Archive for August, 2008
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, August 31st, 2008
In celebration of International Blog Day. We’d like to share some great non marketing blogs with you.
Organikal – tips on green living for families.
I am an Organizing Junkie - Actually I am not which is why I like this organiser’s blog.
Being Five – cartoon about a junior blogger
The Scottish Football Blog – commentary on the Scottish football scene (and by football I mean football not that North American rugby equivalent!).
The Stay at Home Mother - Great blog by a local mom.
For more:
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, August 28th, 2008
Judging by the sheets of rain outside, summer is almost over here in Vancouver but never mind, there are lots of reasons to keep us cheerful on the new media front. Here are links to our discoveries this month.
Jotform – the simplest, easiest way to create forms online.
Mixwit – make your own music mixes.
wiki How – wondering how to do something? Ask wiki How. Know how to do something, contribute to wiki How.
spoink – social blogging by phone.
veoh – an alternative to YouTube.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, August 27th, 2008
This Out-Smarts podcast looks at how kids are using social media and interactive games on line. What better way to do it than by interviewing two net savvy generation zedders.
[audio:http://www.out-smarts.com/Podcast6.mp3]
Podcast: Download
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, August 25th, 2008
International blog day is coming up again (on August 31) and once again the Out-Smarts blog will participate. The whole point of this day is to break down borders and allow bloggers from all over to connect.
What do you need to do? Find 5 blogs that you like and blog about them on the day. They have to be blogs from other countries, areas of interest or culture. Last year our favorites included a rock tumbling and travel blog. You’ll have to wait till Sunday to find out about this years favorites.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, August 22nd, 2008
Links are like gold on the Internet, the more your have the better your ranking. Link building however can be arduous and frustrating and if you don’t know what you are doing you can spend a lot of time chasing your tail.
Here are some tips to make your efforts more effective:
1. Always ensure your site is listed in all of the major search engines prior to starting your link building campaign.
2. Only submit links to quality sites.
3. Target your linking to sites that are pertinent to your business.
4. Remember to add your links in appropriate directories.
5. Quality is better than volume. Link to sites that have good traffic stats.
6. Track your progress – set up a spreadsheet to track submissions.
7. Many sites require a reciprocal link. Decide in advance if you will take this approach and add this to your web site.
8. Only pay for listings if you can determine your ROI.
9. Go for the low hanging fruit. Request a link from customer and partner sites.
10. And this is perhaps the most important. Don’t get disheartened. Effective link building takes time and commitment. Results are not instantaneous and it often takes several months to see the full effect.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, August 20th, 2008
As someone who can fritter away hours on Google analytics looking at web traffic patterns and trying to understand them, I was over the moon when the opportunity arose to review a book for the Mini Book Expo for Bloggers about just that.
Click – Unexpected Insights For Business and Life by Bill Tancer takes a very close look at online patterns: specifically what millions of people search for online and turns up a number of unexpected and interesting parallels.
Bill is the general manager of global research at Hitwise, a company specializing in online competitive intelligence and as such has vast amounts of data available at his disposal on how and where people click. He loves finding patterns and predicting outcomes, some of which he shares in the book and, as I found out, he has an uncanny knack at uncovering search habits one wouldn’t expect.
Did you know, for example, that searches for “Prom Dresses” peak early in the year or that on-line sports gamblers like to play poker in the close season. These are some of the first discoveries Tancer discusses in the book. He goes on to analyze celebrity addiction and what we really fear as opposed to what we say we fear. Tancer makes the valuable point that people are more transparent and honest when they search online. They see it as a forum providing anonymity and are therefore more comfortable using online search to find out about touchy subjects than they would be face to face or in “real life”. By tracking who searches for what, where they click and when, patterns emerge that tell us a lot about the habits of our society and the way we use both traditional and new technology.
As a fan of the Arctic Monkeys, it was interesting to find out that Bill was able to track their meteoric rise to fame through as small number of “super connectors” spreading the word in MySpace and that TV also plays a major role in driving online traffic patterns.
This book is full of case studies and interesting anecdotes and has many gems of information such as the fact that Pareto’s 80/20 rules doesn’t apply online where 1-9-90 one does: 90 percent of people online are lurkers, 9 percent are intermittent contributers and 1 percent active collaborators. A kick in the teeth to the web 2.0 ideal of everyone participating.
