Archive for the ‘Google’ Category
Thursday, November 20th, 2008
Before you read this post, you might want to know a little bit more about subscribing and rss so that you can keep things in context! Got it? Great.
Feedburner is a tool that many bloggers (including myself) use to:
a) Provide blog readers with an rss feed of their posts
b) Track their rss subscription statistics (ie: how many people are subscribed to their blog)
Without a doubt it’s a decent tool, but here’s the problem: it’s not terribly reliable. Just check out a screenshot of my supposed subscription stats over the last couple of weeks:
Feedburner Stats
These stats lead me to believe one of two things:
1) I have extremely fickle blog readers and lost 10% of them one day and gain back 15% the next day (not to mention on some days all of them stop subscribing and then the number jumps back up the next day)
2) The numbers aren’t accurate
Neither a terribly good conclusion to draw, and I’m even more incredulous at this because Feedburner has been owned by Google since 2007. Given the great stats provided by Google Analytics, why has nothing been done to increase accuracy with Feedburner after almost 18 months?
But besides the fact that inaccuracy bugs me (and many people on Twitter), there is a bigger issue. Remember point a? That Feedburner actually provides the link for readers to subscribe? That’s what scares me. Should Google decide tomorrow that Feedburner isn’t worth what they paid for it and shut it down or leave it to die, means that all our blog readers will be pointed to a metaphorical dead end. And given the lack of innovation and current state of affairs, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if that were to happen eventually.
I know when I switched rss feeds from the old blog to this I lost a lot of readers and traffic, but that was my choice. I would certainly hate for it to happen because of poor maintenance or a poor business decision in 2007. Do you worry about this? Does it bug you that your stats aren’t accurate? Be heard!
Tags: bloggers, feedburner, feedburner reliability, Google, migrating rss feeds, rss feeds, rss statistics
Posted in Google, Poor Practices | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
I’m writing this with Singapore in mind, but I think it could work anywhere.
Rubin and I had a discussion tonight about bands in Singapore, whether they’re talented or not, whether they could make money or not, etc etc. Towards the end of the night I needed to blog and turned to him for inspiration and he said “write about the local music scene”. Brilliant.
So here’s social media for the local music scene.
1) Get repeat plays.
One of the podcasts I listen to mentioned recently that in the music industry, frequency is your currency. So you get people to play it as many times as you can. Give it away free to everyone on MySpace, give it free to the polytechnic radio stations, give it free to the university Campus Radio stations. It doesn’t matter if you’re making money out of it at this stage, just give it free.
I can’t say how many times I haven’t liked a song on first listen, but it grows on me after three or more listens. I’m sure it’s the same for many other people.
2) Pimp yourself.
In a lot of ways, the local music scene is like the local blogosphere. There’s a lot of crap in there, but there are gems too. So how do you get people to notice you? Make yourself searchable. That means pimping up your website, going on MySpace, maybe creating a fan page on Facebook, whatever works. When someone hears your band name and goes home to search for you, you’d better turn up on page one of Google.
Case in point: Origami. I think that’s how it’s spelled because I was only walking past, but I liked their rendition of Kelly Clarkson’s Miss Independent, so much so I wanted to get in contact with them and offer to try to get their track on Campus Radio. So I come home, Google Origami and zilch. How do I help you get your music out there when I can’t find you? Do yourself a favour. If your band name is called Hystericks Stickz, change your name to something Google-able. That advice is free.
3) Get help.
No, don’t get someone to buy you a $30k ad on national radio. There are free (or at least cheap) ways to go about doing it. There are many, many polytechnic or university students out there who would probably be willing to help put your name out there or build you a blog, or pass your cd on to three friends. What could you offer them in return? Well that’s up to you. But remember: your most loyal customers are also your best.
Finally, a disclaimer: All this only works if your music doesn’t suck. As with everything else, content is king. If the content you’re producing sounds like screeching and/or cawing, no amount of publicity is going to help you.
