No legalese anywhere–just a straightforward and slightly cranky description of the kinds of comments that add value to a blog posting and the kind that will probably get deleted. Read the new comment policy here.

Let me know what you think in the comment below.

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So, my post on my frustration at finding someone to service my snowblower has generated a fair amount of traffic and is certainly my most commented-upon post since I added the blog. This is exciting for the most part, but has introduced a new problem: spam comments.

I imagine I should be flattered and happy that my blog here is seen has having enough traffic and value that it’s worth it to some folks to drop a spam comment in an effort to boost the profile of their own site. So, um, yay, me. I guess. But it’s annoying because I have to go through and clean things up, genuine readers have to wade through the junk (if they stick around), and it makes me feel taken advantage of. You see, spammers are only dropping comments here because I have rel=dofollow active on the site, which means when you add your website URL to your comment Google will follow the link and count that in your favor when evaluating the Pagerank/significance/etc of your site. This is something I do because I appreciate folks giving my posts their time and attention and it’s a small way to pay them back.

But notice something there: I do it because I appreciate folks giving my posts their time and attention. Dropping a quick comment just to gather some link juice for your own blog does not count. So what to do?

Dealing with comment spammers

Well, the toughest step can be figuring out who the actual spammers are. Sometimes it’s easy: the post is full of URLs and gibberish-classic spambot behavior. Other times the spam is a bit more subtle: The comment is clearly written by a person, and sounds like they read what was written, but the comment lacks specifics and doesn’t really say anything beyond, “Nice post–keep up the good work!” But these comments are often betrayed by included URLs that point right back to some sales site, or the entered email is some weird collection of letters. A clear indicator to me: You try to tell me your name is Lose Weight Today or some BS like that. Sorry, no.

A new comment policy

…is being worked out. In the meantime, I’m going to go through old comments and delete the ones that fail my sniff test (if it smells like spam, it’s spam). My apologies in advance if a delete a comment that you made in earnest. I’m actually going to be pretty generous on this round since I’m only now laying down some ground rules–though I should have known better and had these place long ago. Ah, well.

I’ll probably end up implementing captchas or the like. They’re a pain, I know, but not as much of one as something like going through a whole double-opt-in registration process. I just want to put in a small enough barrier that only someone who is really interested in contributing to the conversation will go through it.

Or I might just turn off dofollow.

If anyone has any better ideas, let me know in the comments. And be real about it.

Update Okay, I think I’ll leave all the comments in place because some of them make me laugh and some of them are glaring examples of how not to leave a comment on my blog. For example, no one is named Free Web Directory. So some folks are getting a free ride with the link juice for now, but, again, I intend to be more rigorous in the future.

Picture by f_mafra

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I’ve been seeing a lot of blog and Twitter traffic about a company called Uprinting.com lately. Lots of folks have been doing reviews and offering giveaways, and I’ve been wondering what the deal is. Now I know, and it’s a great example of how a company can market itself and go after business.

I got an email the other day from a rep at Uprinting.com who said they’d noticed I’d commented on another blog post about them, and would I be interested in some free cards in exchange for a review or giveaway? Sure!

Note: This is the disclaimer part

I am going to take them up on their offer, and I want to make clear that I am receiving compensation (the free cards) from this company for posting about them. Here’s why I’m okay with this:

1. Bloggers and other business folks whose opinions I trust have done this and have had a postive experience already, so why not? I mean, hey, free business cards!
2. If the experience or the cards suck, I’ll tell you. I won’t sweep any problems under the rug and won’t hesitate to warn you off if it’s a bad experience. I can maintain my integrity even when freebies are involved.

This is the exciting part!

So I really hope this work out as well for as it has for others I’m familiar with. As some of you have noticed, I’m in the process of rebranding and mixing up some of the services I offer, and I need new cards anyway. This promotion is well timed.

What? That’s not very exciting? How’s this: If it turns out be a great experience–which, again, I expect it to–here’s what’s in it for you: Uprinting.com will sponsor a business card giveaway right here on my very own site. I’m still hashing out the details of how that’ll work and what the criteria to win will be, but I will soon. Stay tuned to learn how you might get a stack of free business cards of your very own! Check back often, or subscribe to the feed.

Take care!

