Why should you attend?

Why are we different?

Networking!

Buzzing!

The speakers, who are they?

If you don’t book your ticket,you won’t get to witness something along the lines of this:

Quick re-cap:

The Details:

• Where: The Congress Centre in London’s West End
• When: October 25th and 26th
• Price: £699 +VAT
• If you are an SEOmoz PRO member, you can get access to special pricing by using the code in the discount store – making it a steal at £499 +VAT / person.
• Get your ticket now!

Hotels

There are a number of hotels surrounding the seminar venue:

• The Bloomsbury Hotel
• Radisson Bloomsbury
• The Academy
• Hotel Russell
• Holiday Inn Bloomsbury

I look forward to seeing you all there!

Future Distilled Events

Do you ever set out to do a task, and 3 hours later you’ve done just about everything else except the thing you originally set out to do? Join the club.

I’ve found myself having a number of conversations recently about productivity. And a quick search online revealed a shed-load of time management and productivity posts and articles.

Due to the wealth of articles and posts out there, I decided to avoid the obvious topic of time-wasters like Twitter and email. And I’ll be giving the ever-popular 80/20 rule (also known as Pareto’s Law) a wide berth too.

I’ve opted instead to compile a short list of other Laws that could be at play when you find yourself dithering.

Law Number 1: Parkinson’s Law

“Work expands to fill the time available”

I witnessed this one myself in my previous employment, running Outward-bound-type team exercises. I’ve given some teams 10 minutes to complete a task, and other teams 45 minutes for the exact same task, and almost without fail, they take the amount of time given.

Sometimes, the ones given more time do a far worse job, and really over-complicate the problem (more on that to come).  For now, the answer to this one is to continually set shorter deadlines. 30 minutes is ideal.

Break a task down into the smallest possible chunk, ideally with only one skill involved in each chunk. For example, chunks for writing a short document or blog post could be:

Brainstorm, Research, Draft, Edit, Format, Publish, Promote

Now it might seem OTT to chunk such a small task down, but it makes it seem like less of a mountain and more of a molehill, particularly if it’s a task you’ve been putting off for a while.

If you’re not feeling on top of your game, the thought of creating the whole thing might seem much more daunting than merely drafting it.

During the time allocated, try to get into the habit of working solely on that one thing.

Law Number 2: Segal’s Law

“A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.”

(admittedly not that Segal, Or Seagal!)

The mantra to this law is ‘if in doubt, get more information’. Paralysis by analysis – we’ve all been there.

Paralysis by analysis could derive from an over reliance on knowledge and existing resources, and an unwillingness to experiment, and learn by doing.  The solution? Grow a set!

That may be a bit flippant, but I’ve heard all kinds of advice on this, but all joking aside, maybe Nike said it best…

Just Do It.

Law Number 3: Gall’s Law

“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked”

Are you over-cooking things? As Leonardo Da Vinci put it, “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”. If you’ve ever watched Dragon’s Den, you’ll undoubtedly have seen someone present a massively over-engineered solution to quite a simple problem.

There’s a bit of an urban myth about astronauts, which, regardless of accuracy, illustrates this Law well. It’s about the US and the USSR’s solutions to the problem of ball-point pens not working in space. The American’s apparently spent $1,000,000 on a writing device that could handle zero gravity. The Russian’s took a pencil.

The antidote to this Law is really just to ask yourself if you’re overcomplicating things. What’s the simplest way it could be done?

Law Number 4: Coughlin’s Law

This one’s from the philosophical bar-tender/poet in the movie Cocktail – Doug Coughlin. And it goes…

“Anything else is always something better”

Other related phrases include ‘the-bright-and-shiny-object’ syndrome and ‘the grass is always greener’. When a task is getting a bit boring, or we’re reluctant to start it, it often seems that any other task will be a lot more fun.

Choose your top 3 priorities at the start of the day, and if anything else pops up, try asking yourself ‘does this need to be done today?’ If not, stick it in your inbox, and you can process it later and reassess your priorities tomorrow.