So, now that you know all that. You want a social media/digital strategist to help your band out? Start a conversation with me. Here, Plurk, Twitter, Facebook, whatever works for you.
Tags: blogosphere, campus radio singapore, facebook, Google, myspace, origami, pimp yourself, Plurk, self-publicity, singapore local music, singapore's local music scent, smu campus radio, twitter
Posted in Google, Search, Singapore, Social Networks, collaboration, community, mainstream media, social media, twitter | 5 Comments »
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
About four months ago I posted the Top 100 Websites in Singapore as reported by Alexa. Just earlier in the week at work I happened to check out the site again, and interestingly Google.com.sg has now taken over with Yahoo.com in second place. Main Google is at #7, localised yahoo.com.sg nowhere to be seen.
Two observations and a question:
1) Since Google has two spots in the top 10 list, they’re obviously beating the crap out of Yahoo, which should make Google very happy indeed and companies should know where to advertise now.
2) Localised Google (ie the .sg version) is right at the top, suggesting the increased preference for localised search.
Which brings me to the first question: Why isn’t Rednano on the list at all? I’m almost definitely sure that it provides better search results than Google when it comes to localised search, but somehow it doesn’t seem to be used. Anyone want to shed some light?
And the second: What changed in two months?
Tags: alexa data, Google, google.com.sg, paid search, rednano, Search, top 100 websites in singapore, yahoo, yahoo and google
Posted in Google, Search, Singapore | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
So on Sunday night I was talking to Rubin and said “Very disturbing. If I Google you, I get your Facebook profile and your profile picture is that of you at a party”. So we had a long conversation where we generally had opposing views. I said it mattered, he said it didn’t.
Monday I came into the office and found (to my surprise) Pauline here, starting a five month internship. Somewhere in the middle of the day she said something to the effect of she has to watch her Facebook pictures now that she’s at work.
That got me thinking, is this caution over ones’ online identity and online reputation restricted to us in the communications field? Or should it apply equally across the board? Are employers in the banks less likely to Google their prospective employees than communications professionals?
I don’t have empirical evidence for this, but my gut says no, they should be equal. As much as you want a proper resume that indicates your prospective hire isn’t an ex-murderer, you’d probably want to run a search to make sure your wealth management employee doesn’t have a history of being in the press for the wrong reasons, or that the lawyer you’re going to hire for your firm isn’t being slammed online for bad legal advice by disgruntled people online, or that the last house your prospective architect designed for another client didn’t cave in on itself. You get my point.
I’d say that at at best, when someone Googles you, something positive comes out. At minimum, something neutral that doesn’t indicate you’re a poor performer. At the very least, finding something about volunteer efforts is better than pictures at a club. Rubin thinks differently, ie that not even appearing in a Google search is good. No news is good news?
What about you? What do you want your prospective employer to find on you when they Google you? Or do you think they won’t Google you? Is your online identity an important part of your resume to manage? Are Google searches on prospective employees more likely to occur in one industry over another? Share your thoughts!
Tags: online identity, online reputation, reputation management
Posted in Google | 19 Comments »
Thursday, May 8th, 2008
Listening to Marketing Over Coffee on the way home, there was a very small section talking about GoogleDocs and how you can activate a form to collect data for you. It also made me think further on the question about how much we’re collaborating (or not collaborating) online.
We had to create a wiki for our social media class, and of course, wikis tell you how much (or little) someone edited the final output. It was noted that a handful of people contributed the majority of the content, which made our Professor, Michael Netzley, less than thrilled. I brought up the point that though a few people may have been the actual ones to enter the text, doesn’t mean the whole team did not collaborate together. Both sides are debatable, but that’s not the point.
I’m an assistant scout leader for my alma mater’s scout troop and every year around this time we have a camp. As with previous years, the emails pile up, meeting minutes get distributed, camp schedules get sent and changed and re-sent and re-changed until eventually, no one knows what in the world is going on anymore.
