BlogClump - Blogging About Associations From a Gen Xer

Pretty cool, but I was featured with my part-time web design firm on the Lead411 Blog . Thanks again Susan!

We are starting to do webinars at my association. Some will be paid, some will be free. If you haven't seen it, Associations Now has a great article on webinar pricing and whether or not to make them free. (Sorry, I couldn't find the link. Maybe Lisa Junker can help out.) [Edit - Thanks to Mark from ASAE for finding the link] I am of the mindset that if the webinar is about the core of your member's being, why you exist, then it should be free to members. But, if it is a value add or extremely specialized, then charge. A good mix will be appreciated by all. My two cents.

Maggie McGary had a great question to my earlier post about Mobile Apps: Now--what's your call on this: a member contacts your association saying they've developed an app that includes content created by your association (say a Twitter or blog feed). They intend to charge for the app. Do you grant permission or not? Hypothetically-speaking only, of course ;) My two cents, and I am not a lawyer, don't play one on TV and didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night... That is your content. It isn't public domain. No one should be able to profit from something that your association created (albeit it was most likely volunteers donating the time and knowledge). You wouldn't let your competing association do it, so why a member? Now, if they had extra content or some new technology to offer that piggybacks off what your association created, I would try to license it or purchase it from the member and launch it under the association's umbrella. That way t...

Lindy Dreyer over at Social Fish has a great blog post about mobile apps for associations . Are they a waste of time? We had some extra money in the budget to use by the end of the year, so we decided to dip our toe in the app world. We did a quick survey and found that 2/3 of our members who use smart phones use Blackberry, 1/3 iPhone, and one using an Android. So we took one of our products, a listing of crane hand signals and their graphic representations, and made it an app. OSHA just passed a regulation on cranes and derricks, so it is timely. Here is what I learned in the process. - You have to register as a developer with both Blackberry and Apple. This step takes time. I thought our vendor was registered and could just put it up, but if we wanted our name on it, we needed to have our own vendor account. Again, this is not a short process. Even if you are just thinking about doing an app, register now. Apple does charge $99 per year. - Spend the extra time mapping out ...

I really wanted to hang my 32in TV in my bedroom instead of having it on the dresser. I got this mount, and it went up easy and holds it with no problem. Swings out to boot. Love it.

I have a LaCie 320 GB portable hard drive . Nice and compact. Works like a charm, every time.

I get a lot of folks asking me for computer recommendations, other stuff to buy recommendations. So, I thought I would start a new feature on this blog highlighting some of the stuff that I use and love. First up, My Netbook . I have the Acer Aspire . Love it. Highly recommended. Stick with the 6 cell or higher battery, though.

I am going to give my 2 cents on this whole Cook Source thing. If you don't know what I am talking about, you can read more here and here . I am sure a few folks are going to take umbrage with my stance, but that is bound to happen. So a magazine found a blog post, liked it, printed it while giving credit to the author. The author hears about it, and gets pissed? She wants printed apologies and a donation made, because she got published? What am I missing here? Who wouldn't want their stuff to be published while being credited? Isn't that one of the main tenants of blogging, to be linked to? Sure, the response from the editor was one of the dumbest things ever written and she handled it tremendously bad. However, I am just floored that this person is pissed off. True, the internet is not public domain. However, every college paper in the world has citations. And all those students didn't contact the author to make sure they can use it. And every blog post ...

I realize I have been off of this blog for 2 months now. Partly because I have 2 small kids. Partly because I have traveled a decent bit. Partly because it is budget time. But mostly because we are in the wake of a total web overhaul. I am leading the charge of our new site, complete with lots new functionality. And the lesson here is, it always takes longer than you think it will. I knew this going in, and it still is taking longer than I thought. It is not really anyone's fault in particular. It is just how life goes. You have lots of people doing little parts, but many of those parts can't be started until another is completed. And unless the perfect storm of everyone doing their part, on-time, in the right order happens, you will have delays. I know there are project managers out there saying, "that's what we are here for" and "you have to plan properly." I understand and agree. But even if you do that, it will still take longer. Trust ...