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A recent post by Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz makes a strong and necessary statement: Your sales don’t need to slump during an economic downturn as long as you adjust your marketing. In her post, she says:

(Example: In economic boom times, I position my products and services as a way to attain freedom. Sure, everybody’s making money, but are they free? In economic down times, I position my products and services as a way to attain security. Yeah, running your own IttyBiz might seem risky, but isn’t the alternative a hell of a lot riskier? Same stuff. Different angle. Sales are steady.)

Right before that, she says:

Think about what’s ALREADY important to them and piggyback off that.
Money. Time. Security. Freedom. Comfort. Self-esteem. Fame. Power. Health. Family.

Which brings me to the title of today’s post.

Better marketing through science

Specifically, a bit of science known as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Now the title of today’s post assumes Naomi doesn’t know about Maslow, which is probably not true. But otherwise the title doesn’t work. And I love that title. But if you’re in marketing and you’re not familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, you’re making your own job a lot harder. Go learn about it. Right now. I’ll wait. Okay, now you know that Maslow’s theory is the secret weapon in figuring out how to market anything to anyone in any economy. Find out where your customers and leads are on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and explain how your product or service will meet those needs. This will help your sales.

Consider different marketing approaches you’ve seen over the years. There’s a reason sex sells (Physiology–as basic as needs get). Luxury goods aim high (Esteem)–and aren’t doing too well right now. Apple…Well, Apple generally tends to Think Different and aims right for the top and Self-Actualization, but a lot of recent ads reinforce the Safety of switching to Mac because you’ll still be able to run your Windows apps if you need to.

Bush historically pursued the Safety needs and did okay in elections and getting his way in Congress–at least early on. In the most recent campaign, Obama covered all levels of the pyramid simultaneously, reaching lots of people where they are simultaneously, and crushed.

Actually, Naomi is all over Maslow

I didn’t ask, but I’d bet real money she is. Just look at her list. It could have been pulled right off the pyramid, and her post describes almost exactly how to use it. In good times, she focuses up the pyramid; tighter times, lower down.

Good marketing is not about your product, its about your customers. Research your target market, find out what it is they need–not want, need–right now, and tell them how you can meet that need. It really is that easy.

Maslow diagram from the Wikipedia.
Five points if you get the post’s title’s reference.

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I must say I felt much better after getting that recorded. Rants can be somewhat cathartic.

So, anybody know a good snowblower repair place in the Kalamazoo, Michigan area?

UPDATE It’s funny, but today–the day after I posted this rant–the blog iMedia Connection has published an article about this very topic–with some numbers to back it up. It’s called “Yellow Pages loses fans to search-engine enthusiasts” and you should check it out at http://www.imediaconnection.com/news/21680.asp .

UPDATE 2 Comments closed on this post because it looks like some folks are exploiting my dofollow comment policy without really adding to the conversation. (Your folks named you Foreclosure Plan? Really? Yeah, didn’t think so.) I talk more about this in a newer post on establishing a comments policy.

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Intro for the New Year from Matt Tuley on Vimeo

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The month has more significance for me this year than in years previous. I recently lost an aunt to breast cancer, and a very dear friend of mine is fighting it. From the Center for Disease Control:

In 2004 (the most recent year numbers are available),
* 186,772 women and 1,815 men were diagnosed with breast cancer*†
* 40,954 women and 362 men died from breast cancer*†

That’s just too many people taken too soon. Let’s do something about it. Learn more about breast cancer and the effort to fight it at The National Breast Cancer Institute’s website. If you have a blog, consider going Pink for October.

Let’s put an end to this.

†Source: U.S. Cancer Statistics Working Group. United States Cancer Statistics: 2004 Incidence and Mortality. Atlanta (GA): Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and National Cancer Institute; 2007.

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Commenting on a problem I had with Excel’s REPT() function, my buddy Charles pointed out this is the result of the sometimes-weird world of floating point math in computer operations. And, yeah, I know things can sometimes get wonky when floating point math shows up and can require special handling. But, come one. That problem shouldn’t show up if I type =REPT(”|”, D7) (where D7 holds the value 6) instead of REPT(”|”, 6) should it?

Well, let’s see. Let’s have REPT to look at a cell holding a forced integer. The INT() function does this. INT(6) force Excel to treat the 6 as an integer, for example.

Forcing REPT to handle integers

I modified the spreadsheet to have a new column that took all the values I entered directly and turn them into integers with the INT() function, then told the REPT() function to use those for the repeat values. Here’s what I got (old version on top, new version on bottom):

Well, whaddya know? Even if the value contains a simple, non-calculated number, it might not look like that number to REPT(). That’s pretty lame.