If it must be done today, but takes more than 2 minutes, schedule a time to do it. If it takes less than 2 minutes, do it now and move on (GTD fans will recognise this approach).

You could also try scheduling set times (eg twice a day) to handle items like emails.

Law Number 5: Student Syndrome

Anyone remember those days of late night cramming? I certainly do – I remember shaking from so much of a certain energy drink I couldn’t write for the first 15 minutes of one final year exam.

Anyway, the theory behind Student Syndrome is that any time buffers built into a task will be wasted. People only start to fully apply themselves at the last possible moment before a deadline.

For this reason, if you’re delegating tasks that you really want to get moving, it might be an idea not to give them a 2 week target. They will likely do next to nothing on it for the first week.

You could also set more intermittent deadlines for yourself to avoid the onslaught of Student Syndrome, although you’ll have to find a way of sticking to them.  Self-imposed deadlines are often the first to slide.

There are numerous things you could do to prevent yourself being victim to the Laws mentioned here, and stop the hours disappearing into the Ether.  I’m certainly no master of this stuff, but I’m getting better…

What about you? Do you have any little tips and tricks you use to boost your productivity and keep you on track? How do you handle incoming items like email and Twitter?

Image Credits

Time Spiral – Treehugger.com

Social Media Collage – WebAdvantage

Astronaut – Scienceblogs.com

Steven Seagal – Geekadelphia

Student Cramming – Yyelsel Ann on Flickr

Sometimes things just break. In this day and age, servers crash, websites are hacked, and new programs go haywire. At its worst, hackers can get access to private client information. It is moments like these when a company is truly tested. So many try to cover up mistakes, sweep them under the rug, or just pretend they did not happen at all. This is the biggest mistake a company make, and with the increase in popularity of social networks, the sharing of information between customers is more prevalent. Read: Hiding is not an option.

There are a few companies that are “taking the blame” and sucking up their pride to ask for help and forgiveness. At Distilled we want to give kudos to the companies that approach an issue right the first time. Take for instance, this time last year, TechCrunch noted an email from Netflix to it’s customers giving a 2% discount to their customer’s monthly bills. Some were not even aware of the issue. MG sums it up at the end with “Companies often seem curious how other companies get ‘fanboys’ — this is how. This tipped off our 2 most recent tales of companies turning technical mistakes into true human relations.

Miracle Industries

A good friend of Distilled, Dr. Peter Meyers, just had a new addition to their family. To the family’s surprise, they got 2 swaddling blankets in the mail from Miracle Blanket within a few weeks of each other when they had only ordered one. Instead of just letting it go, the company did something out of the ordinary. They emailed about the mistake and asked for help.

Hello,

I’m Marshall Gatten, the Vice President of Customer Services here at Miracle Industries.

This morning we received an email from a customer whose order was somehow accidentally shipped twice. We thought it was just a small mistake by our warehouse. Then we got a voicemail from another customer with the same experience, followed by a couple more emails. We realized something had gone wrong.

As it turns out, a large number of orders from last week were accidentally transmitted to our warehouse a second time on Monday due to a computer glitch, and new shipments were made for all of them. Needless to say, this has the potential of being a very expensive error for us, and we’re hoping you can help us out.

Your order was one of the duplicated ones. You should be receiving your order a second time some time this week or maybe early next week if you haven’t already.

When you receive a second package from us, please simply write “Refused, Return to Sender” on the outside of the unopened package and drop it back in your mailbox and the post office will return it to us at no cost to you. (If it’s a FedEx or UPS shipment, just hand it back to the delivery person and explain that you would like it returned.)

If you’ve already received and opened the package, or if FedEx/UPS left it on your porch so it can’t simply be sent back that way, please respond to this email with your order number (or, if you don’t know your order number, then your address) and I’ll have our warehouse send you a postage-paid return envelope. We don’t want anybody to pay for postage to return the blankets to us, and want to make it as easy as possible for you to return the duplicate. This was very much our mistake, and the last thing we want to do is to inconvenience our customers as a result of it.