To solve this, I set up a wiki for the leaders. It’s a private wiki so I’m sorry I can’t share the link. I will however say that we’re using PBwiki, which I find to be superior to Wetpaint in terms of editing as well as help. But that aside, so far it’s been helping us keep track of personnel and manpower, topics of discussion, a couple of things to be noted, schedules, equipment lists and so on.
No more losing of minutes on paper, no more “can you send me the latest schedule? I can’t find it”. Everything is up there and updated. To the minute.
So why aren’t more of us doing this? Is it the challenge of working alone as Michael brings up? Or an unwillingness to change our styles of working?
Does it make sense for us to share our items on Google Reader (my shared items are here)? Or on del.icio.us? How about collaborating on Google Docs in the classroom? In the office?
To me the biggest problem is convincing the people you’re working with that it’s worth their while. In my scout case study, I knew the people who were primarily going to enter the data would be the younger adult leaders, while the older leaders would keep and eye on it from time to time. To both of these groups, you gotta speak their language.
To my peers, it was the idea of collaboration. To see everything in one place, to have links and for easy reading. To the senior leaders, it was the idea of streamlining information. Not losing paper, not having to distinguish whether schedule(final).doc is the true schedule or schedule(final)THISISTHEREALFINAL.doc is the true schedule.
So how’s collaboration working (or not working) for you? Are you using wikis regularly? Online document processors or software based? Is it a challenge convincing your classmates/colleagues to use it as well?
Tags: collaborating with google docs, collaboration, collaboration on google docs, communicate asia, google docs, googledocs, marketing over coffee, meeting minutes, michael netzley, pbwiki vs wetpaint, schedules, scout wiki, scouts, sharing google reader items, social bookmarking, social media class, wiki
Posted in Google, Icio, Research, collaboration, social media | 4 Comments »
Monday, March 24th, 2008
How much should the average blogger know about SEO?
Frankly, the average blogger does not need to be worry about SEO. Here’s why:
First, the blogging platform which most bloggers use, such as Blogger.com and Wordpress.com are generally search engine friendly come complete with SEO-friendly default template or theme.
Second, most bloggers do not need to rely on the search engines to bring them traffic. They can get traffic from the plethora of social networks and Web 2.0 sites.
If you are interested to find out what are the other 20 ways of generating traffic, click: The 21 Traffic Generation Methods
SEO For Blogs
SEO is appplicable to the more advanced bloggers, who are not in the average or casual bloggers category, and those sites which rely on the search engines to drive new visitors to their blogs.
Usually, these blogs focus on a topic of interest or a niche, e.g. Engadget.com which blogs about the latest electronic gadgets and Blogopreneur.com which focuses on SEO and Blog Marketing.
The 7 Unbreakable Rules of SEO
In order to make your blog rank well for your targeted keywords, these are the 7 things that you need to do and must pay attention to:
- Focus on one keyword per blog post. Stay within the theme of the keyword.
- Keyword-rich blog title. Blog engines such as Wordpress automically uses the blog title in the <title> tag.
- Write a description for each post and add it to the <meta name=”description” …> tag. Make sure you include your targeted keyword in the description. See #7 below.
- Use the keywords in the first paragraph of your post and repeat it as many times as per your editorial requirement.
- Focus on writing great content. Make it useful to your targeted readers and interesting enough for fellow bloggers to quote you and give you that valuable backlink.
- Use a SEO-friendly theme. The WordPress’s default Kubrick theme is SEO-friendly. And most variants of the Kubrick theme are also SEO-friendly. Don’t worry about the cosmetic effect first. It is more important to get into Google and have a good following because of your interesting content.
- The SEO-All-in-One Pack for WordPress is a must-have plugin if you want your blog SEO-friendly and it helps you to prevent duplicated content. This WordPress plugin for SEO also enables you to enter description for each individual post.
