So, as it turned out, three days ago I received a question, submitted to me via my page on FormSpring.me. Cole Roberts, a very talented Vancouver photographer with whom I had the pleasure of working while at Magnify Digital, did the honours as the first “human” (meaning, not FormSpring’s own robot) visitor to ask me a question. Below is a copy, and my answer:
Q: How can I get my blog to be #1 on Google search for ‘Vancouver Photo Blog’ : )
A: Hello, Cole – great to see you here, and thanks for being my first (human) visitor to pose a question.
So… how do you get your blog to be #1 on Google search for “Vancouver Photo Blog”?
As you know, this is not an SEO question that can be answered in a short paragraph, but let’s see what I can do to at least help you know a tad more today, than you did… say… 5 minutes ago.
First, the bad news: it looks as though you have your work cut out for you. A quick search on Google.ca shows that there are 17,300,000 search listings for that same term.
The good news: I’ve been following what you’ve been doing on your blog, and you’re on the right track. That contest you ran last year (http://ow.ly/Ywj3), which had the final draw broadcast on video, is an example of content that you can continue to do, to differentiate yourself from your competitors. One idea would be for you to keep on creating engaging, educational, informative, unique content on video, and post it to YouTube. According to data from October ‘08 (eons ago), YouTube, at that time, had more than 65 million unique users.
This was my first for-ray into live blogging. As such, forgive me in advance for typos, grammar errors or otherwise discombobulated sentences. The text below details Jason Billingsley presentation for the International Internet Marketing Association, covering the topic: 42 ways to sell more online.
Jason Billingsley is the founder of Flip Retail, co-founder of Elastic Path and the blog Get Elastic. He co-founded Elastic Path Software in November 2000 and held the position of VP Marketing where he helped the company attract over 200 customers. Global brands such as Google, Aeroplan, Nike, Time Inc., Avis, Samsonite, United Health Group, Telus, Garmin, and Sony. Most impressively, this was done with no outside equity financing.
Flip Retail’s mandate is to consult with online retailers on how to execute e-commerce best practices.
Ean Jackson is introducing Jason.
Don’t miss the events coming up in February, March and April. For more information, visit the IIMA website.
Jason got into e-commerce when he was 17 years, and his girlfriend asked him to developed a web page. From then on, he started Elastic Path. Right now, 140 people work at Elastic Path – one of the biggest success stories in the tech field in Vancouver. After 9 years, he retired from Elastic Path and is now a professional speaker and e-commerce coach.
Jason loves to travel and decided with his wife to go to a half-year cruise.
Jason is now talking and about to start presenting his presentation deck and the Elastic Path story.
Some of the clients in the Elastic Path roster right now are Virgin, Google, etc. For now, he’ll talk about e-Commerce.
LeWeb is taking place as we speak, and they have opened up many of their presentations to UStream. Today is the last day of the conference, and it’s been definitely worth staying up to watch some of it (remember – they’re in Central European Time).
For your viewing pleasure, here’s the embedded video stream. Obviously, this will not be up and running after the conference is finished.
So far, I’ve watched a roundtable discussion with Twitter, Facebook, Ning and MySpace, led by TechCrunch, a presentation by Twitter, a very funny presentation spoof by Yossi Vardi. And, right at this very moment, a presentation by Danah Boyd.
If you’re not familiar with UStream, it’s a great channel that allows you to stream live video while also enabling chat next to the video player. If you’re planning on live-streaming a conference or special event, it’s definitely a channel to consider.
One of the appealing things that LeWeb is doing is broadcasting many of its mainstage discussions. Some people may argue that a conference such as this should not be open through live streaming, and that if you want to catch any of the action, you should pony up and pay for it. My take on this is that, if the content is good enough (which it’s been, in this case), people will watch the live online videos, and the content will serve as a magnet to:
Raise awareness of the conference
Through the numbers of recorded viewers, help prove to future sponsors that it’s worth for them to invest in the event
Some of the things that they’re doing right is integrating Facebook and Twitter stream on their homepage. For many, this may seem like an obvious thing to do, but it’s great to see that they haven’t forgotten about something so fundamental.
