JungleJar

Shayne Tilley is the Marketing Manager for SitePoint and was nice enough to do an interview for JungleJar. We discuss his new book scheduled for release in May of this year, current web browser releases, Twitter, and of course SitePoint.

(Christopher): Shayne, you have a SitePoint book scheduled for release around May of this year entitled “The Art & Science of On-line Marketing”, which Barnes & Noble is already allowing internet marketing enthusiasts to pre-order. Would you like to share a bit about that with our JungleJar readers who may be hearing of this news for the first time?

(Shayne): “The Art & Science of Online Marketing” is a book that helps answer one of the most common questions I get asked: “I have a website and I want to promote it, where do I start?” The book covers all you need to know about promoting your business online. It doesn’t focus on just one here-today, gone-tomorrow marketing approach, as do so many of the books out there. It steps you through all elements of an effective online marketing mix, from leading edge social media techniques, right through to more traditional activities such as email, affiliate and advertising campaigns. We’ve tried to keep this book very practical, with lots of examples so that readers will be able to get stuck into their own campaigning straight away. While it’s not detailed on O’Reilly at the moment, I just want to point out that the book is being co-authored by Brandon Eley (http://www.brandoneley.com/), a super intelligent individual with a healthily addiction for online marketing since 1999.

(Christopher): You are already known for authoring informative articles for SitePoint, but is this your first real publication? If so, did you find the transition of developing your content for a website/blog to developing your content for an actual book a difficult challenge?

(Shayne): Being a marketer by profession, I’ve lived in a world where you strive to say as much as you can in the fewest possible words. Transitioning to a longer form of writing was quite a challenge. That said, once you knock over the first few chapters it all seems to drop into place. We also have a great publishing team at SitePoint who have been more than willing to help me make the transition.

(Christopher): It must feel incredible to first join the SitePoint team in May of 2007, and now as we approach May of 2009 to not only author a publication, but to also have that publication
listed in the O’Reilly Author Community and be noted as a cutting edge, experienced, and innovative marketing manager from such a credible source. Do you ever feel a bit heavy from the pressure, or do you ever find yourself thinking it’s all a bit surreal?

(Shayne): Walking into SitePoint in 2007 I substantially underestimated the impact it would have on my life. The chance to publish a book is only a tiny part of the great opportunities SitePoint has given me. Not only is SitePoint one of the friendliest, welcoming and accepting workplaces I’ve ever seen, in my role I’ve been encouraged to really push the boundaries of marketing. Sure at times that puts some pressure on me to perform, but as long as I give everything 100% commitment and continue to have strong support from the SitePoint executive team, I can approach everything I do with confidence.

(Christopher): SitePoint is well known for giving its readers sample chapters, and sometimes even entire books from its continuously growing line-up of Web Design / Web Development books.
Will we be receiving a few teaser chapters of “The Art & Science of On-line Marketing”, or perhaps even the chance to download the book in its entirety for a variable amount of time as we saw with the Twitaway Giveaway?

(Shayne): You’ll certainly see a sample of the book available for download late in May, but I’m sure all your readers will order themselves a copy of the full book anyway. Will it ever be a part of another SitePoint Twitaway? Good question. That depends on a number of factors and a question I’ll be in a much better position to answer in 12 months time.

(Christopher): As I’m sure you’re already aware, Internet Explorer 8 was released by Microsoft and is being promoted as a “secure out of the box” web browser. The Washington Post is even spouting that IE8 beat out Firefox 3.0.7 in the majority of their time trials by less than a half second. Have you had time to try the latest version of Microsoft’s web browser, and if so, what are your thoughts and opinions?

I know that in June of last year you predicted that by the year 2013 Internet Explorer would be extinct. Do you still feel this way?

(Shayne): The post you mention above was a little tongue in cheek, but it did contain some pretty important messages for IE.

I’ve only had a chance to take a quick look at IE8, but so far I’ve been pretty impressed. In my option, things like speed tests won’t decide who’ll dominate the browser wars. While Microsoft dominates the operating system market, they will always have a core base of users who don’t want the inconvenience of switching. When IE6 was around, sure there was a big gap in terms of usability between their browser and others – that even a non-tech user could instantly benefit from, which is why we witnessed increases in people making the switch. But now that Microsoft have responded and closed the gap with IE7, and now IE8, I think they’ll be around for a while yet.

