Facebook, your kids and the age of social laziness

11 August, 2010 (04:37) | Internet Marketing | No comments

socio-lazy beings

socio-lazy beings

How many phone numbers can you say you actually know by heart? If you are like me, you probably remember your home number, maybe your office number and your direct extension and perhaps a few 1-800 branded numbers from the radio jingles you hear in the car.

If you are my age, lets say older then 35, you might remember a few more numbers from history – those you knew when the idea of a cellphone seemed as crazy an idea as Maxwell Smart’s shoe-phone. Back then, you had to dial the numbers and in the process you’d memorize many of them. Back in the 70’s and 80’s, most of my friends new at least 20 numbers by heart — their girlfriends, their ex-boyfriend’s parents number, their parent’s office numbers and even some aunts and uncles. When you asked a girl for her number, you were talking to her face to face and she would actually write it down for you on a piece of paper, sometime with a smiley, and hand it to you. To impress her, you would say, “hey what’s your number?”. She would say, “I’ll write it down for you?” And you would reply, ‘don’t worry, I got it!’ and just memorize it. It was a significant, personal and even meaningful exchange between two people.

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Why Facebook will beat Google and what Paris Hilton has to do with it

4 July, 2010 (05:31) | Online strategies, Social Media | 2 comments

Search Engines’ holy grail is to serve relevant search results. Their livelihood depends on that. But what is relevant? On the road from textual search to semantic universal search, SE’s are trying to resolve the relevancy puzzle. Machine based database queries cannot truly decipher my human intentions. The popular example used for the “search intention” conflict is the Paris Hilton paradox. Am I searching for Paris Hilton the celeb or am I working on my travel plan for my vacation in France and trying to find a hotel?
So far, Google has tried to resolve the issue by analyzing my behavioral and geographic parameters and assuming they can make an educated guess about what I really want. Google can take into consideration a range of relevant data, such as whether I searching from France,my search history and my online habits, given that I am logged in to my Google account when I do most of my searching. They know a hell of a lot about me from – medical issues, to what I like to cook to which sports teams I probably root for. But unless I am logged into my Google account or Gmail, Google should not be nosing around in what I do online.
Many critics accuse Google of building the world’s largest spyware. But relative to Facebook’s potential to enter the personal space of anyone with a Facebook account (is there anyone without one?), Google has only touched the behavioral data surface.
Consider our Paris Hilton dilemma once more. Google is forced to make a lot of (somewhat educated) guesses about what I am in search of, while Facebook is armed with a killer relevancy weapon my Social Network data. Consider the type of data Facebook can access about me and track:
Have I recently connected with friends in Paris?
Am I a Paris Hilton Fan?
Are any of my friends her fan?
Have I recently searched for a related topic from the same tag cloud?
Did any of my close friends or family conduct such a search?
Is my girlfriend living in Paris?
Do I want to study French cooking?
Am I interested in travel applications or celebrity tracking applications?
Facebook’s potential power to deliver the right search resolution is enormous and no doubt will be capitalized on. It presents an enormous challenge for Google and a huge opportunity for marketers to jump on the Facebook wagon early in the game.
The Paris Hilton Search Paradox

The Paris Hilton Search Paradox

Search Engines’ holy grail is to serve relevant search results. Their livelihood depends on that. But what is “relevant”? On the road from textual search to semantic universal search, SE’s are trying to resolve the relevancy puzzle. Machine based database queries cannot truly decipher my human intentions. The popular example used for the “search intention” conflict is the Paris Hilton paradox. Am I searching for Paris Hilton the celeb or am I working on my travel plan for my vacation in France and trying to find a hotel?

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Online Patient Recruitment

13 June, 2010 (09:58) | English, Online strategies, Social Media, שיווק באינטרנט | 1 comment

As we engage in another medical project for clinical trial patient recruitment online, this time related to diabetes, it seems like a good time to write about the subject. In Israel, most medical device and pharmaceutical companies may not be aware of the great advantages of running patient recruitment campaigns online. Boy are you guys missing out! Read more »

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SEO Companies, Mafia Style

27 May, 2010 (08:08) | Doing Business in Israel, Seo Israel | 3 comments

Israeli SEO companies going wild

Israeli SEO companies going wild

As an SEO contractor takes on a project, they experience immediate pressure to show results.  No matter how well they’ll try to communicate to their clients that “whitehat/textbook” practices take time, they will forever be judged by how fast Google ranking for  their websites improved.

This pressure leads SEO companies to use aggressive and sometime questionable practices.  Contractors use their own existing pool of web pages (some of the more questionable companies even use their other clients’ sites!) to seed backlinks to their newbie client’s website.

