Digital Marketing and Web Strategy by Bob Hazlett | One Half Amazing!

• Facebook “likes” are starting to show up in searches.  Before you know it, Facebook will unleash it’s search engine and “likes” will be the new pagerank.
• Cleaver ways to use Dropbox.  Even use it to host your website.
• Pepsi is launching a location-based loyalty program in mid-May called Pepsi Loot.  Check-in at a restaurant or establishment that serves Pepsi through their mobile app and earn rewards towards free music, behind-the-scenes content and special offers.
• How to add a retweet anywhere button to your WordPress site. *See an example of this below this post.
• RUMOR:  Google could reveal details about their TV project during their I/O conference on May 18.

Howdy, it’s Bob.  Remember me? I used to be pretty active on this blog, but then lots of things in life started making things crazy.  I’m not complaining, because I’m happy to announce that I’m getting married this August and I’ve also taken a new job.  The job part is what brings me to the topic of this post – getting your foot in the door at companies which may otherwise not give you the time of day.

Working and doing a lot of online marketing, you find some loopholes, but there are also some drawbacks.  The bad thing is that its hard to actually openly search for a job while you have an active blog and social profile.  The things you rely on heavily to communicate with and get the word out, can’t be used as they should when lots of ‘different’ people could potentially be reading it.  You almost have to do it ninja style, sending cryptic DM’s and communicating under the dark of night.

Thinking to myself, I wondered how could I show off my skills to those few ‘dream job’ type of companies. I didn’t really expect I’d get the job or even take it if I did, but it was more an experiment on my own to see if it would work.  So here’s how I got interviews with 2 of the most influential web companies in the country.*

You’ll kick yourself for not thinking of this yourself and come to find out, I’m not even one of the first.  But all I did was buy a couple of Facebook ads and directly target folks that worked at those few companies I was interested in. In the ad, I mentioned who I was, my specialties and if they could introduce me to a hiring manager.  The ad featured my picture which led the user to my resume** located on my site. Boom, I had 2 calls within 4 days for a grand total of $12 spent and less than a hours worth of time.

If you’re new to buying Facebook ads, check out my 101 presentation from Social Camp

That’s it. I wish there was some magic formula to it.  Have you seen creative resumes or ways that people are getting interviews? If so, share them in the comments below.  I promise I’ll work on posting more often too.
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*I’ll keep their names a secret, but the first interview came from a company whose name combines a utility that a man shaves his face with and an aquatic animal and the second interview came from a company which combines a word that defines a market consisting of a street lined with shops common in the Middle East with the the distinctive quality or pitch/condition of a person’s speech.

**Much love for all the time and hard work that Jay put in on my comic.  He took my vision and blew the doors off of it.  With his help and a little time with Comic Life, my resume really stood out in a crowd.

PHP, Web and IT Stuff has a great tutorial on tracking Facebook Fan Page activity with Google Analytics.   Yes, Facebook does have Insights tracking that any page administrator can access, but it only shows you data for fans and sometimes you’ll see a couple days delay in getting that information.

In short, here’s how they did it.  Facebook pages will limit the amount of javascript that can be run on a page.  Google Analytics requires javascript to work correctly.  As a workaround, they’ve created a tool that allows you to embed your Google Analytics code in an image instead of using the standard javascript.  You’ll have to create an image for each page you’d like to track.  For example, if you have separate custom tabs set up on Facebook to display your products,  talk about your services and give users an option to contact you, you’ll need 3 different image tag codes.

To get started, set up a Google Analytics account or add a new website profile if you already have one.  Find your account number within the tracking code they provide.  It will look something like UA-1234567-74. Finally, use their tool to create a custom image tag and then place it at the bottom of each page you need to track. FBML is a great tool to add HTML to your Facebook page.

If you’re super-cool, you can even host the code yourself.  Hosting it yourself gives you the ability to see traffic to and from your site to your Facebook page.

The biggest benefits to using Google Analytics over the package that Facebook provides is the ability to track all users, not just the few that have become fans.  Google also gives you all of the other functions like time on site, keyword tracking and map overlays.

Everyone and their brother seem to be doing online marketing and social media predictions for 2010 so I thought I’d dust off my crystal ball and take a deep look into what I think the new year will hold. In the spirit of your sanity I kept each prediction to 140 characters or less (I thought this was a novel idea, but it looks like TrendSpotting beat me to it). Let’s hope these are better than last year.

My predictions

• Everybody gets their own iPhone and mobile app.  Sites like MotherApp, GameSalad and Swebapps make it too easy.
• Apple, Facebook or Google will open up and allow publishers to do micro transactions across web with ID & buy digital content everywhere.
• Google Nexus One phone = game changer.  Google will disrupt wireless industry, create new business model for cell phones.
• Buzzword of the year will be “experience.” Companies figure how to create engaging touches  &  inject customer love in every level/dept.
• ^^ above companies forced to create small hybrid groups of PR, Mkting, HR & Cust Service focused on set of clients rather than specific duty
• Adwords gets a 2010 upgrade – smarter, better customer choice, maybe even image ads in results…gasp.  Advertisers forced to get better.
• Advertisers & Marketers will put QR codes everywhere – ads, websites, physical products. Objects will all be connected & enhance experience.
• SEO gets disrupted because of personalized search and Google Caffeine.  Folks who dominated will whine as they lose position.

Predictions from friends

• @clayhebert - Consolidation, mainstream adoption, snake oil exposed, budgets shift from trad to digital, real experts valued & rewarded
• @buckdaddy – Whrrl beat FourSqaure in location based social network. FTC rules will hurt 1 person badly like w music piracy. Available SM jobs will grow
• @jtrigsby – Multiple feeds will converge and enable filtering to produce a more usable life stream of information. Some are doing it now, look for more
• @skippytpe – Social games continue further into meat-space. Mobile media consumption continues to outstrip capacity. Revolution: there’s an app for that.
• @jtrigsby – Number of followers will become less important than quality of friends. Numbers will still be important though, so maybe friend tiers?

Give me your thoughts/predictions/wishes in the comments below.

According to a recent report by ViTrue, the best time to get a response from your fans is on Tuesday.  Click through rates peaked at nearly 10% on Tuesday and actually hovered around the same percentage on both Monday and Wednesday as well.

The worst time?  Their study suggests that click-through-rates plummet on Friday and Saturday with less than a 3% CTR.

Facebook let it all hang out to a select group of members to test their new search interface.  The system would allow members to search their news feed for recent updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared on friends’ profiles and fan Pages. Users who have made their profile and content available to anyone will also be searchable.

SEOMoz yammers it up during Whiteboard Friday to talk about visualization.  I think visualization is one of those new and sexy fields that you’ll hear more and more about in the near future.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Visualization from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

12seconds is updating their iPhone app to take advantage of the new OS 3.0.  The app, which should be available soon, will allow you to send short video messages directly to your friends via twitter.

Back ‘dat thing up and pick up some great tips about landing page design through CopyBlogger’s Landing Page Makeover.  Their most recent tutorial covers CarsHelpingAmerica.org.

If you’re a fan of Indie Rock, I highly recommend The Veils – Sun Gangs. Rock out this weekend.