New E-Book: Marketing in a Web 2.0 World

Link to E-book: http://www.keepandshare.com/doc/view.php?id=1173660&da=y

Don’t Be Evil, Why Google sets the Bar

“Don’t be Evil.” This is Google’s unofficial company motto, which I was unaware of till yesterday, but which did provide the spark for this blog post. I think it’s a motto we can all agree with, though some people don’t necessarily follow. However, I don’t think many people argue that we are not surrounded by evil, and that there are many Evil people, most of which have power. It’s a sad fact that power tends to come not with responsibility, but with greed and of course, evil. However, that is not the case of the internet. Which I why the internet is my favorite invention (though it wasn’t invented by anybody, including Al Gore).

No one owns the internet, though I think I can safely say Google controls it. More than 50% of all searches on the internet are done through Google. That’s on the internet, not in the U.S. I would argue that never has a company had so much power and not let it go to their head. Google’s creators only make a dollar a year, on their own request, so that their interests are tied to the stockholders (though they are still quite rich). But their power is derived from their product, not with their motto or practices, and that control is not one of absolute power.

Google came around at a time of a massive battle for search engine supremacy, and they came out on top due to their quality of search. They intended, and still intend, to list sites based on quality of content, to bring you the best the web has to offer. This creates a push for better websites, with natural links that customers generate on blogs, etc. This in turn makes customers listen to their customers, which makes the groundswell start to influence companies. The reason the internet is so great is it demands quality. Because if you don’t do it, someone one else will. If someone came up with a way to generate better searches than Google, Google would have to adjust or lose its spot at the top. If Facebook, the #1 social networking site, tried to charge 5 dollars a month to use its service, it would see millions of customers stop using the site within the day. The internet doesn’t have long term contracts, and it demands only the best, because its customer controlled. When using the internet for business, this is an important concept to realize, and if you operate off this principle, you will do well.

The internet is a source of information, entertainment, networking, and sales. If you are doing sales, than obviously you should strive to have the best prices available, because you have to compete with other companies doing the same thing. If you are involved in the three other sectors of the internet, and you are providing a service for the community at large, the price you are charging better be zero. Obviously if you are providing services for companies, you can feel free to charge them. But as downloading becomes easier for anyone to do, you better start providing services for free and gain a following. Because once your price is zero, no one can undercut you, and then it’s just a popularity contest. Your money should come from advertisements, but it shouldn’t hurt the quality of your site. Google for example, separates their natural search results from their PPC results, and if they stopped doing that, they would stop being popular. YouTube can never cost a cent for people to upload videos, or for people to view videos, or they lose their power.

The internet is controlled by the people, and it’s for the people. Charge the community at large the least amount as possible, and make the companies pay to have access to your customers. Quality should be your number one concern, because people will come, if your web site is good and helpful. So don’t be evil, and maybe conducting business can become a good thing again. 

Ticketmaster And the People Who Hate Them

Ticketmaster has to be destroyed. They are everything that is wrong with business. Every one of their customers hates them, and yet they still continue to do business. Not only do they do business, they continue to do a ton of business. They not only charge their own customers a ton, but they also use sites like Ticketsnow to resell their own tickets for much higher prices. They made it impossible to camp out for tickets, as they are now decided by lottery, even at the venues that Ticketmaster doesn’t own due to exclusive contracts. The problem is; they have cornered a market that people aren’t willing to give up, no matter how much they hate what Ticketmaster is doing. True music fans have to go see concerts, and they will pay anything to see the bands they love, even if they are paying a company they hate. However, Ticketmaster isn’t the real problem. It’s the venues and the bands.

 

It’s the venues for being greedy, and accepting exclusive deals with Ticketmaster through legal bribes, without a care for their customers, because their customers will show up anyways, disgruntled only at Ticketmaster, and not at the venue. Sadly, the Ticketmaster service isn’t the problem, because if it was, a company would simply be created which charges less, as the internet tends to police itself. Ticketmaster is nothing without the exclusive deals it makes with the venues. So we need venue owners who care about their customers enough to turn down these exclusive offers. However, these sorts of people don’t tend to own venues, though I swear here and now that if I ever have the money to open a venue, I will do it, and never use Ticketmaster or a site like it. The annoying part of the whole situation is this; Ticketmaster is offering a service that no one really needs. Selling tickets only requires a domain name and the most basic programming. This should be done directly by the band or the venue. I actually have no problem with people reselling tickets, AS LONG AS THEY GOT THEM USING THE SAME TICKETPOOL AS EVERYONE ELSE. Selling directly to ticket resale sites is an abomination. But the venue is happy as long as it keeps making money, as it will of course. Which brings me to the bands.

