Google - Fix GCal's Multi-Email Calendar Bug Please!

Overall, I really enjoy using Google Calendar. It is fast, flexible, free, and accessible from pretty much anywhere. However, there is a very annoying bug that drives me nuts and I hope they can fix it soon.

Google Calendar does not understand associated email addresses from Google Accounts when it comes to invitations.

Background on Associated Email Addresses

Long ago, Google enabled "associated email addresses".  These allow you to map other email addresses to your primary Google account. This has multiple benefits such as allowing you to login to most Google applications, even Google Calendar, with any of the email addresses you have associated with your account. When you setup a new alternate email address, you need to go through the steps of validating the email address and clicking through on a verification link sent to that account.

When you check your account and have setup alternate email addresses it will look like this (my actual accounts are blacked out here but you get the idea):

As I said, you can login to your apps by using the primary or any of the alternate email addresses and it works fine. That is, until you receive a gCal invitation sent to one of those alternate email addresses.

Google Calendar Invitations Don't Recognize Alternate Email Addresses

At work we happen to use MS Exchange instead of Google Apps. I'd prefer Google Apps, but that is not my call. So, we make the best of it we can. However, I work with outside vendors who do happen to use Google Apps for their businesses. When we schedule meetings, such as for a screen sharing conference call, I'll often receive a calendar invitation from the partner/vendor, etc...and it will have been sent via Google Calendar.  Of course, being work, they will send it to my work email address. For this example, let's say it's email-2@domain.com and my primary, personal gmail account is primary-email@gmail.com. 

The problem happens when I want to see details inside the calendar appointment. In Outlook, I receive a the invitation and I'll see in the detail something like this:

Often the dial-in and screenshare link information are included in the details of the appointment. However, when I click "more details >>" I am given this wonderful screen:

Remember, email-2@domain.com uses the exact same Google Account as primary-email@gmail.com. As far as access to Google Apps is concerned, these should be considered aliases and I should have equal access. Unfortunately, it does not recognize that email-2@domain.com is a valid and verified email address for primary-email@gmail.com (and vice-versa).  It it were smart enough, it would let me see the event because they both belong to the same Google Account.

Perhaps this is just an edge case and that is why the bug persists.  Nevertheless, it is a crap user experience and Google should fix it.

So, Team Google Calendar, please fix this. We'll give you a +1 for it.

My MozCon Summary: Aim High & Don't Let a Lack of Resources Stop You From Trying

I just wrapped up a great few days in Seattle attending my first MozCon.  I've been to numerous search marketing conferences in the past but this was my favorite so far (although I do miss the annual pints in London with my friends from Mecalux / Logismarket).

This is not a laundry list post of notes from the conference.  Other people have done a great job already capturing many of the MozCon details and highlights. This post will focus on the most important takeaways for me.

Of all the different things that people talked about, I'd say that there were three main themes of the conference that consistently emerged and are most relevant as takeaways. The good thing is that these themes are universal and can really be applied to anything whether you want to be a better marketer, get in shape, or even run for office.

1. Always Aim High To Do Your Best
2. A Lack of Resources is Not an Excuse
3. Get Doin' Something Already

Walking out of the conference, after having met good people, listened to great talks and feeling inspired from the last three days, I happened upon someone that summed up the conference perfectly to me.

All of these core themes were embodied right there in the street.

This guy was having fun, playing the shit out of some makeshift drumset and making real music (#RMS?). He was good. Damn good and he didn't need anything fancy to make a great beat and put on a fun show. He just took what he could and started playing.

Some people, like me, stayed and watched while others passed by, but you could tell that pretty much everyone who heard him, liked what he was doing. When he finished his song, I among others all contributed to his thank you bucket. He had made my day better and he did it with a joy that gave me the feeling that he'd do it even if he didn't get paid.

After I stopped to talk to him for a second to see how he was making that snare drum rattle like a snare should. Peeping into the open faced bucket I saw some coins, bent soda cans, little bells and a metal plate.  He said all you need is anything that will clank or rattle.

He didn´t just one day play the drums and sound like that. But, he took what he could find, decided he was going to start playing and worked really hard so he could reach a level where strangers get stopped cold to admire the beauty of the sound.

We face roadblocks, get stuck, and settle for less way too often. We can learn a lot from his approach.

See you at #mozcon 2014

Don't Confuse Inbound Marketing Tools with the Methodology

We've recently moved over to HubSpot at work to handle our marketing automation and assist in our Inbound Marketing efforts.

At ShoreTel, we are big fans of Inbound Marketing and believe that being customer-centric is necessary for success in the modern economy.

I was reading a post about the latest report on the State of Inbound Marketing and one of the comments really stuck with me. It was from someone called "HT" who did not like what he was reading...

