photo by: gribley
The inspiration for this post came when I saw a lady distributing Yellow Pages books from her van. Made me think about the last time I used Yellow Pages; the actual printed book. It occurred to me that the last time I used it was before I had high-speed internet. I got my high-speed internet in early 2000. For the past ten years I’ve been getting my information from online sources. If I want to find a phone number, I go online. If I want a restaurant recommendation, I go online. If I want to know the closest car wash to me, I go online. And most of my blog readers, friends, and colleagues do the same. But surprisingly, majority of small businesses are not online. They only exist in the offline world.
I completely understand that not all small businesses need a full website, need to be on every social network, or provide status updates regularly. I understand that economics may not work, expertise may not be there, and time commitment to figure out how internet works may be non-existent. But please have some kind of presence so that I could find you, call you, and recommend you. There are enough tools and sites such as Yelp and Google’s Local Business Center and that allow you to claim your small business listing, update your information, and interact with your customers with ease. But most importantly, it leads to greater understanding the type of impact having even a greater online presence may have on your small business and your bottom line.
This post was prompted by Steve Gillmor’s article ‘Rest in Peace, RSS‘ posted on TechCrunchIT on May 5, 2009. In the article Steve Gillmor argues that RSS service has no place in this world and instead internet users should switch solely to Twitter to get their daily dose of news and information. Although I disagree with Mr. Gillmor, he is not completely wrong; he does note that Twitter serves as a better system of disseminating new content earlier. However, there are two issues that Steve Gillmor doesn’t consider in his argument. First is the questionable process of content delivery via Twitter. And second is that this process is human powered.
Twitter is great for disseminating early content before it is even published on blogs, newspapers, heard on the radio or shown on TV. However, to get the whole sense of what is going on, the users need to follow breadcrumbs in the discussion between Tweeple. A great example would be reporting an earthquake or a fire. Although the mainstream media won’t be able to report it as quickly, twitter users (aka Tweeple) are able to spread the message of first-hand accounts across their Twitter network. The problem with distributing this type of content via Twitter is that it is human powered.
In order to spread the content, Tweeple need to be active on Twitter. If no one is logged in, no content gets spread. If users don’t have followers, or enough of them, again, the content doesn’t get spread. To really take advantage of early warning content delivery from Twitter, users (or influential ones at least) need to be hooked up 24/7 to get the content out to the masses. Although possible, but somewhat unrealistic for someone to sit and monitor thousands of discussions on Tweedeck live and wait for new content to arrive. People have jobs to go to and lives to attend to. A couple of other issues arise from human powered content delivery. The reliability and credibility. It is at users’ discretion to spread the content, and to spread accurate content. Sometimes people are not fast enough or are able to deliver most accurate information.
RSS is not dead. It is alive and well. I learned about Steve Gillmor’s article via my subscription to TechCrunch RSS feed on my Google Reader, not through Twitter. For the reasons below, RSS will continue to flourish and stay alive:
- Subscribe to any type of content you want to see. Eliminate noise.
- Content arrives as soon as it is published.
- See it all in one spot. No need to visit multiple sites or follow breadcrumbs.
- See it whenever you want.
- Get more than 140 characters of info.
- Faster delivery for published content.
Both Twitter and RSS feeds are killer tools. The best practice is to use them in harmony to maximize the speed, credibility and reliability of content delivery.
While job hunting through the latter part of ‘08 and some of ‘09, I came across this article: Use Facebook Ads to Make Employers Hunt You Down. A good friend of mine and a fellow blogger Andrew Kinnear sent it to me via StumbleUpon. After reading it and studying each case I decided to launch my own experiment. In addition to using the Facebook ads as an avenue for employers to hunt me down, I also wanted to find networking opportunities.
Using the techniques and strategy described in the article I ran two Facebook ads. I hyperlinked the ads to a page on my site that clearly spelt out what I was trying to achieve with my Facebook ad experiment. In the copy I thanked the visitor for clicking on my ad, provided a very brief description of who I am and what type of work I was looking for. Also, I provided a link to my LinkedIn profile. As a call to action, I asked the visitor to provide me with a lead to a job opening or a simple networking opportunity with someone at their organization by filling out a contact form.
Facebook Ads allows you to specifically target a group of people that you intend your message to reach. I decided to target Facebook members that are employed by one of the companies that I always wanted to work for. Below are examples of ads I ran and the results. Each ad ran for a week.
As you can see, Ad01 produced better results (CTR%) than Ad02. My friend Andrew Kinnear hypothesized that audience was more drawn to my casual profile than a corporate look because they identified it as being more realistic and authentic; whereas the corporate look in Ad02 looks like a stock photo.
(Fill the black spaces with the company name of your choice.)
Also, when I ran a second Facebook Ads experiment targeting a number of organizations in the same industry with a generic message, the response and results were not impressive at all. As you can see below the CTR% was only .23, even with low impressions.
