The iPhone, despite all the attention, is only a small part of how mobile is changing our work lives. Google's mobile team, which just unveiled G1- the new phone based on its OS Android -- has some ideas of its own.
Log onto Work Fast TV to watch Sumit Agarwal, Google's product manager, demonstrate all sorts of fun ways to improve your life with mobile phones.
The blogosphere is an increasingly crowded, complicated space to navigate. Everyone’s an expert, everyone has “great” content and everyone’s rabidly eager to be found. So how do you get Google to pay attention to blog posts?
Today, at BlogWorld 2008, Dave Taylor, author of The Intuitive Life Business Blog, Ask Dave Taylor, and the Attachment Parenting Blog, offered eleven tips for how you can maximize your blog traffic.
1) Optimize the title of your blog entry
Be specific. Your title is the single most important tool you can use to get your blog found by Google. Give your post a title that conveys the gist of what you’re saying. Avoid being cutesy or esoteric – while that might reel people in to buy a print publication, it doesn’t work on the web.
2) Keyword density
You can get a sense for whether you’re on the right track by using Google Adsense – if you see ads that are unrelated to your content, you’re not paying attention to how you’re writing.
Be specific and repeat your key phrases over and over again when you’re writing. Avoid using “it” to refer to the object and when you’re trying to link to something, use specific words rather than phrases like “Click here” or “link here.” Help the search engines out by offering clues.
3) Name your images (and other files) carefully
Name your images with keywords – eg: iphone-ipod-playing-song.jpg rather than DSCN06.jpg.
4) Pay attention to alt and title
Fill in alt (text or non graphical browers) and title (info that can title a link) with actual keywords.
5) Avoid using words like “more”
Using phrases like “read more” or “read the full post here” is a bad idea. Every time you link to a post, the hypertext reference (the blue underlined words you click) is really important. “It’s a really important vote for what the page you’re pointing to is all about,” says Taylor. Google, Yahoo etc don’t index websites, they index web pages. The way that you link from one page to the other is important. A good practise is to use the title instead of read more.
Another area you can apply this when building your own site -- don’t link users back to “home.” Link back to the name of your site.
6) Use savvy permalinks
Use the actual full link to the entry for your permalinks. Google ignores certain words – the, in, of, at. A good link is something like: How-keep-track-company-buzz-online.html. If you’re using something like WordPress, you can install a plugin that allows you to use better permalinks.
7) Use HTML too, not just CSS
CSS itself doesn’t give search engines any clue. Use H tags, in addition to CSS. This will attract Google’s attention, letting it know what the title and headlines are. “As you go more and more indirect, it’s harder for search engines to decipher what you’re doing,” explains Taylor.
Gorgeous websites in Flash are virtually ignored by search engines because they don’t understand them. Somewhere along the continuum of a beautiful page that nobody can find and an ugly page that’s totally searchable, try to come up with a happy medium that best represents your strategy and interests.
If you’re going to do a video blog, have a transcript on the page (use a site like Mechanical Turk). Same thing with podcasts. Without these, Google will skip right over you.
8) Minimize exit links
Taylor’s take is that blog rolls are bad. Every single link that takes people away from your page is bad. So many bloggers want to maximize their number of external links. It’s pointless. People are more likely to leave your page than they are to stay and read it. Minimize the number of external links. From a search engine perspective, the less links you have the more important the few links you do have are.” Taylor explains this relationship as being equivalent to big man on campus – your 3 friends gain more cool points than the person that no one likes. And if you have 300 friends, each friend gains much less from you than if you had just 3.
9) Use internal links to cross-promote content
Refer to earlier blog entries to drive traffic back and forth. It helps to use plugins that pull related entries for you.
10) Encourage easy commenting
Seth Godin’s blog, according to Taylor, sucks ( I don't necessarily agree.) The reason for Taylor's antipathy? "Simply because Godin doesn’t allow for users to comment. You need to make it as easy as possible to let people comment. More comments give the search engines more content to analyze. Comments are like fairy dust from heaven.” (Yes he actually said that last bit.)
