26 Jun
It’s been a horrible 24 hours. I was in night class when my wife sent me a text to let me know that the king of pop had passed away. I couldn’t believe it – It blew my mind but then again he had a stressful life. One I wouldn’t wish on anyone let alone the three children now left without a father.
Moving forward to the title of the post.
I don’t plan to get into the politics of the legend rather the findings from the whole situation. I had a question – who is profiting from the death of him? Who is utilizing the numerous search’s and tweets? It IS possible and in fact it IS being done.
I did a quick search regarding Michael Jackson’s Death:
Michael Jackson's Death Search
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Wow…really? I couldn’t believe it so I checked out all the Sponsored Links aaaand:
Profit on Michael Jackson Death
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Regardless of the ethical issue of trying to porfit of the man’s death but let’s dig a little deeper shall we?
AdWords and Micheal Jackson's Death
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Pretty interesting isn’t it? I can only estimate at this time that the average CPC will increase over the weekend and when the autobsy results return they will be huge. Why? Well, if you know a popular pop website that runs adsense why not try to get the readers.
What are your thoughts – ethical or just business as usual?
25 Jun
The Ladder of Success
Success like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. However, when a coworker gets promoted over you – you can’t help but feel a little shafted, right?
I ‘m all for competition since it drives the mindset of an entrepreneur.
In being successful you have to determine your own peg.
If you don’t want to run your own business - you don’t have to.
If you don’t want to be involved in climbing the networking ladder – you don’t have to.
Then again, if you complain about being passed over and I hear about it – I will smack you…literally.
*I don’t want to hear. I don’t want to read it*
It’s that same attitude that I heard, almost on a daily basis, from friends as we would contemplate on our futures
“It’s not my fault, it’s my environment. I can’t do anything”
It all starts from within. If you are quick to blame others for you being past over in promotions ask yourself “why”. Look in the mirror and stop looking around at others. The worst thing people can do (myself included) is not take personal responsibility in wanting to achieve more. I’ve passed on projects before and they’ve come back to bite me in the end. Things I’ve learned in the past NOT do when it comes to importance.
Have you been there? Maybe you’ve been the one promoted and heard the whispers in the office.
15 Jun
SEO What? Tweet..uh?
It’s an honest question. I’ve been going to night school for quite some time and yet am astonished by the textbooks and the information they provide. I just shake my head at the author’s – not because they don’t know what they are talking about but that they are saying the same things as all the previous ‘editions’. After reading Seth Godin’s latest blog post entitled Textbook Rant I felt the need to speak out. He hit the nail right on the head.
I recall a few years back when I was working on HipHopRemix and learning about SEO (hands-on) and SEM (again…hands-on) I was in a Marketing course. The instructor broke down our groups and we had to develop a presentation on a specific subject they chose. The group I was in was given “Online Advertising”. HA!
This was a piece of cake…or so I thought.
I looked through the $90+ textbook for any reference…nothing! So, I took what I knew referenced some people in the ‘industry’ and some media kids. BAM! Done. Cue to the end of the presentation and the instructor asking where we got this information.
It wasn’t the book that was for sure.
As I got more in social media marketing I find that more professor’s with high tenure don’t feel that “social media” has any merit whatsoever. They are in an era of ‘cocktail’ parties and work-of-mouth advertising. I’m not saying they are bad people at all. Rather that they don’t see the benefit of it all. Most college’s don’t and that leaves an open door for people like you and me to come in to teach / write / develop / etc these young minds. They are doing social media marketing most of the time and not even knowing it.
What say you – are the college’s behind the times?
11 Jun
Earlier today I responded to an email to a co-worker who has a side blog (LDD Blog) about how companies really need to research the searching function of the internet. It got me thinking a little more.
I’ve written about knowing your companies keywords – what is it that you are offering and build your site/content around that. Yet, we need to go a little bit deeper into that. By using Google Analytic’s – Google Webmaster – Google Local Business Center and your cPanel statistics you should know just about everything about your clients.
Google Analytics
I could write a book about the various things you can do with this to see where / how / when people are coming to your website.