I knew that I had to get my thoughts out yesterday as early as possible because a much more eloquent post from Maddie Grant would be on its way. If you haven't read it yet, you should, especially the comments. I wanted to write a bit more regarding some comments left on both posts. Michelle (@ExpoQueenUSA) asked some good questions, which I will answer from my perspective. 1) Did they plan the activities, sessions, and expo according to the needs of those attending? - I would say yes. A few speakers fell flat, but nobody bats 1,000. And it is hard to have one conference covering such a vast array of attendees. I think that is why the MMC and Tech Conference are so popular. They are more laser focused. 2) Did they communicate their travel info, schedule of events, etc. successfully with attendees, exhibitors and speakers, etc before the show? (In print, email, online) - Totally, 100% 3)Did they encourage and enable all parties to communicate, connect, and ENGAGE with each o...

Ok, so I could have spelled out the title, but chose the hashtag - #asae10. Supposedly there were over 8,000 tweets with the hashtag, but probably countless more direct messages of messages that left out the hashtag but were conference related. Two years ago, we were using twitter as a backchannel to talk about speakers. Now, over 800 people sent conference related tweets. If you aren't on Twitter, you are already late to the party. Anyway, on with the post... In no particular order, my thoughts on this years ASAE Annual Conference: 1. LA was a good venue. Lots to do. Hotels close by. Only downside was the rooms were a bit of a hike. 2. I missed Sunday because of family obligations. That really put me behind the 8 ball. Since I led a session, that meant I only got to go to 3 true sessions. Sorry, I don't count Joy Behar and the closing session. Although Marshall Goldsmith was good, I probably wouldn't have gone to see that speech as a Learning Lab. 3. Based on #...

I had ads run Thursday and Friday. The final totals are this: 453,750 impressions 93 spots ran Avg. CPM $0.65 I only had 2 people go to the website directly, but I did have 2 search for my company name exactly on Google, which hasn't happened before. Plus, I had several type in the web address directly, but without the /TV. Interesting experiment. Hope it helped some folks.

Since I had a request for it, here is the ad I created. Realize that I did this with stock photos, screen grabs, the microphone on a webcam and cheap and free software.

So I logged in this morning to see if the ads had finally been approved, and it turns out I had ads run yesterday! Here is the screen shoot of what I had run yesterday. Looks like almost 310k impressions in 72 spots. My average CPM was $0.46, which is actually less than the minimum bid of $0.50. Here is the Google definition of an impression: Impressions within a Google TV Ads context are counted as the number of set top boxes tuned into a specific network when your ad is aired. The set top box must be engaged with your ad for at least five seconds to count as an impression. Your account is charged for live impressions and DVR (digital video recorder) +1 impressions. Final impression numbers -- the basis of billing -- are determined four days after your ad airs The one issue I have right now is, looks like 0 people came to my website as a result of the ad. Overall lessons learned: 1) Don't be too afraid to have a max bid on the top end of the estimates. You will most likely be...

I get up this morning and check my account. The ad has not been approved by all partners, which means no ads today. Google takes up to 24 hours. Then the partners get it, and who knows how long they take? I also notice that the next auction dates for many of my day parts are next week. So, I am wondering if that means I am not going to get those displayed tomorrow. I wanted to show a few screenshots for people, so you could get an idea of what shows up along the way. This main campaign screen tells me my estimates on the right. It also shows me the day parts I bid on and what it looks like I will get with each one. You see my "Ad Approval Status" on the left. The two shots below are what you get when you click there.

Things are looking up. I have passed the first set of approvals!!! Now I am seeing the following: This ad has been processed by our television partners. It is still being processed by 5 of our partners. It is approved and ready to be shown by 1 of our partners. I also went through and added a bunch of extra target channels and day parts that were the cheapest out there, just so I can try to maximize what I get. My new estimates are 372k unique impressions, 723k total impressions, 76 spots for a total of $300. So, barring any disasters, I will have TV ads running in the morning! Lessons learned: 1. Have lots of time available to get this up and running. 2. Make sure everything in your final video is in that action safe area. 3. You can use free video editing software to get the final, TV ready video. I will have a follow up after Friday, once everything has run its course.

A lot of you may already know this tip, but someone shared it with me and I figured I would pass it along. If you are looking to pull in specific stories/posts/articles from other sources into your news section on your website, here is a handy way to do it. Setup a Google Reader account with all the RSS feeds you might pull stories from. Then use the "Share" feature to select the stories you want to post. Then you can get an RSS feed of your shared stories and display that. You have now sorted through all kinds of noise for folks and given them the goods!

