Google just issued a response to a guy who was claiming that with the negative reviews he receives enough links to rank high in SERPs.

Firstly, I think it is a dumb strategy to try and get more links my negative reviews as there is a big part of potential customers who make a buying decision precisely based on these reviews.

Secondly, I found Google’s response interesting. They’ve admitted the problem and a potential loophole as well as suggested to use nofollow attribute. Some my disagree but recently I been seeing more and more nofollow attribute not having any difference for ranking purposes.

The conclusion from all of this? The guy got high rankings when newspaper wrote about him, instead of doing something bad: do something extremely good, on the edge or controversial.

Why do we get so hung up on numbers? Do your grades in school really show how successful you will be in life? Do those extra 000s in your bank account make you a happier person? Does a larger Twitter following make you a social media expert? I would say the answer to all of these questions is “No”.

I registered for Twitter over a year ago, but didn’t use it too much. Simply because none of the people I knew were on Twitter and I didn’t find a lot of use for it. I used search.twitter.com to identify trends and such, but I didn’t tweet as much myself. With the installation of TweetDeck and TwitterBerry (now trying to use TweetCaster) I started to get involved with a Twitter a bit more.

I instantly learned what Twitter spam is: you type a certain keyword and you get bunch of followers who are either: bots, porn people or social media experts. My favourite kind is “social media experts” they usually follow like 10,000 people and 8,000 or 9,000 will follow them back.

Now comes the question—do you block those accounts which are obviously spam or do you let them follow you? I mean, you will look cool if you have more followers, right? Wrong, due to the simple fact that it is easy to see who is following you. So if you claim to be a marketing expert and have, say, 1000 followers and then your clients click on who follows you and sees names like Kelly4568 or Mandy124 what kind of expert are you?  Of course, if you have hundreds of thousands of followers it is hard to monitor new adds, but the majority of people don’t fall in that category.

This reflects very poorly on your brand and also, from a practical point of view, you can’t really use your twitter account to deliver message to the masses. You think those bots care about your new blog post? The internet is just a medium, marketing principles stay the same: to be an expert in “Social” you have to actually be social. Social means developing conversations and, in a marketing context, helping people satisfy their needs.

So fellow Tweeps who don’t block those accounts, why aren’t you? Agree? Or think I am full of it? Let me know.

@romanz

P.S. Definitely not a social media expert.

P.P.S. But I have couple of good ones working for me.

This video is very good video as it search engines are always developing to combat spammer and help users to find the most relevant information. This video is more an hour long, but I watched it all and here are some highlights if you don’t have time to watch.

Highlights:

• If you have fancy navigation (in flash) make sure that your page is accessible in many ways. Static htmls are the easiest for search engine to crawl
• Alt text on the images is very important. This also correlates with Whiteboard Friday video @ seomoz.org
• Do your keyword research in AdWords you might rank high for a certain word, but there might be a very popular search term in your industry that you are completely missing out on
• Don’t use too much bolding, people can’t read it very well and crawlers might think it is a spam
• Make sure your thumbnails lead to bigger pictures. Google tries to index bigger pictures as this is what users are searching for
• Basic, but make sure your loading time is appropriate. Especially if you want people to access your website from cell phones
• ALWAYS backup your website. Everybody gets hacked, timely back-ups will allow you to quickly restore your website.
• My favourite: best $20 you can spend is by taking a random person, tying your hands behind your back and ask them to use your website
• Before buying a website make sure you check its history. Some urls were owned by spammers, burned to the ground and then put up for sale

Overall great video. It is almost like going for class session on SEO.

Almost a year ago I published an infamous post Koodo Mobile in Toronto or why develop a fake brand? which generated a lot of controversy between and my readers (mostly just my friends). Back then I thought couple of things:

1) What is the point in creating of what I call a fake brand or sub-brand of Telus?

2) Originally Koodo was supposed to be targeting younger people and I didn’t understand how is 80′s work out tape relates to the target audience

3) I didn’t think that “fat free mobility” was actually fat free.

