I also enjoyed Chris Heuer’s session on “Death of Advertising” which Ruth Seeley covered better than I could at this late & tired hour. The most memorable thing for me was discovering Blentec’s Will It Blend campaign. It’s mainly videos of their CEO in a “lab” testing their blender’s ability to make “smoothies” out of iPods, lightsticks, and so on. Apparently since this campaign launched their blender sales have gone through the roof and they even get paid to do blender demos as entertainment at events.

On the one hand I want to cheer them on – way to go! Leverage new media creatively! Make it work for you!

On the other, I was so sad to see the toxic waste-filled innards of the iPod mulched and fuming into the atmosphere for the purpose of selling more stuff.

This is at the root of my discomfort around so much branding and advertising: the despair I feel for our overtaxed planet and our underfed souls… some of us at times spending and spending to fill an emptiness that traditional advertising has worked so cleverly to enlarge.

So I guess I have to give Blentec kudos for this campaign; regardless of my conflicted feelings they have created something remarkable.

**OK, so it’s not really sordid, but that sounds catchy doesn’t it?

• She likes to mix her kick-ass marketing advice with a lotta swearing and mentions of sex/nudity/alcohol.
• This leads to much humour for her readers and high rankings on her website for bizarre search terms. I suspect this has taught her a thing or two about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Which brings me to…

A quick review of SEO School

I got my hands on a review copy of this ebook so that I could hopefully recommend it to my clients. Pretty every web designer in the universe has been asked “How do I show up number one in Google?”. Upon hearing this, every web designer in the universe cringes. To even begin to answer that question you’d have to be more specific, like “How do I show up number one in Google for ‘cheese biscuits’?”. The short answer is:

• Nobody should promise that you’ll rank number one in Google for anything except for, maybe, your website’s name. (See SmashLabSucks.com – there’s always the possibility of somebody bigger with more SEO juice affecting the results.)
• SEO is complicated.

Thankfully Naomi’s SEO School contains a long answer in her non-complicated, sailor-worthy language. At $19 on sale, it’s the best deal of the bunch. (Use the coupon code “wood”, without the quotes.)

While I don’t specialize in SEO I’ve been building web sites long enough that I have a good handle on this subject. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to learn a few new-to-me things in this ebook. In the many online tools she highlighted there are some I hadn’t heard of such as one by Microsoft which gauges commercial intent of a website or a search term. It shows for example that etsy.com has a .87 probability of commercial intent whereas unicef.com has a .98 probability of non-commercial intent. Or that “sexy boots” has a .97 probability of commercial intent. (That one’s up for debate, I think.) Another tool to check the age of a website, and so on.

What could be improved?

• Naomi’s already told me the graphics are soon to be re-done, so if you value style as much as substance you might want to buy later when the new version comes out. The current version is fine though.
• A beginner’s glossary of SEO (and/or an index) would be useful. She covers some really ninja-worthy stuff but in a few spots jumps past some basics on the way. For example she first mentions backlinks without explaining the term. Later there’s really awesome detail about what kind of backlinks you want, but at first mention this is probably confusing for a newbie. (Backlinks are the links coming into your site. Like that “web designer” link above? That is a keyword-rich link to my own portfolio I threw in so I could explain it just a bit.)*
• The section for bloggers has some advice I might handle differently or expand on. For instance there are plugins for WordPress that help with some of the issues and tasks mentioned. But I suppose that’s why there’s WordPress SEO Secrets for the really keen bloggers out there.

Conclusion

This part’s short & sweet because I’ve blabbed on enough and my honey is watching the Long Way Round and I’m kinda distracted.  So here you go:

• If you’re an SEO newbie, SEO School is a fabulous place to start. You’ll get an excellent grounding in the basics in a short time and walk away knowing some of the top tips to improving your rankings. Note, she doesn’t get into *how* to do some of the more technical site tweaks. She reckons either you built your site and know how, or you’ll ask your web guy/gal to do it for you.
• You should check out Naomi’s other goodies before you go to bed Thursday night. I’ve  got her Online Business School and you won’t be disappointed if you need an introduction in this area. There’s also a brand new e-book on how to launch your e-book. You’ll need to get the discount codes from her sale page.
• Ewan McGregor is one amazing dude.

