direct mail versus email. We often address “ROI” issues like these in Marketing AdVents, the monthly newsletter of the Direct Marketing Association of Washington (DC), of which I am editor. The answer is, of course, “Let’s find out.”