The benefits of user comments - they add content to a page that you are no longer adding to, which makes what would otherwise be long dead posts gain new life for search engines.
According to Taylor, if you’re making people register to get a comment, you’re getting about 5% of the comments you would usually get. But what about spammers. He didn’t really go into that.
11) Don’t be afraid of keyword research
Use a site like keyworddiscovery.com or wordtracker.com to figure out whether you should use the word cellphone, cell phone or mobile phone for instance. You’d be surprised at how significant the difference is. “Cell phone” (2 words) is searched 20 times more often than “Cellphone” (one word.)
Using all these tactics to drive traffic to your blog “is like building a sand castle,” says Taylor. “Any one grain of sand is irrelevant but when you start putting them together right, you can really do something wonderful.”
It's fall again and while summer's valiantly trying to extend its tenure, pretty soon our shadows will get longer and our days shorter. For bloggers though, while posts about drinking outside, losing iPhones on the beach, and walks through Central Park might have to be curtailed, all is not lost; what is perhaps the year's most awaited event is just around the corner.
In case you've never heard of it, BlogWorld, the world's largest blog and new media conference takes place through September 20th-21st in Las Vegas – (not a bad town to convene for a weekend.) As the only industry-wide event that focuses on promoting blogging, Blog World is a big deal. Literally. Last year the conference claimed to have had an audience of 98 million.
Every blogger who's any blogger, and any company that wants to successfully carve a space online, can't afford to miss this. Apart from the opportunity to network and extend your online relationships offline, you can learn about strategies and new developments in the blogosphere from an impressive roster of 130+ speakers –- including the likes of Guy Kawasaki - MD Garage Technology Ventures, Elisa Camahort Page - the co-founder of BlogHer (and an amazing, impassioned speaker), Edelman's Steve Rubel, Chris Alden of Six Apart, and a whole lot more. You can also check out a wide variety of exhibitors on the Blog World Expo floor.
There's also a pre-conference Citizen Journalism Workshop being held on September 19th -- a journalism training certificate workshop for bloggers seeking to deepen and broaden their skills. This workshop focuses aims to equip bloggers with the tools and knowledge necessary to improve the quality, and impact of their blogs.
The full schedule of events can be found here and includes: events for executives like the myths and realities surrounding corporate blogging, and how to find your new media voice; and events for entrepreneurs like social media strategies to generate traffic, and how to hire a professional blogger for your business.
Even better… You can sign up to be considered as an expert blogger for Fast Company. Just look for our booth at BlogWorld – we'll have a sign up sheet - or shoot me a message on the site.
Register online at www.BlogWorldExpo.com and save 20% with our discount code: FCVIP.
Since Coca Cola acquired a minority interest in Honest Tea back in February of this year, the organic beverage company has utilized the benefits of the partnership to come a long way, and according to CEO Seth Goldman, managed to stay true to its mission.
As of late September, Honest Tea will be available in far more locations – both geographically and across more channels – than ever before. The company has entered into an agreement with Coca Cola Enterprises (NYSE: CCE), by which all 9 flavors of the tea will be distributed in select markets in the Western US (initially in Northern California, Arizona, Las Vegas, Washington, and Oregon) and across all channels.
This gives Honest Tea the chance to really break into the mainstream, moving far beyond just natural foods -- a progression that most natural beverage brands strongly covet.
"We're being presented with great growth opportunities. CCE is the largest single beverage distributor in the world," enthuses Goldman. "This enables us to get our brand to so many more people and channels. With this account, our products will go wherever Coca Cola is sold. Now we'll get to convenience stores that don't specialize in natural foods. Consumers will come across our product as the first organic beverage there."
Honest Tea has simultaneously expanded its use of Fair Trade Certified tea leaves, and claims to be the only bottled Fair Trade Certified tea in the world. Two of its newest varieties, Lemon Black Tea and Peach White Tea, will contain Fair Trade Certified tea leaves.
