Not only was it a tough year for the Colts, it was a tough year for Super Bowl advertising. I was watching Twitter during the Super Bowl and there was a ton of criticism on ‘pantless’ juvenile commercials. AdAge’s Bob Garfield does a great wrap up of Super Bowl advertising this year (click through if you don’t see the video):
The winners that Bob lists:
I wrote another post on how to track multiple authors in WordPress with Google Analytics once before, but got it wrong! Outside the WordPress Loop, you’re unable to capture the author names so the code did not work.
Sorry for the fail.
I’ve done some additional digging and found out how to do it smarter with multiple Google Analytics profiles. (Quite honestly – this is when you come to love professional analytics packages like Webtrends!)
The first step is to add an additional profile to your current domain. This is an option that most people aren’t familiar with but works perfectly for this type of scenario.
You’ll want to only measure page views tracked by authors in this profile, so add a filter for the subdirectory /author/. One note on this – I had to make “that contain” as the operator. Google’s instructions call for a ^ before the folder. In fact, you can’t write an ^ into the field!
You won’t want to actually track all the extra pageviews by author in your original Profile, so add a filter to your original profile to exclude the subdirectory /by-author/.
Within your existing Google Analytics tracking and below your current trackPageView line, add the following loop in your footer theme file: <?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
var authorTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxxxx-x");
authorTracker._trackPageview("/by-author/<? echo the_author(); ?>");
<?php endwhile; else: ?>
<?php endif; ?>
This will capture all of your tracking, by author, in a second profile for your domain. By excluding this tracking from your primary profile, you don’t add additional unnecessary pageviews. Keep in mind that if you have a home page with 6 posts, you’ll track 6 pageviews with this code – one for each post, tracked by author.
If you’ve accomplished this in a different way, I’m open to additional ways to track the author information! Since my Adsense revenue is associated with the profile, I can even see which authors are generating the most ad revenue 
.
While doing some research on the book, I happened across this wonderful little goldmine from Shift Communications PR squared blog… a Top 10 Social Media Guidelines. They put it out there and require no attribution whatsoever for commercial use.
TOP 10 GUIDELINES FOR SOCIAL MEDIA PARTICIPATION AT (COMPANY)
These guidelines apply to (COMPANY) employees or contractors who create or contribute to blogs, wikis, social networks, virtual worlds, or any other kind of Social Media. Whether you log into Twitter, Yelp, Wikipedia, MySpace or Facebook pages, or comment on online media stories — these guidelines are for you.
While all (COMPANY) employees are welcome to participate in Social Media, we expect everyone who participates in online commentary to understand and to follow these simple but important guidelines. These rules might sound strict and contain a bit of legal-sounding jargon but please keep in mind that our overall goal is simple: to participate online in a respectful, relevant way that protects our reputation and of course follows the letter and spirit of the law.
- Be transparent and state that you work at (COMPANY). Your honesty will be noted in the Social Media environment. If you are writing about (COMPANY) or a competitor, use your real name, identify that you work for (COMPANY), and be clear about your role. If you have a vested interest in what you are discussing, be the first to say so.
- Never represent yourself or (COMPANY) in a false or misleading way. All statements must be true and not misleading; all claims must be substantiated.
- Post meaningful, respectful comments — in other words, please, no spam and no remarks that are off-topic or offensive.
- Use common sense and common courtesy: for example, it’s best to ask permission to publish or report on conversations that are meant to be private or internal to (COMPANY). Make sure your efforts to be transparent don’t violate (COMPANY)’s privacy, confidentiality, and legal guidelines for external commercial speech.
- Stick to your area of expertise and do feel free to provide unique, individual perspectives on non-confidential activities at (COMPANY).
- When disagreeing with others’ opinions, keep it appropriate and polite. If you find yourself in a situation online that looks as if it’s becoming antagonistic, do not get overly defensive and do not disengage from the conversation abruptly: feel free to ask the PR Director for advice and/or to disengage from the dialogue in a polite manner that reflects well on (COMPANY).
- If you want to write about the competition, make sure you behave diplomatically, have the facts straight and that you have the appropriate permissions.
- Please never comment on anything related to legal matters, litigation, or any parties (COMPANY) may be in litigation with.
- Never participate in Social Media when the topic being discussed may be considered a crisis situation. Even anonymous comments may be traced back to your or (COMPANY)’s IP address. Refer all Social Media activity around crisis topics to PR and/or Legal Affairs Director.
- Be smart about protecting yourself, your privacy, and (COMPANY)’s confidential information. What you publish is widely accessible and will be around for a long time, so consider the content carefully. Google has a long memory.
NOTE: Mainstream media inquiries must be referred to the Director of Public Relations.
People who know me know that I can be a bit of a grammar and punctuation geek. While I won’t go so far as to publicly correct people (I just berate them privately), I have been known to edit signs that contain misspelled words, misplaced apostrophes, and generally egregious errors.
So, needless to say, I always try to make sure my writing is up to grammatical snuff.
“Even on blogs?”
Yes, even on blogs.
“But blogs are supposed to be informal and conversational.”
Not as much as you might think. There are more businesses embracing blogging, and they’re trying to project an image of trust and reliability. And believe it or not, customers will judge an entire corporation’s ability to do even its most basic core mission on the grammar and spelling of one low-level PR flunky.