P.S. You will need the self-installed version of WordPress to install plugin. So you will not be able to do #2 and #7 if you are using free blog at WordPress.com.
About the author: Shi Heng Cheong is the SEO Trainer with Finggle Pte Ltd, a SEO training company based in Singapore.
Tags: blogger, blogging platform, blogspot, finggle, search engine optimisation, search engine optimization, sem, SEO, shi heng cheong, timmguru, unbreakable rules of seo, what to know about seo, wordpress
Posted in Google, SEO, Search, social media | No Comments »
Friday, March 21st, 2008
Now that the SMU = NTU ad buzz is dying down (or is it just picking up? TIMM Guru put an ad up on Google for people to discover why NTU used the keywords), I think it’s important to look at a few lessons from the whole fiasco:
1) Track What’s Happening
I set up a Google Alert for “SMU NTU” yesterday and quite a few people picked this up, as well as the front page of Singapore Daily. If you’re a company, especially in our small market in Singapore, can you afford this kind of negative publicity? Even if there’s no “new media” person at your company, the least you should do is set up a Google Alert for your company’s name.
2) Respond Quickly
But it’s not enough to know that people are talking about you. You need to respond. Fast. I know on the comments page of sg_ljers one NTU student is valiantly trying to defend the school, but it isn’t working. To be fair, for all we know this could have been the result of a genuine mistake, maybe the mistake was on Google’s part, maybe it’s a typo. The fact is we will not know because NTU chose to keep quiet. It’s going to hit 48 hours since the news was first posted and the blogosphere will move on. People will forever remember the incident as a “fault” of NTU’s, simply because they did not take the opportunity to engage and respond.
3) Your Brand Isn’t What You say It Is, It’s What Google & The Internet Says It Is
The commenter on sg_ljers said:
But I just want to highlight how easily people can draw conclusions based on what they see (which is worse than conclusions based on what they don’t see). Hasn’t it occurred to anyone that SMU might have the same tactic? Hasn’t it occurred to you that maybe NTU is not behind that link? Personally I wouldn’t think that the NTU corp comm would be so dumb as to ruin their own reputation like that.
Yes, bloggers draw conclusions at face value and quickly and will look for the most controversial story instead of the most likely one (although in this case they are probably the same). We’re not journalists, we’re not going to do research or contact NTU Corporate Communications to find out. We will just blog. And the internet will represent it as such. And who reads the internet? Well…
4) Know Your Audience
If this appeared in the Straits Times forum, you can bet NTU would have responded quickly. But choosing not to join the conversation online may be their biggest folly. Who’s reading print? Not me. Probably people much older than me. Who’s on the internet? Who’s picking up this story on Twitter? Your prospective students (or from a business perspective, prospective customers). Just because the discussion is not via your media of choice, does not mean the people in that discussion do not matter. They could matter more.
5) The Internet Is Permanent
Google “SMU NTU” now and you’ll see the SMU = NTU ad as the first link. Now every year new students are going to compare the two business schools and see this issue as well as this (from Tomorrow.sg):
They will draw their own conclusions. I’m betting those conclusions aren’t positive. Again, your brand is what Google says it is.
Finally, I ran this article not to be sensational or controversial for the sake of being controversial, but as an experiment to see if NTU would reply, even with an explicit call out. I think the results speak for themselves.
My word of advice to all companies would be not to ignore what is said about you online. The content creators (ie bloggers, Youtube video creators, Flickr posters, podcasters) are the new gatekeepers of the online community. This one post led to all those other online posts which will enjoy the multiplier effect via word of mouth to reach thousands (more if it were Xiaxue). And you ignore them at your peril.
By the way I can’t seem to replicate the results anymore. Can you? Result of NTU getting rid of the ad? We’ll probably never know. Share your thoughts in the comments section.