Turning to Fair Trade is not the most directly lucrative venture – although obviously the right thing to do, it lowers the company's margins, which is why Goldman hasn't taken the whole line in that direction all at once. He says it will happen, but gradually. However, a burgeoning awareness about environmentally friendly products and an increasing conscientiousness about fair labor practices mean that, in the long-term, Honest Tea's Fair Trade certified status will hold the company in good stead.
In the meantime, it's unlikely that Honest Tea will have to struggle -- Goldman points out that the company aims to gain in other places, like buying bottles in bulk now that it can buy alongside Coca Cola.
By converting more of its teas to Fair Trade Certified, at the same time as he is creating a partnership with CCE, Goldman hopes to dispel any notions that his brand has been diluted.
"In fact, it's the opposite of diluting our brand," says Goldman. "Partnering with Coca Cola has accelerated our conversion to Fair Trade. We're running things like we always have. I've only gone to Atlanta once since Coca Cola invested in us, and that was to make the sale to CCE. We aren’t reporting in every day or anything."
However, some consumer's perceptions have soured after Honest Tea chose to link itself to Coca Cola. In response to a blog post I wrote a few months ago on this, one member wrote: "I was disappointed to hear they were joining forces with Coca Cola, will they be able to keep their honesty?" Shawn Graham, a Fast Company expert blogger, commented: "(This is) similar to Tazo Tea who is a competitor to Honest Tea and was ultimately acquired by Starbucks. As companies continue to jockey for position to be seen as 'green' by consumers, we'll continue to see socially responsible, environmentally friendly business being gobbled up."
Goldman himself acknowledges that consumers' perceptions after the change have been hard to deal with. The company lost its account an Oberlin College, after the student body protested its dealings with Coca Cola, citing the beverage giant's questionable labor practices in South America. Oberlin is well known for having an extremely liberal, eco-conscious student body and all Coca Cola products have reportedly been banned from its campus for some years now.
"I'm not a spokesperson for Coca Cola," says Goldman. "I come from an activist background so I don't just brush this stuff off. If you are concerned about labor conditions regarding the product you are buying, there's no greater protection than Fair Trade. Sometimes people like to just make a point without being serious about making change. You've got to want the largest beverage company in world to move towards making positive change rather than punishing them for their attempts to get serious."
Turns out that we as consumers can be easily manipulated -- and it's probably happening far more often that we'd like to imagine. A couple of studies released this year draw attention to this. The first demonstrates that consumers are prone to value high price tags – not always because of any intrinsic quality such as better taste, texture, performance or higher comfort levels that the products bearing these prices possess – but sometimes simply because the price is higher.
Earlier this year, Antonio Rangel and his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology conducted a study that measured the relation between price and perception of quality. Twenty people (who weren't particularly experienced in drinking wine) sampled what they thought were five different Cabernet Sauvignons sold at different prices, while having MRIs of their brain activity performed. In fact however, they only tasted three wines, two of which were offered twice and were the same price.
A $5 bottle of wine was marked with its real price, and also marked as $45, while a $90 bottle of wine was marked with its real price and then again marked as being just $10. The results showed that the tasters' brains registered more pleasure at the higher priced bottles, even when they actually contained the same wine as the cheap bottles. In a nutshell: consumer happiness can be directly influenced by an expectation of quality, even if this level of quality does not actually exist.
Similarly, a recent MSNBC article by Robert Britt, reported the findings of a study in which participants were offered a range of products, presented in different ways, with some being presented as clearly superior. Consumers were found to blatantly prefer what they thought was the superior product, often regardless of the product's intrinsic qualities.
It's disquieting to think about how easily we as consumers can be manipulated. Britt lists several tricks of the trade that sellers employ in order to get people to buy: using a 50% off sign (regardless of the original price) works well; frequent but small discounts do better than less frequent but bigger discounts; asking which item a shopper prefers leads him to skip the phase of deciding whether to buy the product at all, instead focusing on which product he prefers.
