Multichannel Surfing

Ah, geolocation. Ask just about any marketer: It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. When are we going to admit that geolocation is not very effective? Maybe when more writers and bloggers speak up and say they are sitting at their desk, about 1,200 miles away from the deal that’s reached their computer screen.

My office is in Stamford, CT. I’m on our company’s Overland Park, KS-based server. That’s 1,251 miles if I drive 20 hours four minutes on I-70, or 1,350 miles if I drive 21 hours 25 minutes on I-64.

So these offers designed to drive me into businesses in Overland Park or nearby Kansas City are really not going to be very effective. All they’re going to do is tell me what I already know: Geolocation sucks. more

… you give your fans an offer they can’t receive elsewhere.

I’ve published a few articles of late that indicate a few things: Facebook users do not want to be sold to while they are feeding their chickens on Farmville or whacking someone in Mafia Wars. But consumers who become your fan on Facebook do expect something in return.

It looks like woman’s apparel and accessories seller Nine West is going about it the right way. Marketing firm Fluid launched its Fluid Fan Shop app on Nine West’s Facebook page this week , and it allows the merchant’s Facebook fans to shop for select discounted items without leaving the social network. more

So the biggest surprise I heard today: The majority of the attendees at the Internet Retailer Web Design and Usability show have not heard of the online retailer Threadless.

Speaking during a session called “Designing your web site to create social marketing success,” Fry director of creative strategy Bridget Fahrland asked for a show of hands - who in the room had heard of Threadless. Only a few hands went up.

Those hands must have belonged to subscribers of Chief Marketer, and read Brian Quinton’s profile of Threadless. more

Just a heads-up, I’m going to tweet from the Internet Retailer Web Design & Usability Conference today and tomorrow. Out feed: http://twitter.com/mcmerchant. Will people care? Who knows.

What do you think about live tweets from tradeshows? Good, bad or ugly? Are 140 characters worth the keystrokes if there’s no line to an article, post or example?

When we were looking to “go Web 2.0″ with the Chief Marketer Network’s Websites back in 2008, the topic of article commenting came up. The team that was assembled had asked if there were any vendors who had a plug-in that would work with our site, or if we should look at some sort of a comment aggregation service to facilitate the process.

My advice then: Don’t go with Topix.com. It’s a cesspool for bottom-feeding Internet trolls who have nothing better to do but cowardly hide behind aliases and leave racist, homophobic, libelous, slanderous, tasteless, classless and downright rude comments on every article it attaches itself to. And apparently the publications that use Topix.com do not have the ability to remove those comments, no mater how much its reputation can be damaged.

Topix.com sunk to a new low this week, giving consumers to self-serve privilege to remove racist, homophobic, libelous, slanderous, tasteless, classless and downright rude comments left about them… for a $19.95 fee. That’s just as disgusting as the trolls who have helped spearhead the death of civility on the Internet. more

Flying is generally a nightmare these days, though as I pointed out in the post My Virgin Flight earlier this year, it’s slightly less of a nightmare on some of the newer airlines like Virgin America and JetBlue.

Now JetBlue has capitalized on what it offers that other airlines do not with a 16-page mock catalog called The Flyer’s Collection, which you can find on JetBlue’s Facebook page. Here are some catalog highlights: more