B(abble)log
Have you seen the new Steam Whistle Brewing television commercial? It premiered last night on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos.
If you aren't familiar with Steam Whistle Brewing, it's a Toronto-based pilsner brewery that
uses traditional brewing techniques and only four natural ingredients
including spring water, malted barley, hops and yeast - all GMO-free.
The beer is brewed in an old warehouse that used to make steam locomotives. Their logo, distinctive green bottles, delivery vehicles and advertising all play off that retro feel. The television commercial is a lovely example of how using sound can underline brand identity and create a memorable 30-second spot. It also ties-in nicely to the Steam Whistle website, which has the same iconic whistle sound.
The ad was created by Toronto agency SharpeBlackmore Euro RSCG.
Stumble It! |
Save to del.icio.us | 
Humour in copywriting can be tricky. Finding that “universal LOL” is extremely difficult. When it works, it’s brilliant. When it falls flat, it sits there in a mirthless mess for all to see.
Last weekend, this flyer arrived in my local newspaper. I don’t know if the "modelquin" idea seemed like a whole whack of good silly fun at the concept stage, but these ads for Old Navy are more creepy than hilarious to me. I looked into it a little more, and apparently I’ve been living under a rock. The Crispin Porter + Bogusky ad campaign started two months ago. (BTW, CP+B are the folks behind that other creepy plastic mascot – Burger King’s King.)
Alex Bogusky is quoted as saying, "We're taking a poke at fashion. We're doing it in an entertaining way with some characters that are having fun and feeling good."
Oh.
Well, I’m sure my feelings are apparent, but what about you? Does it work for you?
Yesterday at Searchology, Google showed off some of its new tools to make the web a little easier to navigate, by viewing search results in new ways. One of these methods is Search Options. It now appears at the top of your search results just below the query box.
It allows you to filter results by type of results (video, forums and reviews) as well as by date, so you can see more topical and recent results. There are also some new ways to slice and dice your results...
Wonder Wheel, a type of visual concept map, is a cool new feature that puts related topics in a visual wheel, with the original query appearing in the centre. If you want to see a text version of the related queries, simply click on “Related searches” to get this…
You can see the video here:
Yesterday I was having a conversation with a friend who asked if Twitter was good for optimization purposes. My answer was the wonderfully ambiguous, “Well, yes and no.”
We’ll start with the no part.
Twitter, like many other social media sites, adds a “nofollow” attribute to all outbound links. Google, Yahoo and MSN exclude links listed as “nofollow” links from their algorithmic calculations. One of the few search engines that ignores the “nofollow” command is Ask.com, which has a small part of the search engine market share. So, try as you may, linking to your site or your blog will not increase your number of incoming links.
But all is not lost.
In an interview at WebProNews, Joe Whyte said, “I tend to think that link value is still passed but at a much lower value. We also know that these links do get picked up and put into Google's and Yahoo's backlink checker and we know that nofollow still allows spiders to cache and index, which is still great.”
And yesterday, things got even better as Twitter's new VP of Operations, Santosh Jayaram, who incidentally was VP of Search Quality for Google, announced that Twitter will soon be crawling and indexing links.
This means Twitter will go beyond tracking conversations and enter a new phase of real-time search. As well, Twitter Search will get “get a reputation ranking system. That means that not all tweets will be equal; rank will be calculated for each twitterer, probably based on several criteria such as number of followers, number of retweets and so forth.” (From Mashable)
I suspect that just as Google uses domain age, no doubt length of Twitter use will play a part as well.
It’s a very exciting and potentially huge development.
The bottom line is brand recognition and visibility. You can use Twitter to create community and share your latest post. The site visitors can then share and bookmark your post through Sphinn, Buzz Up, StumbleUpon or any other number of tools. Additionally, as you build your community, “RTs” (retweets) help spread and maximize your message, getting it out to more and more audiences. And don’t forget that Twitter has just become an even better resource for keyword research. Use it to better understand your market and what they are looking for.
If you are looking at Twitter from a pure Google PageRank angle, no it is not going to help with optimization… but going beyond and looking at how interactions with your community can help create a more solid relationship with your potential customers and attract people to your website, then Twitter is fantastic for optimizing your site.
- This is one of my favourite quotes this week, “Not all marketing stories are literal; be aware of the story told through your site design choices.” Read this outstanding article by David Rossiter that reflects on storytelling, user-friendly design and the social web.
- Finally, Twitter has brought real-time search to us all!!
- Wolfram|Alpha hasn’t yet launched but that hasn’t stopped it from being called a “Google killer” The search engine uses natural language queries and doesn’t just supply results, but rather answers them directly.
- With Swine Flu being the conversation-de-jour. Lifehacker reported on a Google Map mashup to track the disease.
- All you emotive people out there will be glad to know that Gmail has added more emoticons.
- Are you a B2B marketer? Gord Hotchkiss has authored a white paper titled “Mapping the BuyerSphere” in which he examines different buyer roles, the identified risk control mechanisms, and the relative effect of a vendor's credibility and positioning. You can download it here.
- Mitch Joel offers his insights on speaking in a powerful new way as part of Cluetrain Manifesto's 10th anniversary. Read other posts expanding on Cluetrain’s tenets at Cluetrainplus10.