I’m truly very sorry for any inconvenience this might cause. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.

Thank You,
Marshall Gatten
VP, Customer Services

Now I added the emphasis there, but notice what they did there. They made a mistake and asked for their customers to help. This costs the customer no money and appeals to the human side. I would venture that this move saved the company more money in the long run. And how does this help the consumer? Why not just keep the second one? They could have easily, but this gives the new families a way to give back and keep prices down on this awesome (or so I hear) product. It’s a win-win for everyone involved. Great job Miracle Blanket!

Take Aways

• Your customers are human too. Treat them as such.
• Admit the fault as soon as possible.
• Do the work for the customer if they are helping you out.
• Think about rewarding those that return the product, or do the desired action.

Tempur-Pedic

Now I’m going to follow that up with my own story from this past week. I bought a Tempur-Pedic bed when I moved to Seattle, and a few months later purchased the Tempur-Pedic mattress cover from their store too keep my investment safe. The item was delivered on time and everything was great. A month and a half later, I got an email telling me that my order is being delivered, again. Do What? Thankfully, clicking the tracking number in the email revealed that this was the same order as July. So I deleted the email and went on with my day. A few hours later I was met with the following email from Tempur-Pedic:

Dear Valued Tempur-Pedic Customer:

I am writing to let you know that due to a technical issue involving our email system, we mistakenly sent you this weekend a “Shipping Confirmation” email for an order you had previously placed with us.  I would like to assure you that no duplicate order was actually placed or shipped, and that no duplicate charges were made to your credit card.  The error consisted only of sending a duplicate email letting you know that your original order with us had shipped.  I want to express our sincere apologies for this error, and the confusion and concern it likely caused you.

We are in the midst of upgrading our eCommerce and eMail platforms so that we can make shopping with us easier and more enjoyable.  We regret this technical error that occurred as we put in place our new systems and we look forward to serving you better in the future.

Sincere Regards,

Patrice Varni
Vice President, Direct-to-Consumer

TEMPUR-PEDIC North America

Simple. Easy. They admitted their mistake and just moved on. But here is the kicker, they didn’t protect the user’s email addresses. *sigh* So in that win, there is a minor fail.

Take Aways

• Even if there is nothing to recover from the customer, at least let them know you know the boo-boo.
• Let the customer know why it happened.
• BCC people at least. I didn’t need to know who got the same mistake email as me.

In the end …

It’s about treating your customers like human beings and transparency. We all make mistakes. Just admit to them and move on. Hey, you never know when it is a nice reminder for your customers that you are there, human, and paying attention. It might just cause a few more unexpected purchases.

Good morning!

I Just wanted to update you all on the wonderful new feature over at Facebook- Facebook Places.

Facebook Places clearly has potential- massive user base, loads of opportunity for geo-targeted specials (as has been masterfully created by Foursquare, Gowalla and other products).

However, as has been a growing concern for many users, there are lots of potential risks and privacy concerns. That which follows is my own opinion and more than likely does not reflect anyone elses concerns. The usual disclaimer applies.

1. The Default Settings

As I made quite clear in my argument with Paddy I am not a big fan of implied consent when it comes to advertising, privacy and targeting. Similarly, I am not a big fan of implied consent when it comes to my location and the ability of others to publicly announce where I am at present. And we all know of some of my existing concerns with Facebook.

Take a look at the default settings of Places within the privacy settings on Facebook. Please note that I have not changed anything with regards to Places.

Take note that the user is automatically included in the “people here now” section- visible to anyone nearby. Perfect for that restraining order I’ve just got against my crazy ex-girlfriend!

[Edit: It's been brought to my attention that the default setting is somewhat dependent on the level of security settings you have previously enabled. Thanks to @RichardShove for this! Either way- be sure to check your settings!]

 

2. “Allow Friends to Check me In”

I’m not too sure what the default for this one is- as it seems to be neither enabled or disabled. Judging by the above and other countless examples of Facebook privacy issues I would venture a guess that the implied consent rule holds and the default would be that others (your “friends”) are allowed to check you in.

