Organize Gmail and Keep it Under Control with ActiveInbox

When it comes to organizing my Gmail inbox, I fail horribly. Though I do use a service called OtherInbox to organize my messages, it still does not stop me from letting my messages pile up for days, even weeks. Right now I feel like there’s no hope for it, so I was pretty excited to come across ActiveInbox. It claims to “help you clean out your inbox, build stronger relationships, get work done faster and to never let you forget an important email.” I am currently using it with the Google Chrome browser, but it can also be used with Firefox. You simply need to install a plugin to get it working.

So, ActiveInbox “creates Status labels in Gmail that help you turn emails into tasks.” The labels that you can choose from (to begin with) are pictured below. You will be able to add or remove labels once you finish setting it up.

Once installed. You will have a new widget on the left sidebar of Gmail. There will also be more option menus (pictured below) for each email message. You will be able to choose a status and category, plus archive any email that you’re done with.

The status corresponds with the labels you picked (pictured above). Emails with a status will then be added to the “To Do” tab in your sidebar. The category menu lets you add the message to your any labels that you’ve already created within Gmail

With the ability to add statuses to your emails, you can quickly go through all of them, label them and have them out of your actual inbox. You can then access them from the “To Do” section whenever you have the chance.

As far as the other sections, I’ll briefly describe them below.

• Projects: “Group emails into projects and sub-projects to make them easy to retrieve and to respond to the continuous demands of your day.”
• Contexts: View emails that require an action (such as call, respond, chat). You can create context labels and apply them to emails.
• References: “Reference labels identify an email as a type of resource for easier retrieval.”
• Old: Move old labels that are no longer used here.
• Labels: This is where you can view any Gmail labels that you’ve created.

Each label that you click on, in any of the areas, will open up all emails with just that label.

There’s really no way I can go into every detail about ActiveInbox; it really has a lot of features and is a bit complex. Honestly, I find it pretty confusing and overwhelming. If you’re a busy person like me, you may not have the time to even deal with ActiveInbox.

I’m sure you could achieve what they’re doing by simply using the Gmail label system, and it will be less confusing. Plus there is also the OtherInbox Organizer, which I currently use and feel does a better job of organizing your inbox — and don’t forget about Gmail’s new priority inbox feature.

There are currently two types of account: ActiveInbox Free and ActiveInbox Plus. The paid account is currently $24.95/year (was $49.95). Not sure how long this sale will last but you may want to act now if this is something that you think is beneficial. You can see the differences between the two types of accounts here.

To learn more, check out their Getting Started Guide.

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Affiliate Marketing Goes Social

The folks at Whale Shark Media were kind enough to invite me to join the esteemed Dr. Kate Niederhoffer in engaging some of their partners around how to get the most out of social media.  This sounds like an average assignment right up until the moment that I tell you Whale Shark Media is “rollup” of affiliate sites like CheapStingyBargains, Deals.com and CouponShare and that everyone in the room was an affiliate channel manager in many cases not on their brand’s “social team”.   Not your typical day at the office, but who doesn’t love a challenge?

When I last touched affiliate marketing (providing special, limited time deals to coupon aggregators), it was a 100% siloed channel that the brand never pointed to for fear of cannibalizing their own channels.  This is actually very similar brick & mortar strategies of forcing outlet malls 20+ miles out of cities to not hurt the sales of their full-priced stalwarts.  Additionally, it was 100% transactional - no conversation or insights beyond what triggered transactions.

In preparation for today, I learned that social media has forever changed what it means to build a relationships with a brands deal seekers (who are not necessarily the same as your brand fans).   While there is a whole spectrum of approaches, Kate & I summed them up as follows:

Branded, but Separate: Some brands choose to host separate, branded presences laser-focused on deals.  Dell hosts both a separate “Dell Deals” Facebook fan page for limited-time deals on new systems and  @delloutlet for deals on refurbished equipment that rarely interact with the rest of their social footprint.  Similarly Gap has set up a separate @gapoutlet handle and Facebook fan page for the Gap Outlet brand.  These have the opportunity to not just spew deals, but create content about what their brands deal-seekers potentially care about - “promotions, ideas from our stylists and budget-wise tips” - even if that differs from the motivations of the rest of their buying audience.

Integrated with Primary Brand Presence: Retailer Best Buy has both @BestBuy and @BestBuy_Deals.  The Deals flavor hosts straight deals and no engagement (correctly stated in bio), but the difference  here is that @BestBuy will intermittently point to and promote what is happening in the Deals handle.  This only works if you are comfortable shining a light on your sweetest deals and nodding to the fact that we are all “deal-seekers” in the right context.