So was I right or wrong? I think I was right in some things and that Koodo adjusted in a year and is now looking more like what is supposed to resemble. Here is my reasoning:

-Now almost a year later same advertising agency Taxi 2 changed its advertising campaign from 80′s workout tape to clever new words like “bigbiliffication,” but still kept the same colors.  I think that was a great move as that 80′s tape was annoying the hell out of people. Just check out Twiter if you don’t beleive me. I still don’t know what is the point of people with big mouths, but I think they have a cleaver slogans and it was good they kep the colors to keep the branding going.

-Telus did grow their customer base quite a bit, but is not releasing how much of it is attributed to Koodo.  Somehow I think if the figures were good they would release them openly

-They deviated from “fat free mobility” and now offer: web browsing, mms, call forwarding and when you add all the services it still doesn’t come out that cheap

-They did eliminate service charge – which made them look like an actual discount brand.

I still beleive that brands like Koodo, Fido, and Soho are just one of the way to trick consumers in buyng the same service. Some people do it, because they like marketing others just don’t see any other alternative. My opinion is that when new players like Globalive enter the market Rogers, Bell, and Telus will have to adjust and make their prices reasonable as a a result Koodo, Soho and Fido will have to either disappear or become even more discounted in order to attract customers that would want to use services from new players.

I personally can’t wait for that time. We really need a second GSM company in Canada!

I will be upfront that I am not an expert or anywhere near in social media. I know how it works in theory, but implementation been lagging I just don’t seem to have enough patience or maybe my strategy is just wrong and I need to hire social media specialists. In my mind I compare every life situation with either driving on highway (don’t ask I have a whole theory) or martial arts training, so I figured that social media is like martial arts – never happens overnight, takes practice and lots of patience.
That is a reason why I feel very happy even when I make small steps to improve my social media profile and skills. I did two things in last couple of days to improve:

Twitter:
It seems that everybody on the net talks and uses Twitter these days. I’ve been slow in using it and only have 56 updates – partly due to a simple fact that I had no followers. However, now when T4C is near its completion it is time to reach out to the public of Toronto, I said to myself, it is time to start actually using Twitter. Now, I know that my approach is totally wrong – I should have been developing relationships and followers along the way and now it will take some time till I build creditability with the community and actually benefit from Twitter – but hey, it is better late than never right?

So I did two things:

1) I installed Twitter – Facebook application. What it does is copies my Twitter updates to Facebook, I don’t think it works in reverse. This allows me to tap into more developed Facebook network while building up my Twitter account as well. I think this is a first step one should do.

2) Now before I go to sleep I go to search.twitter.com and search for terms relevant to T4C it is amazing how many people are on Twitter from Toronto while nobody around me doesn’t even know what Twitter is. I read through first two pages and check out interesting people. I don’t want to follow each and everyone, because then really it will be impossible to follow all of them. So I click on user profiles, check out their updates and their blog or website. If a person is interesting – I follow. Then – magic this people start following me as well. So in a day I grew my followers from 8 to 30.

I know that mastering Twitter is a slow process and I also need to bring value to people who follow me and not just promote my content. That is why I am going to take my time to develop this relationship and gradually grow the readership. I think next step would be to get custom designed Twitter page and participate more in conversation of people I follow already.

Toronto Food Blogs
Really there is no direct competition to T4C ( and that is why we started the project), but it doesn’t mean somebody is not starting the same project and you still have to follow other players in the industry. From my perspective the nearest to us in topic are food blogs and entertainment guides. Finding major ones is pretty easy, but how do you go deeper? I used a system that I read from Dave’s Fleet blog :Practical 101s: Google Reader And Persistent Search . So I set a brand new Google account, so it doesn’t mix with the regular feeds I read and set up a system that monitors every media company in Toronto I could think about as well as keywords like “Toronto Restaurants” or “Toronto Dates.”
Yesterday I logged in to this account and scanned the 660 feeds that appeared over there in a matter of 10 min I found 15 local Toronto blogs that are dedicated to food – I was amazed, because I couldn’t find them before when I was doing the research for my business plan.

Now these new websites that I discovered could be our competition or in opposite could become our content partner – you never know. What I do know that as a professionals in what we do – we just have to keep on eye on what these guys do and try to develop a relationship with them where everyone will benefit.

So here they are – my baby steps in social media. I think I will spend more time with blogs and Twitter for now, and not going to use use Stumble or Digg anytime soon – because I want to be authentic and that requires time and patience.

