September 2010 Archives - 2/3

Good blogger outreach and is Worky worth trying?

September 14, 2010 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

As my sites have become more popular, I’ve been contacted by an ever-increasing amount of people interested in whether I’d write about their company (or more often, the company they’re paid to promote). And generally they use email templates headed ‘Dear Sir’ or ‘Dear TheWayoftheWeb’, and it’s about something completely irrelevant to the topics I blog about.

So I don’t often do it.

But there are some worthwhile exceptions. In this case, the agency employed to raise interest in company/individual professional site Worky.com. Not only did I get a concise and accurate email addressed to me, but they’d used Youtube in a quick and free way to make the outreach even more personal. (Disclosure: I already knew a couple of people at the agency concerned, including a founder, which is probably why I made it onto their list). Plus I got quick responses to my email questions back, and a promo code I can share with you all.

And it’s obviously worked.

What is Worky, and are there free promo codes?

So Worky is ‘a place for your to promote your work life’, which involves creating a profile, connecting with companies and other users, and seems pretty similar to other career-minded sites (LinkedIn and Gist spring immediately to mind).

There’s some potentially useful features, such as a lot of analytics regarding your profile to aim at raising it in search rankings (And in the process, raise Worky up as well). I have to admit, I haven’t quite found the features that make it stand out as yet, but the founder is interesting serial entrepreneur, and it seems to do reasonably well in search results, for example.

So it’s interesting enough to be worth registering for. And rather than the standard free account, if you sign up to Worky via this link, and use the code ‘workypromo’, you’ll get to try the full paid version of the service. As always, I’d be interested in hearing what other people think…

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Filed Under: public relations, social media marketing Tagged With: good blogger outreach, good social media marketing, online career site, worky, worky promo code

Newsflash: The world is constantly changing, so don’t panic…

September 9, 2010 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

In the last week or so, you’d be forgiven for checking the sky to see if it’s falling, with breathless updates from everyone on Ping, the new ‘social’ network from Apple, and Google new Instant search in amongst the usual technology and social media news.

In the rush to be the first to update, it appears that SEO may or may not be dead, the Long Tail of search may or may not be hobbled, and Ping may or may not drive sales, kill Spotify, or lead to Google Music overtaking iTunes when it eventually launches.

In the words of someone far more intelligent than me…

Don’t Panic.

Having played around with Ping, it’s obviously an initial first step which is quite likely to increase sales purely by allowing social recommendation within iTunes, and the simplicity of it at the moment is particularly useful on mobile devices rather than the desktop. And if it’s showing signs of early success, it might expand out to encompass more areas, including applications. But there are obvious limitations to what you can do at the moment.

And if it does expand out in terms of the social aspect, it’ll still conform to the same basic principles of reputation,engagement and gaining influence which have ruled all social interaction since we first emerged from caves.

Google Instant is initially more disruptive and scary. Suddenly you’re getting real-time suggestions and results as you type your search terms, and that will have an effect on the nature of how search is performed via Google (so around 75% of the search market in general).

This is going to have an effect on both natural organic results, and on the effectiveness of paid search campaigns. But I suspect even the employees at Google can’t quantify exactly what that might mean at the moment. It’s likely to improve the search experience for mobile, as the real-time changes will be easier to use than revising your search via a keypad/touchscreen, and we all know mobile is the biggest priority for Google these days.

But I don’t think Google has done anything which will have an enormous effect on CTR rates for paid search, which is where a significant amount of revenue lies. Impressions may change as search behaviour changes, but I suspect that campaigns on the eventual results page someone was searching for will remain the same as the paid search placements will still be located and displayed in the same way.

There may be an increase in overall clicks as you may find your advert is now appearing more times for a search, and could catch someone’s eye earlier in the search process, before they refine their search to their ultimate results, but all it means is that Google is doing more of the work on the fly. Impressions are likely to rise, especially in the early days of novelty, but that can only be a good thing as generally you’re only paying for a click-through.

Natural search is going to be more significant, but again, I’m guessing most of the people that currently rank for a term will still rank for a term, especially in a short timescale, and while it’s only available to those searching after they’ve logged into their Google account (I don’t know what the logged-in percentage of searches is – anyone know?). There’s talk of page titles becoming more important, but even if you change them today, you’ll have to sit on your hands while your page is re-indexed, so it’s worth spending a few days actually seeing some results before you start worrying.

And by then, we’ll have access to something which makes the digital world a fun place to experiment – real data on what people are doing.

