Do You Poken?
Poken seems to have taken over the techie space as the next big thing in conferences and networking. Don’t know what a Poken is? Well, it’s basically a USB drive with a cartoon character for a cover. The drive has software installed on it that automatically connects to the Poken website when you plug it in. It also has a sensor on the hand that flashes when you “high 4” with another poken, effectively exchanging virtual contact information.
I first learned of this product at Affiliate Summit East 2009, thanks to Peter Shankman mentioning them in his keynote. It seemed like everyone wanted a Poken after that – and many people bought some from Peter before the conference was over. Peter has obviously identified these cute little virtual business cards as a significant advance in sharing contact information, a “game-changer”, even.
But are Poken really the wave of the future?
It depends who you are. If you travel and network a lot, they could be incredibly useful as they pick up popularity and more people are available for you to “high 4” with. Shelly Good-Cook says of the device, “I bought one a couple months and other than my twin sister, for whom I also bought one, I haven’t found anyone to “high five” mine with. I took it to a networking event I attended in Arlington, VA recently where most of the attendees were young, hip and computer savvy, but none of them had heard of it yet. I even met a reporter who covered that beat and it was new to her, so I gave her the scoop on it, hoping she covers it. They may have won a Tech Crunch Award in Europe, but they still have work to do in the U.S. before they get wide spread adoption. For me, this is like the early days of the fax machine. I have one but there isn’t much value in it until a lot more people get one. Most of the people I talked to about it at the networking event thought it was a great idea, although some of the men were less than thrilled with the limited design options. Most thought $20 was reasonable for the functionality although a few balked at the price point, stating it was much too high.”
Poken has responded to the cartoon complaints and come out with a more professional looking Poken, the Poken Pulse, that looks much closer to a traditional USB drive and boasts 2GB of space and traditional USB drive functionality in addition to the Poken networking features. At a higher price point, I actually expect more professionals will go with it over the cartoonish regular Poken as it does have that added functionality. Most of the feedback I get about Poken are from my contacts in the affiliate marketing community, and I wonder now that there have been a couple more conferences if they’ve gotten more use. Elizabeth Hannan said of her Poken, “I have had a experience with Poken at SXSW 09 where I was first introduced to Poken. It was incredibly helpful and made awkward introductions into easy conversations.”. I can definitely see how that is beneficial for those of us that are friendly but not incredibly extroverted.
Whether or not these are the wave of the future, time will tell. The buzz has seemed to died down in the last few months, but they’re not being tossed aside with that m100 Palm Pilot just yet. Do you Poken? Share your story!
Read MoreAffiliate Marketing Fanatics 17: Coming Soon – Black Friday!
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Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A Publisher (Mike Buechele) and an Affiliate Manager (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!
Well, it’s been awhile, hasn’t it? Schedules have been ca-razy lately and Mike & I just haven’t been able to get together to record. So, welcome back as stand in co-host Eric Nagel! We got back to our roots in talking strictly from the affiliate vs. affiliate manager discussion. We come in at a cool 42:50. In in this episode we discuss:
- The new Retweet function on Twitter – meh.
- Holiday affiliate contests
- Paulson Management Group’s “A Jingle for your Jangle”
- ShareASale’s Fourth Quarter Frenzy
- Increased communications from affiliate managers during the holidays
- Still more emphasis on Black Friday than Cyber Monday
- Happy Monday: The Importance of Mondays this Holiday
- Affiliates buying products through their own links
- Debate: Affiliates Buying Clickbank Products
We promise not to go this long again!
Read MoreVSEO – Ranking Factors Behind YouTube
Guest Post By Ryan Sammy.
Everyone knows the importance of video marketing as well as the tremendous potential YouTube offers in creating a strong presence for your brand and company image. However, does everybody know how to use YouTube optimally to gain the desired advantage and leverage for your videos and thereby your company?
Just creating a good video of your company, or a video containing information intended for your target customers and uploading onto YouTube is not enough to get the desired results. There are many ranking factors behind YouTube that you should know if you want your video to score high marks in the popularity charts. Good VSEO takes into account these ranking factors to help build a good brand image and enhance the reputation of your company.