Thinking about these studies led me to wonder about a broader question around branding – how much of a brand's appeal has to do with intrinsic quality and how much has to do with external influence (both intentional and unintentional.)
Of course, if people are buying a (designer) brand for it's aesthetic value, this is far more difficult to measure; although even here, one has to wonder whether perceptions about how aesthetically appealing something is can again be influenced by perceptions about fame and talent, regardless of whether these are in the slightest bit true.
My experience with this revolves around a friend who only shops at really expensive stores. But she only shops at these when things are on sale. I've never understood this mentality because, from the times I've gone shopping with her, it's usually the worst stuff that's on sale – not just in terms of the aesthetics but also just in terms of the quality. The worst of the "best" is definitely worse than the best of the "worst" (the $30 dresses from H&M) in my opinion. We disagree. She's always so enamored by the fact that something "branded" is on sale, that she'll buy it even if it looks like something you could buy at an H&M for quarter the price.
There are so many self-identified "designers" and artists who manage to get away with tacking on an extravagant price tag. They call their creations art and people pony up. Andy Warhol put it best: "Art is anything you can get away with." Today, what makes something art is just that – other people accepting it as art. And that's what's pivotal for a designer brand or a painting to become lucrative, having other people be willing to buy into or accept the value you (the designer) confer on it.
I'm not saying that designers and artists manipulate consumers into buying their products (if art can be called a product.) I'm just underscording how, in order for products to sell, consumers need to have a perception of value – whether that's tied to intrinsic value, talent or skill, or just to an overarching idea about the brand itself stemming from factors like the price, or the creator's fame. And here's where businesses have an open field to step in, mould (and sometimes, yes, manipulate) these perceptions.
Greenpeace International released its latest 'Guide to Greener Gadgets' this week. Nintendo came in right at the bottom, with a score of just 0.8 points out of 10, scoring zero on all e-waste criteria.
The quarterly guide ranks the top 18 manufacturers of personal computers, mobile phones, TVs and games consoles according to their policies on toxic chemicals, recycling and climate change.
According to Nintendo, it scored so low because it did not voluntarily provide Greenpeace with any data. Greenpeace, however, told the BBC that Nintendo had decided "not to engage," refusing to answer requests and leaving the non-profit no choice but to draw conclusions based on information that was on the company's website.
Although Nintendo has the most energy efficient game console (better than Sony’s Playstation or Microsoft’s Xbox), the company still scores zero on energy efficiency.
Greenpeace says that its guide has made a tangible difference since it was launched in August 06, leading many companies (such as Lenovo, Sony and Apple) to pledge improvement to their recycling schemes and to remove the worst toxic chemicals from their products.
The ranking criteria reflect the ideas that companies must clean up their products by eliminating hazardous substances, take back and recycle their products responsibly once they become obsolete and reduce the climate impacts of their operations and products.
Microsoft came in second last, with a score of 2.15 due to "some commitments on toxic chemical phase out but poor on e-waste and energy issue," while LG ranked third last with "some points on toxic chemicals and e-waste but zero on energy."
Sony Ericsson came out on top "with almost top marks on toxic chemical phase out but poor on recycling."
An 80-storey (420-metre tall) moving building is slated to be built in Dubai, with apartments that will spin 360 degrees at voice command, according to the BBC.
Talk about innovative… 79 horizontally placed wind turbines located between each floor, producing enough energy to make the building self-sufficient, will fuel the apartments' motion.
"Sky scrapers suffer a lot from the wind and I say why don't we use the wind, why don't we use nature for our benefit instead of fighting nature," says its architect, Dan Fisher. "This building never looks the same, not once in a lifetime… (It is) designed by time, shaped by life."
The skyscraper, which is expected to cost $700 million, will be ready in 2010. "It couldn't be more green than this," says Fisher. This will be his first skyscraper.