So take a deep breath, and relax for a moment. The technology world will always be changing at a fairly rapid pace, but the biggest benefits from making changes to your paid and natural search set-up are going to come from the benefits of knowledge rather than trying to rush to be first. And if you’ve been sticking to best practice so far, it’s going to be a case of minor adjustments rather than rushing to make wholesale changes. I’d be far more worried about the disruptive nature of the digital world on traditional businesses and lifestyles than changes within the digital ecosystem. Technology changes are the things that make working in their world interesting and fun.

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Filed Under: Paid Search, Search, social networks, technology Tagged With: apple ping, google instant, itunes, natural search, paid search, technology innovation

Do you relate to your computer as another person?

September 7, 2010 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

Apparently we treat our computers as if they were human, according to a new book “The Man Who Lied to his Laptop” by sociologist Clifford Nass. There’s an interesting article/interview on Venturebeat about the book, and some of the examples in it. For instance teambuilding and asking for favours etc.

But the issue gets cloudier when they cover persuasion, and recommendations from ‘people like you’, which is where I want to jump off a bit. Obviously I haven’t been able to read the book yet (Publishers, feel free to send a copy!), but I wonder if there’s a distinction between imbuing human attributes to your computer, and imbuing human attributes to a computer which also allows you to make human connections 24/7.

I was about to cite other examples of the first attribution, but realised they also allow connections in some way. For instance, humanizing a car, which transports you either to, or with, other people. Or a guitar, which connects you to other people via musical performances.

Do we humanize any inanimate object which doesn’t enable a social connection of some kind which isn’t too tenuous?

That’s besides the fact we instinctively seem to humanize objects which we are passionate about and spend a lot of time with. (In my case, cars and motorcycles, computers, and asking my Xbox 360 not to break).

Nass envisages software becoming increasingly humanlike (e.g. referring to landmarks for directions, and matching your speech pattern etc). Which could become pretty creepy – particularly whenever these things are done too well and then become artificially good.

And considering the advances in robotics and artificial intelligence, and the rise of the ‘internet of things’, it’s going to be interesting to see if our attitude to technology changes.

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Filed Under: technology Tagged With: computers, humanization, relationships with technology

The gamification generation

September 6, 2010 By Dan Thornton 8 Comments

When I wrote about the gaming layer recently, I pointed to a few reasons why it will become increasingly important in our lives, concentrating on the existing scale and the awareness that an increasing number of businesses now have about how gaming mechanics can improve interaction and revenue.

But there are reasons why this is the moment when gamification really hits. There are technical reasons, such as the rise of high speed internet access to a reasonably large part of the developed world, and the increasing access to technology, whether it’s sneaky social gaming during the lunch hour at work, or the Xbox or Playstation as the provider of entertainment in the living room.

But all of this has come together to effectively create the gamification layer. It’s a generation which contains a large proportion of people who grew up alongside gaming, and are now reaching the stages of their lives and careers where they’re adapting those values and outlooks to their business, much as the elements of Web 2.0, flexible working practices, and hacker/geek culture have all contributed.

I was exposed to early videogames before the age of 5, getting a ZX Spectrum for my fifth birthday, and gaming through Nintendos, Segas, Amigas, PCs, Playstations and currently an Xbox 360.

And I’m not alone:

Xbox Live:

23 million members (Feb 2010)
61% male, 39% female
70% 18-34
20% 35-44
37% household income over $100,000

Playstation network:

50 million members (June 2010)

Stats from Wikipedia and Microsoft Advertising.

We’ve grown up with a form of entertainment that encourages us to load up a game, explore to find the rules and tricks which aren’t in any manual (although they rapidly appear on sites like Gamefaqs), and feature a very regulated work and reward structure.

We use gaming as both a solitary form of entertainment and an online social gathering place to come together with offline and online friends, form groups (‘clans’), find ways to ‘grind’ up through levels and solve problems, and to gain social standing through ranks. It’s as integral as families gathering around the radio or coming together to watch the one TV in the street when the World Cup was being shown.

1925 radio image with thanks to Ylvas on Flickr (CC Licence).

And this is the generation that are now running companies, in middle management, and particularly those with a disposition for technology, digital business, ecommerce and social activity online.

And now our children are growing up in a world with even more interactivity (on-demand tv and audio) from all entertainment.

The next few years are definitely the time when the gamification generation comes of age. The first challenge is to realise that this is happening and to think about how it can benefit your customers/audience. The second is that videogames have evolved massively from PacMan to Starcraft 2, and for even the simplest game mechanic to succeed, it’ll take a lot of complexity and knowledge in the background.

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