Ten Things I Absolutely Hate About My Google Droid Phone

January 10th, 2010

by Laura Thieme

Part Two of What I Love/Hate About my Droid Phone.

The reason I got rid of the Treo was its ability to call people mistakenly, and lock at the worst times ever, like when you needed to take that important phone call. I’ve returned to similar if not worse touch screen phone madness with the Google Droid Phone. Here are ten things I hate about my Droid phone, and yes, there might be more than ten things…

1) Answering a call, yes, while driving, is extremely dangerous - you better use your bluetooth, cancer-likely causing device when driving, because trying to answer the Droid while driving is hazardous to everyone around you, including you. They re-set the software so that you no longer have to drag a lock, semi-circle, across the screen. But you still have to drag a lock across the screen. Try doing this with your fingers while driving, and when it doesn’t work on the first or second time, try doing this safely. You simply can’t.

2) Voice Activated Search sucks. To be safer, I’ve finally learned how to use the Google Voice Dialer, or the Car Home mode, which includes Voice Search. They suck. They really suck. You are still driving, touching the screen, trying to speak into the phone who you are trying to reach. It is so off sometimes, then you end up pressing no - or try to get the screen to go away - and then back to home screen, back to voice dialer, or contacts, etc. That’s a lot you shouldn’t be doing while driving your car.

3) It does not seem like Bluetooth works with Voice Activation. With my LG, I could simply hit the Bluetooth button on my earpiece, and it would automatically go into voice command mode. Nothing happens here other than “beep”. So, if they could get the Google Droid phone to automatically sync with Voice Activation on the click of the Bluetooth button, that would be great. If they could improve the accuracy of Voice Search or Voice Activated Commands, that would be even better.

4) Navigation/Maps - I used this for the first time heading up to the SES Chicago 2009 show. My 13-month old daughter was with me. Google sent me into an abandoned area of town, into a section that had a closed exit. It didn’t reconfigure, except to send me back the same way. There was no alternate safe route. It was pretty bad. I was quite nervous getting the heck out of where they sent me. I’ve used it locally without problems. What I don’t like, however, is having to press so many buttons while driving. It seems like this always happens, despite using bluetooth.

5) Dialing someone I didn’t mean to - or someone I just hung up with - happens often

6) Dropping phone calls happens often - I seem to be hitting a button or something that causes the screen to lock; I can hear them, but they can’t hear me. Happens at least once a day, if not on bluetooth. It’s hard to hold this phone and talk and not press something on the screen that you don’t want. The screen is overly sensitive when talking on the phone. Bluetooth helps with this issue, but not everything can be done with bluetooth as mentioned above.

7) The keyboard - I hate it, hate it, hate it - really, no one has the skinny-ass Droid fingers you show in your commercial - really! And no one can type that fast on your keyboard who is human.

8) Autocomplete - don’t put in words I did not ask for - don’t automatically auto-complete me. Let me opt for auto-complete. It corrects my daughter’s name automatically without me selecting it, often.

9) The camera button on the side of the phone where most people hold it to talk - seems that might be affecting the “lock” effect while I’m talking - possibly - see no reason for this button to be here

10) Microphone - a number of people have said that my voice sounds muffled - the speaker is amazing, but the mic not so good.

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10 Things I Love About My Google Droid Phone

by Laura Thieme

A few weeks ago, I lost my LG phone. I’m a very loyal Verizon customer. Have never been swayed to go anywhere else by any other vendor. I refused to become Crackberry. I did Treo. I am lucky that my pregnancy survived Treo. I told my secretary during 1st trimester pregnancy that I’d shoot my Treo if she didn’t find me another cell phone that same day - that’s how I felt about the inaccuracy of touch screen phones. I’d dialed people I didn’t mean to. I’d hang up on others accidentally. I’d not be able to answer important phone calls. So, I was ready for good old flip phone technology such as the LG Verizon phone. That was until I lost it, for good, and caved to the interest in the Google Droid phone in November.