Tags: fake ntu ad, google alerts, ntu adwords keywords, ntu google advertisement, ntu singapore, prospective students, sg_ljers, singapore daily, smu = ntu, smu nus ntu comparisons, smu singapore, straits times forum, timm guru, tomorrow.sg
Posted in Google, SMU, Search, Singapore, social media | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008
Wanida picked up the NTU advertisement post and posted it on Sg_ljers, which got quite a conversation.
Keen eyes noticed that if you try to search for it right now, the NTU ad is no longer there. Here’s the screenshot taken at 11:13pm (click for bigger picture).
So I’m calling out NTU to respond either here or at Sg_ljers or anywhere on the internet: What happened to your ad? Did you read about this and remove it? Did it run out of budget? (Nods to Amelia).
Whatever the reason, why was it done in the first place? Clearly the corporate communications department is new media savvy enough to use AdWords, now use that same ability to respond to the conversation! I think the blogosphere should know what’s going on.
Tags: adwords, Google, ntu corporate communications, ntu fake advertisement, nus, Search, sg_ljers, sim, singapore universities, SMU
Posted in Google, Marketing, Media, SMU, Singapore, social media | 17 Comments »
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008
Google SMU Singapore (Singapore Management University) now and you’ll get this result (click for bigger picture):
The top result? A fake paid link by NTU (Nanyang Technological University). I understand Google can be gamed, but do we really need to do this? Is it bordering on unethical behavior? What do you think?
Edit: Note that I’m not making a big deal out of NTU appearing on an SMU search. It happens with Google and it’s okay. The point is that the paid link says “SMU Singapore” but the URL link is “ntu.edu.sg”. Clearly misleading.
Tags: fake paid links, gaming google, Google, ntu, nus, sim, Singapore, singapore management university, singapore universities, SMU, unethical search
Posted in Google, Marketing, SMU, Singapore | 7 Comments »
Saturday, March 15th, 2008
Thinking about my Snapfish posts and the whole debate going on about whether or not we as marketers or communications people should be comfortable with using social media for business because taking that leap requires giving up a large portion of control to your consumers or the general public.
Name-dropping in history
Sticking just to music, bands that existed before or just when the internet came into existence did name-drop brands. From LFO (Abercrombie & Fitch), Barenaked Ladies (Snickers), Run DMC (Adidas) and recently, Melee (JetBlue). (Here’s a good list of brand names appearing in songs)
Though product placement is gaining popularity now, it certainly wasn’t in the early ’90s, though Abercrombie & Fitch enjoyed some market growth and Run DMC was eventually approached to be Adidas’s spokesperson.
Prior to the internet, unless you were one of those bands or maybe Oprah, what you thought about a brand would not grow larger than conversation at the bar.
What’s Changed: The Ants Have Megaphones
Borrowing the phrase from Chris Anderson’s book, The Long Tail (brilliant book), the ants have megaphones. The democratisation of media means that anyone can be a critic, a brand advocate, or a “journalist”. Because of that, your brand isn’t what you say it is. It’s what Google says it is. Given the long tail of bloggers, reviews, youtube videos and the like, a search for your brand could turn up negative reference (Dell Hell anyone?)
I don’t think marketers ever had control. But now they have to sit up and deal with the fact that many “ants” collectively can affect a brand (for better or worse), and we’re not as easy to deal with compared to offering a spokesperson contract to Run DMC. We want honest and open company dealings and we will take companies to task for failing to do so.
In short: our conversations are not restricted to bar talk anymore, and it would be folly for a company to ignore it.
Positive or negative brand experiences with social media? Let’s hear it! (Don’t worry, I don’t think you’re ants!)
Tags: abercrombie & fitch, adidas, adidas spokesperson, bar conversations, barenaked ladies, bloggers, brand advocate, brand democratization, brand reviews, chris anderson, control message, critics, dell hell, Google, jetblue, lfo, long tail, marketers in control, melee, name dropping, oprah, run dmc, snapfish, snickers, the ants have megaphones
Posted in Google, Marketing, Search, social media | No Comments »
