Friday, April 17th, 2009
Shill Alert
Awhile back I was talking to a friend who I went to school with, and she was telling me about a social media training session by an “expert” who was teaching them how to use social media to monitor their brand. This apparently covered the usual Google Alerts, as well as some of the more popular forums here in Singapore. So I asked the obvious question: “When’re you going to start participating?”
“Oh. We have to pay more for training for engagement.”
Say what?
I’m definitely not against having training for engagement. It’s way too easy to do the wrong thing when commenting on a blog, using Twitter, using Facebook or just replying on a forum. Not to mention there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for participation, and it’ll have to be customised to fit your company’s needs, which will differ from industry to industry, and even within industries, between companies.
Here’s the thing though. If I were an agency or a self-proclaimed “expert” (a term I really don’t like), I’d love it if a company contacts me and doesn’t include a request for engagement in the “training package”. Great for greed, great for money.
It’s like going to an agency and asking for something “viral” just because it’s the latest buzzword, but not having an inkling what it’s actually about, and when the agency comes back to you with an idea which is far from viral, you won’t know any better and have to take their word for it. Do you really want to take that kind of risk with your money these days?
So I think as a client, do yourself a favour and do some research on what your agency should be offering you and what you should be asking for. And if you don’t know enough and don’t have the time to know about, at least bring someone on board in your company who can tell you when your agency or “expert” is obviously shilling you.
Tags: agency, brand monitoring, buzzword, clients, engagement training, facebook, forums, google alerts, inline engagement, monitoring your brand, one size fits all, participating on forums, participation online, risk, shill, Singapore, social media expert, social media monitoring, twitter, viral
Posted in Poor Practices, Singapore, social media, social media business | 7 Comments »
Saturday, March 8th, 2008
2) What Do You Do in Your SEO-Related Field Of Work?
As a trainer in SEO and search marketing, I allocate “surfing time” everyday to visit forums, read blogs and articles to keep abreast with the latest SEO and traffic generation techiniques.
Then I spend most of my “free” time testing these techniques to see how effective they are before implementing them into my SEO training workshops.
Not When, But How Quickly Can Your Site Be Found
Currently, I am working on a simple method to help small and medium-sized business’s Web sites to get into Google organic listing in a very short time, say within a few hours.
For large portals e.g. www.channelnewsasia.com and www.asiaone.com, which already have high Google PageRank, getting into the SERP quickly is not a problem. However, for many small and medium-size companies in Singapore, it is a challenge even to be listed in the seach engines for one’s company name.
SEO Specialist: The Web Site Repairman
Many of the small and medium-sized company sites are broken and not accessible to the search engine robots. The problem could be due to a combination of factors:
1. Pure graphic page
2. Flash only splash page
3. Excessive use of Javascript
4. Zero hyperlink to inner pages
5. Illegal re-direction
6. and many more…
In order to fix these problems and make the Web site search engine friendly, you will need the help of an experienced SEO specialist. Sometime it is easier and cheaper to create a new page than to fix a broken one.
Web site owners, Web masters and Web designers may use the 3 simple steps I mentioned in SEO Guest Post #1 to ensure good search engine ranking and quality traffic to your new Web site.
SEO Specialist: The Marketing Maverick
Building Websites to market your business using the new media requires a change from the conventional thinking of traditional media.
The final goal may be the same: you want paying customers. However, the rules are different. For example, Long Tail keywords are more profitable than generic keywords. Also, using less graphics and more words may help you to convert more sales.
A good SEO specialist, besides possessing the required technical knowledge of tweaking the Web page for search engine robots and algorithm, will also need to have a great understanding of marketing in order to give advice on the most probable keywords and how to make your page layout appears simple and easy to use and yet useful for your visitors to return again and again.
Enormous amounts of time and effort has to be spent on collecting the right marketing knowledge and building the required technical experience to provide effective solutions and strategies to make a Web site successful.
That may well be the job description of a SEO specialist.
About the author: Shi Heng Cheong is a SEO Specialist turned SEO Trainer based in Singapore. He blogs about SEO and search marketing related topics at http://shihengcheong.com/blog/ and http://www.TIMMGuru.com
Tags: forums, search marketing, SEO, SEO specialist, timm guru, traffic generation, web designer
Posted in SEO, Search, Singapore | No Comments »