Again, probably not the end of the world if you trust your friends but it can be a real doozy. I’m sure Eric Schmidt and the Google team would probably say something to the effect of “anonymity is dead, blah blah blah” and “don’t do bad things and no one will know” and so forth, but this takes control right off the table. It’s bad enough that my friends might call me out and check me in to the local karaoke joint when I’m there but it’s far worse to consider that they could check me into “The Golden Banana” in the greater Boston area whilst I’m still living in London!

And given the number of young people on Facebook, this will defintiely be an issue. Maturity is not a universal trait.

 

3. If enough people check into a place it becomes “public”

Here’s another cause for concern. If someone wants to, they can create a “Place” for my home. If enough people check-in here it becomes public. Well, if any of you remember the hilarity and awfulness that came of Corey Delaney and his parents being out of town, it’s fair enough to assume that a “small gathering” could quickly turn into a flashmob, riot, or epic house party… with loads of uninvited guests.

There are a couple takeaways/thoughts from all of this.

The first of which is: you should probably trust your friends- if you’re willing to call them your friends on Facebook you should probably know them well enough to assume they won’t sabotage your reputation online. If not, it may be time for a “friends clean-up” on the old Facebook account.

The second is that you can disable a number of these features simply by adjusting your privacy settings in your Facebook. I don’t mean to raise conspiracy theories here or make a huge stink because you can opt-out.

The third of which is: hold on to your hats if you’re not big on your Twitter stream and News stream (on Facebook) being clogged with folks who have gone a bit trigger happy with Foursquare… things are about to get a whole lot worse.

All that’s left is to wait and see if this can be harnessed and become another masterstroke to help Facebook compete with Foursquare and the like- or whether it’s enough to push some users over the edge.

Let us know what you think!

Please feel free to sound off in the comments and let us know how you’re feeling about Places. Are you excited? Worried? Think I am too paranoid for my own good? Feel free to let us know

 

 

Had anyone told me when I was getting into high school that I would be speaking at marketing conferences in New York and London, I’d laugh in your face. That would be after turning bright red.

So I still turn bright red today (it’s part of being pale) but I am much more calm when it comes to speaking in front of groups of people. I’ve had friends in this industry ask many times “Do you get nervous?” or “How do you stay so calm?”

There isn’t a trick like picturing the audience naked (ewww!). It’s all a matter of perspective, preparation and confidence.

Get Perspective

There are a few things to keep in mind when you get into a room to speak. The first is that you are in a room full of people just like you. No smarter, no less smart. The attendees will vary in experience level from experts that you have followed since starting in SEM, to beginners that got stuck doing SEO as part of their marketing role. The point is, they all are there to learn about your experiences. Don’t think you have to WOW everyone in the room. Remember that it is a big crowd, and you aren’t going please everyone. If you can help one person there, the job is done.

Practice Preparation Makes Perfect

One thing I don’t do is practice my speeches. I know, most people would call that heresy, but I prefer to shoot from the hip. My advice is to:

1. Write your presentation ahead of time  (NOT the night before) and go over it in your head a few times. It’s okay to edit just before the conference, things change too fast not to.
2. Do not memorize it. Memorizing will only make you more nervous.
3. Storytelling is the best way to connect with a group. Remember that part about the attendees being there to hear about your experiences, just tell them about those experiences.

You want things to be as natural as possible.

Confidence

You were chosen for a reason. Have confidence that you can teach someone, many someones in fact, something new. Embrace the fact that you are an expert in your own field and industry. There are many experts at different things, and to someone in that audience you are the expert.

But don’t get a big head. Never stop learning. The moment you stop learning is when you need to change professions. You can be an expert at one thing and a complete greenhorn at another field or industry. So accept your new position as a speaker and go forth. You earned it with the blood sweat and tears poured into your work and optimization.