I’ve had it now several weeks. I’ve been back to the Verizon store once to reset the software. I’ve been able to get past the initial new technology shock, and feel the need to tell you what I love about the Google Droid Phone.

1) Screen resolution and clarity for browsing and reading websites is amazing; almost any website looks like it was designed for mobile apps using the Droid regardless of whether the site was or not
2) Facebook power user is likely, almost guaranteed, after you get the Droid
3) Weather Channel app is awesome for frequent road travellers - you’ll love the ability to have multiple cities loaded on the dashboard
4) Gmail has never been easier - setting up your email account on your cell phone is idiot-proof
5) It’s hard to misspell with the Google Droid phone; however, it’s hard to say things correctly due to an over-active, over-zealous auto-complete feature (more on that in the next segment on 10 Things I Absolutely Hate About My Droid Phone)
6) Pandora Radio - easy ability to listen to Radio wherever you go, by theme, by artist; have used this on numerous occasions while travelling - absolutely love this service (make sure you have unlimited data before testing)
7) Market Apps - free apps vs fee-based apps, with user reviews right on the screen
8) Navigation - allows you to keep doing other things while navigating, sometimes
9) Ability to Merge Phone calls - nice feature - haven’t used it yet, but sounds promising
10) Google Sky Maps - this is wild - you have to check this out.

Next, I will do an entry on Ten Things I Absolutely Hate About My Droid….

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Ten SEM Things to Do Differently in 2010

December 15th, 2009

by Laura Thieme
Use coupon code Bizwatch1218 to save an additional 10%, IF you order by this Friday, 12/18/09, EOD(day)
All Google Checkout orders are receiving a 10% discount off our regular search marketing tool prices.

1) Perform a Paid Search PPC Key Performance Indicator Audit - pull 13 months of Google Adwords & Yahoo Paid Search Data for an Audit - what campaigns, ad groups and/or keywords have not delivered you ONE attributed conversion online? Which campaigns are operating in the red? Which campaigns consistently perform best?
A RECENT PPC Audit discovered $53k in non-converting terms
Bizwatch Fee: Just $952, includes one hour phone consult if you order online below, and use coupon code Bizwatch1218 by Friday, 12/18/09.

2) Research Broad Match actual searches in Google Adword’s new interface.
“See Search Terms” on keywords with high clicks, high cost, and high cost of conversion.
Bizwatch Fee: Free with another paid Bizwatch service - I’ll show you this in a phone call if you want. Fascinating. Uncovered several thousand dollars in unrelated keyword searches on expanded broad match for one client. Received partial refund for client.

3) Order a One Year Traffic Audit on your KPIs Reveal high traffic, high conversion terms and get your annual reports finished within an hour or two. No more monthly Adwords or Analytics KPI exports, graphing, etc. Bizwatch does it all for you, and makes those annual reports extremely easy. Trends all major traffic KPIs including goals. Trends keywords and all related traffic KPIs.

Bizwatch Fee: $952 if you purchase online using Google Checkout, and insert coupon code Bizwatch1218 by Friday EOB, 12/18/09. Agency discounts available for more than 5 accounts.
If you purchase on Google Checkout, you can save 10% ($119) per order.

4) Leverage higher traffic converting terms, with high conversion rate. Using PPC & Traffic Audits above, request fresh ranking report on these new terms. Are you as visible in SEO for these top converting terms as you should be?

Bizwatch Fee: $355.50 if you use coupon code Bizwatch1218, and purchase by Friday 12/18/09. Includes setup fee, and up to 50 keyword phrases. Monthly reports available for just $195/mo after initial setup, if desired.

5) Get Rankings, Keyword Traffic Projections, and Rankings on Your Competitors Examine top ranked competitors in our report. Are they true competitors? What are they offering on their landing pages for the ranked keyword phrases? How does this compare to your business? Is there anything you could improve, after looking at your top ranked competitors?

Bizwatch Fee: $199 for 50 keywords, $299 for 100 keywords; Enter COUPON CODE Bizwatch1218 for additional 10% discount. Includes one phone consult by SEO expert to explain what everything means if desired.