(Christopher): Speaking of web browsers, Google launched their own now famous web browser Chrome 2.0 in beta fashion just a few days ago. Any thoughts or opinions on that particular web application?

(Shayne): My first thoughts on Chrome were geez, that thing is ugly. But Google have never been in the business of making things pretty, they create things that are extremely usable and I think they’ve done a good job. I’ve not had a great deal of exposure to Chrome, but some of the SitePoint team are already using it as their everyday browser, turning to FireFox only when some heavy lifting is required (ie Firebug). There are some really cleaver aspects to chrome, but they are subtle. Mainstream users are going to struggle to see obvious tangible benefits and won’t switch. That said, who knows, Google might be brave and for example make Gmail only accessible through Chrome – that will increase take up, but might cost them a user or two. If they want more people to use Chrome, they need to create clearer benefits for the everyday user.

(Christopher): Shayne, there is no doubt in my mind that these are the years of the social media networks — the bookmarking communities — an evolved connection with sharing and receiving content. While I find this is a good thing, I’m often confused as to why self promotion on these networks is frowned upon. StumbleUpon disallows it completely, Twitter elitists demand re-tweets or you are forever cast out of a particular crowd, and the chances of receiving front page notoriety on Digg for an article of quality without acknowledging and ultimately Digging every shout that comes your way in order to encourage others to do the same for your own content are slim. Of course the much larger websites such as SitePoint,
Smashing Magazine, and Mashable, to name a few, do not encounter these issues, do you feel that this could ultimately be the deciding factor as far as the decline of these types of social communities? In your professional opinion, do you feel that it’s now a lot more about the self promotion than the appreciation of a good informative and helpful article?

If so, do you also feel as though if the ‘taboo’ of self-promotion were lifted from these networks there wouldn’t be such a shoving match for attention?

(Shayne): First you need to think of what the benefits are for users from sites like Digg and StubledUpon. The information that is deemed newsworthy is established by the crowd, not by an individual’s own self interests. So it’s a natural step for these sites to get combative against users who are using the popularity of the sites for their own benefit in a manner that’s not allowing users to decide for themselves what’s important. I think that Digg have gone down the wrong path and ended up in a situation where newsworthiness is decided by a few power users, not by the crowd, which is against everything they stand for. StumledUpon is staying the course as many people are struggling to understand exactly how it works, so abusing its core proposition is proving a little more difficult.

You mention that sites like ours don’t feel the impact of self-promotion, which isn’t the case. It’s something that we’ve been battling with on our forum for years. Without our fantastic group of moderators, if left unchecked, self promotion would be rampant.

Twitter is a completely different ballgame – because you, as the user, have the power. You decide who you follow and you create your own circle of news sources based on what you’re interested in. It’s part of what sets Twitter apart from the rest.

(Christopher): Not too long ago we briefly discussed the troubles SitePoint was facing with its own social groups and the fact that, for the most part, the community seemed a bit disinterested with it all. With SitePoint being so highly recognized in the web design and development community, the immense participation from its users in the forums, and the fact that the social groups were somewhat attached or linked off of the normal forums, I don’t think anyone on the outside who was paying attention truly understood why there just wasn’t very much interest in the social group aspect of the SitePoint community. Do you think that perhaps this comes from the fact that the social grouping -is- a tendril of the forums itself and the participants just don’t see a point to it all? Have you seen any significant change in user participation in the social groups at SitePoint, and for better or worse, where do you see
the social grouping element of SitePoint’s community heading? I know that vBulletin is limiting you as far as how much attention you can generate towards the social groups; Do you think that we might be seeing SitePoint announcing something a bit more robust such as something similar to Facebook or maybe even Twitter? I’m not the expert, but I just can’t see a networking concept such as Twitter, a way to network with other members of the SitePoint community away from the website and/or forums being something that would fail. Do you have any thoughts on that?

