Posted by Andrew Nicholson in Google, Social Networking | 3 Comments

What’s the big deal about Google’s search plus your world?

For the first time since they pulled out of China, Google really got down and dirty yesterday with the launch of Search plus your world.  SPYW (or Search+ as I’ve started referring to it as) is Google’s way of driving new users to their ailing social media site Google+ in a desperate attempt to usurp Facebook’s mantle.  The concept is really rather simple.  Rather that feeding you results based on the open web, Google are including results from your contacts on Google+ (only when you’re logged in mind).  This is optional at present (but it’s pretty much a sure thing that the default will be ‘on’) and will result in a search for ‘Bali’ (for example) bringing up friend’s pictures of their holiday in Bali, status updates mentioning Bali and such like.  Within minutes of Google going live with search+ in the US the blogs lit up (you can see my own to and fro’ing in the comments section of http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/8643-google-adds-social-content-from-google-into-search-results) as assorted techie types cried foul.  But why is this?  In short:

Posted by Andrew Nicholson in Brand, Tech Talk, User experience | 0 Comments

When is a website not a website?

When it’s your brand, of course.

Eh?

Let me explain myself.  I was lying in bed a couple of nights back trying to think about the content of a piece  I’m writing for the ever excellent B2B Marketing magazine about trends and developments in 2012.  By the end of my ruminations, I’d hit on upon an idea (I won’t spoil it by telling you what it is here) that was passable, and several that weren’t.  However, one idea stuck with me, and whilst not relevant to the article in question, it did warrant further consideration.

Posted by Andrew Nicholson in Content marketing, Marketing speak, Personal, Tech Talk | 0 Comments

Creating, using and targeting content to engage with prospects (Part 1)

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for me recently.  Not only was I lucky enough to be invited to speak at the EConsultancy Funnel marketing seminars (see part one below), where my specialist subject was “Creating, using and targeting content to engage with prospects”, but I also picked up a plethora of awards on Thursday night at both the Sodexo Stars Awards (Innovation and change award) and the B2B Marketing Awards (Marketer of the year and Best internal marketing campaign).  It was a bit of a logistical challenge being at two award ceremonies in one night, but with the aid of London’s finest Black cabs I pulled it off and spent all day Friday recovering as a result.  A fantastic night, and a huge thank you to all involved.

Posted by Andrew Nicholson in Content marketing, Marketing speak | 0 Comments

Creating, using and targeting content to engage with prospects (Part 2)

Apologies for the delay – but please see below part 2 of my presentation at Econsultancy’s Funnel 2011.

Posted by Andrew Nicholson in Google, Pay per click | 0 Comments

How qualified is a quality score?

For those in the PPC world a good quality score is something to be cherished and loved.  A quality score, for those not in the know, is applied by Google to every key word or phrase you bid on, with the score relating back to the page the advert links through to.  In the words of Google almighty “A keyword’s Quality Score for ad position is based on its clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google, the relevance of the ad and keyword to the search query, historical keyword performance, and other relevancy factors.”

Why do we love quality scores?  Simple really.  The higher the quality score, the less we have to pay for a click though; and the higher a position we gain in the paid for results.  The holy grail of quality score is obtained when it’s high enough to catapult your advert into the above organic (as opposed to side, and as of this week, below organic) search results.  Normally this only happens when you’re deep linking the advert into a specific key term geared page, or on brand name bidding.  In short.  Quality score x bid price = position.  And if you’re quality score is low, there’s just now way you’re going to be hitting the top spots on your paid for listings.

But just the other day this all came crashing down for me!

Posted by Andrew Nicholson in Personal, Social Networking | 0 Comments

Pipped at the post

You know how sometimes you come up with a really great idea?  One that you’re sure will make you “a millionaire by this time next year”?  Well that happened to me a few weeks back.

Hang on, I thought to myself whilst writing my econsultancy presentation on content targeting.  Wouldn’t it be great if on pulling out my final slide, instead of having a long and unwieldy list of all my social profiles for viewers to note down, I could just have a single page url where everything was amalgamated?  It could be a really simple page.  Content managed and aesthetically pleasing, it would be a doddle to add new social feeds as and when you signed up to them.  This is it, I thought.  This is the big one.

Then along came about bloody me.  About.me does everything I was planning, and to be fair, they’ve probably done a far better job that I ever could have.  Swines.  So, in the spirit of fair play here’s a plug for their tool.  It really is a great bit of kit.  So good in face that I’ve even signed up myself at about.me/webconsultancy.

Now, who’s in the market for this great new collaboration tool I’ve just invented?  I’m going to call it an ‘Internet’.