There are also  SEO companies collaborating with one another to create a strong backlinking cooperation pool. The sophisticated companies will develop a cooperation that is dynamic and categorized by topics and relevancy, thus benefiting from stronger weight in the SE’s. This practice is called link farming.  The search engines, recognizing this problematic practice that fill the Internet with bogus content and paid-for links, have vowed to fight the phenomena and punish the link-farmers.  But the reality is that little has been done to successfully prevent the phenomena and it is still a prevalent tactic used by the SEOs looking for fast and dirty results for their clients. Read more »

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The Secret to Success Online – Planning

3 May, 2010 (07:07) | Internet Marketing, Online strategies | No comments

On one hand, I notice that so many people believe there is some secret to success online — those are the people who fork up hundreds or thousands of dollars to the gurus and the conference organizers — hoping “this will be the day when I find out that one secret that I need to turn my business into a goldmine”.

On the other hand, it seems like there is a belief that anyone can go online and reach their goals if they just spend a few months learning, Read more »

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The Real Value in Social Media

22 April, 2010 (12:03) | Internet Marketing, Online strategies, Seo Israel, Social Media | No comments

Dror and I have been talking a lot about social media in this blog and among ourselves. Not surprising since we are Internet marketers since before the start of this century. But we feel we have to talk about social media more than we actually want to. So many customers are looking for social media solutions, social media consulting, social media experts. Its like what was going on a couple years ago with SEO. And you can see it reflected in the rapid growth of social media “experts” offering their services.

Actually, I am not a social media consultant or social media expert, at least I would never introduce myself that way. I know a whole lot about social media and how it can fit in, or not fit in, to an overall Internet marketing mix. And Dror knows even more than I do. But when a company jumps on the bandwagon and without any clear goals or strategy, decides it needs a Facebook fan page or Twitter account, count me out. It’s probably not a client I could end up pleasing. Why? Becuase I would be honest with them, even if it cost me getting a job. Ween a CPA tells me he wants his own Fan page, I am compelled to tell him that CPA’s don’t have fans. Sorry to all the accountants in my family. But I could probably come up with some much better ways for him to achieve his goals Read more »

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Be Careful When Using the F Word

15 April, 2010 (11:27) | Internet Marketing, Social Media | No comments

Or

What do banks, realtors, accountants, law firms and your mother in-law have in common?

The answer  – you don’t want to join their Facebook Fan page!

Hold on  - before you start accusing me of being socially-media incompetent, hear me out. I am not a hermit, I do have friends, and some of them are even real. I even admire some people. But only for a very small select group of people (such as Michael Jordan and Sting), would I ever consider to be a devoted fan.

The dictionary defines fan as “an ardent devotee; an enthusiast which is short for fanatic”.  When Facebook designed the “fan” page functionality , they probably had in mind a nifty little feature designed to help their ongoing battle with MySpace, which had experienced great success among artists and musicians. I cannot imagine they envisioned scenarios that included banks, accountants and furniture stores. Their attempt later to correct this with an “official page” and “community page” just proves my point.

Fan worthy example

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Is Social Marketing Really Free?

2 April, 2010 (16:27) | Internet Marketing |

Free_buttonToo many business people are entering the social marketing sphere with false assumptions. They think it is FREE. They think it is EASY. They think it WORKS.
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Tranzila.com Upgrade Shows Incredible Results

28 March, 2010 (11:50) | English, Internet Marketing, Online strategies, Seo Israel, שיווק באינטרנט | No comments

Two weeks ago, the new Tranzila site went up. Itzik Nozatski is already bouncing off the walls with glee at his 15% bounce rate. Fifteen Percent!!!!!! He was kind enough to immediately notify us  and credit WebWhile with the success. After all, Dror Gliksman, WebWhile’s ace Internet marketing strategist, Read more »

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Brands of the New Dimension

3 March, 2010 (07:05) | English, Internet Marketing, ecommerce Consulting | No comments

Remember the first time you seeing some brand that, despite being shoved into your face, you still loved it?

I clearly remember the impact the first time it happened to me. The day Michael Jordan and Spike Lee, sorry, Mors Blackmon, challenged everything we knew about advertising in the early 90’s TV-30-something-landscape, with a pair of Air Jordan Nike shoes. It was fresh, transcended over the early 90’s and took branding far beyond everything I knew about being unique and attention grabbing. The ad stood above every other commercial just as MJ leaped above every opponent, leaving them all in dismay.  It pulled us into Spike’s Lee’s “do the right thing” world, emphasizing black and white, challenging the rules of gravity in TV advertising.

Is it the brand? Is it the brand?

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