- Online Marketing Blog has some great tips in Public Relations Activities That Affect SEO. As Lee Odden points out “content that can be searched on can be optimized.”
- The always-inspiring Valeria Maltoni has written 5 Marketing Ideas You Can Use Today.
- Is it any surprise that even online men feel the need for speed? Find out more about gender issues in website usability.
Friday Fun
Twitter Magnets – Don’t say I didn’t warn you – it’s addictive!
Kathryn from Zoonini and I would love to thank everyone who has enjoyed and shared our public service announcement Do I Need a Flash Intro? We got over 50,000 unique visitors in 4 days from over 130 countries. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!
Zoonini Web Services and I put together a public service announcement to answer the age-old question “Do I need a Flash intro?”
Don’t get us wrong – we love Flash, when it’s used correctly to inspire, inform and engage your site visitors. It can create a slick, professional look. But a Flash intro is the equivalent of trying to bulldoze your visitor with a commercial about you, you, you. (Usually with bad techno music - the horror!) And, to boot, a Flash intro can be counterproductive to any web site optimization.
Your website isn’t about imposing YOUR experience. It’s about building a compelling, informative experience. If you are thinking about a Flash intro ask yourself this:
Does the Flash intro interfere with my visitor’s ability to access the information they are looking for?
Flash intros create a block between your great content and your potential customer’s to access it. Why would you want to do that?
Last week I had the pleasure of speaking with Sara Falconer from the Hour.ca and we had a great discussion about promoting your business on the Information Super Highway! We talked about why the Internet is different from any other marketing channel and how to avoid some common mistakes.
And, today, the article is out. Here's an excerpt:
With Oprah and Ashton Kutcher introducing micro-blogging site Twitter to millions of people, there's no excuse for you not to be using online tools to promote yourself or your business... that is, if you can get it right. Too often, social media campaigns and websites are bogged down by lack of clarity and self-indulgence, say web designer Kathryn Presner and content strategist Charlotte Riley.
Read the complete article at the Hour.ca.
Approximately nine years ago I was working at LookSmart on a project called LookSmart Live. Similar to Ask Yahoo, people would send in their online stumpers and our team would do our best to dig up the answers on the Internet. The search skills I honed at LookSmart Live have served me well, as on a daily basis, I’m scouring the Web, conducting research for clients or getting information to write about a particular topic. (And, of course, looking for the occasional recipe.)
I thought I would put together some of the tricks I’ve learned over the years that make my job of finding things a lot easier. Generally speaking, search engines exclude “stop words”. (the, for, a) As well, uppercase and lowercase don’t really matter. For example, searching for “Turkey” or “turkey” yields the same results.
Let's start with some basics:
brownie recipes
This is the way most people search - by entering their keyword phrase in Google. This sort of query returns results that mention both “brownie” and/or “recipes” on the same page, or in the browser title or incoming links.
“brownie recipes”
By putting double quotes around a set of words, you get search results for the exact phrase you are looking for. (Often called "an exact phrase match.")
brownie OR recipes
Using the Boolean command “OR” tells Google to search for pages that have either “brownie” or “recipes” in the title, in in-bound links or in the body of the copy.
brownie recipes –walnuts
The negative search term uses the subtract sign to exclude words. For instance, this search will return pages with “brownie” and “recipes” but exclude pages with the word “walnuts.” (For all you walnut haters out there.)
brownie recipes ~good
Through the mighty tilde (~) you can add synonyms. This search will return results that include synonyms for “good”, like “best” in the body of the copy or in the title or incoming links.
brownies site:epicurious.com
This command allows me to search a particular site for a brownie recipe, in this case the Epicurious.com Web site.
intitle:"brownie recipes"
Using the intitle command allows me to search for brownie recipes (I’ve used the quotes to ensure both words) in browser title. If I wanted to restrict my search to pages with “brownie recipes” in the title of the Web page and that were a specific file type, such as a PDF, I would add the “filetype:” command afterward. Like this: intitle:"brownie recipes" filetype:pdf
inurl:brownie recipes
This command restricts the search to words found in the URL.
inanchor:brownie recipes
This command allows you to search for these phrases in anchor text, the text-based link clicked on to go to a web page.
Random Search Tips
Need to know the time somewhere else in the world? Just type the word “time” before the location:
time Melbourne
Get weather information the same way:
weather Toronto
Local search
Use the postal code or city name to find local results - for example poutine H4A 1E9
Vertical Search
Don’t forget Google verticals – they can save so much time. Search for:
News
Blogs
Images
Video
Books
Financial/market information
There are tons of other tricks and tips, so this post will be continued...
SEO Resources
B(abble)log
Art & Life
Search!
Stuff
Categories
Advertising
Art
Blogging
Branding
Copywriting
Creativity
Email
Five Questions
Fun Stuff
Make the Frames Stop
Marketing
Online Content
Personal
Photography
Random Thoughts
Search
Selling
SEO
Tips
Usability
Visual Things
Web 2.0
Words
Archives
June 2009
May 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
Blogroll
Copywriters Blog
Gaping Void
How to Change the World
Mitch Joel
One Degree
Possibility Virus
Search Engine Land
Seth Godin
SocialMediaGroup.ca
Meta
Web Site Design | Search Engine Optimization | Portfolio | Etc.| Contact