Coast Digital Blog

The internet is Buzzing at the moment with the announcement that Google has introduced a new social feature to its ever-popular Gmail service. It’s called Google Buzz, is linked directly to your existing Gmail account and is easily accessible from the main window.

Buzz offers the usual range of social networking features, but promises to “go beyond status messages”. I have had a quick play around with it this morning, but as it is being rolled out slowly it has been a bit hard to “buzz” many of my contacts.

Luckily, I managed to rope my colleague Hannah into Buzzing – just to see what it was like. Happily she agreed, and I witnessed a very nice Buzz real-time update that happened without the need for refreshing.

Having mastered text updates, we tried a text and photo update. Incredibly, this worked as well! It is also extremely easy to use, using either photos from your computer or from your library.

Google has decided to encourage privacy by giving you the ability to share your updates publicly or privately. I like this feature a lot – if, for example, I have a quick update I would like to share with only the Coast Digital team, then I can. This appeals to me a lot more than sending out an office-wide email.

Another feature that I am looking forward to trying out is the ability to connect Buzz with other sites, allowing you to pull in your Twitter feed or your public Picasa albums. I use Gmail and Twitter every day, so having them both in one place does seem pretty handy.

There is a wealth of other things I should talk about such as complete inbox integration, iPhone Buzzing, and picture importing – but I shall save those until I get fully used to all of this and have a few more followers.

My colleague Hannah Rampton says this about Google Buzz: “I think that Buzz is just a more personal, simpler version of Wave. I love the real-time integration with no need for refreshing.”

And here is Google’s official announcement:

This might be a rather controversial question to be asked by someone who works for an agency that offers search engine optimisation, but I think it’s one that needs thinking about.

"My name’s Rebecca Wheeler and I’m a Twitterholic”

I’ve never been able to resist the lure of social networks. I’ve always used one social networking site or another (rarely one exclusively) and I’ve been thinking about how I use them - and whether this has changed as significantly as I think it has.

Weighing up the benefits

Where I’d once used social networks to share interesting titbits, keep in touch with long distance friends and stay connected with old colleagues, I’ve been using them more and more to find answers to my questions.

Perhaps it’s the influence of my new iPhone, but getting a response from a social network is now incredibly fast. You no longer have to wait until your friends are in front of a Mac or PC to receive @ replies, direct messages and wall posts. We’re all truly mobile now – and better connected than ever.

So, rather than get Google to find something for me, I often find it easier, more fun and much quicker to ask my friends and followers. Because they know me better than Google does (sorry, Big G), they understand exactly what I’m asking for, even if I haven’t expressed my request particularly clearly.

Valuable advice

I’m not suggesting that social networks could give me all of the answers that the search engines can – after all, I’m addressing a distinct set of people and resources. But I do think search engines could learn a thing or two from the way people interact and share information across the various social platforms.

My friends and followers deliver the added bonuses of advice, opinion and recommendation, for instance – whether I’ve asked for them or not. This isn’t a completely alien concept to search engines. We are now offered integrated user ratings and reviews when searching for products, and they’ve sometimes had enough of impact to determine whether or not I bought them.

But do I really listen to the advice of strangers as seriously as I take on board the opinions of my friends?

To Google or not to Google?

So, while I’ll continue to use Google to find information and gain knowledge that my friends might not be able to impart, I’m relying on Twitter and Facebook for responses to my sometimes muddled questions – and to tell me which new apps I should try out this weekend.

When is the novelty of Twitter going to wear off, at least in the media?

For a service that's quite clearly billed as a social network, I find it hard to understand why there's so much fuss about people doing - erm - social things on it. Yes, the sight of people flirting and chatting, lying and scheming, plotting and self-publicising can be fascinating - that's why journalists fill their pages with this sort of stuff.

At least, that's what they tell themselves.

But why the extra hoo-ha when people do these things on Twitter?

Let's take the Twitter stories of last week and assess their real significance.