As an Internet marketer, this book is invaluable and effectively displays the value of data mining online to hone in on your target audience but its not simply a book for the internet or marketing professional. It provides an entertaining analysis of online habits written in laymen terms that would be applicable and valuable to anyone interested in the habits of our society.
Thanks to Hyperion and the Mini Book Expo for the advanced reading copy of this book and especially to Bill for sharing his insights. I look forward to more in the Hitwise blog.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, August 19th, 2008
I love tracking the stats on the traffic that comes to this web site and can easily while away hours finding out where people are visiting from and what they are interested in. I was therefore fascinated this weekend as I watched traffic to the site spike at a time when there had been no post so of course I headed straight into Google Analytics to find the solution. There I discovered that it wasn’t a new post that people were finding but an old one.
Let me explain. Back in December 2007, the there was a similar spike that happened when I posted Facebook overpopulated? and Facebook Overpopulated – the aftermath discussing a fun wall post I had received in Facebook warning that the system was overloaded and that inactive users would be deleted unless they forwarded the message. It was a classic chain mail hoax and many were taken in.
By using Analytics I was able to determine that the traffic patterns to this site were repeating this phenomenal surge in traffic but this time there was no new post simply the old post that worried Facebook users were finding. I can only assume that the hoaxers (is that a word? – sounds like the Scottish word for armpits – which is rather apt really) had decided to revisit their little scam.
If you have indeed received the fun wall or email similar, here is Facebook’s excerpt outlining how they communicate with users in the event that they need to do so. â€We will never use any of the following methods to tell you information, or ask for you to take an action:
Your Wall
An inbox message from a friend— in other words, chain letters.
Messages spread through Applications—if an application is telling you that Facebook is about to shut down, report it.â€
I hope we have put your mind at rest somewhat. Thanks for coming to our site. Please stay a while and find out more about what we do….
Gotta love Google Analytics.
Thanks Sam for the photy!
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, August 15th, 2008
Thanks again to Rob Cottingham of Social Signal for this.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, August 13th, 2008
This great article came from Rowena List of Getting It Together and deals with strategies to get your email organized – thanks Rowena!
Getting Your Mail Together
Dedicated to all the people who would like to simplify their lives just a little bit more.
When it comes to our mail you will want to adopt the “Deal with it, delegate it or dump it” philosophy.
Deal With It: Let’s start with the first one. Collect your mail from the box when you have 2 minutes to deal with it. Handle each piece of mail once if at all possible. File your bills and invitations etc under the appropriate dates in your 1to31 organizing binder. There is no need to pay bills until the day they are due. By being organized with your mail you will avoid the pitfalls of having piles of unopened mail all over your kitchen counter or top of your desk.
Delegate It: Can you delegate any of the mail tasks? Setting up prepaid authorization payments is a great way of delegating your bill payments and takes the stress out of paying them monthly. Is there someone in your household that can fill in the forms that need to be returned to set-up authorized payments? If not set aside some time to do this yourself. The time spent to get it set-up will be worth it!
Dump It: Dump all junk mail in the recycling bin or better yet sign up for the RED DOT program and you will never receive junk mail again. Think of the trees you will be saving too.
Next time you go to your mail box try these simple tips and see how much time you will save. What will you do with that extra time?
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, August 11th, 2008
Given my previous 2 posts, I thought this would be a good time to revisit the reasons and benefits of using microblogs and Twitter in particular for business benefit.
1. Great source for the latest information in your industry – if you’re following the right people that is.
2. Shorter than blogs and more concise so if you only have a few moments you can hone in on juicies more readily.
3. Stellar way to establish your expertise and build awareness of what you do – build brand.
4. Microblog technology can be used to expand awareness of your service. A great example is the police and fire services using Twitter to get the word out in emergency cases.
5. By linking or announcing new articles or changes to your site you can drive more traffic to said site.
6. Microblogs are a great way to monitor what being said about your product or industry, so you can keep ahead of the pack. Its also a great way to elicit feedback.
7. To share neat links and add value for your followers.
8. To collaborate on a project with remote partners or colleagues in short blasts.
9. Whilst direct selling on microblogs is discouraged, many companies use it to bring awareness of the existence/benefits of their products and services to new markets.
10. To network with peers in your industry in order to develop your knowledge and to build better partnerships.
