His blog is actually really easy to understand and is in the same tone as the radio/tv content that he’s been involved in. And its this which makes it so compelling - you can see his intonation in the content from the blog. From a marketing perspective this one of the hardest things to do - especially in a large organisation. Having the same tone, constant messaging, constant meter, constant sense of humour etc is important.

If you read the content on some websites you’ll see that the tone changes. I guess if I believed in NLP I’d say that this was ‘breaking the state’ - customers were thinking about buying and the change of tone of voice distracted them (it doesnt need to distract them much just a tiny little change) and BOOM! you’ve lost them. The same way as I may just have done (poor sentence structure causes problems too - Yoda would be rubbish at keeping one state).

The same thing happens with spelling mistakes its just enough to distract the visitor from the job in hand. And that’s why I’m a Pestonphile - every day I read, hear or see big Rob on TV his messaging and style is consistently constant.

That’s an aside I just thought I’d post a cool image that I found over @ crackunit (nice blog - you should read his description of ‘digital planning‘).

If the answer is no - then I guess you must be doing PPC for a living - poor souls…

God I hate the Internet sometimes. Generally when I’ve just done something I spend all my time advising people against - buying based upon what someone you dont know says. I’ve just ordered some stuff from Graze.com on the basis of what Kieron from here.org.uk wrote in his blog.

Why I bought based on Kierons opinion?

I’ve never met this fellow, never spoke to him on the phone, never communicated by email or chatted by messenger and here I am taking his word that buying some fruit and nuts online - rather than getting off my ass , walking to the shops and buying some - is a great idea! I’ve read his blog every so often - it was recommended to me when I started doing some bits and pieces with affiliate marketing - and for some reason its stuck in my consciousness. I’ve started to trust what he says. I dont even know if his real name is Kieron: he could be Sideshow Bob, Darth Vader or George.W.Bush based upon my real world contact has been with him.

If Aldous Huxley were here he’d be telling me that 62,400 repetitions make a truth. In social media its more like twenty shared opinions make a truth.

I’m so glad it’s not only me!

I’ve been blind sided by social media when I least expected it and  I’m probably not alone. Every day people make decisions on what to buy and what not to buy based upon what their online peer group are saying. You’ve probably done it yourself - looking for a TV you get some opinions on the model online before purchasing, thinking of going on holiday you’ll have read a few reviews of it before deciding to stay there or somewhere else etc. And all in all social media websites are helping thousands to make their decisions on where, what and when to purchase goods and services.

Anyway I’m off to wait on my nuts and fruit - eat some craisins and refine my work out routine for this week (ok the last bit isn’t true) but if I repeat it enough and get everyone else to repeat we’re not far making it a social media truth).

What hasn’t impressed me is the level of content within the title attributes within the calendar widgets on the site. The title attribute on the link for October the 23rd contains:

Stockport-trains - epetition response
Tracks - epetition response
Dispensaries - epetition response
Fryhonours - epetition response
ScientologyNMW - epetition response
Polygamywelfare - epetition response
Stillborn-rights - epetition response
Livewithit - epetition response
Morning press briefing from 24 October 2008
Ask the PM - economy
Prime Minister on the economy
Gordon Brown
Ask the PM

Nice!

To celebrate I thought I’d give them some trackback spam.

:p

Anyway I watch the video with the strange voice over from the guys at Google. Anyway instruction one is to click on the visualise tab! But lo and behold I dont have it. Come on Google where is my visualise tab, gimme a helping hand ehre - don’t show me nice functionality in Google Analytics and then not give me it. That’s cheating

For the first time I saw Google trying to steal everyones sales with their price comparrison function. Right at the top of the results, displayed to distract users from the other results they’ve rattled in a price comparison function. I was doing some research for a potential client in the financial sector - rather than looking to strangle myself with expensive debt. I think the ditraction factor is hugely important - by creating a level of abrasion on a page you can increase clickthrough rates on your on screen items. Highlight it, change the font, do anything just to make to clash with other elements - not so much as it annoys people but just enough that they have a thought of “whats that” as they read through your content. The new item certainly did that to me today - so much so that I got a PPC expert to explain it to me. Apparently its part of Googles Merchant Search functionality.

Google Price Comparisson function

You select an amount from the drop down and click compare lenders and you’re sent to: http://www.google.co.uk/MerchantSearchBeta/search. And you get:

Is google an affiliate?

The swine @ Google must be getting commision on sales - or the cost per click must be massive.

If you’re an affiliate relying on PPC be on the look out. Google may be coming to steal all your luctrative sales. May be time to get into some SEO and stop developing bridge pages to make your sales. If Google expands this to many more queries it could be a fun ride.

During these discussions the subject of paid links came up - they have a budget for them. I’ve probably knocked myself out of the process by saying that I’d find it difficult to use this budget for this purpose - with Google being so anti-paid links. I explained that the links I’d build would exist permanently and would not be rented, there would be no threat of links going up in price etc. Or that when we’d finished the work that any further payment would be needed to maintain the links.

When I said this I got the response that ‘other companies‘ had mentioned it was ‘not approved‘ by Google but that it should be something they should use. At this I pressed the issue, being a nosey little so and so, to see if they’d tell me who these ‘other companies‘ were.

They did even better than that - they sent me the proposal. Which indeed lists paid links as a way of forming links that were acceptable and should be used to improve positions. I was slightly surprised by the company in question - as they’re a well known brand in SEO. A company who I know bits about and have generally seen in publications etc.

My interest in this is that this company could be putting their clients search engine positions in jeopardy. I’m what I consider to be an ‘ethical SEO’. Part of this, I feel, is not to endanger the long term stability of any clients online business. Paid links may not always give you problems - i.e. they may not get you removed from Google for using them, but they could. The risk is there and by using paid links I would be endangering the long term prospects for a client.

Anyway - let me know what you think.

My problem - they’re killing websites I visit and making my browsing experience bloody awful. Went to the guardian website to read about a joke Andy Murray made after losing the US Open tennis final, I’m no real fan of tennis but it sounded like it would be a funny interview, and instead I wait for thrity seconds for a three paragraph story to load as the adserver is taking ages to pass the adverts to the site.

I go and look for news of the Vaselines reforming - same problem over @ exclamation.ca - 7 adverts for Ford. Looks like someones been blind buying inventory for Ford. Bloody awful move - targeted online media will help your business. Untargeted crap on irrelevant sites will devalue your brand. Yes I’ll recognise that I saw an orange Ford on your website - but I ain’t gonna but your cars that stopped me finding out about the Vaselines.

And more almost every second website I visit is taking an age. Its taking longer to access website content than it did when I used to dial-up for access. Broadband should give a better web experience. And it does often - but when advert serving services take so long to deliver the image/flash movie/annoying irrelevant pap (which I’ll never bloody click on anyway) gets in the way.

My plea if you are going to monetise your content with these horrendous ads is not to load your pages with them. You’ll make more from people looking at multiple pages - and revisiting your site than by putting an extra ad or two on a page and getting us all annoyed and riled.

On a similar theme of you type just ‘about’ into your address bar of Google Chrome you’ll be shown the details about the user-agent of the browser - so you can now test add that to your list of user agents when checking which browsers you need to ensure your website displays correctly.