Dannii Minogue is pregnant

She's pregnant. She announced it on Twitter. "Woo hoo I'm gonna be a mummy!" she said.

Significance: why issue a press release when you can get national coverage with a tweet?

Kerry Katona is not

She isn't. Despite someone on Twitter saying she is.

Significance: who cares? It's just another non-story about Kerry Katona. Turn the page.

Neither is Kate Perry

No baby for Perry either. "Ur gonna make me cry, maybe that's my period tho. THAT'S RIGHT I'M BLEEDING. Face. Better luck next month peepz," she tweeted.

Significance: yet more free publicity for something that hasn't actually occurred.

But Tila Tequila is

She is so. The lover of the late heiress Casey Johnson says she is.

Significance: yet more free publicity for something that has actually occurred.

That's enough pregnant. Now for the pause

And having read all the non-stories, pulled off the internet by hacks who are desperate to fill space, it's hard not to sympathise with the following item of interest.

Ricky Gervais thinks Twitter is duff

He doesn't like Twitter. He's stopped using it after six tweets, claiming it to be 'pointless' and 'undignified'.

And sadly, given the oodles of tedium that seep from Twitter into the pages of the press, it's tempting to agree with him.

But that's to miss the point – Twitter is just like any other social medium, and you can actually derive a lot of pleasure, amusement, satisfaction and even profit from it, without once noticing that a minor celeb is (or is not) carrying a child. It's in the newspapers that you can't avoid that sort of dross.

No matter. Let's end on a positive.

Haiti aid comes by tweet and text

Yes, an additional $5 million has been trickling in. And I'm not along in thinking that's one of the many good sides of Twitter - one that doesn't have much to do with pregnancies, real or imagined, and one that may well have been missed by Ricky Gervais.

Here's how you can donate to Haiti earthquake victims.

Many companies add blogs to their websites with the sole intention of bolstering their SEO efforts. And why not? It’s a simple and effective way of generating fresh content that the search engines will love.

Unfortunately, there’s a downside too. Blogs also need to appeal to brand followers and potential customers, and many organisations struggle to keep them updated with the original and interesting content that attracts a healthy readership.

So, how can you avoid this pitfall? What do you need to bear in mind if you want to write regular blog posts that generate buzz and draw in visitors? Let’s take a look at the top five articles that were posted on this blog in 2009, and see what we can learn.

Timing is everything

Jan Moir: how the Twitter backlash started (October 2009)
The key to this post’s success was not only its hugely popular subject but also its timing. It also revealed an aspect of the story that had been missed by the mainstream media, as well as other bloggers. On the evening it was uploaded to the Coast Digital blog, the post received nearly 300 page views almost instantly.

Ensuring that newsworthy content is available when people are looking for it (i.e. when the topic is still fresh) is an absolute must and will ensure that you don’t miss out on potential search traffic.

Google homepage: we’re not bored, let’s fade away (December 2009)
A staggering 80 per cent of this post’s page views resulted from Google searches. Again, timing was key as it followed hot on the heels of Google’s homepage update.

The post also offered readers opinion on the update, rather than just a bland report, which led to a healthy number of reader comments. This kind of interaction is always good for extending the lifetime of a post.

Mix it up

Santa Nav: track Father Christmas online (December 2009)
A news story rather than a blog post, but topicality was still vital to the popularity of this Christmas-themed story. Knowing what your readers are interested in - and responding appropriately - is almost certainly the simplest way of guaranteeing a loyal and involved audience.

It doesn’t hurt to offer some light-hearted material amongst the more serious issues-based posts every now and then, either.

Don’t be afraid to express an opinion

Why Foundem.co.uk doesn’t rank in Google (August 2009)
Like the Google homepage post, this blog served up plenty of opinion – and this time it explained why a certain website deserved its poor SEO performance. Timing was once again crucial – Foundem was featured in the national press on the same day.