6) Determine a Social Marketing Strategy for Facebook, Twitter & other online social media sites - while I have splashed about a bit with social media, and garnered about 1,000 Twitter followers across a corporate only account, a BizresearchLMT account, and a personal account, clearly a social media strategy by an expert who focuses only on this for your business is crucial. I could be doing much more, far better, if I hired a social media expert to do this for my company. It should not be me, exclusively. I will say this, I can attribute over $30k in sales as a result of Twittering about nonsense. Imagine if I worked at it, and hired someone.
Consider this in 2010.
Don’t DIY ;-)
Bizwatch Fee: Hourly for us to coordinate a social media expert contractor, and manage or we can make direct recommendation of such a person to you, for you to manage

7) Google Conversion Analytics If you don’t have Google Analytics tracking your goals/leads/request a quote/contact forms, why oh why are you doing search engine marketing? Please, please, pretty please - I’m on my hands and knees - I’m begging you, or I’m going to actually suggest kicking you to the curb in 2010. If you don’t track conversions, then why are we doing business? Commit to Leads Being Tracked.
Bizwatch Fee: $1,000 - includes Bizwatch Traffic Audit data pulled for past 3 months, if available, and three months of traffic data service from Bizwatch for trend analysis, and one phone consult to review data.

8) Don’t Jump onto every new bandwagon that comes along in 2010. Let something sit out there for about a year, before you feel like you have to excel. What you might consider doing now that companies have had time to try it? Facebook localized search is delivering targeted low-cost leads. Look into it for your business. One retailer client of ours said they attributed $50k+ in Twitter retail conversions. If you haven’t tried advertising on Facebook you should. If you haven’t Twittered with a strategy (as mentioned above), you should. But don’t feel like you have to embark in Facebook Mafia Wars and every other single “gotta have” APP that’s out there. We are truly less productive, and destined to fail/fall short of our goals if we keep chasing after the “latest” cool thing.

9) Email marketing - if you aren’t embarking in email marketing to increase that customer visitor rate on your traffic KPIs, and to increase customer retention, you’re throwing that customer acquisition out the door as soon as you said hello. Bizresearch will be emailing its customers once a month with helpful tips to continuously engage in customer interactions.

10) Host an Infomercial using Webinars - It’s easy with Gotomeeting.com, and Webex.com to host a webinar on your topic, your specialty. It costs about $49-$69 a month to host a webinar. We’re hosting one tomorrow, on 12/16/09 about Bizwatch. Contact me if you’re interested in participating. It’s on Bizwatch and Agency Services. Strongly recommend it.
Bizwatch Fee: None

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30 Days to 1,000 Loyal Followers - Is It Possible?

September 15th, 2009

by Laura Thieme

In my last post, I talked about going to Borders and looking for some literary inspiration at the adult professional level, as opposed to the board book, 9 month old level. I came home with several books, including

1) Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us”
2) Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning

3) The Upside of the Downturn: Ten Management Strategies to Prevail in the Recession and Thrive in the Aftermath

Seth Godin’s book is a great start, because it’s a fast, easy read. If you’ve heard the following phrases a lot, they’re either picking it up from Seth Godin, or we’re all saying the same things now:

- change status quo
- it’s going to be a game changer
- managers have employees, leaders have followers

I’ve seen status quo and game changer several times in the past week on the political front and in articles, which of of course get recycled numerous times on Twitter.com and other social media and content-sharing sites. Seth Godin’s book talks about being a leader, and how we need YOU - think the US ARMY - to lead us. He talks about previously unknown people, or possibly still unknown to you and me, social media leaders or bloggers on the Web that have a true following. Godin says you need 1,000 loyal, true followers to do amazing things. I’m in 100% agreement. I recently launched Bizwatch, a new search analytics platform that integrates the most important aspects of search marketing into one place, one web-based console, one data warehouse. I told my technology team that I had a goal of 1,000 customers, or when we have achieved $2M in revenue. Instead of marketing to everyone, I’ve chosen to market to multipliers first to test the market. I’ve received excellent feedback, and new customers.