Has Someone Been Planting Ideas In Your Head And Making Them Seem Like Your Own?

Are You Sure?

WARNING:  This Post Contains Spoilers (And The Links Out Contain Some Serious Ones!)

 

This season’s blockbuster, Inception, is set in the future where it’s possible for people to enter shared dreams and uncover their deepest secrets, in a process known as extraction.

However, the challenge for our heroes is not to extract an idea, but to plant one.

To be really effective, the idea must feel like it originated within the subject’s own mind.  They must lead the victim of this ‘mind crime’ to reach the conclusion on his own.

There are a number of fascinating interpretations of the movie across the web, but one of them in particular blew me away…

Inception Is A Film About Film-Making

The movies we watch in the cinema are in fact shared dreams.  We experience them together.  And the very best ones leave us thinking and feeling differently.  The director, Christopher Nolan, is commenting on movies and storytelling in general.

Throughout history, and across cultures, stories have provided one of the most powerful tools of influence.  Traditional cultures passed down their beliefs and values in stories.

Psychologist Howard Gardner even studied the impact of storytelling in leadership.  According to Gardner, in his book Leading Minds, a leader is “an individual (or, rarely, a set of individuals) who significantly affects the thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviours of a significant number of individuals”.

Know Anyone Else Who Wants To Influence The Thoughts, Feelings and Behaviour Of The Masses?

Umm… Marketers maybe?

Stories can be incredibly influential in marketing.  People can be very receptive to stories.  It feels much less like force-fed marketing.  You’re just listening to a story, right?!  And the audience reaches the intended beliefs about you and your product all on their own…

Or, At Least, That’s What They Think!

So let’s take a crude example from the world of SEO.  There are a number of marketers using persuasive techniques to whip people into a buying frenzy.  It might go something like this…

“A few years ago I was stumbling around in the world of SEO.  I’d listened to all the gurus, bought their products, and was still getting nowhere. Then I discovered a secret loophole in Google that worked liked gangbusters.

Within 2 weeks my website had rocketed to the top of the search engines.  I shared it with a few friends and they had massive success too.  Now this isn’t black-hat, it’s not article link-building, or any of the usual suspects.

This one technique completely transformed my business, and my life.  I’ve since launched multiple businesses using this one simple technique, and I now earn an insane amount of money on auto-pilot!”

The storyline here is a take on the most timeless of plots – The Hero’s Journey.  I was lost but now I’m found.  And when they’re done well, you join the storyteller on the journey.  You feel their pain, you experience the highs and lows before eventually emerging victorious.

You Create The Movie in Your Mind

Now the previous story might sound a bit crass, and I do include it only as a crude example, but still, whenever I see these things, I often find myself sucked in.  Like the dreams in Inception – you don’t realise something’s amiss until you’re out of it.

And our marketing friend is hoping you won’t fall out of that trance, until you’ve hit the big shiny button – ‘Buy Now’.

But let’s be clear – the act of telling stories isn’t the problem really.  It’s the question of ethics in using any form of persuasion.

Does our marketing friend have our interests at heart?  Possibly (arguable, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt).  Can his system provide the results it promises?  Probably – but here’s the big question…

For How Long?

Could there be any adverse consequences in the long-term?  The chances are Google will get wise to the scheme sooner or later, and it will be another SEO technique cast upon the pile.  And it could take your website with it.

Personally, I’d be concerned about anything using the phrase ‘loophole’.  He’s practically admitting it’s a bit shady.

If you’re looking for quick-hit affiliate profits with no view to the long-term, knock yourself out.  But if you want to build a long-term proper business, purchasing this kind of thing could be disastrous.

Steven R Covey warns us against looking for quick wins without considering the long-term consequences (fancy another piece of cake?).  He also encourages us to be guided by principles, not techniques.

So if you find yourself tempted by one of these methods, allow yourself time to step out of the dream.  Does anything seem strange to you?

Do You Get A Funny Feeling Something’s Wrong?

Take a moment to ask yourself, does this comply with the principles of SEO?  In other words:

Am I adding value to the web, through my website and my link-building activities?