“Oh my God, you dangled a participle! We will no longer buy your products again!”
Don’t believe me? Pay close attention to the comments on any political blog during the presidential elections.
While you don’t need to placate those kinds of people (they need to be sedated instead), you do need to project an image of competence and professionalism. And that means you need to spell words correctly, and use proper grammar and punctuation.
I will occasionally send Doug a DM about some misplaced apostrophe or a misspelled word in one of his Marketing Technology posts (which in hindsight is probably why I’m being punished I was asked to write this article).
There are a lot of grammatical errors that, if you make them, frankly make you look dumb (Copyblogger’s words, not mine). Things like its vs. it’s and you’re vs. your are errors that you should know better than to make.
A lot of people will say that grammar and spelling on blogs just aren’t important. That we’re supposed to be informal and laid back, and that it just doesn’t matter anymore.
That’s fine if you’re writing a personal blog about your own life, and that you’re only expecting a few friends to read. You can be as informal as you want, make errors to your heart’s desire, and even fill your posts with gratuitous-yet-hilarious swearing. (Looking at you, The Bloggess.)
But if you’re talking about your business, your corporation, or your industry, you need to keep everything as clean and error-free as possible.
It’s not a sin if you make a mistake. Many’s the time I’ve made errors on my blog posts, especially ones where I talk about the importance of good grammar and punctuation. But I can always go back and clean it up. That’s the great thing about blogging: nothing is permanent, like a magazine or brochure. It’s a static, living document. Event the posts that are three years old.
So if you make an error or two, don’t despair. Have someone you trust look them over and give you honest feedback. Then go back and fix whatever you missed during your first couple rounds of editing.
Because rightly or wrongly, the nitpickers are out there. And they’re coming for you.
Dear AT&T,
I’m already a customer of yours. I have both home phone and DSL through you (previously SBC). I like the service but wish to upgrade the DSL as well as take advantage of the great TV service you have. You see, my apartment only offers a basic package and I’d like to upgrade.
For the last couple years, you’ve sent some incredibly enticing direct mail requesting that I upgrade. I get them about once a month addressed properly to my apartment. One month you even sent a full color book that described all of the packages for both DSL and Television. You got me… I’m sold! I need to upgrade to U-Verse to see the Colts win on Sunday in all their splendid glory.
This is what you show me… and yes, I am ready!
So, I visit AT&T.com and click on the Upgrade Now button. Doh! First I have to check for availability. I know it’s available, though, because my neighbor in #1324 had the service for over a year (he moved out). That’s on the third story… I’m on the second story. So, I submit my address and phone number…
Service Not Available.
My first question, Dear AT&T, is why would you send advertisements to my address for the last year asking that I upgrade to your service if it’s truly not available (which I know is not true). You’ve spent quite a bit of money on this constant barrage of direct mail. …
Oh well… I decide to take another route. I click on the Chat Online Now service on your page. I’m in queue with 15 customers waiting. I think you can drop the Now. I clicked close on the window and decide to call instead. I click Contact Us… thankfully you have the phone numbers available.
The phone answers with an automated voice and asks me to enter my account phone number. I do. It then asks me what I’d like to do, I carefully say “Get U-Verse” thinking “U-Verse” is a pretty good sound to catch on. No go… “I’m sorry, I don’t understand your request.” Now I’m getting a little bit frustrated. “Upgrade to U-Verse”… that works.
The system tells me that I can’t upgrade, I owe some kind of back balance. So, I pay it over the phone by credit card by typing in all my numbers. Curious why you didn’t tell me this on the web page where I logged in and requested the service.
Anyways, I’m connected with a rep, Shannah, and she’s fantastic. We have some small talk about The Colts beating the Saints this weekend. She tells me her husband is a Bears fan. I ask, “Are they still in the NFL?”. She got a chuckle out of that. She tells me her system says it’s not available either. I tell her that my neighbor had it and she asks their address. I have to run out of the apartment, up the stairs, and get the number. I run back down and tell her #1324.
She continues and thinks she’s making progress. I’m pretty excited. Then the call is dropped.
No one calls back… I guess the system didn’t track my number and I don’t have a means of getting a hold of Shannah now to continue the pursuit. I tried dialing through to the operator a second time but now there was a wait again.
So… I visit the website again and decide to write an email. I click Contact Us on the bottom of the page and type “Upgrade to U-Verse” in the field that’s available. I click submit and the page reloads with a couple e-mail options below. I click the first e-mail option… and instead of an email address or form, I’m presented with a link back to the U-Verse web site. That’s the site I was already at.
It makes me curious if you’ve ever done user-testing with your own site to find out how easy or difficult it might be for your customers to utilize your online services. I wonder how many hundreds or thousands of other customers are willing to pay more and become more valuable customers to your organization – but can’t.
There you have it, AT&T. I’m a (previously) happy customer who wishes to upgrade their account. I’ve paid my bills, I’ve got money, and you’ve been marketing to me to do it for a couple years. You really do want me to upgrade, right? If you do, your web site isn’t optimized, your online chat isn’t keeping up, your system isn’t accurate, and your phone system (ironically) may have dropped my call.
I’m ready when you are.
Obviously, that’s not today.
Thanks!
Douglas Karr
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