The product has been fully tested, and we’re getting some exciting offers to license the application in various markets, verticals and customize the application. But to further promote the market, I believe and have always believed that education is key to marketing. Thus, the timeliness of Seth Godin’s suggestion that we need 1,000 loyal, true followers to succeed.

I’d like to test this theory with Bizwatch, and our Twitter following. Currently, I have a Twitter following of 340 true followers, meaning I clean out the spam on a weekly basis. You won’t see many, if any, adult followers on my @bizresearchlmt account. Most of my followers are therefore genuine people, not robots or sale-centric followers. I have an assortment of followers, including a representation of my hobbies such as @animalplanet and @cesarmillan in addition to @josephmorin, @gregboser @widgetgirl and @prominentplacement. So, to get to 1,000 followers, I need approximately 660 new true, loyal followers.

So how do you achieve 660 new true, loyal followers? And, could I do this in 30 days? Do you think this is possible, and of course, it’s important to note that I am a single, working new mom of a child less than a year, and add onto that - a dog, two cats, four fish, and a life! :-) I’m also in charge of the application design for Bizwatch, and also maintain current client service accounts for SEO, PPC, and Conversion Analytics.

I figure I have six hours a day to fulfill client services, five days a week (30 hours), and 2 hours, four nights a week (8 hours) to do some type of social media monitoring, and or contribution, along with keeping up on any issue related to Bizresearch agency services and Bizwatch search analytics product development and maintenance. So, some would say, I have absolutely NO time for Twitter, or LinkedIn, or social media. So, is it possible to gather 1,000 true loyal followers within 30 days (660 net over the current 330), and in only four to eight hours a week for one month?

And of course, what would I do with 1,000 loyal followers? Would I sell more Bizwatch Search Analytics accounts? Would I sell more search marketing services? After all, it’s a tough economy and people are hesitant to spend more money? How do I convince others that what I have to sell is worth their time and money, and in fact, could save them time and money?

I’m going to work on this for the next 30 days. Please check my @bizresearchlmt Twitter account to see if I’m adding on new followers, about 20 a day, between September 15 and October 15th.

September 15 - 340 followers

Goal:

October 15 - 1,000 loyal, true followers - this is the important part - it has to be loyal, true followers - no adult-rated automated let me show those single guys my boobs type of followers - ’cause they’re out there and they’re likely automated to some degree.

What’s my tactic? That I’ll have to reveal later. After, I’ve achieved 660 new loyal followers, in 30 days, on top of the current 340 followers. Also important: how do I keep from disengaging the current 340? I want to attract new loyal followers, and not detract the first 340, whom I consider to be quite loyal.

Stay tuned at http://www.twitter.com/bizresearchlmt and here.

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Looking for Inspiration? Do Something Remarkable.

September 6th, 2009

Like many weekends, by Sunday, I always feel the need to venture out in the early evening. Chores aside, exercise complete, my child’s needs met, and yet a feeling of restlessness rises that only a drive will quiet. So off we went to no specific place. We ate dinner at a favorite healthy spot. Then we ended up at Borders.

With a 9-month old, you can imagine that trips to the bookstore usually involve a board book or two, and that’s the extent of our budget some days. But tonight, I found myself wandering over to the business book section. I noticed that Border’s bookstore looked old and worn for some reason. There were fewer bookshelves. You could actually see most any section of the store, from one point, and yet, I couldn’t easily see the business books. Tonight, I was feeling the need for some inspiration in the form of a book.

I’ve often let books choose me. I don’t know why that is, but I like to journey along a bookstore aisle, and let a book jump out at me. I don’t follow book clubs, I simply let a book pick me. If the cover or heading catches my eye, and the inset further catches my attention, we might be headed somewhere. I finally settled on three books for business, and one for my 9-month old. Testing books on my 9-month old is easier - I simply drop the book into her lap and see if she thumbs every board book page and doesn’t toss it on the floor. If she starts talking to the book, I know we’re in good shape. But for me, it’s different. Tonight, I was looking for inspiration and I wasn’t sure of the form that it would come in.