 

So far, I have heard of bands that claim to be outraged by Ticketmaster’s resale policies and general practices. They have complained, sued, and made public statements. But I have yet to see bands actually do anything about it. If they all don’t like the policies, they should all refuse to play. Or if they do play, they should play in venues which don’t use Ticketmaster. Or they should ban together, and make a festival called Fuck Ticketmaster, or some name without the profanity. Regardless, there are things that can be done, and complaining and trying to sue when our anti-trust laws are so obviously a joke in this country really is just a waste of time. If Radiohead wanted, they could release their next album that gives half their profits to buying out some of the venues with exclusive contracts, and then selling their own tickets through their website. These bands own the thing that Ticketmaster sells, music. Aren’t bands supposed to support their fans as we support them? Radiohead was able to release one of the most popular records ever without the use of a record company. Doesn’t it make sense that they should be able to play music for their fans without the use of a ticket site?

 

Here’s what I propose for Radiohead. Make your own festival. Promote it as power to the fans. Do it in the UK if you want, ill fly there. Sign up all the bands that hate Ticketmaster, it shouldn’t be hard, your Radiohead, who wouldn’t want to play with you. Make it the biggest festival ever. Charge whatever you want, I don’t care, and neither do your fans. As long as the money goes to you, I’m happy, and so are they. Once someone buys a ticket, a track-listing of all your songs appear. They then get to order them, so that the number one song they want to see you play live is at the top, then number 2, and so on. Once all the tickets have been sold, and with everyone’s list getting equal weight, the set list is determined. Obviously, you won’t play your full discography. But you choose the amount of songs you want to play, and then you start at the bottom of the list, so you close with the number one song people wanted to hear. Recommend that all the other bands do the same thing. You would sell out as many days as you wanted to do it for. You could even make a venue based off the idea. Let me promise you though, if you don’t use Ticketmaster, and you make it known that their policies will not be tolerated, other bands will follow, and things will change. And if any other bands want to step it up in the meantime, that would be just great.

 

Note: I would be happy to do all the grunt work for that festival. I just don’t yet have the money. But when I do, things are going to change with the live music industry. I promise.

SEO E-Book

I just finished making my E-Book about SEO. Its just the basics, mostly for people interested in the subject, but who know nothing about it. Here the link: New Host for my e-book since hotlinkfiles.com took mine down after 2 days of inactivity! Find it here: http://preview.tinyurl.com/cxgvz6

Grooveshark: Embracing the Groundswell

While at my internship, I have been splitting my time between reading about SEO and reading about online marketing, which of course have some overlap. Currently, I am reading a book titled Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. I found that due to my previous research, that I was pretty familiar with a lot of the ideas presented, even though this book flushed them all out particularly well. However, the thing I found most poignant was that case studies, which are prominent throughout the book, and which help to reiterate all the concepts, and of course give insight into actual paths companies have taken while trying to interact with the groundswell. For those who don’t know; “the groundswell is a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other instead of from companies” (Introduction, Groundswell, Page X). Essentially, this book is about interacting with the customers that are active online, in order to reach your customer base as a whole, which can of course range considerably due to your companies personal tactics and goals. This book attempts, and I believe succeeds, at detailing with the range of possible interactions, and outlining which types of companies should consider which types of methods for interaction with the Groundswell. While reading this book, I engaged with Ben, an employee from a company who I have recently started using its product, Grooveshark. I would like to share my experience with Ben, as he is a perfect example of how to properly interact with the groundswell regarding his particular company.

 

Yesterday, I made a blog post about Grooveshark, about how much I really like the program, and I strongly encourage people to use it. As the site is currently blocked at my internship, I can’t find an exact date the product launched, though it was established in March of 2006, so needless to say, this can be considered a very young company. On my blog, I also made a list of some things I would like to see improved about the way the interface works, and put in a suggestion for an expansion of their product. I then sent a @reply to Ben on twitter, Grooveshark’s spokes person. I sent this at around 4:30 PM. At around 11PM that night, Ben sent me a @reply saying he had commented on my blog. His reply was a page long, more than half the size of the article I had written. I would like to highlight some of the key parts of his response. To see the whole response, you can find it here: http://preview.tinyurl.com/dmq9xf.

 

The first thing to notice is how nice Ben was at the beginning of his e-mail. He was personal, and had obviously taken time while writing his response. Though being nice to the customer seems like common sense, making sure that comes through in this sort of medium is crucial, and he used his words carefully to reiterate that point. More impressive to me still, was the bulk of the reply.

 

In my tweet to Ben, I had asked him to look at the suggestion part of my article specifically, and to react to it if he could. After making his polite and flattering introduction, he went straight to the part of the article I had asked him to. He reacted directly to all of my points, not just telling me what he though, but telling me about what the company was doing currently, to address the issues I had mentioned. When talking about my product idea for a way to get Grooveshark in the car, he not only reacted to what I said, but also told me about applications they were currently working on that were similar, which keeps me in the loop with the company, creating a personal feel to the dialogue.

I would like to quote his last paragraph here, as it is crucial to the interaction; “Thanks (a)gain for absolutely EVERYTHING, Blake, and let me know for sure if you have any other tips, questions, requests, or just want to chat. You know where to find me: http://twitter.com/grooveshark.” I couldn’t imagine a better way to have ended his response. It let me know that what I said mattered, even though that was made clear to me already, but it pushed for my continued drive and interaction with him and the company. This is a perfect example of energizing the groundswell.