While many companies shy away from expressing genuine views in such a public way, a bit of controversy can result in an incredibly popular post. It’s unlikely to harm your reputation either: as long as you back up your opinion and avoid empty ranting.

Is racism acceptable on Facebook applications? (August 2009)
Picking a subject that you feel strongly about will nearly always result in a compelling piece of writing that others will want to read.

This post received a lot of supportive comments because it addressed an issue that many bloggers might have been afraid to tackle. You certainly won’t lose face by pointing out what your industry is doing wrong and suggesting a way that it can improve.

Bringing it together: practice makes perfect

There are no hard and fast rules for the success of a blog, so it’s often a case of getting started, building a following, and then analysing which posts are popular and which aren’t. Every time you succeed, ask yourself what attracted people to the post, and why they engaged with it.

Each company, industry and blogger will be looking to achieve something different, so don’t be afraid to try something new. You might be surprised by which topics interest your followers – they’re often not the ones that you’d expect.

As we entered the new decade (not a patch on the passing of the millennium), Google announced it had been blogging officially for five years. A late starter, you might think – especially as Google acquired the Blogger platform as early as 2003 – but it was certainly worth the wait.

A blog is born

Since it burst onto the scene, the Official Google Blog has amassed an impressive 1,541 posts, with new articles being added almost daily. For me it provides a valuable insight into the goings on at Google, the updates that are being made and the new products to look out for.

I use an RSS feed on Netvibes to keep track of the latest posts. This provides me with the heading of each new post, along with a few lines that describe it, making it easy to decide whether it’s worth visiting the blog itself to read the whole thing. It’s a great time saver.

Back in April 2004, Google’s first blog post directed readers to its advice for curbing the problem of ‘bad software’. It was a good start that clearly laid out Google’s intentions for the way it planned to use the new platform – communicating information in a candid and non-technical way to those who might want or need it.

I wish more blogs did something similar, instead of positioning themselves as online sales tools. That’s so often a wasted opportunity.

Growing up

As you’d expect from Google, its official blog has evolved and grown in popularity. In 2009, its most popular post by far announced the arrival of Google’s own operating system, Google Chrome. It clocked over two and a half million unique page views alone.

Last year also saw the introduction of more content specific blogs to the Google compendium, including one for Google Wave along with others dedicated to Google Arabia and Google Thailand.

What’s next?

So what can we expect from the Official Google Blog in 2010 and beyond?

Certainly we’ll get more “Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture”, but – as always with the ‘Big G’ – it’s not going to give away its secrets so easily. Make sure you’re listening to advice from your SEO specialists as well. They’re the ones who are engaging with Google and the other search providers on a daily basis, and they have their ears to the ground for the latest news and updates.

This week Facebook started rolling out changes to the way in which it manages privacy for over 350 million users. This is no small task, and Facebook has done well to keep everything simple and straightforward. When you log in, you are invited to alter your settings. All you have to do is click ‘next’, review your settings and then click ‘finish’. Nice and easy. 

The only problem is with the options. I can either have my OLD settings or give access to EVERYONE: I can’t make my settings more private than they already are. Most of my OLD settings were set to EVERYONE, meaning my options were to give access to certain information to EVERYONE – or EVERYONE! 

So I decided to make my profile a little more private. This is how I did it.

The best way to keep your personal data safe would be to close your Facebook account, although that would be a bit drastic. Instead, you should access the privacy settings under Settings >> Privacy Settings, where you will see the menu below. 

Let’s start with the Profile information section. After clicking this option, you will need to click ‘change settings’ and enter your password. Once you have done this, all the boxes will become active. 

If you change all the settings to ‘Only Friends’, this will ensure your information is not publicly available – only your Facebook friends can see your information. Of course, it’s crucial that you are careful about the friends you make – there are thousands of Facebook accounts set up with the purpose of stealing personal information, and some of your friends may not be so selective. So don’t give access to ‘Friends of Friends’ and certainly don’t give it to ‘Everyone’. It is also important that you set all your albums to ‘Only Friends’.