I found it interesting that books written and published in 2007, just didn’t appeal to me. In fact, possibly those books in 2008 were also not grabbing my attention, or offering me a stamp of credibility. I mean after all, does anything we did two years ago still apply? Does it still work? Don’t we have to do things very differently now? I think we do. We have to do something remarkable.

That’s the one word that I kept seeing pop up tonight in an assortment of business books, written in the past year. “Remarkable”. Do something remarkable. Lead a tribe of people. Don’t manage employees. Lead. Look for heretics (Seth Godin’s word in “Tribes”) who challenge the status quo. And look for people who influence with ideas and get things done.

Think of someone you respect - what do they do that’s remarkable? What is remarkable in your mind? It’s something that impresses you. Something that maybe you even wish you could do, or had already achieved. It’s the extra-ordinary. That near impossible. It’s something that affects many others in a positive way, or affects change in a positive way. Godin also references how being remarkable might not always get you credit. You might not always be liked for being remarkable. You might even be marked as extreme in some way. But it’s about influencing, leading, and affecting change.

Remarkable to me is preferably something good, that’s over the top good, that’s extraordinarily effective, and in terms of business, it has to derive revenue in some way. I’m often struck by kindness, something unique, and something that serves the greater good. And so that for me, is something remarkable. I hate to say that in this world we sometimes distrust kindness, we question the agenda behind it, the intent and that’s a real shame. It would be better if we could simply do something remarkable and not have others wonder why we did it. But in general, depending on your audience, politics aside, when you do something remarkably kind for another, when you really go out of your way to help someone, they are often impressed by its remarkability.

It reminds me of when I hosted a luncheon at the SES 2006 Chicago conference. I spent $10,000 on food, and $10,000 for the right to sponsor a luncheon, in order to provide a hot Asian style buffet, which at the time was something quite rare at the conferences. We were all tired of the lunch box sandwiches. I saw this as an opportunity. I was a small company but needed a forum to communicate with my session attendees. As a speaker you often get in front of 1,000 people, but actual face time to talk one-to-one, is next to minimal with a handful of attendees. I handed out over 1,000 tickets, but only 125 would be accepted at the luncheon. I suggested people come early. And sure enough, there was a line half an hour before the lunch started. We had to close the doors at 15 minutes to the hour, and apologetically tell people to put their name in the basket and we’d make it up to them in some way.

The lunch was a major hit. But in the line of people that were turned away was one person, Chris Baggott, whom at the time I did not know. He was downstairs in the bar later that evening, in a group of influential conference organizers. Honestly, Chris pretty much lambasted me about the luncheon - and how I had turned him away. I asked him a few questions and realized that he had shown up much later than the luncheon had started. But as Chris talked, he admitted, what I had done was “brilliant”. I got his business card, and was determined to “make it up to him.” I had a gourmet wine shop up the road send him a really nice bottle of wine, in fact at the time, one of the nicest wines you could get. Chris Baggott then talked about this through a community of LinkedIn colleagues that eventually made its way back to me.

Everything about that luncheon was remarkable. I received blog attention from colleagues. I noted that hot luncheons became the new trend at the SES conferences, and even the SMX conferences. The ice cream sundaes were the highlight of the luncheon, and that received blog attention as well. And, I had a $2M opportunity within a week of that luncheon.

When you do something remarkable for another, it’s inspiration not only for them, but for you. You find yourself extremely appreciated. People will talk about you, and in most cases, in a very good way. And in todays’ economy, combined with today’s social media where everyone is talking about something online, and in many cases about someone else, you just might get talked about in a very good way online. But you may not have to spend a lot of money, if anything, that might be a turnoff in today’s world. What can you do, that doesn’t cost a ton of money, for others? How can you do something remarkable, and lead a tribe to do something remarkable? You can use Twitter to do it, and that doesn’t cost a lot of money.

While Twitter gets alot of bad press from the naysayers, that people just talk about what they ate, or about themselves, or if you see trending topics, coverage on a person who died, or a publicity stunt, but there are some keywords that I noted in terms of something “remarkable”.