This was probably the first casual yet business event I went to in my life. Coming from traditional media I am used to black suites,politically correct speeches that are usually held in conference halls or hotels.

Needless to say that the crowd that attended the Casecamp was very different and very diverse. More than 500 people attended and I saw some people in suites and some in converse sneakers. I think the uniting factor was similar to Web 2.0 itself – transparency. It felt like everyone is just who they want to be without the need to put a facade so needed at a corporate job. Even the venue Circa itself was one of trendiest clubs I saw in Toronto and I am sure I will visit it again on a regular night.

The bottom line is the contrast between tradional media and new media was evident. I decided that I am finally where I want to be. Thanks a lot to Eli Singer for organizing it and lowering barriers so everyone can parcipate.

Bits of pieces I gathered from 15 minutes presentations:
Brian Segal from ComScore:

• Canadian spend the most time in the world visiting social media websites. It correlates to what I heard at the conference from Yahoo’s Daniel Maor
• The segment of internet useres over 30 is again the largest in Canada.

Bottom line: if you are in Canada and targeting  tradional audiences social media marketing should be integral part of your marketing plan.

Boxing Day 2007 at RedFlagDeals.com:

• Derek started while living with his parents in 2000.
• They make money from affiliate links
  
• When he first launched forums it was a failure due to the lack of existing traffic
• He mentioned that without 100,000 existing visitors they couldn’t approach big advertisers
• Boxing week is the most profitable week for them
• Last Boxing week the organic traffic from Google grew by 151%, already during November they ranked the highest for the keywords
• Last Boxing week they brough 8.5 millions in sales to one retailer
• Now there is RFD factor – when they mention the deal on the website the retailer is sold out in a very short time

Bottom Line:The success is based on transparency, user collobartion and constantly improving user experience.

Story2Oh!, Evolving TV Storytelling to Social Network

• for the fake story they got enormous amount of clicks and followers
• one woman in the audience got mad, because she had no idea that characters were fictional and she was actually following really closely the evolving drama
• they plan to run a whole season

Bottom line: I am not sure if the succes of the show was due to the new nature of the storytelling or because some people didn’t pay attention that characters are fictional. It will be interesting to see how they will monetize it when the time comes.

Update: Due to complain from the lady they took down the characters on Facebook

Radiothon Diaries, Harnessing YouTube for the Hospital for Sick Children

• SickKids used YouTube videos with a widget button at the top for the first time
• The Radiothon’s fund raised increased by 40-50%, but it is unknown if all of is attributed to YouTube
• It was a lot more work in terms of editing the videos than they ever expected
• The videos on YouTube were different from their typical TV spots.

Bottom line:no matter what industry you are – you can find a way how to use social media for your benefit. I think for fund raising with their limited funds for publicity it is even more true.


The TD Canada Trust Facebook Story
Sue McVey, VP Marketing Planning, TD Canada Trust

• Social Media was new to TD Canada Trust
• The biggest fear was the loose of control over the message comparably to tradional media
• They did receive some negative comments and left them intact
  
• They exceeded the goal and quickly gathered more than 10,000 fans on their Facebook page
• RBC launched the Facebook page couple of days after TD and that means they are doing something right.

Bottom line: It is hard for tradional businesses to start using social media due to the lack of control over the brand. Naturally there are only few companies whose customer service doesn’t suck. Still it is a needed component for staying competetive in the current marketplace. Develop contingecies on how you are going to deal with negative complaints. Metrics for social media are not as straight forward as for tradional media or PPC advertising, but they still exist and needed to be measured.

Yesterday a visitor left a link to an interview with Kevin Banderk . It is actually an exlcusive interivew so that is why I am reposting the link.

I also received couple of emails from people i Know who told me that I should not put down someone’s else creative work.  I left a lengthy comment to myself in my previous post and now just decided to make the record clean.

I think that the campaign was creative and the execution is great as well. I think the main problem is that it doesn’t align with the core target group of 16-25 years that Koodo was originally planning to target. I just don’t see the connection. 

My opinion (without any data to backup) is that it works the best on 30+ since they can easily identify with 20 minute workout video and still not adopted techonology as much as younger generation.

I made a small test myself which is probably not representative, but 95% of my facebook friends told me that want to have unlimited internet access in their phone.

