Archive for March, 2009

Twitter: friend or foe?

Monday, March 30th, 2009

My colleague Geoff Jennings posted this video on his blog last week and I thought it was appropriate for the Netpreneur audience.  It reminds us about some of the underlying weaknesses of Twitter (and other social networking websites). Whilst Twitter might be the latest and greatest thing on the web, there are also negative elements of this social networking tool which suggest that it could be a short-term fad – specifically that it is addictive, that it creates ‘artificial’ interactions between people, and that it can be a huge waste of time if not employed wisely!  Indeed, micro-blogging will never remove the need for good old fashioned face-to-face, human contact. That’s not to say that Twitter won’t be useful as a means of communication in your business….give it a try.

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Action List: Validate your HTML and CSS

Sunday, March 29th, 2009

valid

Are you web pages ‘valid’?  Valid??  What does that mean?

Web pages are typically written using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). It’s important that your site uses valid HTML and CSS code so that the search engines can index your site properly.

Like all computer languages, HTML and CSS change constantly. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the governing body that establishes what is valid HTML/CSS and what is not. Search engines obey the HTML/CSS standard. If there are errors in the HTML/CSS code of your web page, then search engines might not be able to read your web page properly.  Accordingly, you may be penalised in the rankings.

To test your site for valid code, visit http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools/

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Action List: Seize the initiative during bad times

Sunday, March 15th, 2009

It’s almost impossible to avoid the negative sentiment that is permeating all aspects of our lives at the moment- media reports are full of doom and gloom and the predictions are that the global financial crisis (now with its own acronym, the GFC) is with us for the foreseeable future.  Indeed, financial commentators agree that it is likely to get worse, before it gets better.  The pundits are saying that the crisis will last 12-24 months at least.

With the GFC has come the anticipated corporate failures (eg. Storm Financial Limited, Herringbone and Strathfield), stock market plunges, a huge dip in consumer confidence (despite government handouts – another story…) and rendundancies (Pacific Brands, ANZ).  It is almost certain that we haven’t seen the last of these issues – who is going to be next? 

Seemingly, it’s not a good time to be in business.  Clearly, it’s time to batten down the hatches.  Or is it?

I reckon it’s a great time to be in business, because times like these spell opportunity, opportunity, opportunity.  Your competitors are so scared about their own circumstances, that they haven’t got the time to monitor what you’re doing.  Now’s the time to get your brand out there and seize the initiative from them, particularly as your competitors have probably slashed their marketing budgets to save precious costs.

It’s just what Woolworths are doing – they have undertaken a full rebrand and they are spending stacks on marketing (have you seen the weekly updates on fresh produce?) in order to steal more market share from Coles and others.

Why not take Woolworths’ lead?  Bugger the negative stuff – get positive and start making a big difference now while the chips are down (and it doesn’t mean spending lots of money, just do something…anything), and your business is sure to power out of the recession when the cycle inevitably turns in 12-24 months time. 

So, turn off the television news, ignore the nay-sayers, don’t read the papers and just pretend that everything is hunky-dory.  Your business will the better for it.

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Action List: Don’t overdo the page content

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

content

I was reading a competitor bookstore’s online newsletter the other day and it gave me an idea for a post.  The newsletter went on and on and on.  I scrolled, scrolled, scrolled down through the content and found myself deleting the email before reaching the bottom. 

It’s not that the content was bad – it was actually really good (and it gave me some ideas for our own Boomerang Books Bulletin).  It’s just that I didn’t have the time or the inclination to take it all in. 

There’s a lesson in that for netpreneurs.

People’s attention spans are short these days.  We have so many things impacting on our time - so many distractions, competing priorities, and the ever-increasing demands of everyday life.  We just don’t have the time to read through a lengthy web page or email newsletter.  And when we do have the time, we can’t possibly take in all that information, because our mind is full of so many other things!

So for our human visitors/newsletter subscribers, the advice is to employ the KISS principle - keep it simple, stupid!

There’s also another important consideration when reviewing the length of our web pages - will Google index all of the content if it is too long?  Like most people in modern society, the Google indexing robots are busy little bees.  They will only spend a certain amount of time on your website before moving on to the next site.  If each page of your website contains a thesis, then much of the page content won’t be indexed, which means that your site won’t achieve its traffic potential from the search engines.

With that in mind, here are some tips for good page content:

- Keep each page or newsletter to 200-300 words maximum per page.

- If your content is more than 200-300 words, span it over multiple pages, but offer a ‘print version’ that contains the entire text (it’s painful having to print articles that span over multiple pages)

- Use bullet points, prominent headings, white space, 1.5 line spacing and short paragraphs to break up the content and enable the reader to ’scan’ your content.  It’s proven that most people scan, rather than read.

- Include keyword combinations that you want to rank highly for in Google and other search engines, but make sure that they appear ‘naturally’ within the text (ie. when read, the text should read naturally)

- Put your best content ‘above the fold’ so that every visitor can see it – ie. it is visible once the page has loaded, without the necessity to scroll down to reveal the content.