 

“Energizing the groundswell means tapping into the power of word of mouth by connection with, and turning on, your most committed customers…” (Energizing the groundswell, Groundswell, Page 131). It was interesting reading this section of the book for me, because I knew it was talking about me, but from the prospective of a company. When I like something, not only do I like it on a personal level, but I spread it to everything that I think would also benefit from it. Ben doesn’t know this yet, though he will when he reads this because he’s good at what he does, but I must have already personally told about 40 people about Grooveshark, and that doesn’t include my blog. Not only did I tell them about it, but I went into about as much detail as I did on my blog, making sure that coming out of the conversation I have them committed. Not only that, but I told all of my friends and other people I have told about Grooveshark to contact me if they had any questions, and I would help them. I have already set up accounts, uploaded music libraries, explained the auto-play feature, and answered the question “what was that music site you were talking about again?” countless times. I have been using Grooveshark for under 3 weeks.

 

Ben didn’t know this.  Ben doesn’t know me. I had never interacted with him before I sent him that link to my post. But by listening and interacting with the groundswell, Ben did exactly what he was supposed to do. I know myself, and as Groundswell mentioned, with people like me, we tend to be very fickle. If a company bothers me, people will know about it. If I like something, people will know about it. Keeping me liking something is hard, but if he keeps listening, I will keep talking, both to the company and to the groundswell. For now, I am a energized and committed customer, which is exactly what a starting company like Grooveshark wants and needs.

Grooveshark: Ahead of the Online Music Curve

Move over Pandora. There is now something so much better. I was never a huge Pandora fan previously, but now I absolutely refuse to let anyone use it. Grooveshark was introduced to me about a month ago, and I have spread it good name to all of my friends through word of mouth, and I would now like to spread it through word of mouse.

 

Grooveshark, for those who don’t know, is basically Pandora+ ITunes+ Napster. It searches it massive and ever-growing music library for the song, artist, or album that you searched for, and gives you all the results in list form, the way Napster used to. However, instead of downloading the songs, it simply streams them, which is why it is legal. You can download files, but you would have to buy a subscription, which I have not done therefore I can’t review the service. This is the only service that currently costs money, everything else is free. Like your ability to upload your whole ITunes library to the site, which expands its library, as well as making your whole ITunes library available from any computer at all times.

 

To access this feature, you first must sign up for a free account, which I highly recommend. It takes about 30 seconds, and only asks for your username and password. It doesn’t even require an e-mail. Once you make an account, in addition to uploading your library, you can now make and save playlists, and “heart” people whose music you like (personally I use it to heart people I know), and heart playlists that other people made (easy way to make a mix for someone).  You have unlimited space since it’s an online interface, so you can make a limitless amount of playlists, songs you’ve saved, etc.

 

There is also a button called auto-play, this is basically a single button that does what Pandora does. However, you can skip as many songs as you like, and when you search for a song, it plays that song first, and then you enable the auto-play feature.

 

Expansions on the Grooveshark idea:

There are some small things I’d like to see change with the site, and one bigger product idea that I want to throw out there. I will start with the smaller things.

 

1. You should be able to select multiple songs in an already queued playlist and move them around, instead of only being able to move them one at a time.
2. When you search for songs, the list should be generated by the quality of the files. Flack files, for example, should be at the top, where low quality audio should be at the bottom.
3. There should be different ways to make playlists other than the puzzle style currently used. (As I write this, I can’t access Grooveshark to double check that this is not a feature I have simply not utilized yet, though I do not believe other options to be available).

 

Bigger Product Idea: Where satellite radio failed, I think Grooveshark would succeed. All you would need is a portable receiver that attaches to your car stereo system, like Sirius and XM radio use. This would enable you to access your full Grooveshark account from your car, permitting you to create playlists right before a trip, making them as long as you want, and simply going to that playlist in your car and pressing play. My main issue with the radio is even though it tries to play the music I like; it gets repetitive, and often plays stuff I don’t like. This solves the problem, personal radio. Who better to play DJ but me? For those who want to hear new stuff, the auto-play feature would still be available. To be honest, I would pay a subscription for this, but I would rather it was offered for free like Grooveshark is now, where I pay a one time fee for the portable receiver. In order for Grooveshark to make money, since they actually pay the artists for plays on their site, commercials should be utilized to cover those costs, simply being initiated every 5 (give or take) songs, and then resuming the playlist. Like the subscription Grooveshark offers so you can download their music instead of streaming, a commercial free subscription should be available for a fee.

 

I am almost positive Grooveshark will soon be as big as Napster. It is the best program in this field currently offered which provides legal free music. Its mission statement is one I personally commend, hence why I am simply posting this idea, encouraging them to use it and make money. This is the type of embracing of the current state of music and the internet which needs to be pursued and encouraged. I hope Grooveshark continues to keep up the good work.