I was extremely surprised with the results (from Ad01 and Ad02). I received a handful of emails, some of which led to introductions to a recruiter, other people in the organization, and having my resume passed around within.
Some of the folks that helped me out I’ve connected with on LinkedIn and still stay in touch with them today. Although I did not find work with my target company, I was able to use this experiment as an interesting topic of conversation during my hiring interviews and networking meetings. I was even called into an interview because the hiring manager was extremely interested in hearing about my job hunt tactitcs. What made the experiment a success was (a) targeting the right demographic, (b) creating a targeted message, (c) genuine appeal for help, and (d) authenticity. At the end of the day I was able to find work at another great company that I admire for innovation, great business sense, and people centric culture.
Seems like everyone these days is a Social Media Guru, Maven, Ninja or [insert new age hipster type of descriptive term here]. I am not intending to single out anyone but I am sure many of you have come across someone who claimed to be a Social Networking or Social Marketing or a Social Media expert, but later to learn that they’re complete fakes. Just because someone joins every single social network under the sun does not make them an instant expert in the space. Experts understand their clients’ goals. Experts are able to execute the strategy. Experts deliver measurable results. Having a deep knowledge, enrolment and familiarity with various social networks only puts you at par with everyone else. It is how you use your knowledge and experience that will put you ahead of the pack.
Not so long ago I made a couple of posts about Twitter and its lack relevance to me. I initially thought that only slackers and internet addicts would use it to tweet randomly about what they’re doing that exact minute. However, I am beginning to warm up to the service. I actually like it. The member base has grown significantly in the last few months and there are enough people who actually tweet relevant content that I can use instantly or explore it at a later time. Being a marketer and having high interest in digital space and emerging media, AND a trendwatching junkie I am starting to see a real value in Twitter. I am slowly but steadily building my own community and following people who share similar interests with me, are active, and have something to contribute.
Cutting costs these days? Stop paying thousands a month to someone for sending you an email with links to articles and blogs that discuss your brand, competition and industry related news. That’s something you can do yourself, save thousands and get instant updates. There’s an abundance of free tools available for you to monitor media sources, the web, and social networks. Although you may not get the full analytical breakdown of how many times the word ‘layoff’ appeared in Twitter between 2pm and 3pm (like Radian6 offers), but these few tools are a great start.
Google Alerts. Get email alerts for relevant Google search results.
Monitter. Monitor Twitter and what tweeple are saying about a set of three keywords… in realtime.
Twitscoop. Quickly and easily see hot topics on twitter via tag cloud.
Yahoo Pipes. Interactive RSS feeds manipulator. Provides graphical interface for you to manage and take greater control of your RSS feeds.
The following technique applies to all sources below.
First and foremost get yourself a Google Reader (or another RSS feed aggregator) account. If you already have a Gmail account then you’re all setup. You’ll need this in order to efficiently and effectively follow what various media outlets online entities are reporting via RSS feeds. The sources below allow you to generate your own RSS feeds that you can subscribe to.
- Visit the site listed.
- Enter the term you want to monitor (it could be anything from your brand name to mundane objects such as margarine) into the search.
- When the search results appear find the RSS feed link and subscribe to it.
- Use your RSS aggregator to monitor the feeds.
Google News
Technorati
Digg
Delicious
Although there are hundreds if not thousands of sites that do the same thing, but these are the leaders in their respective space.
The blogosphere is abuzz today with the release of a new browser by your favourite search engine, Google. Chrome, as Google calls it, although in a very early beta mode, is receiving praise all over the globe. In Google’s natural fashion it is extremely light weight and very simple to use. It won’t take hours for you to explore and figure out everything it can do. It literally takes a couple of minutes and some. This post is not a review of the application (you can find reviews and first looks at: LifeHacker, Gizmodo, TechCrunch) but rather what this means for FireFox (and Internet Explorer).
- Speed. Recent release of Firefox has been plagued by complaints about the browser being slower than its predecessors. I’ve actually had to switch back to IE7 to get stable performance and speed that Firefox can’t deliver anymore.
- Size. Hard to say what an official release of Chrome will look like in the future, but currently it’s extremely light weight and skinny. Google is keeping Chrome clean and simple.
- Reach. Google has an enormous user base that already use one or more of Google’s applications. It took Mozilla over 5 years to achieve 20% market share. Google can tap into their user base and can easily achieve dominance in Web Browser arena.
- Integration. I already use gmail, picasa, reader, trends, analytics, webmaster tools… I can’t wait to see how Google will marry all these applications with Chrome (although I do have some ideas worthy of seperate post). With Chrome, Google is on its way to become the Internet OS.
The bottom line is, Chrome will eat the FireFox… and possibly spit it out in a different form. Afterall, Google did invest heavily into Mozilla Foundation. The two may co-exist in one form or another, but the real threat is felt by Microsoft. Read about it here: What Chrome Means for Microsoft.