HT: Blah, blah, blah. Of course Hubspot is going to create a report singing the praises of "Inbound Marketing" and making claims that "traditional marketing" is dying. Do you think they would make a report claiming the opposite? It's self-serving. Branding, messaging, targeting, promotion, service and the product itself are the drivers. Let's not fool ourselves. Without those, inbound is irrelevant. "Inbound" is but a portion of the overall marketing strategy. It does not succeed on it's own. However, as a part of an overall plan, it has its place in the big-picture. I'll be honest, I am not a fan of landing pages that require me to give you my information before you even tell me what you are offering or why it would matter to me. I'm seeing way too much of that approach lately. And that approach seems to be emphasized by inbound marketers. What you will end up by following such a tactic is a list full of unqualified leads who simply filled out a form, but only because they wanted the info to review first. I would much rather have a list of people who had the information and THEN submitted their information to me, as they would be more likely a lead that would have a better chance of actually converting. In the time that we have transitioned our marketing efforts to a more "inbound" approach it has resulted mainly in unqualified leads who only wanted more info. The rate of sales success has been very low. I could go on and on. Marketing is all encompassing: print, digital, tv, radio, outdoor, sponsorship, events, public relations, social media, etc. You have to both drive customers to you (outbound) and draw them in through inbound means. If they don't know you exist, how will they know what they are looking for? It takes both inbound and outbound strategies to be truly successful in your marketing efforts.

I think more than anything what bothered me about the comment was that HT seemed upset that Inbound is growing in influence and that HubSpot is happy to promote itself and the positive trends towards Inbound.

By the time that I saw the HubSpot post, comments were closed. So, here what I would have liked to have written to HT:

My question is, why wouldn't they? They are a leader in a rapidly growing market.

Just because a positive report on the state of Inbound Marketing benefits HubSpot, that does not make the report untrue. The reality is that customers have changed and Inbound Marketing is the best way to reach them and build profitable relationships.

I'm open to whatever comes after Inbound, but right now it's the best methodology available and until something better comes along, it's where marketers should be focusing and investing their time, resources and energy.

Inbound Marketing is a movement, not a fad. 

Inbound Marketing is not a panacea nor will everyone who tries it be good at it. The same is true of traditional marketers. For every masterpiece such as "here's to the crazy ones" there are thousands of examples of schlock.

I agree with you that too many websites ask for visitor info before telling you about their company or what they do. But then again, that is not really Inbound Marketing because it is not a customer-centric approach. Just because they use some of the tools or  techniques of Inbound Marketing does not mean that they are practicing good Inbound Marketing.

Do not confuse the use of Inbound Marketing tools with actually practicing Inbound Marketing as a discipline.  It's very easy to buy and throw in a tool.  The true value of Inbound Marketing comes from following the process and methodology.  The tools are there to facilitate, enable, and make those processes more efficient. You, as the marketer, still need to decide:

• Who are your customers and what they are looking for?
• How to communicate the value that your company and products offer to your customers?
• What steps and characteristics you and your customer go through in the funnel?
• Which calls to action, offers and content are most effective?
• What are the hypotheses that need to be tested?
• What is the right amount of content to provide, when, where, and how to push the prospect deeper in the funnel?
• etc...

For your company HT, consider lead scoring or some other process for segmenting your leads so you are only spending time on those most likely to convert. Perhaps you are gating too much content on your website. Perhaps you do not nurture your leads to identify and separate the good ones from the bad.

I hope you find a way to Inbound success.

Was Morgan Freeman recommended to me because of my name?

So, yesterday I get a Google+ email with suggestions for people I should add to my circles.  I was a bit surprised to see Morgan Freeman listed first in the list.  I enjoy pretty much all of his movies and think he is a great actor, but I have the feeling that Google recommended him because we have the same last name.  Who knows what goes on in the secret sauce of the recomendation algorithm, but this one seems a bit off.  I have no idea who Brendan or Adriana are.

Perhaps Google could do something like Apple's Genius recommendations and at least give a hint as to why or how they think we are connected.

I wish Morgan Freeman were my uncle!

When living in Spain and telling people my last name, I always had to say (in Spanish) "you know, Freymann like Morgan Freymann." Sometimes I even was able to convince a few people that we were related and he was an uncle of mine (by marriage). I wish.

"I hope the pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope." - Red

@Google: How is this a good search result for business phone system?

UPDATE 01/24/13 - Cisco finally fixed their CMS. The formatting is still broken on the content but at least it is back on the page. For Google, it does not seem to matter either way because they rank #2 as if nothing ever happened.

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UPDATE 01/22/13 - The Google cache has been updated to show the blank page and it still ranks #2. Amazing. Talk about giving Cisco the benefit of the doubt.

Where's the beef?

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UPDATE 01/21/13 - Cisco still in position #2 and they still have an empty page! At least a week with absolutely no real content in the page, which is clearly broken. You'd think that even if Google doesn't notice the problem, Cisco would at least notice by now. Does anyone actually manage this part of their website?