If you search on Tweetvolume.com, you’ll note “remarkable”, “love”, “hate”, “food” - has some interesting search volume. I noted that food and hate were not as widely talked about as “love” and “help”.

Twitter Search Volume - TweetVolume

I think it’s interesting to see that two extraordinarily popular terms are “love” and “help”. I decided to compare this to “jackson” as a publicity figure that we can not seem to avoid being talked about in the media even 75 days after his death. I was pleased to see the comparison (chart below).

Michael Jackson Tweets vs “Love” vs “Help”. Clearly help is more popular than Jackson, but more popular Twitter term than even “love”.

So, in the essence of doing something remarkable saturated with kindness, look up on Twitter.com to see who is tagged or writing on behalf of helping another. Click on Find People & type in the word “help”. Sure enough, you can find people looking for help on a particular issue, which is exactly what Seth Godin talks about in his “Tribes” book. Twitter offers the way to communicate, and it helps people who want to lead, who want to help, who want to do something to communicate - to talk to one another - and in the end, do something really good for a lot of people or in this case, animals. @HelpAnimals had the most followers, over 29,000 followers at the time of this writing. And this Twitterer is just trying to help, by doing something remarkable, by being kind to others, and using Twitter as the social platform to gather a tribe with a common interest.

So as you go to bed tonight, as you wake in the morning, consider what you could do to do something remarkable, for another? Could you lead a tribe with a common interest via Twitter? Could you locate a tribe and see if you want to join? I’ll write some more about tribes of interest to me, professionally & personally in my next post.

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Twitter Grader - Do You Know Your Twitter Rank or Score?

April 4th, 2009

by Laura Thieme

I attended SMX Analytics Toronto this past week. The guys from Hubspot.com gave a presentation on competitive intelligence. The tool featured by Dharmesh, in his presentation, is http://twitter.grader.com . They checked out Vanessa Fox’s Twitter rank and compared it to Danny Sullivan, the former of which scored a 99.8, and the latter - a 100.

So what’s your Twitter grade, rank or score? Check it out.

I reviewed my Twitter.com/bizresearchlmt grade - a 94 - an A. Yay! The rank - not so good - 102,000 something. Hmmm. Might need to work on that. Now what I really like - you can see my Tweet cloud - or the topics that are trending. Very cool. According to Twitter.Grader.com - my trending topics include Toronto, SMX, Analytics, MattCutts, and Danny Sullivan. You can also post your Twitter grade on Twitter, through a link on the page.

So, I wanted to check some others’ scores:

@Romeothecat - cool cat trying to raise money for animal rescue: uh - oh - a crash on the site. May have to add to this later??

Okay, back online Saturday night, early Sunday morning:

Checked out the grade for Guy Kawasaki - a 100 score @guykawasaki - note his Tweet cloud - nothing that sounds of interest. Guy has recently been criticized despite most of us liking the “guy” - for his use of spamming Twitter. He has nearly 100,000 followers.

@randfish - 99.9 grade score - Tweet cloud shows reference to SMX Sydney
I’m fascinated with his number of updates and number of follows - so about the same number of updates that I’ve had, but over 5,000 followers. Impressive. He also just keynoted the conference, which could have sig impact on followers.

@leeodden - 99.7 - nice tweet cloud

@carolethieme - my mom - who just started the other day - so I was beginning to wonder if anyone had a bad grade. Yes, my mom does. She needs to Tweet more often, but pretty cool that my 65-year old Mom, who is a techy graphic designer, is on Twitter.com and now Facebook.com, not to mention Linkedin. She’s going to have to find time for Twitter if she wants to improve her grade. It just goes to show that what you put into it, you get out of it - like any other class in school.

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Twitter, Tweeple, TwitPic, TweetUp - Do You Know What These Mean for Your Business?