I guess time will tell…

My readers know that this Friday is my last day at my 9-5 job. After that I am on my own. One thing I learned at my job that is all about networking, knowing right people is imperative to besuccessful in achieving your goals. That is why I am attending CaseCamp.org event in Toronto on April 29th.

I’ve never been to this event before, but from I what I understand it is really casual presentation of case studies by big names and open collaboration of the audience.This is totally Reality 2.0. It is a wiki in a real time. I Googled it and it looks like a lot of bloggers from Toronto will be attending it. I am sure they don’t know anything about me, but I was checking out their blogs for awhile – almost like a stalker.

Anyways if you live in Toronto and even remotely interested in social network marketing I urge you to attend CaseCamp. I am sure it will be inspirational and will allow for the opportunity to meet a lot of people that might help in achieving your business goals.

I think their wiki is down, but Facebook page still works. Check it out.

Here is the list of presenters:

P.S. trying to print my new personal business cards before the event, because I guess my current company’s won’t work:)

I like statistics. While analyzing google’s traffic sent to my site I found out that my Koodo Mobile or Why Develop a Fake Brand post is my best post ever. Apparently a lot of visitors want to know what is the marketing agency behind these annoying Koodo Mobile ads. I know in Toronto you can see these ads everywhere on buses, downtown and TV.

I will save you some time and the short answer is Taxi 2 Advertising Agency. Taxi 2 is pretty big player in the marketing industry and is responsible for some really creative marketing campaigns. I love their WestJet campaign. However, I still think that both marketing and product offering for Koodo Mobile is a bit questionable. Here are my questions:

• Why would 80′s working out theme appeal to 16-30 year olds? We were not born at that time, so it doesn’t appeal to us as an audience.  Seriously I have no idea how does working out hints at buying a cell phone
• Except stating “fat free mobility” there is no real message in the ad campaign that would tell me why should I go out of my way to check out their website
• I do want to watch TV on my phone,
• I do want to browse internet on my phone for one low flat rate fee per month
• I want cool looking modern devices

At the end of the day except eliminating system access fee I see no difference between Koodo Mobile and other mobile companies in Toronto. If you are asking yourself a question is someone cares if you would disappear tomorrow – the answer is no nobody cares.

Check out this blog I am not sure, but I think the owner of the blog works for Taxi agency and they are brainstorming on some new ideas for Telus. Contribute and he might invite you to a party.

Oh Yeah, if you agree with me or disagree please leave a comment.

Update: New post about Koodo advertising campaign after one year

92.5 Jack FM advertising in Toronto or don’t promote your competitor.

If you read any of my posts you probably know that I love Rock and everything that goes with it. Now, in Toronto two my knowledge they are two major rock stations: Q107 Classic Rock and 92.5 Jack Fm. Whenever, I forget my Ipod I do listen to both stations. I listen to them interchangeably depending purely on the song or commercial that is playing at the moment. The difference between two stations is that Q is playing classic rock only, while Jack FM plays modern rock as well.

Now two months ago Jack FM rolled out a new advertising campaign in Toronto. The whole drive behind the campaign was to just bash Q107 and just say that only older generation listens to it. Jack FM even had a recording of listeners who called in and said how much they hate Q107. This is it – the whole marketing is based on putting down the competition.

I have a lot of contacts in advertising agencies in Toronto, but I think this campaign was made from within the company.  I would fire the guy who did it.
This campaign is just so against any of marketing principles:

• it failed to position the product, all it did is talked about competition
• marketing 101 negative publicity is still a publicity
  
• it offended people who listened to both radio stations
• it offended older generation
• it offended the spirit of Rock (what are you saying Green Day is more rock than Led Zeppelin?)

Guess what? The stations is owner by pretty familiar company to my regular readers – Rogers Wireless.

I decided to write this post just now, because I was listening to Jack FM for the first time in two months and figured that they changed their approach. Right now they actually push on the fact that they are the only station where a person can listen to both modern and classic rock. I think it is way better approach.

The lesson is talk about yourself, tell me why you are good! Don’t tell me about why other guys are bad, I might love these people and you will make me feel stupid. These are the principles that even rookie sales reps know.

Related Posts:
Rogers Wireless the hate lives on
Rogers Wirelss Monitors You