I tried it with the original table, where the repeat values are calculated by dividing the value to plot by 0.1 to get a whole number, but explicitly turned them into integers before pointing REPT() to them. This gave:

Yep. That’s what we want. Note: I couldn’t save a step by using REPT(”|”, INT(Bn/0.1)). I tried, but Excel did not evaluate the INT() function within the REPT() function. Oddly, it did not return an error message, either. It just left the “graphing” cells blank.

What have we learned?

Two lessons:

1. Follow a hunch instead of just dismissing it because its truth would be lame.
   Thanks, Charles, for forcing me to look at the issue more closely.
2. REPT() needs integers.
   Even if it looks like you’re giving it an integer, under the hood it might not be and weird number handling could lead to problems. INT() is your friend.

I hope you found this useful! If so, send it along, and consider subscribing to the feed. Take care!

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My last post was July 29? Oh, that’s not good. Not good at all. What happened?

Well, it goes back to the post about the necessity of using a graph wherein I promised to show a nifty way to generate simple bar charts on the fly in Excel. The problem is, I think I discovered a bug in Excel. I was stymied at just how I wanted to approach this, and it derailed the whole blog.

Oops. Sorry.

The Excel REPT bug

Let me say at the start that I’ve only seen this behavior in my copy of Excel, which is v. X for Mac. I can’t speak to other versions–which was part of the problem. I wanted to thoroughly address the issue. But it was becoming abundantly clear I wouldn’t be doing a thorough investigation any time soon, so here’s what I do know.

Excel features a nifty command called REPT. The command “=REPT(”|”,number_of_reps)” will type out the specified character (in this case, the vertical bar | ) however many times is stated in number_of_reps. So =REPT(”|”,6) should give ||||||.

By using the command =REPT(”|”,Dn), where Dn would be a cell in the D column, such as D4 or D23, the number of bars should be whatever number appears in that cell. And here’s where I found the problem. Look at this screengrab:

The REPT columns should plot the death rates given in column B. REPT only works with integers, so in the top graph I divide the column B values by point one to make them whole numbers. Once I saw the problem, in the the bottom graph I have it plot strict integers (typed by hand) from column D. Both graphs are flawed. Do you see the problem?

The death rate of 0.6 should be graphed with six bars ( |||||| ), and the death rate of 1.4 should be graphed with 14 bars ( |||||||||||||| ). Both are a bar short.

This is the kind of thing that drives me crazy, and that can derail a blog until I track down the problem. But I haven’t had time to do that, and it was becoming clear I needed to move forward here.

So that’s what I’ve got.

What’s your experience?

Anybody have any idea what’s going on here? Please share your insights in the comments. And if you use a different version of Excel (Mac or Windows)–or even the same version of Excel–I’d love to know if you experience the same problem. Let me know in the comments!

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You know how websites launch these days with a little “beta” badge stuck somewhere to indicate they’re still working out the kinks? Usually it’s a cop-out or an affectation. (I mean, come on, Google. Gmail is, what, 4 years old and still in beta?) Cuil really would’ve helped themselves with a beta release. As it is, they’ve launched with a seemingly finished product that is crashing and burning.

Okay, maybe I jumped the gun a bit on the “education technology copywriter” search, because some results are seeding now. None of them are for copywriters specializing in education technology (at least, not on the first page), but there are some results.

I went 20 pages in on Cuil results on my name…

…and was underwhelmed with what I found.

Cuil found lots of old Usenet posts, lots of posts to forums dating from the early 90s, lots of Twitter users who follow me, and lots of my comments on others’ blogs. And as I went in the 20 pages, I saw many of these results were repeated over the pages.

Now, how many of those results on those 20 pages were for this blog, or any of the pages here on my site?

None.

Okay, this page doesn’t have the highest Google pagerank. I’ll grant that. Maybe I just don’t use my own name around here enough. I don’t know. But if someone searching for me can’t find my own website in 20 pages on a search engine, something isn’t working right.

(In contrast, when searching Google for my own name, I am 9.5 of the first 10 results (I shared one with other Matt Tuleys in this country. Who knew?))

Maybe next timel

I wanted to like this new Google alternative from former Googlers, but I just can’t. It just doesn’t work that well. Will they be able to fix it and bring it up to speed? Maybe, but they’ve got a lot of negative press and word-of-mouth to overcome now, so it will be tough.

Oh, well.

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