I think I have seen this page more than anything else while working in adwords. (I zoomed in so you could read the screen shot)

On Friday, I wrote into Google again about the issue of the broken links and the fact that I still didn't know why the ad was rejected. I did get a call from a live human (different from the first guy) wondering how he could help. However, turns out that the TV ads is a totally different department than regular adwords, even though they both live under the adwords moniker. He tried to be helpful nonetheless and is supposed to call me this week with more info. In the meantime, I did get a notice this morning from another person that the video failed because not everything was in the Action Safe Zone again. One setting in Visual Communicator is to playback in action safe mode. However, I guess it doesn't save that way. I do have photos in the video that need to be cropped down to be "action safe." I am going to do that this morning, and repost. We shall see. This just in - the links to VideoPad and Movie Maker are now fixed!!! No one told me they were fixed, bu...

Well, this is not going well. Every ad I have submitted has been rejected. However, they don't tell you why. I tried using another video editing program, but I guess that didn't do it. There are 2 broken links on the Google help that give you instructions for specific software, and of course those are the 2 for the free video editing software. Right now, I am waiting for a human at Google to get back to me with reasons the videos failed and why the links are broken on the help page. But, I did get an email from someone who has had the same "waiting for approval" message for a month. So it looks like this is a bigger issue than just me doing something wrong on my video editing end.

The backend of Google Adwords was having some real trouble yesterday. It was hard for me to manage anything. But last night, everything looked ok. I was just waiting to hear back on my ad. I had bids in for ads to run this morning. So when I checked the backend this morning to see if anything happened, I found out that my ad had not yet been approved. On the bright side, I am down to one pending approval instead of 2. This ad is currently pending the basic quality check. This step may take up to 24 hours. So, the one lesson I have gleaned from all this, don't be in a hurry. The TV ad process with Google is not like search adwords, where you can get up and running and live within seconds. However, since the TV ads is part of adwords and has roughly the same interface, I guess that is what I was expecting. But it seems like there are multiple approvals that have to take place and none of them happen in under 24 hours. One other thing of note, the estimates for impressions an...

I went back and made my video "Action Safe" (at least I think I did). I tried a new video editing software that Google listed in their Technical Specs page , VideoPad . It seems very similar to VideoSpin, but what I like about VideoPad is that you can change your encoding options for video and sound using a number of codecs and settings. Hopefully this will ensure my compliance with what Google wants. However, there are lots of options, so we shall see. I uploaded the video and got the following message: This ad is currently pending content approval by Google. This step may take up to 24 hours. This ad is currently pending the basic quality check. This step may take up to 24 hours. I canceled my earlier campaign and started over in terms of targets. I went for Thursday and Friday morning, throwing some more channels in the mix and increasing my CPM bid which seemed to get me more impressions for my money. Hopefully it works this time.

So I logged in today to see if my ads ran. Turns out my ad video was denied for technical reasons. There are 2 problems here. One, Google didn't notify me, so I missed out on trying to fix it before my ads were supposed to run today. Two, there were no details on why it failed. I can't fix it if you don't tell me why it is broken. I have contacted Google TV ads service. We shall see what they say. _____________ Update at 3pm. Google called me back and told me that the reason the ad didn't meet technical specs was because some of my content was outside the action safe zone . I am fixing my video and re-uploading to see if I can make it in for tomorrow.

If you haven't heard, you can now buy TV ads using the Google Adwords platform . That's right, regular old TV spots, bidding just like you do for keywords. (I highly recommend watching the video linked above) I am doing my own test. I do some freelance web design work, so I created an ad for that, and am trying to get it on TV. My goal was to do this as quick and cheap as possible, while still producing something worthwhile. Here is the blow by blow. 1. Creating the ad I went stupid simple. I just used still shots with my voice recorded over them using the mic in a webcam. Not ideal. If I really wanted to put some time and effort into this, I would have used a much better sound setup. I used Adobe's Visual Communicator product (originally created by Serious Magic). I really like this tool. You can make cool video very simply with it. With Google TV ads, you can have various length ads (15, 30, 60, etc) but they have to be exact. I tried uploading one that was l...