- Cross-link to other appropriate pages on your website so that your visitors can find other content quickly and easily.  Use contextual links (links within the body text, like this one!) to provide natural pathways throughout your website.

Of course, I am aware of the irony – this article appears on a blog page that scrolls and scrolls and scrolls.  A consequence of using Wordpress, although I am sure that it could be configured differently…

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Get the word out with a viral video

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

First what’s a viral video?

Viral marketing is sending out a message, usually via email, that encourages others to pass it on to all those they know. Often this is a humorous photo or joke or in this case I’m talking about a video.

5 must haves for a successful viral video campaign

  1. Come up with an idea or short clip that is unique, clever and often humorous
  2. Not blatantly an ad
  3. Encourages people to pass it on to everyone they know
  4. Include your website URL in the video itself, if you hope to generate website traffic
  5. Optimize your videos description and tags so it is easy to find in the search engines for your target keywords

Your aim of course is to have it seen by as many people as possible so it is viewed on YouTube, shared on other video sharing and social networking sites and blogged about over and over again.

Take comedian Judson Laippley’s video Evolution of Dance it is one of the top two most viewed clips on YouTube ever with over 127 million views or the home video Charlie bit my finger which has had more than 85.8 million views.

Possible formats for your video

  • Commercial or Commedy sketch

    A commercial that is controversial or “banned” is sure to catch attention as is something funny.

    Eg. The simple T Mobile Dance was posted on YouTube on January 16, 2009 and has already been viewed more than 6 million times not to mention the other sites that have posted the video including more than 1800 blog posts and 11600 comments.
    Cadbury Eyebrows was posted on Dailymotion on January 23, 2009 it is only a minute long but very clever! It has had more than 5 million views, 1200 blog posts 13000 comments and 18 duplicate videos.

  • Music video

    Singer, song writer, Oren Laview put his music video Her Morning Elegance on YouTube on January 21, 2009 and it has been viewed more than 4.3 million times.

  • Interview

    An interview is a great way to get a message across or promote a film or celebrity.

    Eg. Matt Harding of Where the Hell is Matt fame or Justin Timerlake.

  • Demonstration or how to

    Go toYouTube or Google and search for ‘how to make an omlette’ or just about anything(!) and you will see there is a video ‘how-to’ available

  • Short film or trailer

    Eg. The short film Sign is about communication. It has had more than 569,000 views

Recent Australian examples include wokinabox and Baron’s Brewing Save the Males competition.

So brainstorm some ideas and grab your video camera to take advantage of viral video marketing for your online business.

Remember your clip needs to be unique and catchy but not end up on the 10 most annoying online viral marketing campaigns of all time list!

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Action List: Get fast, quality hosting

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

web-server

Popular web sites often have faster server response times compared to smaller unimportant sites.  Search engines often index more pages from these quicker sites and give them prominence over slow sites.

Do you think that Google will allow a ’slug’ website to occupy a top ranking in its search engine results?  Not likely.  That’s why it’s important to host your website on a fast server – not to mention the fact that most ‘real’ visitors will be turned off by your website if it is too slow.

The best bet is to go for a dedicated server hosting plan – but they’re quite expensive if you have been used to paying for shared hosting.  Most dedicated servers cost $400+ per month.

If that’s too expensive for you, there are plenty of shared hosting providers out there and most of them are very inexpensive – the trick is to find one with good, local customer support (in my experience most data centres are offshore, but some have local call centres).  Look for a service that has phone support as well as email support, because it’s important that you are able to talk to a human when an emergency occurs (ie. your site goes down).

Another consideration is that websites hosted offshore will use IP addresses of the home country and this may impact on search engine rankings.  There is evidence to suggest that websites hosted overseas will not be given as much credence in the target country as those websites hosted locally.  For example, if my website was targeted at the Australian market, but it was hosted in the United States (regardless of whether I use a .com.au domain or not), then Google may not give me the level of importance (and hence the high rankings) that my website deserves in local search results on Google.com.au. 

A further reason for caution when using shared hosting providers is that they use shared IP addresses, lumping your website in with a bunch of other sites hosted on the same server – over which you have no control.  Again, there is evidence to suggest that shared IPs may impact on search engine rankings.  If your website shares an IP with a blacklisted website in Google, then your credibility may be reduced in the eyes of Google.

I use Canberra-based company AussieHQ for my hosting and I have found their products and service to be impeccable.  Their help desk response times are lightning fast.  I felt compelled to move all of my hosting to a dedicated server with AussieHQ after a website mishap in a PlanetDomain data centre in the US  (a number of servers caught fire).  Until that time, I was relatively happy with PlanetDomain because they offer local telephone support and their shared hosting plans represent good value.

Ultimately, you choice of host will impact upon your search engine penetration, so choose wisely.

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