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 »
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 »
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 »