If you have been reading anything regarding the social media space over the last few years, you have probably heard of the 90/9/1 rule . It states that 90% of folks are just lurkers. They read what you put out and see what you have to say. Then 9% are there commenting and participating in some way. The last 1% are your core creators. They make the content and drive the conversations that are happening. But what about all the other content that you are creating or have at your disposal? How do you use that to reach the greatest total audience and connect them with the content that they are looking for? I see another 90/9/1 rule out there in terms of depth of the content. You can delve 1% into the depth of the topic by providing a tweet or short blog post. Then provide 9% depth by giving folks the 2 minute video interview with your speaker post-presentation or a longer magazine/newsletter article. Lastly, you will have your core, in-depth 90% content which may consist of presen...

In the end, it looks like your bid price does matter with Facebook CPC campaigns. If you haven't read my posts leading up to this one regarding my Facebook CPC vs. CPM ad campaigns, you can catch up here and here . I really wasn't sure what to think of my results, so I tried the CPC ad a second time to make sure it wasn't the day or an anomaly, and got the same results. So the next step was to change my bid. However, I did get a comment from Sue Anne that read: According to what I've been told, Facebook gives you less slots in the rotation on a CPC campaign vs. a CPM campaign. It doesn't actually matter what your bid price is on the CPC, it's still going to get less views. However, I went from $1.00 to $1.25, and boy did the results change. 81,094 impressions and 9 clicks (avg CPC of $1.11). At $1.00, I only saw about 5,000 impressions and no clicks. Based on my extremely scientific and flawless research, my recommendation is to go with CPC and bid a lit...

My Facebook Ad experiment has come to a close, with confusing results. I ran a CPC campaign on Monday and a CPM campaign on Tuesday. I used the same ad, the same hours, the same demo. The only difference was the CPM vs the CPC. I bid $0.50 for the CPM which was in the middle of Facebook's suggested bid. And I bid $1.00 max bid per click for the CPC ad, which was in the middle of the .81-1.20 range. I didn't get any clicks on Monday, so no money spent. The ad had 5,457 impressions. On Tuesday, I got 4 clicks on the ad that got 69,476 impressions and cost me $10. The numbers looked strange to me. Why did only 5500 people see the ad on Monday? I ran it again on Wednesday. 4,958 impressions, no clicks. I am very confused as to why so few people saw the ad. Wouldn't Facebook show it as much as possible until it got the 10 clicks I budgeted for? Or did someone just bid higher per click so they showed those ads more often and mine didn't get shown enough to get t...

As some of you know, I do a bit of freelance web design for small businesses. One of the hosts I have been using lately (I do like them!) is SuperGreenHosting.com . With your package, you get ad credits on Google, Facebook, Yahoo and MySpace. I decided to run a test using my Facebook ad credits. I will detail it here. After going through the options of putting in your link and text of the ad (I didn't include an image), you can select whether to pay per click or pay per impression. In my particular case, my target market based on age, demographics and interests was an estimated reach of 633,000+. The suggested bid price for each click was between $0.81 and $1.20 each. I entered a max bid of $1. I set the ad to run on Monday 5/24 from 5am - 10pm. I then created the same ad again, but selected the pay per impression model. The cost-per-thousand views (CPM) maximum I bid was $0.50. The suggested bid range was $0.36 - $0.52. This ad I scheduled to run on Tuesday the 25th at t...

Another month gone by without a blog post. I swear, it isn't because I don't have anything to say. It is that I am too busy to sit down and write about it. That is why Twitter and Facebook are great. Bite-size chunks of sharing. One of my little pleasure's is reading fellow Ohio U. alum Peter King's Monday Morning QB column on SI.com . He has a section every week called "10 things I think I think." Here is my version right now: 1. I still keep seeing boatloads (at least 5 a day, each way) of commercial vehicles without a website printed on them. Trust me, your URL is more valuable than your phone number. 2. If you say you don't have time for Twitter, Blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook, than you need to look at what you do spend your time on. I bet you do have at least 15 minutes a day to spend on them. And that time will reap rewards. 3. Good is the enemy of great. And moving slow/dragging your feet is the enemy of motivation. 4. Playing is fun. Fin...

