Do a Barrel Roll Google
Cool little trick by Google. If you do a Google search for do a barrel roll, the screen will spin in a circle. I don’t know how long they will leave it up for, so give it a try now if you want to.
Anon (May Have) Announced Planned Attack on Facebook on Nov. 5th
The Hacker Group Anonymous who is associated with Wiki Leaks and responsible for infamous successful hacktivism attacks on Wiki Leaks investigators, and companies such as Visa and MasterCard may have announced that it will attack Facebook on November 5th 2011.
The Hacktivism group claims that they will destroy the social networking site and have listed non transparent privacy policies and sharing of data with public officials as key reasons for the planned attack.
Please keep in mind that these announcements came from a new youtube account, a new twitter account and an online post all from new accounts so some speculate that this is a hoax either by Anon or by an unrelated third party pretending to be associated with Anon.
Assuming it is not a hoax and the attack will happen, the question remains, will Zuckerberg and his team be able to stave off the attack.
Here is the announcement on YouTube which was linked to from the above mentioned twitter account and the text of which was scribed in the above mentioned post: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWQTS8zqYXU
You can read more about Anon here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_%28group%29
The Google +1 (Plus One) Button – Should You Use It?
Post Updated Here:
The Google +1 button is out, so the question arises – should you include it on your site?
First, let’s take a minute to consider what it does. The plus one button allows you to share content with friends in your network. If you click it on a page or next to a result in search (such as at the bottom of this page or in the search result shown in the screen shot), friends in your network (ie your Google account contacts) will be able to see this if the page shows up in search engine results. As of today Google has not given any indication of whether it will impact search rankings: you can read Google’s description here. It is indeed a play on behalf of Google to gain more social graph data and to make search results more interactive.
But they have in the past indicated, and tests have shown correlation that sharing links on Twitter and Facebook Likes do impact search rankings.
My take on this is that Twitter and Facebook buttons are still much more powerful in driving traffic than the Google +1 button due to their viral effect and especially Twitter’s correlation with search rankings. But if you want to install a third button, Google +1 would be a good one to consider. In addition to making a result stand out a bit more in the SERPs, it may in the future impact search rankings. Although at this point in time it is not possible to show relevance to a given search term with an on page +1 button, its use would make a good popularity metric.
Therefore we can consider that it is at least a possibility that Google will make +1 button clicks a factor in search ranking algorithms in the future as a popularity metric once the button is out of beta test mode. If they do in fact go this way, you can get ahead of the competition by adding the button now. At a minimum it will make your current rankings slightly more visible to certain people.
Why Facebook and Google Were Successful and Why MySpace Lost Momentum
Neither Facebook nor Google would have been successful if they were built within a major company. They had to be upstarts to live. And Bing is proof that Microsoft has learned this lesson.
One business mentality to avoid online, that is used all too frequently: Immediate profit maximization without regard for the long term sustainability of a business, would have destroyed both of those companies. They would have been immediately infected with popup ads and banners galore and people would simply stop coming.
The Proof Is MySpace
Myspace was acquired for a large sum of money and long term sustainability or hope for growth was abandoned when someone made the call to make the investment back ASAP, to leverage the traffic immediately for every dollar that could be sucked out of it. And the result is the current difference in value between Facebook and MySpace. Is it important to leverage traffic to you website for revenue? Of course. But you need to ease into it, slowly increasing the ad space as we are seeing Google do, rather than go from no ad space to massive amounts of ad space.
If Facebook would have been acquired as MySpace was, Facebook’s fate would have been the same. It would have been loaded with massive ads and banners galore, many of which would not be relevant to those who view them.
Instead, Facebook and Google have both gotten one critical thing right in developing a mega success website. They have maintained the integrity, “coolness” and usefulness of the site keeping the main focus on the site functionality and useful features and only dedicating a small portion of the page to monitization factors or distracting advertisements when most people aren’t there for the ads but for the other features.
Myspace went the opposite way and loaded up the home page and internal pages with advertisements that are not relevant to most site visitors. News Corp made a large investment and then some executive said holly crap. We need to get our money back quickly. And they paid dearly in the long run for that short sighted type of thinking.
People don’t mind a few relevant ads mixed in with their online content. In fact, sometimes the ads even enhance that content. But if the ads overpower the content, people will leave. As of late, Myspace has toned down their advertising significantly, but still are less relevant and show ads with more frequency than similar websites.