It’d be even better if their UStream video was available through their Facebook Page.
Another thing I’d to contemplate, if I were LeWeb, would be capturing people’s email address before they can view some (or all) of the live-streaming content. Then, I’d send updates on future conferences to those who have provided their emails. I know I’d consider this… an Internet conference in PARIS? Count me in! I’d work it into my vacation!
So here I am, playing with Google Wave. I’m still getting the hang of it, but it seems to open a lot of possibilities.
One of the most attractive features is the ability to incorporate a Wave into a blog. Of course, this will be even better once more people get access to Wave.
I’ve found it very easy to do so by, first, installing the Wavr WordPress plugin. Then, you will need to enter a code, akin to wave id=”yourwaveid here” into the post where you’d like the Wave to be integrated. This is the only part where I had a bit of hiccup, but the solution is simple:
- Login to Google Wave using your username.
- Select a Wave, then look at the address bar in your browser. You’ll probably find something that starts with
https://wave.google.com/wave/?….
To identify your wave id, just locate everything that includes and follows the exclamation mark, minus the period and the number towards the end of the line.
You will also need to replace %252B with +. In this example, we’d end up with: googlewave.com!w+XXXXXX.
Then, embed the wave id code as per the instructions provided by Wavr.
Once the embedding is done, whoever has access to Google Wave will probably see one ugly green rectangle in the blog post. As it turns out, those colours can be reset through the plugin’s settings in your WordPress admin panel.
Local Internet celebrity John Chow has been in the news quite a bit in the last few days, thanks to his introduction of ads to his Twitter updates (Here are the original articles in The New York Times and in The Gawker).
I have posted a couple of comments on other sites about this, which pretty much express my thoughts on this one – at least up until this point in time. I’d be a fool to think that my opinion might not evolve as I hear more on both sides of the equation.
The first comment I wrote was in response to Philip Novak’s link to The New York Times, posted in his Facebook page: It reads…
” I have mixed feelings on that one. On one hand, the original tweet about M&Ms did have “(Ad)” in its text. In addition, if people dislike John’s commercial tweets, they have a simple choice, which is to unfollow him.
As a marketer, I’d be very skeptic about recommending this ad platform to advertisers. It’d be interesting to see what kinds of conversions those ads receive, and how they affect not only the advertiser’s reputation, but also the reputation of the Twitter user who originally posts it.
As a Twitter user, I wouldn’t dare sending a Twitter ad to my followers. It decreases the intrinsic level of trust that brought Twitter to where it is now. And if someone I trust and follow began to post those ads, their reputation would take a quick plunge, leading me to unfollow them.”
Then, a little earlier today, I posted this second comment, on Patti Schom-Moffatt’s blog post:
“Hello,
As you probably know, John Chow made the news because he started incorporating ads in his Twitter stream.
I personally wouldn’t integrate ads in my Twitter updates, largely because I feel that it betrays the trust between myself and my followers.
Maybe John Chow’s followers may not have been surprised that he’d adopt this practice. In that case, whether or not he runs Twitter ads might not necessarily hurt his number of followers.
But what if an ad runs through a Twitter account where followers did not see it coming? In that case, it would be interesting to see the long-term effects on the reputations of both the advertiser and the Twitter account that published the ad.
I could see this ad model working for Twitter accounts that already include information about commercial offers, like coupons, discounts, local offers, etc, but not for others that have built their reputation based on the personal tone in their conversations.
Last but not least, if anyone is insulted by the ads, they always have a choice: unfollow whoever published them.”
So this sums up my thoughts on this… for now.
Would love to hear your opinion. Do you agree? Disagree? Why?
So, as it turned out, three days ago I received a question, submitted to me via my page on FormSpring.me. Cole Roberts, a very talented Vancouver photographer with whom I had the pleasure of working while at Magnify Digital, did the honours as the first “human” (meaning, not FormSpring’s own robot) visitor to ask me a question. Below is a copy, and my answer:
