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August 20, 2008
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I get the impression the PR firms are currently in the middle on a painful transition from being broadcasters to conversationalists.
By this, I mean that PR folks come across as being good at helping companies determine what their public message should be in order to build trust and sell products or services. While that's fine, a new version of this is quickly becoming hard to ignore.
It's a tough concept for many traditional PR people to understand, but that doesn't make it any less valuable. The term I use for it is, "listening."
While sitting in a boardroom and deciding what customers want to hear over a bagels and coffee has its place, it's hardly as effective as listening to what actual customers are saying about your company's products or services in real time online.
I get the impression that some PR firms have caught onto this concept and are now providing their clients with reports on "what people are saying about you online." And, I get the impression that these updates are provided at regular intervals such as monthly.
That's a good start, but it falls way short of what should be happening. What needs to happen is real time reactions to comments rather than simply aggregating pissed off commentaries. You'll still need to do the aggregations, but you'll nip a lot more PR disasters in the bud by proving that business can listen and respond.
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August 19, 2008
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Just short of a year ago, I wrote about Xobni, a company that built a plugin for Outlook that helps you figure out where your email time is going. Trend data that helps you figure out who's filling your inbox with messages and who's inboxes you're filling over time.
It's an impressive tool, but has one limiting feature: Outlook.
At the time, I suggested that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft should build similar reporting into their web based email applications. A year later, this hasn't happened . . . yet. But it looks like we're getting closer based on this mail trends script from Mihai Parparita that is designed to analyze Gmail and Google Apps mail accounts via IMAP.
How cool is that?
Based on the time I've spent using Trends within Google Reader, I'm confident that similar trend reporting within email would be a huge time saver. It's not always clear where time is going when you're processing email throughout the day. If you can occasionally take a step back and look at your email behavior at a higher level, you may find areas where you are in dire need of change. Now you may have the data you need to actually identify the issues and do something about them.
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August 18, 2008
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What happens when someone searches for your name? Do they find you? Do they find other people by the same name?
There are obvious benefits to showing up when someone searches for you. Especially if the results on the page have nice things to say about you.
Here is a shot of the top-10 results on Google for my name as of today:
Currently, I'm 10 for 10, meaning the Ed Kohler that shows up for each of the top-10 results is me. In fact, it looks like I'm the Ed Kohler that shows up in 89 of the first 100 results.
I spend more time than average on the web, and have a somewhat unique (but not entirely unique) name, so I tend to have a strong representation in search results.
But even if you don't spend a ton of time online, there are some relatively simple things you can do to improve the percentage of top-10 search results you control for your own name.
1. Have a blog. And use your name on it.
2. Sign up and occasionally use social networking sites that have strong rankings like Twitter, Blip.tv, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Flickr.
3. Have a bio page on your company's website.
4. Contribute comments to blogs that interest you.
5. Create a public profile on Amazon.
6. Create a video of yourself and distribute it to lots of video sites using TubeMogul.com.
7. Do things worth writing about.
If none of that works, just set a new record for Olympic gold medals.
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August 17, 2008
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The roundup. On the web, this takes the form of a blog post where the author links out to a batch of stories - generally on other sites - with quick summaries of why they're worth reading. They're powerful posts when put together by people with good taste.
Here are three that are done well, in my opinion:
David Brauer's Daily Glean: David Brauer of Minnpost.com - a Minnesota based news site - runs a daily summary of the most interesting Minnesota-centric reporting he finds hitting his Google Reader at the crack of dawn each weekday. His 3-5 sentence summaries include a glimpse into the back story of the stories being covered. Being "gleaned" is quickly becoming a badge of honor for Minnesota journalists who are recognized for particularly interesting reporting.
Rebecca Kelley's SEO Roundup: The SEO industry can be a tricky one to follow online since there is a fire hose of content created each week and much of it is total crap due to self-promotion or misinformation. Rebecca manages to pick out the truly worthy gems weekly for the SEOMoz Blog.
