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Articles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

A Finnish Edition
2008-05-08 14:08:00
Hi, my name is Peter and I’m a Quirkaholic... Just kidding... kind of. Who is Peter Lehto? Well, I was born in Helsinki, Finland, to a South African mother and Finnish father. (Quite a weird combo I know...
More About: Edition

TheWB.com - The New Tv
2008-05-01 16:13:00
In an effort to occupy a higher percentage of consumers' time, media companies are researching new outlets to show their stuff. Broadband distribution is the most recent of these. The latest platform for entert...
More About: General

Five Tips to Make Social Media Strategy Work for Your Business
2008-04-30 13:18:00
True computer geeks (recently I was informed that that there is a discernable difference between nerds and geeks, although my friends - who may or not fall into this category - have some trouble explaining this subtlety to a mere mortal such as myself) predate Social ...
More About: Business , Media , Strategy , Tips

Search Me: Not an Every Day Engine
2008-04-30 08:08:00
Another conceptual search engine has hit the scene, and like me, you might find it useful at times. Search Me, modelled on the memory-eating coverflow view now common on most...
More About: Search Engine Marketing , Engine

Oxfam: Be Humankind
2008-04-27 10:45:00
I love this Oxfam ad. It demonstrates a move away from the endless images of children with flies on their faces and makes me feel more like people could really make a difference. More of an empower-...
More About: General

Genie in a bottle
2008-04-26 08:06:00
Last weekend I found myself flicking through the channels (as one does) and I stumbled across Aladdin - a movie my little brother believes it is the most important movie of the last century (and yes that&rsq...
More About: General , Bottle , Genie

Email Marketing Basics
2008-04-25 15:26:00
Email Marketing engages with p...
More About: Email , Email Marketing , Basics

Twing - searching discussions
2008-04-24 07:23:00
This neat little search engine searches forums. I came across it on Web2.ohreally, where Craig Stoltz discusses what Twing essentially does -...
More About: General , Searching

5 tips on promoting your travel business on Tripadvisor.com
2008-04-23 08:31:00
Werner sent me this article last week about how tripadvisor.com now features 15 million reviews and opinions, up from 10 million in June 2007. I’m not surprised at this massive growth – I have been using tripadvisor.com for over 3 years and have seen it expand from a relatively niche travel site into something that has become the model for a travel social network and has spawned countless spin-offs and copycats. I have also personally helped tripadvisor.com grow, firstly by recommending it to my travel-bug-infested friends worldwide, and secondly as a South African “destination expert”. Basically I’m a huge fan and I think it’s a brilliant site. Not only as a trusted resource for travellers, but also as a powerful marketing tool for anyone involved in the hospitality sector - especially the little guys who rely on word-of-mouth to get a foothold in the competitive travel market. Whether you are big or small, here are 5 Tips on how to use TripAd...
More About: Business , Travel , Promoting

The Art of Viral
2008-04-22 15:23:00
Too often I feel that we take a limited a view of what defines a successful viral campaign. In designing such an operation the instinctive starting point is in creating something that has been optimised to travel from one inbox to the next, and yet Viral Marketing is so much more dynamic than this. Not that there’s anything wrong with this approach, but it does neglect certain traits of user behaviour. Instead of designing something that will be passed around like a hot-potato, why not create something that users will want to bring into their lives and personal spaces? I’m not talking about a radical change in what we define as viral (quite a few brands are already pursuing this route), but I think that a shift in our focus is warranted. Success doesn’t necessarily have to be defined by the amount of views on YouTube, or the number of times that a clip’s passed on via email. Nowadays some adverts are something of an art-form. High-production costs, stunni...

Where to, Yahoo!?
2008-04-22 13:25:00
These are interesting times for global Internet companies. I say “Internet” companies because it’s impossible to limit the expansion of services that haemorrhages freely from every industry giant’s heart onto the intricate arteries of the Web. (Even as we speak, Microsoft has just released Live! Search News as a competitor to Google News) Earlier in the week, Yahoo ! acquired the best web analytics tools, like, ever, in the form of IndexTools. This has massive marketing repercussions for demographic analysis and advertising platforms. Hell, at one stage, Yahoo! was linked to AOL who according to ComScore now has the best Ad platform, like, ever. It makes me wonder about the emphasis Web 2.0 can put on marketing now that site structures and the sites themselves are becoming increasingly formalised, albeit with different rules to traditional offline marketing. One can see the vast landscape of, well, the Webscape is really more like an Oceanscape, constantly ch...

