Ready or not, here they come, via Nuance.
Dubbed “Voice Ads,” Nuance says their new mobile advertising format not only is engaging and entertaining, but conversational, as well. [Read more...]
Bad Backlinks Might Not Hurt Your SEO
April 2, 2013 by Leave a Comment
So, why do some sites with what appear to be low quality backlinks get past Penguin and do exceedingly well on Google search? According to Matt Cutts, one reason is that “the algorithms haven’t gotten good enough yet” to catch them.
Really? The algorithm is good enough to punish sites so severely that they lose virtually all their organic-driven business, but it’s not good enough to penalize competitors using Russian link networks or keyword-rich anchor links in the footers of low-quality blogs? (I thought it was an isolated case, until I saw a comment from someone with the same problem.) [Read more...]
So, Now You Don’t Trust Google?
March 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment
As a heavy Google Reader user and longtime Google skeptic, I have mixed feelings about the coming demise of Reader. On the one hand, I will miss it greatly. It’s how I keep up with, well, almost everything. There isn’t a service or app I use more. But I don’t share in the outrage and feelings of betrayal that seem to have washed over the mass of Reader users
I find the idea that people won’t use Google Keep because they can no longer trust Google to be particularly amusing. This “Google can’t be trusted” reaction, combined with the shock that Google would kill Reader without so much as a “by your leave,” makes me wonder what company they’ve been dealing with over the years. It certainly isn’t the Google I know. [Read more...]
The 3 Fundamental Social Media Rules of Engagement
February 20, 2013 by Leave a Comment
There are plenty of rules for social media engagement, and I have my own ever-growing list. But the more involved I get in social, the more I realize that there are three things that are absolutely critical:
1. Be Nice.
Even if you’re well-known among friends and associates for your cynical snark, the unkind are quickly ignored or worse in the social space. Don’t slam the competition. Don’t criticize your employer or colleagues. Don’t attack, even if attacked. No one comes away from social media fights looking good. If you disagree with someone or something, it may be not be easy to come up with a cogent argument for your position, but it’s much easier than doing damage control for your online reputation. [Read more...]
5 Reasons Pay-Per-Click is a Better Option Than SEO
February 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Ideally, every Web site should be supported with a good search engine optimization program. But once you’ve gone through the “best practices,” good SEO is very expensive. It certainly can be worth the cost, especially when compared to the damage bad SEO can do, but, especially for smaller organizations, pay-per-click often is a better option. Here are five reasons why: [Read more...]
Silk, an Interactive Art Generator
February 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Silk is a wonderful interactive site for creating art using patterns created by “silk” threads.
Click and hold your mouse on the screen canvas and pattern emerge and grow. Drag, swirl, zig or zag to add new patterns. There’s a controls for symmetry: vertical to mirror the pattern on either side, four-way to addthe top and bottom, or none to disable symmetry completely. [Read more...]
Google Enhances Adwords – for Google
February 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Are Google’s “enhanced campaigns” a benefit for Adwords users, or another way to charge more with less accountability? It was the latter when Product Listing Ads rolled out, a fact driven home to us when it became clear that Google itself didn’t know how PLAs integrated with or otherwise affected existing campaigns. At least, that’s what the Google Adwords rep told us.
So now we have “enhanced campaigns,” which supposedly will make campaign management simpler and campaigns more effective. Here are the three key benefits, per Google: [Read more...]
Facebook Fatigue? Not So Much.
February 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Pew Research has released a new study on Facebook use, and there’s a lot of distress and hand-wringing over “Facebook fatigue” because the study and most reports I’ve seen lead with:
61% of Facebook users have taken a voluntary break from using the site at one time or another and 27% plan to spend less time on the site this coming year.
Hot stuff, and just the kind of grist the media likes to mill these days, but it’s not so hot in context. [Read more...]
Top 3 Super Bowl Takeaways for Internet Marketers
February 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment
1. Social media rewards the opportunistic.
The Oreo Super Bowl ad was pretty bad. The “cream vs. cookie” campaign has had its moments, but taking it from sibling rivalry to raging violence seems to run counter to the image Oreo wants as “America’s favorite cookie.”
I guess it was supposed to be funny that the fights took place in a library and everyone was whispering. But that joke got very old very quickly. Instead, it was just another example of the extremes advertisers go to when they run out of good ideas.
But Oreo saved itself by jumping on Twitter when the power went out at the Superdome. Beginning with the “You Can Still Dunk in the Dark” tweet, it rode a wave real-time consumer engagement and post-event PR that no amount of paid advertising can match. [Read more...]
Facebook Facial Recognition Returns. Time to Check Your Privacy Settings
February 2, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Facebook is turning photo tagging and recognition back on, and, like a lot of these “features” that potentially affect privacy, it appears that the option is turned on by default. So, especially if you don’t want photos of people who may or may not be you tagged and presented as such, take a look at your privacy settings now. [Read more...]