Jordy Blog

Dwight Schrute on Google Friend Connect

When I first read about Google Friend Connect, an upcoming service that will allow website owners to easily add social network functionality to their own websites, I immediately thought of these lines from NBC’s “The Office”:

Dwight: Why am I being forced to come in tomorrow and pretend that a website made sales that I made?
Ryan: This is a temporary measure to increase the legitimacy of the site.
Stanley: I don’t like when my clients call me to help them use the website, I’m not seeing commissions on that.
Ryan: I hear you Stanley, that is a great observation. Problems like that will not happen when we launch Dunder Mifflin Infinity 2 point O.
Stanley: When will that be?
Ryan: TBD. Phyllis?
Phyllis: Did the police solve the problem with the…
Ryan: Yes, yes they did, yes they did.
Ryan: Yes, the social networking feature of the Dunder Mifflin Infinity website was infiltrated by sexual predators.
Dwight: I don’t understand why our website has to have social networking at all.
Jim: Yeah, I actually have to agree with Dwight on that one.
Ryan: It’s all about creating a one stop shop consumer experience, alright? You’re chatting with your friends, you’re talking about the latest music, about the election; all of it is happening in our virtual paper store.
Jim: And then an older gentleman asked you “Boxers or briefs?”
Creed: I don’t get the big fuss here, I like the site.
Kelly: If I’d have created a website with as many problems, I’d kill myself.
Ryan: Do you have a question Kelly?
Kelly: Yeah I have a lot of questions. Number one, how dare you?
Michael: [slow clapping] Ryan has done a very good job, and I am not applauding sarcastically. Think about it, a month ago nobody would go on this site because we were worried about getting molested, or losing our identity, having it stolen. But now, at a time TBD, all of the problems will be in the past. Ya done good kid, ya done good.
– Source: OfficeQuotes.net

I thought all this was pretty funny, but the ability to drop social features onto your website with little more than some pasting of JavaScript might just prove us all wrong.  :)

Example:

3 of your friends liked SemiGloss Oxford White Cardstock #80.  Click here to get new friends!

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Geni Is Sweet Viral Marketing

Today’s my little brother Aaron’s birthday, a point that had eluded me until Geni notified me via email:

Dear Jordan Gunderson,

Aaron Gunderson, your brother, has a birthday today.

Click the link below to enter a birthday greeting for Aaron and we’ll deliver it today.

- The Geni Team

Short, simple, useful, and driven by info that I didn’t enter myself.  It was effective: I went to the site (which I’ve been dragging my butt on for months), updated some data, check out some of the features, etc.  Through one simple 4-line email that was pertinent to me, I got involved in their product and will continue to play with it.  Contrast that to the page after page of useless drivel you receive from most marketers (read “spammers”) and you’ll see why permission marketing really is the way of the future.

BTW, I saw Seth Godin speak in SLC yesterday, and I was impressed.  Since it’s already been covered extensively in the Utah blogosphere I’ll refrain from to much comment, but I just wanted to thank Phil, Ash, and everyone else for making it happen.  You guys rule!

Spread Firefox Plugin for WordPress

Those of you who are visiting my site in IE will notice my new alert, generated by the Spread Firefox Plugin for WordPress. Quoth the alert: “Internet Explorer sucks. Jordy recommends Firefox (a free open-source alternative) so your browsing will suck no more forever. Click here to learn more or download.”

It’s a little spammy but it gets my point across. Besides, IE users love spam.

I really do love the Firefox browser and wish more people used it. It’ll be fun to track whether my free advertising helps out any. In some future post I’ll mention why I love Firefox instead of pontificating. Until then, just try it out. It’s free and doesn’t suck. :)

SSS PageRank

The PageRank for Software for Starving Students (via Google’s toolbar) went clear from 0 to 5 with the latest data update. That’s pretty indicative of the almost immediate success the project has enjoyed. The site has only been up since the very end of December but has had some really incredible growth. Just check out the Alexa traffic:

As the project’s volunteer marketing director, I’ve had a valuable lesson cemented in my mind. SoftwareFor had practically no link recruitment; we just focused on making a really cool (free) product. We included top-of-the-line open source programs and gave it a sleek GUI. About the only “marketing” involved me staying up all night and polishing up some very good quotable text for the webpages. In other words, we focused almost exclusively on making a cool product –which (after all) is what the market wants.

The project got almost 1000 Diggs (thus the traffic spike) because it was cool. People from all over the world linked to it because it was useful to them, not because a bunch of suits spent a lot of money trying to jam it down their throats. Our traffic spiked and our PageRank jumped because we provided a service that people legitimately wanted.

Conclusion: The market doesn’t care how much you spend on it. Instead it wants to know what you can do for it. If what you offer is cool, then your “customers” will market your product for you. A cool product (or service) almost sells itself.

Although link recruitment (for SEO purposes) and reaching your market are important, many people and companies take the wrong approach. It’s not about beating the system via comment spam, round-the-clock commercials, or anything else. It’s the classic standoff of “Push vs Pull”, and with today’s technological sounding boards, “pull” always wins.

The best way to market your products is to give the market what it wants. In other words, just be cool. Be remarkable, and people will remark.