• Monday, March 16th, 2009
Wow!
That’s the word for day two – just WOW!
For me day two was more about meeting great people and learning about great tools than anything else.
Of course the highlight for the day was that Rhea Drysdale (@Rhea) decided it was safe to follow me on Twitter, even though every time she looked over her left shoulder, there I was. It was really great to meet you Rhea!
Matt Cutts of Google fame also chatted with a few of us about his recent weight loss success and shared his secret to success. It’s hard to believe, but apparently if you exercise and eat more fruits and vegetables, it’s good for you. Who knew?
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• Sunday, March 08th, 2009
That was the question I set out to answer one day last week. Well, sort of anyway.
I’m sure most of you are well aware of the hullabaloo caused by the recent move made by Mars/Skittles that converted Skittles.com from a traditional web site to a mashup of social media sites, incorporating content from Facebook, wikipedia, YouTube and Twitter. The overall success of the social experiment has been debated widely; some seem to think it was brilliant, others feel it is ridiculous mistake to place control of a brand’s voice into the hands of the general public at large. Regardless of which camp you are in, all seem agree that it took considerable courage. Understandably, word of the new site spread like wildfire. Before long, nearly everyone on Twitter was sending messages with “#skittles” in them, just to see if they would show up on the site. I began seeing people comment in my “twitter stream” about what others had written just to get listed on the skittles page. I realized that people were not just looking for their own tweets, but were actually reading what others had written – score one for the skittles team.
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• Friday, February 27th, 2009
Can a product be too good for its own good?
We’ve all heard the expression “it’s too good to be true”. That’s something that as marketers, we have to be careful not to create when we promote our products – no matter how great or innovative they may be. People often have preconceived ideas about what various products can and can’t do, and claims of performance that go beyond those expectations may be viewed as unrealistic and unbelievable. If your customer thinks you are exaggerating the performance of your product, they may still be willing to try it, but will not be willing to pay the price you expect for such an industry break-through. Your customers see the transaction as risky and will want to limit possible losses. Even if your products do all you say and more, if people don’t believe you, the perceived value of your product will lessened.
What if your product was a talking dog?
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• Thursday, December 18th, 2008
Do as we say, not as we do
If you are even remotely involved in marketing, communication or PR, you have no doubt heard of Ragan Communications. The good folks at Ragan have been providing expert advice for years. Ragan, like many others in their field, have been getting more involved in Social Media, e-marketing and even Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
One of Ragan’s staff writers recently posted an “aticle” (UPDATE: Original article now resides in member’s only area. Here is a Google cached version) (UPDATE: Now the Google cache is dead too…sorry) on how to land on the first page of Google. In the story, author Michael Sebastion summarizes for us a presentation made by John Spagnuolo at a recent Ragan conferance (which generally are quite good – you should go to one).
Michael’s summary was well-written and John’s suggestions, aside from implying Web teams are slow and difficult to work with, were accurate.
How many SEO rules can one article break?
The page this article is on breaks many of the rules talked about by John, and a few other important rules of SEO. more…
• Thursday, December 11th, 2008
I’m a Search Engine Optimizer (SEO). I like to think I do a pretty good job. By no means am I an SEO industry rock star. While I’ve done a few SEO site reviews for friends and small business, and made some suggestions on how they might improve site rankings on Google and the other Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), I primarily work on my employer’s corporate Web sites.
Because I don’t consider myself an SEO rock star, I find it curious that for each of the phrases below I rank on page one of Google (tested on 12/10/2008). These rankings are not just here in Austin, Texas. Thanks to testing done by some of my Twitter pals, I know the pages have similar ranks in other parts of the country and the world. more…
