Adventures in Advertising

Creating a blog

2010-02-26T11:40:00.008+11:00

This is a massive topic that cannot be covered in one single post. I've got some sub categories (like blog design, writing and blogging) on blogging, so you may want to read up on those later. But right now, you're probably wondering why you should even start a blog.

There are many reasons:

It links with your LinkedIn profile and makes you look better
You can use it to showcase your knowledge
You can use it to track the information you discover along the way
It will force you to follow other important people in your field and interact with them

Those are just a few, once you start more reasons will wander out of the woodwork. It's not easy to write, some people have a lot of difficulty with it. LC has a network of copywriters there for you to utilise and get help from, this is just another facet of the support structure. Most of it will involve reading other peoples work of your topics, but remember blogging also allows you to present your own spin on any subject matter you feel.

This will always look good to potential employers when they can see that you're an original thinker.

There are many free hosting sites that you can present your blog on. I used the blogger network because it's very simple and the dashboard application allows me to navigate into google analytics without any fuss. I can also track other blogs from the dashboard, so in essence it gives me all I want without any problems. But if you want more customisation you may want to go with WordPress.

How you want to present the blog is completely up to you, but look at some of the other popular blogs out there and notice what works and what doesn't. You're not going to be monetising your blog any time soon so try not to fill it with clutter and make it difficult to navigate.

Widgets are a part of any blog and you're going to have to play around with them. This will help give you a feel for the environment and design. They can also be useful for generating visitors. I use a widget from BlogCatalog that keeps track of any incoming visitors that have been referred here but Google Analytics also tells me this, so in essence it's only there to show my visitors that I'm being visited regularly.

You've definitely got to think strategically with your blog, but the whole exercise of creating your own blog is to explore and experiment. This will give you invaluable experience that will carry over outside of LC.

You don't have to blog only about your LC stuff. Remember it's your blog, so try to work in a topic that you're passionate about and let that passion shine through. I've got a few different topics that you can see in my category tags and I also have multiple blogs (mainly because the tone and subject matter are too varied to be in one). What topic you choose is up to you, but keep in mind that certain topics will get more interest, like dating or relationship advice over tricking out your laptop with the latest designs. So keep note of the audience you will be attracting with your subject matter.

Keeping your blog interesting and coming up with new subject matter can be difficult. How you solve this is up to you, but reading other blogs always works as inspiration and when you follow them, most of the time they'll follow you back and you'll get breadcrumb visits from those blogs. Don't worry about building a big audience right now, that will come over time as you make connections over the net with other people in your field.

These connections will most likely also have a LinkedIn profile and your steady connections will grow from that. By now, you'll see how it's all integrated and how each facet lends to the other. As your time investment grows in your blogs and social media profiles, so will your reputation and credibility.

Commenting is also an important part of blogging. A blog looks lonely without them and you'll discover there are many automated bots that will worm their way into your site with atrocious spam masquerading as valid engagement. One of the best parts of working at LC is you can send everyone an update on your twitter feed when you've posted a new blog and more than likely some of the staff members will leave comments. They'll probably also be following your blog and then what do you know, you've got a popular blog with interactive readers!

Next step: Tweeting and ping.fm

-Thomas
Adventures in Advertising
Pensive Video Gamer
Short Stories and other Curiosities

LinkedIn: What's all the fuss about?

2010-02-23T17:03:00.007+11:00

We've all played with social networks like Myspace or Facebook, LinkedIn is exactly that a social network, except instead of social connections, it focuses on business connections. The site reads like an online resume and chronicles your activity in discussions and who you're connected with. The site isn't very user friendly, and that works in your favour.

You'll have to set up an account and put in all your educational details and previous work histories. Once you've done this, connect with a few LC key personnel like:

From those connections you can add all the other Intern staff in common and you'll already have a decent list of 20+ connections. Once you've worked with a few of them you can also request a recommendation from them. Recommendations work like references, except anyone looking at them can also check out the credibility of the source with one simple click.

You may also want to link a blog or two to your LinkedIn profile. Your profile page will automatically get a feed from the last 3 posts and anyone interested in what you do will head straight to these blogs.

So far, I've told you how to set up LinkedIn, but not why it's important. You've probably heard the saying: "It's not what you know, it's who you know." This is so true in business. Potential employers are much more likely to hire someone they know or has been vouched for by a trusted source. LinkedIn provides for that, it'll open doors.

Many of the staff that have set up effective LinkedIn accounts have been offered employment by companies outside of LC. Whether you take them up on the offer is up to you, but a good LinkedIn profile will give you these opportunities and advantages that people without LinkedIn don't have.

Furthermore, LinkedIn comes up in search engines. So the more exposure you get online, the better. Make sure you select a good name for your profile, something that fits along the job your doing. Look at the profile page address for Toby or Melanie. These small things count and show proof towards your expertise in the field.

You'll also want to keep track of best answers and topic discussions in LinkedIn. Remember the more accolades you get on your profile, the better it looks. LinkedIn has credibility because any person viewing your profile can see who's said what and in what position they are in. They can validate information for themselves.

Next step: Creating a blog

-Thomas
Adventures in Advertising
Pensive Video Gamer
Short Stories and other Curiosities

Welcome new person to LC

2010-02-09T02:34:00.005+11:00

Aloha,

Welcome to Lead Creation and your internship. I've been where you are now, starting out and for me, it was daunting as hell! Let me paint you a picture, on my first day in the first few minutes of me starting the internship Toby sat me down to have a chat. He'll do this with everyone and mine didn't go so well.