Being ultra leveraged works for e-commerce sites like ebay and the same concept works for brick and mortar stores like Walmart but not for sites that make their money off of drawing users in with great content or functionality and then monetizing the traffic or making money off data collection or ad serving. In this case, they are coming to the site to for a specific purpose, not to see ads. But it is ok if the ads are in the background. A site like Facebook, Google or Myspace must be thought of more like a rock concert or baseball game where people are there to see the main event. You can stick a hotdog stand or beer garden off to the side, but not in front of the stage (OK, maybe a beer garden in front of the stage would be cool).
There is one key difference that separates my online analogy from a rock concert or anything in real space for that matter. In the case of the internet, anyone can access the data at any time from anywhere on the planet. Image if a rock concert or ball game could get that type of visibility.
Back to MySpace. When I log into my account I see an advertisement for a motorcycle maintenance class, an advertisement for a speed dating site, in fact several dating site adverts and an advertisement for marine mechanics intsititue. But if they used the data in my profile (like Facebook does), they would know I’m likely not interested in these things.
Not only that, but they display these ads in large colorful banners that take up the portions of the site that should be dedicated to internal navigation. And they should not display any ads on the home page because I’m only valuable to them and I’m only going to keep returning if I’m logging into the site. Not if I’m clicking on an ad and going somewhere. Sure, advertise once I’m in the site, but use your data to make it relevant to me and non intrusive.
Pull marketing destroys push marketing in the digital world.
- William Ellerman
Napoleon Bonaparte Quote
“We are at a time when you need to double the resolve, & double the vigor of ordinary times. Lead by example. Be the first to put yourself in danger. And with the troops that you have, I expect you to defeat double of theirs.”
-Napoleon Bonaparte
The Best Quick and Dirty Usability Test
To judge the usability of your website in a quick and dirty way that’s light on your wallet, the best test is to sit your mother down at a computer and see if she can find what she’s looking for on your website. If she can, try the same test with your grand mother.
- William Ellerman
Ten Things You Should Be Testing In Your Email Marketing Campaign
- The time of day you send your email (people respond differently at different times.)
- How frequently you send emails
- How useful is the information or offer presented in your email
- How many links do you include in your email
- Who does your email come from? Maybe an email from your CEO might see a higher ctr than one from your brand name
- Are you tracking the results of your email marketing campaign with tagging and analytics
- Is there a clear call to action
- Is there a clear way to immediately respond to the call to action
- Do you use spam words in your email or title that are likely to be filtered into junk folders
- Is your email conversion optimized in a way that attracts attention and focus to conversion elements
Things Today’s E-Copy Writer Needs To Consider
Copy writing has evolved with the evolution of the internet. Today’s serious cyber writer has many additional factors to consider beyond the typical technical and creative elements common in all good writing. First, it’s important to think about content link efficacy when writing text to be posted online. That means the ability and likelihood of a piece of text content to attract links from other websites and to be shared on social media websites like twitter and facebook. Essentially it’s ability to go viral and to gain authority in search engines.
This means you need to appeal to other webmasters. One way of doing this is to mention other relevant websites from time to time in a positive way and they will often return the favor. Another obvious way is to create very interesting, useful or ground breaking text content and then give it an initial push by sharing it on your own social account and asking people within your own network to share it for you. There are many other ways to gain popularity online with a piece of content as well, which I’ll cover in later posts.
A second thing to consider is the technical search engine friendliness of a piece of content. The specific words you use, where you use them in the content, the frequency with which you use them and certain styling elements around them in the code can all make an impact on how frequently and for which search terms your text content shows up for. This also adds another step in the research process. Discovering the frequency with which various terms are searched and the competition level in ranking for different search terms to help govern the way in which to word various phrases in your article.
Beyond The Web
Then there are all of the elements to consider in any type of writing, not just web based writing. If it is a persuasive argument or sales copy, is it compelling? Does it clearly and concisely demonstrate the benefits of a product or service and provide a value proposition. Is there a hook in the beginning that draws the reader in. Is it truthful and accurate? Does it incorporate ways to help readers understand key points quickly such as sub titles, pictures or lists. Are sentences easy to read? Does the article flow? How is the spelling and grammar?
Some things to consider in writing web copy:
Do you include relavent keywords
How compelling is it
How likely is it to be shared in social networks and linked to by bloggers
Is it understandable
grammar issues
spelling
These are just a few of the items great internet content writers keep in mind with each piece of web copy they produce.