After all, do you want total strangers looking at your holiday snaps or family photos? Probably not.

Contact Information

Who do you want to be able to contact you? Make sure that you have all these settings set to ‘Only Friends’, but allow other people to send you messages via Facebook and make friend requests. Unless you want to be a complete hermit. In which case, you might want to ask yourself what you’re doing on Facebook in the first place. 

Applications and Websites

This is the most shocking of all the privacy sections. You need to remember that anyone can write a Facebook application, and it doesn’t take much imagination to work out that anyone can write a sinister data collection tool and hide it inside a nice, friendly game. Companies might even collect your data and store it for totally innocent purposes. But they would still be holding your data, and if anyone hacks into their servers or steals their equipment, your data will be compromised. 

My advice here is simple. DO NOT INSTALL FACEBOOK APPLICATIONS. This way your information will not be stolen. 

There’s another risk, though – check out this tab:

What your friends can share about you through applications and websites

If your friend installs Facebook applications, they can also harvest all your personal details. This brings me back to my point about being very careful who you befriend on Facebook. Your friend ‘Dave1234’ might be installing every application available and not realise (or care) about privacy. 

Make sure that you uncheck every box:

Search

Do you want your profile to appear in search engine results? Do you want to be found by any person on the internet? 

Imagine you are looking for a new job and your potential new boss does a quick Google search for ‘Oliver Bloggs’.  He finds your Facebook profile and checks out your drunken holiday pictures and reads the banter going on on your wall and in your status updates. 

This is a serious issue. Privacy affects everyone.  Make sure that you change these settings and stop yourself being found in the search engines. 

Events

When you are creating an event – such as a charity fundraiser or club meeting – remember these can also be viewed and harvested. It makes sense not to disclose personal information here either.

Conclusion and final advice

Facebook does not look after your data by default. You have to actively make the relevant changes to your settings. Update them. Weed out your friends list – you don’t really have 238,024 of them in real life. And always remember that your account could be compromised or taken over by a hacker. 

Three last tips:

• Do not put your telephone number/ address on Facebook. Unless you would like strange phone calls and random internet people turning up at your door.
• Do not make friends with random strangers.
• Do not install Applications that want access to your personal data. Can you ever be sure it’s safe?

The author of this post prefers to blog anonymously – to protect their personal data.

I’ve been monitoring the buzz from Econsultancy's Online Marketing Masterclasses and I haven’t been surprised to hear some very familiar messages. I spotted one that I thought was worthy of further discussion on Econsultancy’s Twitter feed yesterday afternoon:

@Econsultancy: #OMM Key lessons learnt by Dell - Customers ARE talking about your brand. Either you can be aware and reach out, or you can ignore them...

Where to start? At the beginning, of course

We know that people who don’t work in our industry can find online marketing and social media rather intimidating. They become especially daunting when companies realise - like Dell did - that people are already talking about them and they can’t control it.

From experience with customers across a variety of sectors, we know that every organisation requires a tailored approach to address individual challenges. This is certainly not a ‘one size fits all’ industry. With this in mind, I have compiled some top tips which I hope will provide a good starting point for anyone planning an online strategy:

1. Conduct a situation analysis

If you haven’t engaged with customers online before, it is sensible to review your current online presence and evaluate the awareness of your brand. This kind of analysis can provide you with an insight into any issues that you might not be aware of (negative perceptions, inaccurate information in the marketplace, brand champions and so on) and give you a clear idea of what your immediate focus should be.

2. Identify your audience

Each organisation needs to have a clear indication of who it is that it wants to communicate with online.  Remember that diverse groups communicate in different ways across distinct platforms. A third sector organisation will have a very different target audience to an online music retailer, for example, and this should be reflected in their online strategies.

Selecting the appropriate channels to communicate with your desired target market will ensure that your online efforts are far from fruitless.