- Did you tweet a specific url for a special on a product?
- Did you write a guest post at another site or were you mentioned on a different site?
- Did you Digg / Stumble! / Sphinn / etc?
How long are these people staying and how far in depth are they going. Breaking down each of these statistics only benefits you.
Google Webmaster
Another excellent tool that shouldn’t be held lightly. This will let you know the popular search terms people were finding your site and the position you were ranked in it. If you have a site about “needle nose pliers” and you’re 4th on the search for “nose pliers” – it’ll allow you look over your competition and how they’ve made 1-2-3rd place above you.
In doing all that though you need to double check a few items such as:
- How is your sitemap?
- Is your site verified?
- Does it navigate well or do you have several hundred categories and just as many sub-categories yet not that much content?
- Do you have any ‘warnings’ – 404′s // 301′s // etc?
Knowing this type of information will let you know what is working and specifically what isn’t on your site. It’s great so you don’t have to check each page – each link. That can be tedious if you’re content grows.
Google Local Business Center
Something new Google has offered is reports which can be extremely useful if you have a brick and mortar business or if people just want to know “more information” about your company. While before this they just showed basic statistics (impressions / actions) and offered “coupon” options.
Now, with reports you can find out all sorts of great items:
- Are people looking for reviews on your business?
- Are people interested in your business hours / types of payments?
- Are people looking for directions to your business?
Just a few items and once again it shows the top queries on how users came to it. I will be keeping a close on this particular feature in the coming weeks just to see how effective it can be.
cPanel Information
What does your control panel say statistically? Are users just going to one item on your site to get information or coming by accident? Is your db (database) running slow when people are doing simple search’s WITHIN your site: what ARE they searching for?
Answer these questions along with the previous data and you know now how exactly your clients are.
- How they’re coming to your site -
- What they are looking for -
- How long they are staying -
- What specially they are looking for -
Without Speaking To Them!
What say you? You’re thoughts on the subject?
04 Jun
As you know I have a little boy and there seem to be trips to McDonald’s on an occasion (something my wife and I have cut down drastically for healthy reasons). Yet, for a special treat we’ll get him a happy meal and many of you know they come with the infamous “toy”. These toy’s change just about every week in accordance with a new movie. Wade Sampson has a great write up on the Disney and McDonald connection which goes into detail just how the partnership started – dissolved – and started again.
Disney realized the growth of McDonald’s and their impact in youth culture. While Disney has the funds to do their ‘own marketing’ but looking at their stock over the past couple decades their stock soared when they teamed up with McD’s. Thus cross marketing was born and showed the word the power of it. The sheer cross marketing promotion power for these two have become just about absolutely ridiculous. When Disney comes out with a new movie then a week before and two-three weeks after the movie’s release date the “toy” promotes the movie.
Recently it was the newest Ben Stiller movie Night of The Museum sequel – which my family saw and highly suggest. So, not only did McDonald’s get our business by purchasing a kid’s meal and then Disney got our money next. While we were already set on seeing this particular movie I took notice of our son and how he would play with this toy then talk about wanting to see the movie. Granted as I mentioned we were already planning on seeing it but he would go on and on about wanting to see it.
Cross marketing promotional works!
Do you have another example?
03 Jun
In the past I’ve broken down what exactly social media is and if you are reading this post from a link on facebook or twitter and you make a comment below you are enjoying web 2.0. Yet people fail to realize this over and over and over and over and over AGAIN.
You found a great website and you copied the link – opened your email (aol/hotmail/etc) – pasted the link and sent it off to your friends. Then you add the site to your bookmark (for the computer you are on).
Then let’s move forward a few years:
You found a great website and you 1) leave a comment 2) stumble it to bookmark it 3) from the site post it to your facebook profile 4) ReTweet it 5) Digg/Sphinn it 6) then from the site you send it all your contact’s using your Gmail all why IM’ing it to your those online.
So, which one is better? For those who aren’t able to adapt to changing times and overall new technology I would insist on #1 yet the latter of the two shows us that the possibilities to connect with our friends / family / coworkers are endless and need to be looked at more carefully.
What say you?