I can't believe it has been a month since my last post, but then again, in that month I have moved, had a conference and had another child (ok, not me but my wife did). Needless to say, it has been busy. Plus our annual conference is 10 days away. Anyway... My move has given me the distinct pleasure of sitting/driving on I-66 in Virginia at rush hour. This has given me the opportunity to see many commercial vehicles on my commute. I am shocked at how many of them (vans, trucks, trailers, etc) have the company name and phone number, and that is it. No description. No website. I have also seen many with a tagline or description, but no website listed. I don't know about you, but the first thing I do when checking out a business is go to their website. I googled a few of these companies to see if maybe they just didn't have a website (shame on them), but most did. (There were a few that didn't, and I will be calling them to offer my freelance web design services.)...

Do you know the answer to this question? If not, you may want to stop every other project you have and find out. Because you can't exceed expectations (aka provide value) without first knowing what those expectations are. There was a great conversation on the weekly Twitter chat #assnchat (yes, we know, great name) about using social media as a customer service tool. Scroll through here to see the conversation. I won't rehash the whole thing here, but there was a part about using live chat as a tool, and if you did, members expecting it to be manned 24/7. Would your members expect that? I am currently taking a deep look at our website, but I have had to step back and dig deeper into my members expectations. Because if they are expecting updates once a week, that is different than daily updates. That difference might change my technology choices, CMS setup, navigation, etc. So before you go to far with everything you are doing, you may want to find out what the expecta...

Earlier this week, I had a small Twitter discussion with Kevin Holland ( @associationinc ) regarding aggregation as a value proposition. @associationinc - Deciding your role is to aggregate other people's value is like George Costanza wearing sweatpants. "You're telling the world, 'I give up.'" @cardcat - Interesting comment about aggregating. Don't you think it is a viable option for a small association who can't afford it? @associationinc - Nothng wrong with aggregating content as long as you don't perceive it to be your value proposition. There's no real future in it. @cardcat - Don't think it is THE value proposition, but I think it could be A value to members, a big value. @associationinc - A big value is something you offer that nobody else can or that u can do better. Aggregating content is easy, there4 unsustainable. @cardcat - True, it isn't sustainable. But I almost think if you don't act as an aggregator, you risk folks...

My friend Maddie Grant tweeted this post the other day about Social Media Certification. I remembered another 2 posts from this time last year ( here and here ). In Andy's post he says something that is the crux of it to me. There is no authority in Social Media Marketing, there is no standard. Instead of authority, what I think he meant to say was governing body. I bet these folks doing the certifications are trying to become the authority by offering them. But there is no recognized governing body. The second part is the most crucial. There is no standard. As many of the above posts and others have said, there is no one thing that will work for every company when it comes to social media. We all have different audiences, different technology, different goals, etc. However, I think there is one way to help narrow the field from the people who have been on board from square one (or two) versus those out to make a quick buck. There is a certain amount of objective data ...

Last night I saw a tweet from @CopyBlogger linking to this blog post about blogging basics. #1 was about the title! Further proof of its importance. Also, just after one day, that post is my most read since Sept of 2008.

Don't you wish all your blog posts could have that title, and the corresponding effect of everyone who sees it follows through? As I was digging through my Google Reader this morning, I realized how much I rely on the title (and first sentence or part of the first sentence) to help me decide whether or not to read more of the post. I have boatloads of unread posts in my reader and just can't get fully read each one. Granted, I have probably already read a number of them because I clicked through to it when a trusted source tweeted about the post. However, I know I am missing good content because the title and first sentence don't grab me or tell me what the post is really about. Therefore, I am making a resolution to do better with my title and first few words to make it better for my readers. In addition, if you have any tips on Blog Post Title creation, please share. I am all ears! PS - this is also a test to see if my page view numbers increase at all with this tit...

We are getting ready to buy a new house. Every room in the new place is that dull, off-white. So the topic of colors and patterns is constantly in the conversation at home. My wife keeps looking for samples and inspiration, and then I remembered this: http://kuler.adobe.com If you haven't been here, you have to go. It might waste a full day, but it is so worth it if you do any sort of web or marketing work and you need color palette help. Of course, it is also perfect if you are thinking of redecorating your house too. It helps you create color palettes based on a base color or off a photo. It lets you choose several options once you have your base selected. It even lets you manually adjust if you feel the need. In addition, people create and save their own palettes, so you have plenty to look at for ideas. Here is another one solely based on web photos, and it only gives you 2 options with all colors in Hex format. But it works if you need something quick and easy. http:...