Dear Friends at Fast Company,
I hope you will join me for a free TeleForum hosted by Marshall Goldsmith and Patricia Wheeler on June 25, 12 Noon EST entitled: "Prevent Your Career's Biggest Tragedy."
Info below:
Please join me for my Free Live Teleforum, "Prevent Your Career's Greatest Tragedy," on June 25 at 9 AM PST. Info below. Sign up at: Dr. Mark TeleForum.
Marshall Goldsmith and Patricia Wheeler invite you to a Thought Leader Teleforum
on Wednesday June 25th at noon Eastern time.
Our June TeleForum features author, columnist and coach Dr. Mark Goulston on "Prevent Your Career's Greatest Tragedy," moderated by Executive Coach Patricia Wheeler.
There is no charge for this TeleForum, which will be held on Wednesday June 25th at 9 AM Pacific/ noon Eastern.
Mark quotes Warren Buffett in saying to you:
"All of you have the ability to do anything I do and much beyond. Some of you will and some of you won't. For those who won't, it will be because you Get in Your Own Way, not because the world doesn't allow you."
Mark must agree because he wrote the best seller, Get Out of Your Own Way: Overcoming Self-Defeating Behavior and its sequel, Get Out of Your Own Way at Work...and Help Others Do the Same. In this TeleForum, learn what self-defeating behavior is, why you engage in it and most importantly how you can stop and replace it with success promoting behavior.
During this 60-minute conference call we will be discussing the three points below plus fielding your specific questions:
1. Will you get to the end of your career and life with no regrets?
2. How do you craft a career with no regrets?
3. How can you replace self-defeating behavior with success-promoting behavior?
There is no charge for this TeleForum. Please click here to register. If this link does not work in your browser, you may cut and paste the following URL: www.LeadingNews.org/signupgc.htm.
If you have further questions, please contact Patricia Wheeler at 404 377-9408.
We look forward to your participation!
Patricia and Marshall
In spite of the unrelenting rain (and the fact that it was post lunch), Mediabistro Circus’s video seminar featuring Jim Louderback, CEO, Revision3; Robert Scoble, Managing Director, FastCompany.TV; and Dina Kaplan, Co-founder and COO of Blip.TV, had us all squished in like sardines -- testimony to the high level of interest online video has elicited in recent months.
Jim Louderback launched the discussion, talking about how the advent of online video has moved past TiVo, changing the landscape so that it's not just anytime, but also anywhere and on any device. “It’s all about consumers taking control… prime time is now all the time.” His view is that video is going from mass to special interest: “the mass market has splintered.” Online video that targets focused content choices can be very profitable (he cites Scoble’s fan base as an example.)
Dina Kaplan talked about how a new model is increasingly allowing artists to control the music industry. She cited Chamillionaire as a prime instance: an artist who toured on his own to raise money, and who built up his own fan base and network online, to the point that when he finally approached the music labels, “they needed him more than he needed them.”
Kaplan’s view on the future of video: “Content creators will have more and more power. Distributors will compete with one another for the best talent – and this includes distributors like YouTube and Blip.tv, not just major networks.” She ended things by quoting Walt Mossberg of the WSJ: “The Web is in the process of becoming a video medium.”
After fumbling with several wires and three cell phones (yes he always carries around three cell phones), the much anticipated Robert Scoble flashed a projection of all his current web activity on the wall behind him. Accompanied by an overwhelming display of his Twitter feeds (he follows 23,000 people on Twitter, which he modestly notes translates to about one tweet per second!) he told us about the impressive number of Web applications he uses.
According to Scoble, he was the first person in the US to break the news about the China earthquake – information that reached him via a tweet from a fellow twitterer based out of Beijing.
Scoble drew attention to the work of others like Gary Vaynerchuk, who runs the video blog Wine Library Tv and to sites like dotSUB.com (which allows users to translate video in to several languages) and Asterpix.com (which incorporates interactivity into the video – click on a person’s face for instance to get more information about them.)