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UPDATE 01/17/13 - Cisco has moved up to position #2 and they still have an empty page!  Both Google and Cisco are asleep at the switch on this one. It's been more than 3 days since their content has been MIA (I doubt I happened to find the page right when their CMS broke).
I wonder which will happen first:

• Google will recrawl the page and update its rankings correctly
• Cisco will realize that their CMS is serving up a bunch of donut pages and they'll fix it

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I am getting familiar with the telecom industry in search as part of my job.  Each industry has its own nuances, players, and idiosyncrasies.  One thing that is common is that from time to time you will find head-scratching results in the SERPs (search engine results pages).  Often it is because someone is having a bad day (site is down, CMS error, hosting provider makes a DNS mistake, etc....).  Other times, it is because Google just has not yet gotten around to updating their index for a particular term.  They may get to it eventually, but sometimes they are a bit slow to update the results even though the underlying content and/or competition has changed for a given topic. It is impossible for Google to stay on top of each result and each page for every term at every second of every day.  But then again, when you listen to Eric Schmidt, he thinks that the whole concept of showing a list of search results is a failure.

Today, I found a good example of someone having a bad day leading to a poor search result.  If you search for "business phone system" you will see Cisco listed with the #3 position in the organic results:

Nice position, there should be good content behind that link, right?

You can' always get what you want....

You would think that after clicking on that highlighted result you would be presented with some sort of wizard/set of questions to help me find the perfect phone system for my small business. You would think that wouldn't you? Well, let's see what we get instead:

This is thin content

Now, that is what I call a generous use of white space on a page layout.

My guess is that the CMS is broken or someone at Cisco has inserted some code (perhaps to trigger the chat window) which prevents the main content from displaying.

After navigating a few different pages, it looks like the problem may be pretty serious because I found multiple "empty" pages today on their site.  I'm curious though at what point does  Google take this into consideration into changing rankings/indexed status of such a page.

The last cached copy from Google is January 3rd, which at least did have real content in the page (not great, but at least something).  So we know that it worked correctly 11 days ago, but not sure when the page stopped working correctly.

Even when working correctly, the page content did not satisfy the promise made by the headline.  It listed off some features/functionality that users should consider but it did nothing to actually educate visitors on what those features mean, not the tradeoffs or factors are to consider with regard to the list of features. It also makes sure to mention that you should talk to a trusted adviser (translation - Cisco reseller).  Why can't Cisco just clearly educate the visitor right on this page?  Furthermore, it lists the next step as a link to learn more about Cisco's solutions, but when you get to that page it is just a list of their products without any guidance to what you should be looking to learn or how it fits together.  Obviously, I am biased, but I think the content we provide is better. You be the judge.

We all have bad days

Sometimes our sites don't behave as they are supposed to. Let's just hope that if these problems persist, Google will get around to taking that into consideration in the rankings, even if the site is famous.  Otherwise, that is an unfair advantage for "big" sites.  Google should not protect the 1% sites any better than the 99% when mistakes are made.

You can get the Gringo out of Spain, but...

I have been totally radio silent on this blog for a long time.  A lot has happened since I last wrote about the Barça game:

• We've left Spain and moved to the happiest place in America.  Even Oprah agrees.
• I've started working for ShoreTel Sky, a cloud based business VoIP service in their Marketing department.  First time working from home.  Required some adjustment, but so far going well.
• Getting the boys settled and adapted to new schools, new house, and new language (well, at least new for them to speak outside of the house)
• Surfing much more....the Pacific as a few more waves than the Mediterranean sea.
• No more weekly basketball games. Switched over to futbol (soccer) instead.
• Trying to pickup my tennis game when I can.

Overall, it has been a very good transition. We miss our family and friends back in España but we´re now with other family here and starting to make some new friends (as well as see some great old ones too).

Now that I have rediscovered the blog, I hope to get back to writing some more.  

Need to find some time to keep improving GA Evolution. I have received some great feedback on good features.  In progress, but no ETA on the next rev. Hope in the next few weeks to get the top items completed.

2013 is looking great so far and excited to see where it leads.

A Barça Game Full of Firsts & Lasts

I had always said to Dante that he'd go to see a football match once he was 4 years old. We were lucky enough to get a free ticket to last week's Barça match. As luck would have it, the game would be a series of "firsts" and "lasts" for us and the team:

• Last time Guardiola would coach in el Campo Nou
• Last home game of the season
• Last time I can probably take Diego to see a game and have him get in for free
• First game ever for Dante
• First game ever for all three of us together
• First time for someone to break the single season scoring record in all competitions (Messi) since the 1920s
• First time for someone (Messi) get to 50 league goals in a single season

90 minutes can be long for young kids, even if it is watching great football.  Nevertheless, being there was special and something that I'll never forget. Thank you Eva and Xavi for getting the ticket for us.

Just me and the boys with great seats...