Are the links I’m gaining relevant?

And am I building up credibility as a trusted resource?

As an aside, if you’re using persuasive techniques in your own sales and marketing (and let’s be honest – every business does), just make sure your product kicks ass both in the short-term and the long-term.

And if you ever feel yourself whipped up into a buying frenzy, remind yourself what Flava Flav would say…  Don’t… Don’t…

“Don’t Believe The Hype!”

Photo Credits:

Inception – Movie-Trailer.com

Derren Brown – Official Site

Crazy 3D Glasses – Dvice

Escher Drawing – PlanetPov

Flava Flav – StarPulse

What’s the worst that could happen when one of the world’s most famous brands launches a witty, edgy and innovative social media campaign?

It manages to promote hardcore scatological porn to a 14-year-old.

Actually, that’s not the worst.

Worse than that is that the 14 year old’s mother is a “Mumsnetter” – a poster on the UK’s most popular and influential parenting site.

Now see what happens if you Google “Dr Pepper Facebook” – at the time of writing, the top result is the Dr Pepper Facebook page, but all the other results reference the fact that Coca Cola (owner of the Dr Pepper brand) have been forced to pull their campaign after pornography complaints.

The campaign was targeted at teenagers, and asked them to sign up to allow Dr Pepper to take over their Facebook pages and post embarrassing status updates.  There were regular prizes of £1,000 for people who were prepared to take them on.  Examples of the sorts of updates that would be posted were references to peeing yourself – the worst that could happen was apparently posting that you had run out of loo paper and had used the cardboard tube.

 

 

 

I mean, it’s childish, but harmless……

Until one mum noticed that her daughter had been googling for an explanation of this update “I watched 2 Girls, 1 Cup and was peckish afterwards”.

I’m pausing the action here to explain my interest in this.

I have a baby daughter – 10 months old – and I’m also a semi-regular Mumsnetter.  The whole business of parenting is a somewhat tricky science, and I find myself casting back to my own childhood a great deal to provide guidance on how I should handle things.  But when it comes to the internet, I draw a complete blank.  I didn’t even see my first web page until I was 20.  I have no personal experience of how children and young people use the internet.

Social networking is a particular worry.  The day after my daughter was born, the papers were full of the Vanessa George story – the woman who had abused babies in her care at a nursery.  She had never done anything like this before but was egged on by a man she met on Facebook.   That’s how influential a social networking site can be on the vulnerable.  And it scares the bejesus out of me.

Back to the story.

Do you need me to tell you what “2 Girls, 1 Cup” is?  The politest way to describe it is lesbian coprophilia……

 

 

This was one savvy mum – Mumsnetters are.  She knew what this was and she saw the status update very soon after it was posted.  She complained to Coca Cola (who rather weirdly offered her tickets to the theatre as ‘compensation’.  Eh?) and then posted about the incident on Mumsnet.  The thread quickly took on a life of its own and the mothers mobilised to get the story into the press.  Coca Cola were forced to withdraw the promotion the following day.

The case raises a number of issues for those who are thinking about using social media as a marketing tool.

Where should the line be drawn between what teenagers find amusing and what they really shouldn’t be exposed to?  Should Dr Pepper have required that vulnerable teenagers make their Facebook pages public (required to enter the promotion)?

But I think the main lesson that social networking marketers should learn from this is the classic lesson that marketers through the ages have always had to learn – know your audience.

And in the case of marketing to children and young people, you need to market to the parents as well.  After all, where do you think children get their money from to spend on your products?

Looked at from a marketing, rather than a parental angle, I can appreciate what Dr Pepper were trying to do.  They were referencing something notoriously disgusting and affecting an unusual response to it.  If you know the reference – even if you haven’t seen the film – and are reasonably au fait with internet porn – then that’s quite funny.