January 24th, 2009

by Laura Thieme

You can’t watch CNN, or Brothers & Sisters, or many TV shows without hearing about Facebook and MySpace. In fact, you hear more about Facebook these days, than mySpace. But what about Twitter? Have you heard about Twitter? News reporters use Twitter to communicate with their viewers. Businesses are beginning to use it - it’s a great way to communicate for free to the masses - 160 characters at a time. When you don’t have time to blog - just send a quick Twitter note out from the Web, or the convenience of your cell phone. I thank one of my 2007 Search Marketing OSU Fisher College of Business students, Ben Bleikamp, for getting me up to speed on the need for a Twitter account (www.twitter.com/bizresearchlmt).

So, if you’ve already heard about Twitter, and have checked it out, you probably see just a bunch of 2-3 line notes across a screen. It’s less than glamorous or sexy. Some people talk about non-sensical stuff, others use it to exclusively promote business objectives. Some use it now as a way to communicate with others, instead of email or even Facebook. Now, you want to get a hold of someone? Not getting an answer via email, or Facebook - try Twitter instead.

I’ve been using Twitter for several months now, but I’m behind on the applications and the jargon. So, in my own journey to learn more about these applications and jargon - I thought I’d post a blog on the topic.

Twitter Jargon You Should Know - A TwitGlos -

What’s a TweetUp? - A Meetup with Tweeple

What are Tweeple? - People who Twitter

What’s a Tweet - a note sent out via Twitter

What’s a Dweet - a Tweet sent under the influence

What’s a Twhirl? -

How do you track a Tweet term, like SEO? - Go to http://search.twitter.com and type in SEO. You’ll see all the Tweets that include the word “SEO”. I tested it, posted a test SEO Tweet, and immediately showed up at the top of the list for that moment. I can see people spamming the heck out of this.

I figured there was some type of feed service set up, because whenever I use certain keywords in my Tweets, I get new followers almost instantaneously. For example, when I blogged about McCain in October, their SEO person must have had the “McCain” term feed set up, as PardonMyFrench immediately began to follow me. I Tweet about SEO, I get new followers interested in SEO. I Tweet about Anderson Cooper, I get him to follow me. No just kidding, actually I got an imposter following me. AC360 still has yet to follow me. ;-) So, if you want people to follow you, Tweet about topics using the jargon appropriate to the industry and topic - and you can gain friends and followers through Twitter, using the free feed service.

You’ll also occasionally get less than stellar content followers - so beware and block them, unless you’re into that. ;-)

Okay, I’m continuing to compile this list. Will update accordingly.

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Marketing 754: Friend or Foe?

December 18th, 2008

Marketing 754: Friend or Foe

OSU MKTG 754 Student

Guest Blog Post

 Hands down, Marketing & Logistics 754 is the most difficult class that I have ever taken.  I have struggled thru the past eight weeks hopelessly lost.  The material is difficult to grasp and the presentation of it is hard to follow.  And don’t even get me started on web analytics!

web_analytics_2Dan_hour_a_day2.jpg

But rather than focusing on the negatives, I would prefer to share what I have enjoyed about the class.  First, there are the blogging assignments.  I had never blogged before this course. 

Another aspect of the class that I have enjoyed is the optimizing of a website’s landing page.  The instructions were clear and well organized; this is what it currently has and this is how you make it better.  Rewriting titles, content, and Metatags was actually fun.   Metatags remind me of the Matrix with all of that funky code!

I know this may sound crazy but writing Metatag codes is kind of like sculpting or painting.  You start with a blank canvas and then create a beautiful piece of artwork out of nothing! 

As we also learned in class, there are other ways to optimize a landing page as well.  Including footers and anchortext links are great ways to improve a site.  So while I didn’t have enough computer savvy to actually build a site myself, it was rewarding thinking of ways to beef up the Bizwatch landing page.  

So even though I have faced many obstacles in this course, I can also say that the few achievements I have accomplished have helped to inspire me to stay strong and push threw these last few weeks of the quarter!

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When Anderson Cooper Follows You on Twitter - Now That’s Worth Celebrating

October 10th, 2008

by Laura Thieme
October 10, 2008

It’s always a good feeling, when news media begins to follow you on Twitter. First, it was local news - 10TV, the CBS Affiliate. I was glad to see one of the McCain online strategists was following me. Today - I was more than thrilled to see that Anderson Cooper was following me on Twitter.