(Shayne): As I mentioned, I was extremely excited when I heard that the social groups were coming to vBulletin, it was one of our major reasons for the upgrade. Out of the box though, it’s a total waste of time, and I question how much thought and testing was placed on that particular module. These days people look for more than just threads and posts when participating in a community and I’m hoping that either vBulletin improve the module, someone creates a plugin that breaks through the limitations, or we find the time to create our own. Either way it’s something we need to change.

(Christopher): I recently learned of something that I was not even remotely aware of. The Propeller network, one of the lesser used of the social communities, banned all discussion of SEO.
Do you see any logic in this, and do you think this is a terrible mistake on their part as far as the network trying to reach the same ranks as other community bookmarking
based networks such as Digg, Diigo, and Delicious?

(Shayne): I wasn’t aware of this, and without understanding the exact reasons, all I can think is that they’re trying to give themselves a point of difference to encourage new users. A “come to use if you want to get away from the self promoting SEO group” sort of environment. It’s an interesting move and one I’ll watch. Do I think it’s a mistake? Setting rules on what people can and cannot say is a slippery road to travel and one that must be managed extremely well. I also don’t think just outlawing SEO is going to eliminate self-promotion as there are many other things that can be promoted to an unsuspecting group.

(Christopher): It’s no secret that you harness the knowledge of successfully marketing and promoting websites/blogs through the Twitter network. It’s also no secret that Twitter is fastly
becoming -the- dominant factor in digital content promotion of any kind. Why do you think that this seemingly simple networking concept of tweeting is so vastly appealing to not just businesses or those looking for some sort of recognition, but appealing to everyone? Do you feel as though the simplicity of it all is just the refreshing anecdote that
we were all waiting for?

(Shayne): Twitter as an application is simple that’s for sure, but its benefits are varied and that’s what makes is special. On face value it’s just a bunch of 140 character messages, but how you use it is up to you. You can follow news sites and create your own real time RSS feed; you can keep in contact with a close circle of friends; keep in touch with what’s going on in your industry; use it to communicate and develop relationships with your customers; find new customers and much more. Look beyond the race to see who can get the largest number of followers, and think more about how it can help you. You might just see more value in Twitter.

(Christopher): I noticed that 99designs was used in order to find the design for a new series of books called “The Ultimate Reference”. I thought this was a wise use of resources and also a nice promotional method to draw attention to 99designs and SitePoint both at once. Will we possibly be seeing more of this in the future?

(Shayne): With 99designs.com having been born within the SitePoint forums it’s always going to be something close to me. I’ve run a number of contests there, but the cover design has been my most important. While I do have a design team internally who could have created the design, there are some seriously talented designers over at 99designs, so it would be silly to not tap into their skills for new ideas and a fresh approach to a design challenge from time to time. There’s no doubt I’ll continue to support and use 99designs. The promotional side to using 99designs, to be honest, wasn’t a motivating factor behind using them.

(Christopher): I’ve noticed that you really take the time and effort to search out discussions concerning SitePoint and its services that are circulating on not just social networks, but other much
smaller websites/blogs on the internet, and you participate in these discussions. While one might expect that, you seem to show real appreciation and interest in the discussions, leaving members of the community feeling as though SitePoint does indeed extend beyond the subjective .com entity. I appreciate and thank you for that, and I believe others who may share similar positions such as yourself could learn something from that. Perhaps it is more the small things such as this that truly define someone who is “cutting edge”.
Maybe even “cutting edge” is now more so synonymous with being a member of the community instead of one who tries to dictate it.

(Shayne): Thanks for the kind words. It’s all built on a simple belief that your business doesn’t end at your own website, and if people want to communicate outside of sitepoint.com about SitePoint, that’s okay – I’ll come to them. For more than 10 years SitePoint has been teaching people how to design, develop and run an online business, so meeting them on their own turf and seeing what they’ve build from our teachings is an honour. As I mentioned early in this interview, SitePoint is one of the most amazing companies I’ve ever worked for, and getting involved in discussions about SitePoint has more to do with how much I care about the company than is does about managing PR or dictating terms to people.

You can pre-order “The Art & Science Of On-line Marketing” at Barnes & Noble.com.

Co-Author Brandon Eley blogs about the up-coming book – 01.27.2009

I’d like to give a special thanks to Shayne Tilley who gave an excellent interview, and offered up a substantial amount of information on what the man is praised for — marketing.

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