Deals Shared by Third Party Voices: The deal sites themselves also have a personality and a knowledge of their users to bring to the table.  Brands who create offers for deal sites and trust in the site’s ability to cultivate their community have much to gain in uptake on their deals.   Who wouldn’t want to chow down on this?

Stuff your face with greatness tonight! Print a coupon for free chips and queso from Chili’s here: http://bit.ly/bvrtrt (@cheapstingy)

As brands go farther and farther into social media and presences proliferate, the need for clear missions, roles and responsibilities will continue to heighten.  The fact that there is no sole “best practice” should be a call to experimentation and optimization for all.  Hopefully the challenge of mixing media aimed at different parts of the funnel will not hold it back.

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CNN Says Shared News Leads to Advertising Engagement

CNN has a nifty new study they call POWNAR which stands for “power of news and recommendation.” For the study they tracked the sharing of news through social networks and they also used eye-tracking and biometrics to study engagement. Told you it was nifty.

First, they took a look at the kinds of news stories that were being shared by the 2300 participants in the study. What they found was that people shared stories in order to “impart knowledge,” which is kind of a given, isn’t it? Only 19% of shared stories were considered breaking news. The 65% majority was ongoing stories with what CNN called “quirky” stories making up the rest. But it’s not crime or politics that is lighting up the virtual airwaves. It’s science, technology, human interest and money-related new stories. Technology is a given seeing as that’s the vehicle we’re using to drive this herd in the first place but I was a little surprised by the others. They also mention “visually spectacular” news, which I take to mean things like fires, floods, snowstorms and UFO’s in the skies around China.

Not so surprising is the fact that 27% of all sharers account for 87% of stories shared. 13 stories a week was the global average for sharing and 26 stories on the receiving end.

Here’s the important part for advertisers. CNN used biometrics and eye-tracking to measure engagement and they found that shared news stories resulted in higher engagement with not only the content but the advertising embedded on the same page. They did this by comparing the results of participants looking at random content. 19% of those surveyed were more likely to recommend a brand that was advertised along with a news story sent to them by a friend. 27% said that they were more likely to find favor with that brand.

This is all well and good but how useful is it really? No matter how much we study it, there is no way to predict what people will share on the internet. One day it’s a serious story about unemployment and then it’s cats wearing tutus dancing on a piano. We’re a fickle lot. And the study talks about the types of stories but what about the types of ads. Does an insurance ad do better than a GAP ad if it’s placed next to a story about a house fire?

The Guardian quoted CNN’s senior vice president of research, Didier Mormesse on this point.

“Though recommended news seems highly unpredictable, we’ve have identified a number of key drivers and key motivations, so we do have some ways of understanding what people share and why they share.”

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Old McDonalds Had a Farm

FarmVille now has its own McDonalds. Sing along with me, “Old McDonalds had a farm, EE-I-EE-I Oy!”

It’s a one day only promotion that will probably lead to a long term ad deal, but where’s the hype in that? Today only, Facebook fans can stop by the McDonalds’ farm to help plant tomatoes and mustard seeds. (Mustard seeds?) When you play, you get rewarded with a  FarmVille McCafe Consumable, “a valuable item (virtual good) that makes game-play easier. The McCafe Consumable delivers energy to players to move about their farms at twice the speed.”

How hysterical is it that overly-caffeinated coffee is the prize on FarmVille. Like they couldn’t have taken this opportunity to promote healthy eating by offering a fresh salad as a reward?

Says Manny Anekal, Global Director of Brand Advertising at Zynga;

“Our mission is to connect the world through games by offering consumers meaningful experiences that enhance their game play. Tens of millions of people play FarmVille daily and this unique campaign with McDonald’s, one of the most recognized brands in the world, further strengthens our commitment to delivering high quality in-game brand experiences.”

I get why McDonalds wants to be a part of Facebook’s biggest game and I get why Zynga wants McDonalds as a client – but what about the game players on Facebook? Will a virtual McCafe drink get them to go to a real McDonalds for lunch instead of to Burger King? I doubt anyone will do a study on it but I’m sure McDonalds will count it as a success when they see the hits on their portion of the game.

What do you think? Brilliant marketing move or a lot of hype for little return?

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Feedlooks: A New, Convenient Way to Read Your RSS Feeds

Feedlooks is a new RSS reader that focuses on convenience and simplicity. Though it does not offer a lot of complex or advanced features, the quick speed of the site and nicely designed interface makes it a tool worth using.