Apart from creating quality video content that information seekers will be willing to watch, there are other important factors that you can use to optimize your videos for YouTube and get higher rankings in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). The first and foremost is not to be just a passerby, but a player. Create a presence in the YouTube community for yourself. Listen to others and be heard. The rankings on YouTube depend on various factors, just as the factors behind organic search results on Google or any other search engine. YouTube in itself is a major search engine now, and it adheres to its own algorithmic parameters to decide rankings.
YouTube ranks videos that are watched most number of times rank very high on its SERPs. So you need to make videos that have a strong viral capability to bring in more viewers for your videos. The more people your videos can bring in to watch, the higher in rankings your video climbs. Now, this does not mean that by simply uploading a video that will be watched by many people can get you top spot in rankings; the videos have to be acceptable and engaging to make people vote for the videos. The more times your videos get viewer votes; the higher the chances of you getting top billings in the rankings! Another factor that could push your videos up is the number of times your videos are bookmarked for attention. These are the basic factors that can help your videos to get maximum visibility, and your attention when making videos should be to make them in such a way that they satisfy all the conditions stated above.
Having good titles, meta-descriptions, tags, comments, flagging, shares, comments, channel views, subscribers, inbound links, and latency do matter, but if you stick to the ground rules and include some, or all the above factors, there is no reason why your videos should lag behind. That said, being an active member of the community will help tremendously, and using video analytics such as “YouTube Insight” and “TubeMogul” should help make your videos better and to stay constantly updated on developments. Make good videos and stay engaged; that should drive you to the top spot very soon.
Read MoreAffiliate Marketing Fanatics 16: Wade Tonkin & Blog World Expo Guilt
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Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A Publisher (Mike Buechele) and an Affiliate Manager (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!
This week we are FINALLY joined by Wade Tonkin of GTO Management and the man behind the Christian Affiliate Marketers Association. We had a fine conversation, accidentally recorded in Mono instead of Stereo since I forgot to switch the defaults on this new computer. I think the sound quality is good though, but welcome any feedback. Since we’re all busy people, I opted for no intro music this week and we come in at a sultry 34:25. In in this episode we discuss:
- Who Wade is, i.e. a partner at GTO Management
- Blog World Expo and their affiliate program (which GTO Management professionally manages)
- The events put on by and the Christian Affiliate Marketing Association
- SponsoredTweets and how that’s going to Mike & Trisha
Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 15: Be My Yoko Ono
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Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A Publisher (Mike Buechele) and an Affiliate Manager (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!
We kept it short & sweet this week, but hey! We did two weeks in a row! YES… I’m patting us on the back for that. We talked briefly about some things that have been going on in the industry this week, and had a short & sweet conversation with limited tangents. And almost no discussion of Twitter, other than a third party service mention. Since it was so short I messed with outro music too, which brought us to a pleasantly succinct 19:30. In in this episode we discuss:
- The fantastic fill in job Eric Nagel did last week.
- Affiliate Day came & went on September 14th.
- Sponsored Tweets picked up their traffic
- CJU, despite neither of us going.
- How cool it is when industry celebs remember you!
- Halloween & Fall promotions are upon us!
- Fantasy Football with Jason Rubacky and Shawn Collins… and a brief girl’s guide to how scoring works.
Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 14: Eric Nagel in the House
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A Publisher (Mike Buechele) and an Affiliate Manager (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!
Once again, our schedules just were not fated to correspond this week. So we enlisted the help of good ol’ Eric Nagel, the king of awesome business cards, to co-host with me. Watch out Mike – Eric may give you a run for your money! It was a good conversation, a bit more focused than some. And in Eric’s honor – no intro music! It’s a short & sweet episode coming in at 42:30. In in this episode we discuss:
- CJ Keyword Links expiring – how will this affect affiliates?
- Affiliate Day on Monday September 14th
- Twitter changed it’s Terms of Service, and strangely announced it via email.
- WordPress getting hacked last week and some discussion of upgrading WordPress, plugins, and WordPress MU.
- CJU, ShareASale ThinkTank, Affiliate Summit West, Affiliate Convention all on the West Coast – no love for East Coast!
- The phenomenon of Poken, custom logo Poken, and more business-like Poken coming soon.