A beginner's guide to Google Conversion Optimizer
2008-04-21 11:03:00
Google’s Conversion Optimizer is a free Adwords feature that allows you to manage your campaigns by your cost per acquisition (CPA) bids rather than your cost per click (CPC) bids. I’ve only been running Conversion Optimizer for a few weeks – so this is my beginner’s guide to getting started. In order to utilise Conversion Optimizer you must have conversion tracking implemented and your campaign must receive at least 200 conversions a month. You are able to set a maximum amount (for each ad group) that you are willing to pay for each conversion and then Google automatically adjusts your CPC in order to meet that CPA. Setting it up is easy – go to campaign settings > click on view and edit bidding options > select radio button Conversion Optimizer > save and continue. You will be taken to a page listing all your ad groups and a block for each one to fill in your max CPA. Initially Google will recommend a CPA for you according to how that ad...
More About: Google , Beginner , Guide

Sony at it again
2008-04-20 15:05:00
We've posted Sony Bravia ads before - and whether they involve rabbits, paint, balls or pyramids, the ads have always been winners. As Sarah pointed out in her post covering the colourful rabbits, the fact is that we tend to pass on these ads due to their novelty factor - people have rarely seen anything like them before, and they are received very well. Carrying on with this tactic, Sony are at it again; this time for their camera range. Enjoy Foam City: Comment on "Sony at it again"

Viral needs to be interesting
2008-04-20 09:10:00
The idea of viral marketing is quite a sexy one. A company makes an ad, and instead of hiring a media planner to figure out where and when the ad will reach people, they can just set it free online to spread by itself. Ingenious. What people forget is that a video has to be quite remarkable for people to really want to spread it on to their friends. (Although some other methods for making videos go viral have been discussed – resulting in some controversy about dodgy techniques back in November on TechCrunch). So, this brings me to one of Uwe Gutschow’s posts, listing what were voted as some of the worst viral campaigns for 2007. One of them is a video by Agency.com, which they put together as part of a pitch process for Subway. Done in a ” The Apprentice” kind of style, they documented their idea generation process in order to show what they can do. The video ended up being pretty boring. Their “out the box” video has spread, but not for the re...
More About: Interesting , Viral

Enjoying the Everyday
2008-04-19 09:23:00
It doesn't have the amazing visuals used in some of the other virals we've looked at recently and it's not edgy or funny – which usually appeals to us folks around here. But as its tit...
More About: General

Say What? Google News does quotes.
2008-04-18 15:36:00
That's correct folks; you are now able to use Google News to search for quotes by certain individuals. This capability can be, and has been likened to that of a real-time Bartlett's. ...
More About: General , Google News , Quotes

Designing your site with particular user personas in mind
2008-04-18 09:37:00
Personas allow us to imagine and customise different paths through a website for different user types, based on an understanding of their goals for the site visit. I came across some interesting ideas in this regard in a vide...
More About: Designing , General , Site , Mind , User

Facebook Lexicon
2008-04-16 16:00:00
Facebook released a new tool yesterday, called Facebook Lexicon, that creates a graph representing the number of times certain words have been posted on people’s walls...
More About: General , Facebook

5 Tips for Survival in an Online World
2008-04-16 12:56:00
The time has come to face the truth - the Web is actually a parallel universe increasingly free of the bonds of earth altogether. It comprises of a world in which 'languages' refer to java script or html or a host of other letter strings that have no...
More About: World , General , Tips , Online , Survival

BlackSeeker for Green Future
2008-04-15 09:25:00
Last Friday I blogged about Rushmore Drive, but today I came across a slightly different ‘black search engine’. BlackSeeker is...
More About: General , Future , Green

Old Spice - What it means to be a real man
2008-04-12 09:18:00
So, arguably I’m not the best person to discuss what it means to be a real man. Despite this, I found this viral to be full of delicious one liners to repeat. It’s been a wh...
More About: General , Real , Spice

Rushmore Drive for Black Community
2008-04-11 16:12:00
Black Web Enterprises Inc. have made a bold leap into the world of Search by launching Rushmore Drive , an engine for the African American community. "The first-of-i...
More About: Community , General , Black

Inside Google Earth (for a better earth)
2008-04-11 13:25:00
Sir David Attenborough, data visualisation, and saving the world! That pretty much captures the amazing day Nic and I had at the offic...
More About: Google , Earth , General , Google Earth , Inside

Time.com - Cheeky?
2008-04-10 11:00:00
Time dared to rate the top 25 blogs on the net. That’s right – mainstream (old) media judging the value of the new - how very cheeky. Not only did the results of their ju...
More About: General , Time

Have come down with something... but in a serious way
2008-04-09 17:11:00
For me writing blog posts is about taking an hour or two away from the regular tasks of the day and having a break. It's about finding something interesting and taking time to explore it a little and share it with others. On the odd occasion ...
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Using your confirmation and error pages
2008-04-09 10:47:00
So much goes into a well built website that it can be easy to neglect the opportunity on your confirmation and error pages. While they both represent the end of some kind of interaction, you should avoid letting them be the end of a site visit. The two obviou...
More About: General , Error , Pages , Confirmation

Media Relations Summit: Day 1 Learnings
2008-04-08 13:30:00
Today was day 1 of the Media Relations Summit 2008; an event the organisers keep telling us is the largest of its kind globally. I’m not sure how many people are here, but it ...
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Google to allow bidding on Trademarks in the UK and Ireland
2008-04-08 06:51:00
Up to now it has been possible for brands in the UK and Ireland to prevent competitors from bidding on Trademarked terms by submitting a Trademark complaint. A...
More About: Google , General , Bidding , Trademarks

Music as a Service
2008-04-04 10:51:00
There’s been quite a bit of discussion in the last few days about ...
More About: Music , General , Service

$1000 for Top Search Rankings
2008-04-02 12:18:00
Wow! That’s all I can say after the response to our Creative Director hiring bounty. I can honestly say t...
More About: Search Engine Marketing , Search