When you first sign up, you will automatically be subscribed to a few blogs. I’m not sure how the blogs are chosen or if everyone gets the same blogs. I had three entertainment blogs added to my list. You can, of course, remove the blogs if they do not interest you. Your home window (where your folders and feeds are displayed) will also be opened by default.

You can add new feeds by clicking on the “add feed” button, as well as add new folders by clicking on the plus button (both in the home window). If you already use Google Reader, you can also import your feeds. First you’ll need to download your feeds file to your computer and then upload it to Feedlooks. This can be done in two simple steps right from the Feedlooks site. Under the “More” menu you can also customize the color of the navigation bar (six colors to choose from), change or reset your password and contact the company.

In Feedlooks there isn’t a “mark as read” option.

“Instead of the Read vs. Unread model used in e-mail clients, Feedlooks adopts the much simpler model “New vs. Old”, which is more suited to reading news and feeds. Once you are done checking your posts, simply hit the Refresh button in the Feedlooks toolbar and your current items (New) will be automatically moved to the Archives (Old).”

The neat thing about Feedlooks is that clicking on a feed item opens it in the background of the current tab/window.

The top navigation bar will remain at the top of the page so that you can go back to your feeds or perform other actions found on the bar.

From the navigation bar you can:

• View your RSS feed count
• Show/hide the home window.
• Keep the current post marked as new.
• Refresh your feeds.
• Go to the previous or next post shown in your home window.
• Pin/unpin the current post for later reading.
• Open the current item in new window.
• Share the post by email, Facebook, Twitter or other sites care of AddThis.
• View settings.
• Log out.

The only thing that kind of bugs me about Feedlooks is that since “an item is considered ‘New’ if it has been added to Feedlooks since the last time you checked,” this could create some frustration. See, if you happen to close out or navigate away from Feedlooks by accident or even on purpose (without reading all of your new items), then all of those new items will be archived. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to get to the archived posts, but it can still be a little annoying having all of your new posts out of site just like that. Others may find this very convenient though.

All-in-all I find Feedlooks very useful and see it as a possible replacement (personally) for Google Reader. What do you think?

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Two Conferences for Serious Online Marketers

In addition to our keynote at BlogWorld this month, I’ll be speaking at two other conferences this fall. If you’re serious about building your business with online content, search marketing, and social media, you’ll want to seriously consider attending one or both.

1. BlueGlass Florida – November 2-3, 2010

BlueGlass Internet Marketing Conferences feature the top social media and search marketing industry experts to give you the best in topics, trends, strategies and networking possibilities. The event is produced by BlueGlass Interactive, the powerhouse combination of several top SEO and online marketing firms (including my friends Chris Winfield, Loren Baker, and Greg Boser, plus search and viral marketing ninjas Dave Snyder and Brent Csutoras).

I’ll be speaking on a panel that kicks off the conference called Online PR – The Art of Getting Your Business Talked About along with Peter Shankman and Lisa Buyer. The entire line-up of speakers is fantastic.

Important! If you’d like to save 15% off the conference fee, use copy15 when you register. Hope to see you in Fort Lauderdale.

Register for BlueGlass Florida here.

2. PubCon Las Vegas – November 8-11, 2010

PubCon Las Vegas is legendary as a gathering point for serious webmasters to learn, network, and drink themselves silly. Even if you skip the drinking part, PubCon provides some of the best education about online marketing you’ll find at a conference.

This year, I’ll be doing a keynote panel along with New Marketing Labs president Chris Brogan, social media firm UnMarketing president Scott Stratten, and Sevans Strategy founder Sarah Evans. Can one stage hold all that ego?

You’ll have to show up to find out. And you’ll save 20% when you use this code to register online – cb-5671220.

Register for PubCon Las Vegas here.

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"Digital Birth" - By Age 2, 92% of Kids Have an "Online Record"

(image) I'm fascinated by the tracks we leave online, and their implications both in real time (better search results, real time advertising ecosystems, new forms of social behavior etc) and in the long view. Those of you who read my book may recall my epilog, where I opined on the concept of immortality through the Database of Intentions.

This study (via CNet) is fascinating - it shows that nearly every kid in the US has an online record by age two, thanks to parents posting pictures. What I'd really like to see is how many grandparents are online. I sense my father's generation is on the bubble - some percentage of them appear when one searches for their names, but a larger percentage does not. They are the final generation of non digital natives, and it's really only pointing one way in the future - more and more of our lives exist online, and more and more of our social assumptions about who we are and what our value is will as well.

In a sense I kind of mourn for that last generation. It's why I posted about my Dad on his birthday a few years ago, to ensure he had a record.

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