My celebration was brief, however, as I realized that it was indeed an imposter. See, how important reviewing content, as well as “AndersonSCooper” is? And you thought I wouldn’t notice the “s” in the line, or that there was an oddity about the Twitter account from the start? Anderson, just so you know, I get my news on a frequent basis from you, and prefer that you follow me instead of Anderson “S” on Twitter. Is that possible?

Not to mention, I might admit that I think you (the real 360 Anderson) are personally “hot” and would like you to follow me around on electronic media (like you have time), instead of a no-name imposter without any type of picture to compare with.

I thought it odd that it didn’t link to www.ac360.com, and that the imposter linked to Terms of Service on Twitter.

Okay, back to work. I have search marketing projects to stay up on and a product launch underway. And I’m feeling like a Taboo (due to pregnant status no less) Cup of Caffeinated CrimsonCup Coffee today with fresh cream and sugar. YUM!

Posted in Blogging. No Comments »

 

Three Blog Posts That I Have to Write About SEO & Paid Search Auto Pilot

August 27th, 2008

by Laura Thieme

So there are at least three topics that I need to write about - paid search ad campaigns on broad match and auto pilot and no tracked conversions, keyword variations in Google Adwords, rankings and WebPositionGold issues, and the fourth topic (okay, so there are four) - when site optimization is not enough.

Which one first, you say?

I’ll cover site optimization tonight in one post - although it’s likely to become a link building SEO topic series. The others - another night - but all are hot topics in search right now.

So what do you do when site optimization doesn’t work? Well, when it doesn’t do enough to improve target terms that I might add are highly competitive terms, such as nutritional and herbal supplements. If a site such as this, has a page rank of 3, and internal page ranks of 2-3, and sometimes worse, how well do you think it ranks in Google for “herbal supplements” or “nutritional supplements”, after several months of optimization?

Let’s see who competes for “nutritional supplements” and “herbal supplements” in Google. If you noted Google’s new search feature that shows you related searches and the number of results for each of these keywords, you probably noted Google has over 4M (yep, that’s MILLION) results for nutritional supplements.

Let’s see who leads the top ten organic natural search listings and what their page ranks are:

The first site is Nutritionalsupplements.com - which only has a page rank of 4, and has a bunch of links - that’s it.
Wiki’s page entry on nutritional supplements has a page rank of 6, and is quite relevant and useful.
Wholesalesupplementstore.com has a minimal page rank of 3, and has a bunch of links on its Yahoo store template.
Supplementstogo.com - another ecommerce store - page rank of 6.
Nutrasanus.com - page rank of 4 - educational yet leads to ecommerce products
Mitamins.com - also has page rank of 4 - educational association but clearly commercial affiliation
Planetarynutrition.com - also page rank of 4.

Okay, so my client has a page rank of 3 - which isn’t great - but neither are the leaders above, right? My client has “nutritional supplements” in his page title just like these guys above do.

Okay, so what about numbers of pages indexed? How deep are their sites?

first one mentioned above - 4,290 pages indexed in Google from their site
second - 4300 pages indexed
third - over 6,000 pages indexed
fourth - over 5400 pages indexed
fifth - wow - a whopping 58,000 super size whopper
sixth - only 740 pages indexed in Drugfreesport.com - another one listed in top ten - but NCAA affiliation - may not need as much content??

last one - nutritional-supplements-health-guide.com - only has page rank of 3 and 248 pages indexed

Okay, so there is some shallow stuff on “nutritional supplements” - so I see we have real potential here on our page rank of 3 - although I’d surely like a page rank of 5 to make it easier to compete with the other dogs.

My client - has 339 pages indexed for the record.

So, next, we’ll look at inlinks, and how much that can improve rankings, as opposed to on-site SEO factors. How much can inlinks to your site help build SEO listings, as well as page rank? Tune in soon - or subscribe so you can stay up to date.

Posted in Blogging, Search Optimization (SEO). 1 Comment »

 

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