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 | 1 Comment »
Monday, October 20th, 2008
I was in Toronto to catch Jason Mraz live earlier this week, so needless to say “Jason Mraz” has been a much searched term for me on Google the past few days. Something that came up during one of the searches was a “Musician of the month” type post from Chapters Indigo (in Canada, Indigo is the equivalent to Borders or Barnes & Noble).
Jason Mraz on Chapters Indigo
So on this particular post, the author linked to a video to Mraz’s concert in Korea, which I coincidentally happened to be listening to. Obviously, that made me feel like commenting…. until I found out that I had to sign up to do so.
The problem is that I already have so many accounts with so many places that I keep forgetting my usernames and/or password, and I really don’t want to sign up again unless I really want to use the service. I’m certainly not creating an account just to post a comment. The end result? Indigo doesn’t get an enthusiastic comment and the opportunity for interaction is gone.
Now I get that businesses want personal data on web users, but sometimes it’s not all that necessary. Using essential parts of the service like purchasing a product or submitting user-generated content like a cooking recipe, sure. For small interactions like posting a comment? Maybe not so much.
I’ve mentioned this before on the Ping.sg discussion boards too, if we want to develop community and interaction, make the barriers to entry low and virtually painless for people to join in. If you’re truly offering something of value, eventually people will sign up after interacting for awhile. And who knows, maybe after they sign up, they’ll purchase something, and so on.
Tags: barnes & noble, borders, canada, chapters indigo, community interaction, creating online accounts, developing community, encouraging interaction, Google, jason mraz, ping.sg, toronto
Posted in Poor Practices, community | 2 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 »
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
I was at an informal meeting today which I quite enjoyed. We had bloggers, client-side people, agency-side people, all of whom were interested in social media. I thought the discussion was generally good, but one question in particular stood out.
Someone mentioned that if hotels wanted to blog, why not get the concierge desk to blog as the stories of what goes on on the ground as well as useful information about the city would be useful and relevant to travelers visiting the hotel or deciding where to stay. It was raised that there could be a number of authors running the blog or just one person, but they should be anonymous. Perhaps blogging as “Your friendly concierge at the Hyatt”, for example.
Bill and Coleman called him out on this and said companies who blog should have full transparency and name their bloggers. But the very reasonable reason of “one day they’ll leave” surfaced, and I’m having a hard time reconciling the two.
On one hand I am a transparency advocate. There are times when anonymity helps (ie when needing to talk about a sensitive issue), but generally for an external blog, I think the public should know who is the person blogging.
But I think the person leaving is a real concern. Take Matt Cutts for example, arguably Google’s “face” on the internet. If for some reason he jumps ship to Yahoo! tomorrow, would that be a problem? Thousands of readers may just migrate over. And who would take over that role at Microsoft and Google? How long would it take the new person to re-build a community?
Of course, I know, Matt Cutts is hardly the best analogy for concierge staff, but you get the gist.
So what would you do if you had to hire a community manager or social media evangelist? Would you be comfortable with them being your company’s Web2.0 “face” online? Would it worry you if they moved on? Would you be confident of replacing them with little to no loss in interest from the community?
Tags: anonymous bloggers, blogging anonymity, blogging transparency, concierge blog, Google, matt cutts
Posted in Blogs, social media | 7 Comments »
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
Over the last two weeks I’ve been reading about Sheylara’s Xbox gaming preview and then heard about it on the Tech65 podcast today, and last night I read about the HP Mini-note PC blogger preview from Michael, Vanessa, Bernard and Estee (among many others).
My first thoughts? “Damn I need to buy an Xbox 360 just to play The Force Unleashed”, and “Damn that HP Mini-note PC would be sweet to carry while I travel”.
More serious thoughts: I think it’s great that companies like Microsoft and HP would reach out to our local bloggers in the blogosphere. And on top of that, I think it’s great that they didn’t just throw out a wide net and see who gets caught in it, but they really made an effort to engage in targeted outreach to reach the people who would be excited about their products.
Today I also met up with people from The Digital Movement for an informal discussion with a couple of execs from Google to talk a little about feedback and collaboration.
I think this is definitely signaling change in Singapore. No longer are these big companies thinking: We will just produce the product and people will just buy them. They recognise that there is a conversation taking place whether they like it or not, whether they want to take part in it or not.
And frankly, I feel they ignore this conversation at their peril.
I’m sure there are people who’re going to say “Well, how many of these bloggers who saw the HP Mini-note PC will actually buy it? Or how many people who read a blog entry on it will buy it? What’s my conversion rate?” in other words: How is this going to affect my bottom line?
I think from a very practical point of view, that has to be a consideration. But is it the only consideration? So many management case studies point to hotels who give employees a certain amount of money to make right customer complaints as a way of generating goodwill. Is this truly any different?
If the result of this blogger outreach means that the next time someone is searching for the HP Mini-note PC as part of research about whether or not to buy it, and the top few results on Google are these pages and reviews and feedback from the bloggers who attended the outreach, I think the cost of holding that blogger outreach has paid for itself.
I have a lot of other thoughts on the whole blogger outreach strategy and who it works for and stuff like that, but I’d really like to hear your thoughts on the issue. So… comment away!
Tags: bernard leong, blogger exlusive, blogger outreach, blogger preview, bottom line, estee, geek goddess, Google, hp, hp mini-note pc, ignore the conversation at your peril, join the conversation, michael cheng, microsoft, sheylara, targeted outreach, tech 65, the digital movement, the force unleashed, vanessa tan, xbox preview
Posted in Blogs, Marketing, Singapore, social media | 9 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 »
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
Last week I posted adventures in social media #1 with Derrick Kwa, and this week I’m moving on to #2 Shi Heng Cheong with aka TIMM Guru (that’s The Internet Marketing Machine Guru), specialising in SEO (search engine optimisation) in Singapore.
Shi found my post on Singapore trying to join the Google race and left his comment here, as well as a post of his own.
Shi will be contributing a number of guest posts to this blog revolving around the top 10 questions about SEO that you should want to know.
If you have no idea what SEO is or are tempted to brush it off as unimportant, don’t. Remember how the saying used to be “no one ever got fired for putting a 30 second spot in the marketing plan”? Well, the new saying is “no one ever got fired for putting search in the marketing plan”, and that’s what SEO is all about.
First guest post on SEO should be up by the end of this week or early next week, subscribe via RSS to make sure you don’t miss out on it!
Tags: adventures in social media, derrick kwa, Google, marketing plan, search enging optimisation, SEO, shi heng cheong, Singapore, the internet marketing machine guru, timm guru, top 10 SEO questions
Posted in Blogs, Google, Search, Singapore, social media | 1 Comment »