The mistake that Dr Pepper’s brand agency made was assuming that their target market are savvy Internet users in the same way that they are; that they would ‘get’ the reference.  If they were marketing a product that appeals mostly to Internet users, it would be quite a good tactic.  But it completely fails if your product is a major ‘offline’ brand that appeals to a very broad range of people.

Just because all of these people are using the Internet to take part in the promotion, doesn’t mean that they’re an Internet user in the same way that someone who works for a brand agency is.  It doesn’t mean that they’re familiar with all the Internet memes.  It doesn’t mean that they must have used the Internet to view porn.  It doesn’t mean that they understand the dangers inherent in making your Facebook profile public.

The bigger fail may yet become apparent.

The whole point of building a brand is that people should associate positive themes with it and grow to trust it.

For parents who are wary of the negative effects of social networking on their children but who don’t want to ban it entirely, a promotion run by a major brand that they trust should be an acceptable shortcut to constantly monitoring what their children are doing online.  If Coca-Cola – the world’s biggest brand – can’t be trusted with their children’s online safety or to protect them from inappropriate content, then who can?  Better, perhaps, to just turn Facebook, MySpace and all the others off, just to be sure……….

 

 

Photo credits:

Purple shock – pfaff on Flickr

Loo love – Annie in Beziers on Flickr

Waterfall – mpancha on Flickr

The slots – Vadim Bulitko on Picasa

Tin hat cat - jeffhall2069 on Flickr

This is the director’s cut of my SMX presentation on the new UK laws governing social media campaigns.

If you weren’t at SMX, the slides are pretty self-explanatory, and if you were there, skip to the middle, where you can find all the slides THE MAN DIDN’T WANT YOU TO SEE!

SMX Presentation

NOTE: The folks over at Mozenda are offering a 25% off voucher code for all pay-as-you-go purchases just use “SMXL25″ on all purchases before May 26th.

Whilst the talk of the day (and most of the jokes) yesterday at SMX London definitely seemed to be focused around the Ash Cloud and all the canceled flights, there were also definitely some good presentations to be heard on the first day. Obviously, being based in London has its advantages (beyond it being an amazing city) and the Distilled team were out in force yesterday- providing a wonderful support team/safety net for me.

As my first presentation as an SEO it was really incredible and humbling to receive such wonderful feedback yesterday and I can’t say “thank you” enough to all the people who made me feel so good about my presentation, my career choice, and my choice for working at Distilled. Without the Distilled team and the support of people like Will and Tom I never would have thrown my hat in the ring to speak at the event.

The experience was absolutely amazing and I look forward to any future opportunities to speak!

I hope this deck speaks for itself for the most part. The links to all of the tools I used will be on the last slide and I’m happy to try to answer any questions in the comments section below. If you are at the event and have any questions you’d like to ask in person please just grab me today! Or send me a message on Twitter and I will try to get back to you as soon as possible.

Crocker, Samuel, Keyphrase Research Beyond the Ordinary [Final]

As a word of warning (which I did provide to the attendees at SMX yesterday): I am not a lawyer. My aim with this presentation was not to suggest what you should be doing, but rather to illustrate the power of the tools included herein and as with all SEO tools it’s up to you to use the power for good. The tips I actually had time to focus on were all created using Mozenda though the point here is in the 12 minutes allotted I was only really able to scratch the surface. If you have a chance please try out some of these tools and let us know what you think!

*I know a lot of people were particularly interested in the Google Suggest API. As I said in the presentation, it’s a bit of a hack (i.e. the portal is through a blog rather than the Google site), but I’m sure if you poke around long enough you can find the API through Google, or you can manipulate the query string once you’ve landed on the Google page.

In the UK we spend a metric shed load of money or to be more accurate £1.6bn in the first 6 months of 2009 advertising on TV.

This weekend is the final of x-factor (similar to American Idol), which is expected to attract an audience of 19 million people. Analysts are predicting the price of advertising slots to reach £250,000, which is over £8000 per second. (Check out that url by the way – WTF).

The 19million audience or the £250,000 advertising cost is nothing in comparison with the rate card for the superbowl where a 30 second slot will set you back $2.7 million. The last superbowl attracted 148 million viewers.