While he did briefly talk about his work on FastCompany.TV, unlike the other two speakers, Scoble spent the bulk of his time on stage talking about new and innovative Web applications, and the ways in which he uses Twitter. “Its not just about video – it’s about using all the tools you have to communicate your message,” he told the audience.
Mediabistro Circus’s session about blogging featured Eric Hellweg, Editorial director for harvardbusiness.org; Noah Shachtman, Contributing editor for the Danger Room Blog (on Wired.com); Anil Dash, Vice President of Six Apart; and Elisa Camahort, cofounder of Blogher.
Hellweg kicked things off, talking about how blogging (and the web overall) has changed the way publications interact with customers. While historically, publishing has been “transactional,” it’s now a more relational process, and, in order to keep up, publications need to invert the traditional editorial roles. If you’re used to “being the voice of God,” now it’s time to “listen to the congregation.”
He went on to elaborate upon how while traditional publishing was one to man and the traditional editorial was a gatekeeper approach, things are clearly moving to an aggregation; editors need to take on more of a curatorial role. Nothing we hadn’t heard before really and all pretty standard stuff (we’re firmly on that bandwagon here at Fast Company!)
More interesting was the idea Hellweg threw out about how potential authors (or those in the process of writing or reworking a book) can test their ideas and theories, as well as build up a strong audience, by leveraging the blogosphere. “Blogs are terrific for idea generation… this can become a pretty compelling argument for an author… You can use the blogosphere to your competitive advantage.” One fundamental question that comes to mind, which I would have put to Hellweg had there been more time – what happens with intellectual property rights on such content?
Next came Elisa Camahort. Appropriately clad in fiery red, the vivacious BlogHer COO gave an impassioned speech about the transformational power of blogging: “blogs are mainstream, addictive and trusted.” She cited statistics from the BlogHer/Compass Partners 2008 Social Media Benchmark study to support these claims and talked about how blogs have changed the way people live their lives, affecting not only the first things they do when they wake up every morning, but also the type of information they have access to, and the communities they create or join.
A particularly compelling instance of this was her account of a call to action after Hurricane Katrina -- a woman (called Grace) set up a blog from within her kitchen after being contacted by (or perhaps contacted) a person in Mississippi who had a car and a cell phone. The woman with the car drove around to different regions and shelters, communicating to Grace which shipping company serviced where, what shelters really needed supplies, and what supplies were needed. Through Grace documenting all this on her blog, people could ship supplies that were needed directly to those in need, bypassing all the red tape and missing funds that inevitably come with going through a middleman.
Then Noah Shachtman talked for a bit about how he got to be a big timer at Wired from having started blogging in the spare room of his grandmas house. An interesting journey, the takeaway from which being that it really helps to have a niche (Noah’s blog Danger Room is about national security and defense.)
Finally, Anil Dash came on stage to talk about the “useful construct” of “rip, mix, burn.” With the Web, there are no definitive stories like the Iliad that are passed down because there are no definitive versions – things constantly get transformed and then passed down. “The default behavior with what we do with media is to rip, mix, burn” he explained, the prevailing attitude to music being a primary example.
Dash went on to say that the centralization of content cannot exist for much longer. Having to brand your content on platforms provided by a select host of big names like Google, Facebook, AOL, Yahoo, MySpace etc., “to give up your brand and be subservient,” will not continue in the future.
“These companies want to hold you hostage and you don’t have to put up with that,” said Dash. This centralization doesn’t work in media. It already fell apart in television,’ he explained where there aren’t just a few channels. He compared such big companies to ice cubes that must melt and go back into the water they were made of. “Platforms are made of the Web.”
His answer to controlling your own content and data – blogs. Blogs are the platform that let people mix all this content together; blogs give artists and individuals the opportunity to own their own content, on their terms.
Friending people, having profiles and sharing information are all features that are, or can be, built into blogging today. “Every blog has a network… it’s the long tail of social networks. This,” he says is the future of your media brand.”
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