Erica Mauter's Minneapolis Metblogs Roundup: While Brauer focuses on the news of the day at MinnPost, Mauter gathers lists of gatherings such a local sporting events, the arts scene, new restaurant openings, and political events worth checking out.
What do they all have in common?
- They're on top of their topics of interest.
- They love to share.
- They have great senses of humor.
- They're generous linkers.
Who would you add to this list? Does someone in your industry or geography fit the profile of a great roundup blogger?
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August 16, 2008
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Here are a few advanced searches that are incredibly valuable:
1. "quoting phrases" will search for the words within the quote in only that order. This is especially valuable when searching for people.
2. Searching within a site: site:technologyevangelist.com twitter brings back pages from this site that include the term "twitter"
3. -negatives Throw a minus sign in front of a word to filter out results including that term. Say, you're interested in the Olympics, but not gymnastics, diving, or equestrian. No problem: olympics -gymnastics -diving -equestrian
4. Top level domains: Want to find out what government agencies are saying about global warming? Try this: site:gov "global warming"
5. Google Alerts: Take searches that interest you and track them using Google Alerts. Whenever Google discovers something new on the web matching your search criteria they'll email it to you.
What would you add?
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August 14, 2008
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Google came out with a post the other day clarifying different types of clicks they don't charge advertisers for, when detected. They break down into two categories: fraudulent clicks and invalid ones. Frauduent clicks are generally defined as those there someone is motivated to click for financial gain while invalid ones are double clicks and other things of little value to the advertiser.
Below is Google's examples of fraudulent clicks (emphasis mine).
Inside AdSense: Defining invalid clicks and click fraud
Click fraud is a subset of invalid clicks that are generated with malicious or fraudulent intent -- in other words, clicks that are intended to drive up advertiser cost or publisher revenue artificially. Sources for these clicks include, but are not limited to:
- A publisher clicking on his own ads, or encouraging clicks on his ads
-Users or family members clicking to support the site / publisher
- Third-party programs with user incentives, such as paid-to-click services and click-exchanges
- Automated clicking tools, robots, or other deceptive software
What blows my mind is that Google - to this day - does not offer a way for publishers to identify themselves to Google in a way that would allow them to click on ads on their own site without being considered a fraud. For example, I write articles on this site, and I spend a decent amount of time looking at the site in order to view comments, so I see the ads from Google that I've embedded in the site. Since Google's ads are specifically targeted to the content I wrote, they often appear relevant to my interests. Yet clicking on them would be considered fraudulent by Google's definition.
What I'd like to see is a way to let Google know that I'd like to click on ads on my own site that appear relevant to me. Don't pay me for clicking on the ad. Decide for yourself my clicks are valuable enough to still charge the advertiser for a portion of the click. But don't criminalize my behavior.
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August 12, 2008
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After reading about Twitter's new limit on how many people you can follow, my immediate reaction was, "It sounds like people will have to create a rolling list of people they follow."
Backing up, one problem with Twitter is every time you follow someone the person you follow receives an alert that they have a new follower. This is a good thing since it's good to inform people about followers since many people who are followed would like to follow people back. However, it's also a bad thing since it can be abused by people who attempt to create large lists of follower by bulk-following people to create awareness. If even a small percentage of bulk-followed people find their new follower interesting enough to reciprocate, the spammer has succeeded.
With follow limits in place, it becomes more difficult for people to follow-spam their way to large lists of followers.
So, what's the workaround? Bulk follow people as before, but unfollow people who don't reciprocate within a certain time frame so you can free up additional follow space for additional spam. Would someone really do that? Yes. Check out the first comment from the post linked to above:
# Don Droper on August 11th, 2008 1:33 pm
I hit the 2K limit shortly after I started testing our twitter GM script last week. Yesterday (Sunday), with 675 followes, I hit a new limit: 900. It appears that if you follow too many, they drop your following limit even further. Luckily, I can easily drop the non-mutuals.
"Non-mutuals" is a term Don Droper uses to describe people who don't respond to his automated follow-spam script by friending a robot. I'd use the term "suckers" to describe the, apparently, 12% who do in some fields according to Mr Droper's explanation of his script.
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