*Tip: if you get stuck understanding a term, try using Google as a dictionary. Enter define: followed by your term and you’ll get a summary of definitions for the term. E.g., “define: backlinks” without the quotes.

1. My dear friend Jody MacDonald has her first solo show in Campbell River until February 27th. (See her amazing sculptures in situ on her blog.) I just learned she’ll be interviewed by Sheryl MacKay of CBC’s North by Northwest. Yay, Jody!! I’ll update the air time once I know it. UPDATE: the show will air Sunday January 31st, 6-9 a.m. Guess I’m getting up early this Sunday!
   
2. Pam Slim, who I’ve gotten to know a little bit by hanging out on Twitter, has been getting a lot of press lately. She’s shared 5 ways to get media exposure on her blog.

I’d never heard of Elvine before; looks like they make nice stuff. I’d link to a couple of their sweet-looking jackets but their site is in Flash so the best I can do is their homepage. *Sigh*.

(Discovered via Gagan Diesh)

Each of these ads is fine on its own, but two ads for the same product from the same company with different prices adds up to one confused customer.

While context is one of the things that makes advertising online an interesting opportunity, it’s also one of the challenges.

Which isn’t to say there’s no context issue in other advertising media; we’ve all seen pictures of billboards gone horribly wrong when paired together or put in an ill-chosen location. But in web advertising it gets trickier.

The above example could probably be solved easily enough with a good adserver+administration, some logic and coordination. Unfortunately, that means the right hand needs to know what the left is doing, and having worked at Telus I can tell you that’s easier said than done in a large corporation!

The limitations of machine logic become apparent when ads are targeted by keyword . At myTELUS we occasionally had complaints of inappropriate advertising: advertising for flight specials next to stories of crashed planes and the like. Yes, the story had related keywords, but humans are a more sensitive to the meaning of those words in context than the adserver was.

And then there’s the trickiness of putting AdSense or other contextual text ads on your business site. Some people are tempted to do that, figuring they might make an easy buck off of work they’re doing anyway. But the thing is, it’s difficult if not impossible to ensure you’re not advertising competitors whom you might not even be aware of. Or, you could be advertising something you wouldn’t support. I met someone recently who has a website on tortoises (of all things!). Although she could monetize her hobby she’s wary of contextual ads which might link to shady pet supplies etc. I wonder if Goodsense green advertising might be a good option for her site.

If you have ads on your blog or website, what do you use? Have you any words of experience to share?

Following some of Naomi’s advice on USPs, I was working on some ideas for my Unique Selling Proposition (USP). You know, trying to figure out the essence of why someone should hire me to make their awesome website instead of another designer.  I asked a few friends: What am I good at, and what what do I seem to have the most fun doing?

My dear friend Jody responded:

Tzod is in the details.

Which is too true, I do love to get down into the endless details of a thing, be it web design or not. This can be a great thing and a not-so-great thing, depending. Placement of pixels and letters, great. Obsessing over the tiniest little bug that nobody will notice but me and some other hyper web geeks, or taking forever to make my own websites while I ponder the details, not so much.

Another friend responded:

you are great at blending the technical ‘nerdie’ know how with the artsy-fartsy creative side

Also true – I am kind of a hybrid creative-geek. However in the web design field I don’t feel like that is very unique. What do you think?

And if you feel like playing along, I’d love to hear your thoughts on a few other things which might help me answer this essence thing:

1. What made you hire a particular web designer/developer in the past?
2. What pisses you off about the web design/development industry?
3. Chocolate, Strawberry, or Triple Blast Rocky Road Explosion?

Thanks, y’all.

• Brand Names that Zag – A list of good vs. bad brand names from different niches, e.g. Olay (sounds soft like the skin it promises) vs. Noxzema (sounds toxic and is difficult to spell… I had to look it up just to write this.)
• The 6 Naming Styles – Brand names can be arbitrary (Apple), descriptive (Netflix), and so on. The distinction betwen Suggestive and Metaphorical is fuzzy for me, though. Aren’t metaphors suggestive?

Looks like there’s other great stuff to read on that site. Hat tip to Chris Wilson of Fresh Peel for the link.

E-Junkie shopping carts offer a digital content delivery service, so if you’re selling MP3s or PDFs using PayPal buttons, and having to jump through silly hoops to get the product to your customer after you’ve got the dough, their digital storage & delivery might be the answer.

I discovered E-Junkie via Naomi Dunford’s 45 Home Business Resources: Things and People That Help You Make Money In Your Underwear. She has some great stuff in there, and I’d like to add a few others:

• For cheap starter business cards, Moo Mini-cards are a great creative option. They’re half the size of a regular card on a nice thick cardstock. (Wimpy paper for your business card says “hey, we’re wimpy!”.) You can make a pack with many different photos of your own. (So if you’re a realtor with a cheesy headshot, you’re in luck! These are made for YOU!) But I digress… I have some of my puppies and a macro shot that I took of a bee, and they’re a real conversation starter. Moo also makes stickers, postcards, etc., and people have all kinds of creative uses for them as you’ll see at Flickr.
• For email marketing Naomi recommended AWeber, which I haven’t used. I have used two others though. I recently sent an invite for Marleen Vermeulen‘s upcoming show via CampaignMonitor and it’s generated some very promising leads for her. (Woo hoo!) And, I set up a MailBuild newsletter template for Charlene at CSJ Active Wellness who is enjoying the easy tool for sending professional-looking e-mail broadcasts.
• Google Checkout is worth a look as an alternative to PayPal, and has some special deals for AdWords advertisers too.

Speaking of Adwords, that is exactly how I found the TorsoPants Naomi mentioned. Freakin’ hilarious.

Do you have anything to add?

Alas, I was annoyed by banner ads full of flashing, spinning things I wasn’t interested in.

“Hmm, I thought, maybe this is why I spend more time reading blogs & small independent sites than I do the big sites. They don’t have these kinds of ads.”

Yet, the content was interesting. I pressed on. For a few more (brief) pages of the series, no less. In each page, a new flashing spinning thing annoyed me.

Then, the icing on the cake arrived: an interstitial ad interrupted the page I was reading. That’s right, the page I was interested in was overtaken by something I had LESS than zero interest in. I clicked the “skip this ad link” out of habit while the annoyance boiled up.

I stopped reading the series, to write this rant.

Hey, annoying web publishers*!

I know you need to make a buck on your content now and then. Maybe if you paid your audience more respect you’d HAVE A LARGER AUDIENCE to contribute those pageviews and click-throughs you’re looking for.

This audience is now gone, and keeping her link love to herself.

*Annoying in this case being all those who allow really crap advertising to degrade their content. It’s so TELEVISION, and you know what’s happening to TV… it’s dying. People love their Tivos because they can skip this crap. Take a hint, OK?

It’s purpose is making saving fun and easy, so you can take that dream vacation without the guilt of maxing out your credit card. It’s like an online piggy-bank that you can contribute to automatically. Plus, your contacts can contribute to it, and some sponsors (related to the thing you’re saving up for) may also contribute. At least, that’s what I gleaned from a few minutes on their site.

Unfortunately, it’s only available in the U.S. I wonder if they have expansion plans or if someone could start a similar service for other countries? It’s patent-pending, so I don’t know if you could.

I noticed this in the testimonials:

We were going to take out a short-term home loan to tackle this new bathroom project when I got this e-mail from a friend telling me to ‘SmartyPig’ it

So I also wonder, will it become a verb, like “Google it” has?