The £250,000 cost ignores any production costs. ITV suggest that you spend roughly 10-15% of your TV media budget on production costs, estimating that for most people it will end up costing between £2000 and £1million.

I’ve always been intrigued as to how effective TV advertising is. When we have recorded something (which we do more and more with V+) my wife and I compete to see who can fast forward the adverts at the highest speed possible without missing any of the “good” TV. Its probably a bad time to point out that we also watched last weeks X-factor results show, and by clever use of the fast forward button we condensed the hour long show into under 10 minutes of viewing.

Despite the fact that the first 6 months of this year was the first where Internet marketing spend was more than TV spend it still feels like the big brands haven’t really grasped the full power of internet marketing. As if to prove my point only yesterday Ian Lurie challenges Target to fix some of their SEO challenges. Yeah I know Target is US, and I’m talking about the UK, my point still stands. Bite me.

Just for kicks, lets take a look at what we could if we redirected some of that TV advertising spend for the X-factor final to an online campaign. To get a sensible figure, I’m going to assume that someone spends £250,000 to produce an advert (which I suspect is low for the adverts that will be aired), and that they only take 1 30 second slot at £250,000 (which is also going to be low). This gives me a nice £500,000 or a cool half a million pounds to play with.

Lets imagine we are aiming to sell more digital cameras, and have decided that rather than producing our latest advert with its rabbit balloon and cartoon no entry sign, we will pump the half million into advertising in one of the following ways.

Incidentally, it took me a good half hour of searching to find this advert. Finally, thanks to a combination of Yahoo! answers and random clicking through TV advert sites, I finally found out that the camera in question is a Panasonic Lumix G1. None of my brilliantly constructed “digital camera rabbit balloon advert” searches came good. One of these days I swear a big brand will crack all of this cross channel advertising stuff. The fact that there are two questions on Yahoo answers asking about the rabbit balloon shows that people are interested, but are struggling to find the camera. That’s potential customers struggling to buy your product..

So with my mini rant out of the way, lets look at alternative ways to spend £500,000 to sell more digital cameras.

Option 1 – Put it all into adwords.

It’s not, big, clever or sexy, but darn it can be effective. Lets take the most basic, adwords account possible, and simply exact match on digital camera. The keyword tool gives the Estimated Average Cost Per Click at £1.01. This means you can give your hard earned half million and give it to Google and in return you will get just over 495,000 visitors looking for digital cameras. If we can convert 2% of our visitors into camera sales, we will have just under 10 thousand new customers, and at over £400 per camera that’s over £million pounds of revenue. Not to bad really.

Option 2 – Run a competition

Remember a while ago, when twitter went crazy because Moonfruit were giving away 10 macs. 10 macs would set you back roughly 10 grand. We have 500 grand to play with so this should be a piece of cake…

Imagine if we took our half a million pound budget and pumped it into a big competition. If growing a marketing list is important, then what better way than a mass give away. How about signup to our email list and get a free camera, or free extra lens, or 50% off, or [insert something of value here]. I’m not even going to guess at metrics, but I’d put money on being able to make a splash with a budget of half a million pounds.

P.S. Thanks to Andy Beal, swerveball and Fearless_Shultz (who also pointed out twitter pulled moonfruit from the trending topics)

Option 3 – Create a viral thingy-ma-jig

A year or so ago, teh internets (which I think is what the cool kids call it these days) was awash with a video promoting TFL’s cycle awareness campaign. You probably remember it better as the moonwalking bear. According to Viralblog the budget for this was £250000, which is handy because that means we can have 2 hugely successful viral campaigns for our half a million budget.

I know that you can’t make a viral, and you can’t guarantee success but if you can’t make some noise with half a million pounds then you probably haven’t got much hope anyway!

So next, time you have a spare half a million and are thinking about a spot of TV advertising, why not take a step back and see what other options are available. Time has run out and I didn’t even really scratch the surface of what you could do.