3. Plan and schedule projects realistically

Sometimes it’s good to dive headfirst into new projects and see where they take you; but when it comes to online marketing, it’s often far wiser to test the waters first – or work with a digital marketing agency that knows them implicitly.

Making yourself work to a structured and manageable plan can mean the difference between a successful and durable campaign - and blowing your annual budget in month one.  

4. Agree key performance indicators that reflect your wider business goals

For some organisations it’s all about visitor numbers, while for others cost per click is key. Appearing on page one for search terms that don’t make you any money isn’t a viable long term strategy, nor is ploughing budget into expensive PPC ads that don’t convert to sales.

That said, don’t be afraid to try new things and experiment with budgets and keywords. The results will always be measurable so you can see which tests really worked.

5. Track the results of your campaign using analytics

Coast Digital is all about ‘marketing you can measure’. We can confidently say this because online marketing offers complete measurability. We are able to continuously monitor, analyse and report on the very latest results from your analytics which enables us to optimise your campaign to be as profitable as possible.

Do you have this in my size?

If this tailored approach sounds like something that your business needs, get in touch. We’d love to help you launch an online marketing campaign that meets your individual requirements.

I’ve been avidly following the debate about the future of print media, and it’s certainly not difficult to find fresh opinions on what’s going to happen next. It’s a topic that has captured many people's imaginations and everyone has questions to ask: can publishers adapt; will consumers define the new model; how is the internet driving change?

Whilst I sympathise with publishers who are currently facing plummeting circulation figures, failing advertising revenue streams and uncontrollable plagiarism of their “exclusives” across the web, I can also see why consumers see no reason to pay for a printed version of something that they can read online for free. Can a compromise be reached?

An interesting development that combines the new world of social media and the ageing world of newspapers caught my eye last week. It’s called The Twitter Times.

Knowing what’s important to you

We all have our allegiances to certain newspapers, magazines and websites; we excitedly await their arrival on our doorstep or logging on to read the latest debate on topics that are important to us.

The Twitter Times takes the concept of reflecting your personal interests one step further. It is essentially a bespoke online newspaper which collates news and blog posts from items shared by your Twitter connections. It also aims to expand your horizons by including articles from the followers of your followers which it supposes might also be of interest to you.

All about me

Since I use my Twitter account on a largely professional basis, my connections fall into rather distinct categories: social media; online marketing; PR; technology; celebrity.

Thankfully, this is clearly reflected in my personalised edition of The Twitter Times:

What does the future hold?

I’m not suggesting that The Twitter Times offers us the answer to the conundrum of paid vs. free content (it’s currently a free application, after all), but it certainly offers some food for thought to more traditional publishers about delivering content that people really want.

We all know that we’re more likely to follow a recommendation from a friend than one from a stranger, so it makes sense that we would rather read articles endorsed by our contacts than by an editor we’ll probably never meet.

Content that is fresh, relevant and accurate is vital for the success of the media, and the stickiness of any website. If you’re after a bit of advice about content management and producing information that will meet the needs of your particular audience (and the search engines), get in touch. We’d love to help.

Google Experimental Labs is currently running Google Social Search. The purpose of this tool is to bring you and your social circle closer together. I guess the end goal is that there will be nothing you don’t know about your friends, what they've been up to or what they've been saying!
 
Google Social Search plugs into your Twitter and FriendFeed accounts and sifts through content based on what people have been talking about. This seems like another function that's moving you closer to Google Wave, with everything happening seamlessly in one window of information.
 
On the basis of a quick test drive, it seems a nice way of keeping search results separate from websites. In order to get the best out of this tool your Google profile needs to be regularly updated with the following information:

• People you're connected to through social services that you've listed in your Google profile, such as Twitter and FriendFeed
• People in your Gmail (or Google Talk) chat list
• People in your Friends, Family, and Coworkers contact groups for Google.

Here is a nice video from Matt Cutts explaining how it works: