I know that you have not heard from me in awhile, okay 25 years, but I have been very good. Trust me!!!
I have compiled a wish list of things that I would like to have which would make my life easier as an internet intelligence research specialist. The list is not that lengthy however; I assure you that all of the items will be put to good use.
1. A Super Google - A Super Google is a search engine that would help me find information within five minutes, regardless of where it is on the web. I’m sick and tired of jumping around difference search tools.
2. Access To More Premium Content - As more information becomes available on the web, the more content will be archived and become difficult to access based on fee-based websites. No doubt having the ability to search amongst the million of documents on the deep web will give me the power to provide relevant information that is not readily available on the web.
3. Broken Link Managers For Every Website - Broken Links have been a pet peeve of mine since I have started by career in internet research. There is nothing more frustrating than thinking that you have found a page rich with information and then finding out that the link to the page is no longer working. I would like content providers to have the proper tools to maintain their site to ensure access to information on the free web.
Santa, I hope that these three items are not too much to ask. One out of three should not be that bad.
Merry Christmas
Ian
PS. If you are looking for cookies when you arrive, you will not find any. Have a carrot stick. It is much healthier for you.
Writing a blog takes place on blogsites – while writing to our friends takes place in social media, right?
Hmm, maybe not quite so much anymore: Social media utilities such as Facebook now have become true business hubs for some industry sectors. One of the more obvious examples includes the leisure travel market, where corporate blogging has become part and parcel of an effective orchestrated Social Media Marketing Strategy.
- With this evolution in mind, it may be worthwhile to learn more about the features that make Facebook such an incredibly effective social media-marketing tool. If you are asking yourself what your PR & Marketing department should be looking at to get the most out of each dollar spent – both a corporate blog and a Facebook presence may very well be it. This article will help to get you started and will also provide you with some basic Facebook techniques that will help you increase your traffic on this social media platform. But first, lets have a look at some examples:
- Generally speaking, ‘corporate blogs’ are said to be effective in the realms of branding, customer service, research & development and risk & crisis management. Interactions now taking place in Facebook groups are very comparable to the ‘customer service’ function of business blogging. On Facebook, I call it ‘Faceblogging’ – have a look:
Tour Operator STA customer service on Facebook:
- To take a tour of Tour Operator STA Travel on Facebook, click here. For more, go to Facebook and hit ‘travel’ into the search box, then watch groups with sometimes over 30 000 members popping up.
Facebook extending its reach beyond college students
- You may think that the media lends itself only to younger age groups, but that is not true anymore either: What about the fact that more than 30% of all Facebook users now are post-grads of over 35? We may be in for a surprise in the very near future. Corporate blogging is a way of writing and sharing content, and is never linked to a specific technology, tool or platform such as WordPress, Blogger or what have you… business blogging its also and increasingly happening in social medias like Facebook.
Source: www.techcrunch.com
You perceive Facebook as a thread to employee productivity? - Read on!
- Interesting from a Human Resources – or even Social Media Marketing point of view: Numerous corporations just don’t know how to deal with employees spending company time in their preferred social media network. Here is what Serena Software has come up with to tackle the ‘problem’: Based on an initiative of Serena CEO and Facebook addict, Jeremy Burton, the entire company gets a Facebook treat for one hour every Friday, where all employees are invited to Faceblog away with their colleagues, friends, families and …their customers. If you cant beat’em, join’em.
Create your profile – then create a group
- The first step to do anything in Facebook is the creation of your profile. Once you have a profile, create a group. Obviously, keep your business perspective in mind: while your profile should be ‘professional without being boring’ your group must provide your target group with something they can relate to and that provides a true benefit. An important tip: don’t try to openly sell a service or product on Facebook, people come on this social platform to exchange with friends, meet new people and discover interesting news and information – they want to be entertained. Your strategy would need to take this into account and your product or service should be indirectly linked to the group’s focus… you will need to be creative here to not be perceived as a boring salesman knocking on the Facebook door. One good tip may be: make sure the people taking care of your Facebook group will have fun in animating the group – that’s probably the best advice you can get to make sure that other people (your target group) will have fun too… A possibility also is to outsource your social media strategy to someone who is experienced with social media/PR.
Now that you’ve got a profile and a group – drive traffic!
- Post in other groups – posting in other groups may be the single most important activity to drive traffic to your own group, but you would have to be smart when posting in groups. Just posting ‘Hey, what a great group – click here to see mine!’ won’t do it and may likely be perceived as comment SPAM. So here is the trick: Provide value – that always works! For example, you could gather a list of all Facebook groups containing content related to your group and then post your list as a service to these groups. Sure, you will also promote other groups by doing so, but you provide value and that ultimately makes people click on the link to your group (which hopefully you will put on top as an introduction to your list).
- Streamline your ‘Faceblog’ – A business blog, to be effective in keeping your communication channel open, should be updated regularly. Depending on your SMM (Social Media Marketing) objectives, a healthy mix of long-feature articles and short entries may help you in achieving this objective. This is no different with your Faceblog. Several tools help you in keeping in touch with your target group, will speed up the communication process and shorten your ‘time to audience’. If you are using Firefox, you may want to try out the ‘Facebook Toolbar for Firefox’: In this toolbar, you will find a ‘Share’ button, allowing you to produce fast and effective short entries such as commenting on interesting articles you found on the web. Using the ‘Share’ button allows you to push your entry directly into your Facebook minifeed – and from there into the minifeed of all your Facebook ‘friends’. You can download the ‘Facebook Toolbar for Firefox’ here. For more Facebook plugins, click here,
There are numerous other ways to drive traffic and I will talk about it in future blog entries. For organizations for which the fit in terms of target group seems obvious, integrating Facebook into your overall marketing budget may tempt you. Facebook “Sponsored groups” may be a great way of reaching out to new customers in identified segments – it may be a bit pricy though (: $200K – $300K per 3 month), but it all depends on the ROI you are looking for. Click here if you are interested to learn more about it.
If you have been a reader of this blog, you know my opinion about Wikipedia. Although it is a handy internet resource to use to become familar with a subject quickly, it should not be the sole source to adhere to. Based on the Web 2.0 nature of the source, it has become very popular and many have tried to create similar sites but in the end, they have failed.
The buzz on the internet is that Google will attempt to compete with Wikipedia with the introduction Knol. Knol will be a platform in which individuals can contribute content on difference subjects. Any contributions that are made by users must be allowed by the “initial” individual that started the page before the content is posted.
Just for fun of it, let’s see if there is an entry for “Knol” on Wikipedia.
Yes, indeed and here it is - Knol
It will be quite interesting to see whether Google will bump hits from Knol in front of Wikipedia’s results as they deliver hits to users.
If you wish to have a look at Knol’s interface, click here.
I might be tad late with this posting, but hey, better late than never. According to Outsell, the global information industry is predicted to be worth $448 billion in 2010. Amazing. No doubt that there will be companies seeking to find a niche to take a big bite out of the billion dollar pie.
Other interesting points to take away from the forecast:
- Elements dealing with searching for content will be the main growth drivers for the industry.
- News and publishing segments will continue to sag in terms of sales. Negative numbers will be seen over the next 2 to 3 years.
For more information on the forecast, visit Information Industry Outlook 2008
Call it the “deep web” or “hidden web” or “invisible web”, the portion of the web that does not get indexed is often ignored by internet users. A good reason why is that there is a prevailing notion that “you can find everything with Google”. With my 10+ years of experience, I know that the mindset is completely FALSE.
I could use this post to explain the nuances of the invisible web however; this Wikipedia entry does an excellent job of discussing why billions of pages and files go undetected by major search engines.
In order to hone your skills for invisible web searching, knowing the various gateways or subject specific indexes is a good start. I urge you to take a look at the following resources:
For the past few years, premium content providers have been faced with the challenge of keeping a restriction on who gets to access information based on paying and non-paying individuals. Even though providers have built firewalls to prevent non-subscribers from accessing content, general search engines has found way to index paid content to offer to users. A clear example of this is an online newspaper offering articles for free for 7 days and then after the articles are archived. As the articles appear online, search tools such as Google may obtain a “cache version” or copy of the articles that will be stored on their server. As a result, search engines can offer access to content that would otherwise be stored away in a database and be available to paying individuals. Obviously, copyright issues are at the forefront when search engines and premium content are mentioned together.
Recently, a group of publishers have banned together to form, Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP). The protocol calls for, “a pilot project designed to help Web sites comply with publishers’ content use policies.” Precisely, ACAP is “an attempt to improve upon robots.txt, a voluntary measure for search engines that publishers claim is not sophisticated enough for today’s content and publishing models because it provides only a choice between allowing or disallowing the indexing of content”.
Although this is a great initiative to protect content providers and their respective bottom lines, time will tell whether some search engines will comply with the protocol. After all, search engines are in business to give unlimited access to information on the web (visible and invisible).