Basically, I was told that male copywriters had a very bad track record at LC. They would up and leave halfway through their internships, which ended up being a colossal waste of time for both parties! Toby then followed it up by telling me he had a bad feeling that I was probably going to leave and that he was going to minimise his investment in me!

What bloody investment? I thought. I'm working for free here!

But 3 months down the track, I can honestly say he was totally right. There is a huge investment in training and effort that goes into every intern. It may not feel like it, it's understandable, but this will change. After 3 months of working for LC, I've got a freaking awesome LinkedIn profile which is integrated with this very blog and have already gotten offers for paid copywriting work from it.

I'd never have gotten that by myself because I'd never even heard about LinkedIn, let alone thought Twitter could actually be useful.

The first thing you should do is have a good think about the investment you're going to have to put into this internship. It's more than just time you'll be giving up, it will also be some misconceptions.

You'll already have read a few training manuals and other assorted documents, now we get into the good stuff. This is a bread crumb document that I've designed for all new interns. It's a step by step document that will give you a good guide of what to do when you first begin. At the end of each, I'll link in the next step. Not all will be on my blog as I cover specific topics, some like SEO will be on Vahes blog.

The first thing you should do is follow the blog by clicking on the side panel. Not just for mine, but everyone of the LC staff that you're directed to. Each blog will have helpful advice and tips so it's in your best interest to do so. I always try to mix in some other entertaining tidbits into my blog to make it a little more readable and exciting. Also, information changes, so being up to date with the latest developments in SEO is a good thing.

Eventually you're going to have to start your own blog. The tags on blog design and blogging hold some great tips for beginners. But more on that later.

Right now you're going to have to create a LinkedIn account, a twitter account and also a blog account (might as well get it out of the way). I suggest using blogger.com because it integrates with Google apps really nice and allows you to track data very easily.

Play around with them, but don't worry about making it perfect just yet, well cover that in later steps. Right now there are a few blogs that you should subscribe to in Google reader. What the hell is Google reader anyway?

Onto the next step: LinkedIn: What's all the fuss about?!

-Thomas
Adventures in Advertising
Pensive Video Gamer
Short Stories and other Curiosities

Backup your vital files...NOW!

2010-02-08T14:21:00.004+11:00

For those two people who follow this blog religiously (my mommy and myself), you may have noticed the lack of updates. This isn't just because working 7 days per week means any free time is spent trying to stay sane, it's also because my Judas Dell has decided to pack it in and die on me. Just when I needed him most.

Actually, that's not quite accurate because my laptop is an extension of my body (I'll be writing a long essays as to why this is so for uni). It's the appendage that allows me to tap into and manipulate my virtual identity. It's a part of me, so when it died, I felt like an amputee. Furthermore, there isn't really a time when I don't need him. At every moment, I need a laptop as much as the moment before. More so because of the invested time in building my virtual identity and creative works on it accumulates.

Unfortunately, it had been a while since a proper backup of my files was completed, so most of my time was spent trying to recover data on the weekend. Though it was a success, I know I've dodged a massive bullet because if I'd lost all the work on my book, it would have probably given up my few remaining slivers of sanity trying to restore those works!

Now days, most of my work is online and stored on servers across the world, instead of being located on my hard-drive. This means that all the work for blogs and blogging is safe. Even the countless draft notes and half-baked ideas are all still waiting for me to complete them, and wait they will!

I'm currently on my trusty old COMPAQ Presario Pentium laptop. A blast from the past, yet it still works utterly perfectly and without fail. I honestly love this laptop, even though it's slow, it does the job reliably.

So the lesson here is to backup not only your files, but also your laptop. Have an old one handy and ready to rock out at a moments notice. You can buy them second hand cheap and the investment is worth it. I paid $1700 for my Compaq back in 1999 and after 11 years, to still be functioning is a massive win for me.

Also portable hard-drives are also made of win. I owe a big thank-you to Gavin for buying me one for my birthday.

-Thomas
Adventures in Advertising
Pensive Video Gamer
Short Stories and other Curiosities

Wasting time with time wasters

2010-02-02T13:53:00.003+11:00

A long time ago, in a version of Thomas far far away, there existed an internet forum that he moderated/administered. This was quiet a bit of work because not only did he have to monitor and dispose of spammers, tend to the many personality conflicts and arguments, but he also had to develop interesting articles for people to read.

These articles took a long time to create. Each one based on hours of research as the audience was very well read and any mistakes or inaccuracies would be pounced upon in an instant.

Yet all this work netted Thomas one thing: Frustration.

Why? because he was interacting with people uninterested in the message, uninterested in the content and solely focused on flame wars and aggravating an already aggravated forum administer due to personality conflicts. Not all the audience was like this, but a few select band of individuals got great pleasure from it. On stage during live performance; they're known as hecklers.

So eventually he did the only thing he could do, he left.

The work was hard with long hours, it was unpaid and most importantly, unappreciated. So after a long rumination process that had been building up for months, Thomas did the only thing that would benefit him. He left and never looked back at forums ever again.

All that work had to be left behind, as well as the online friends that had supported him and rallied to his cause. All the stress and conflicts were also left in the past.

It was four years of work wasted.

But he did learn a two priceless points out of the whole endeavour.

1. Never argue with idiots
This world is filled with them, they come at you from all angles. Never engage them, or if you accidentally do, stop as soon as you realise you're dealing with one. There is an old saying: You can lead a horse to water, but you can never make him drink, and it applies to the morons on the internet. You can't make them think or even see your way of thinking because they are too wrapped up in their own sense of over-bloated self important opinions.
Don't waste time or energy on time wasters. You'll only have yourself to blame!

2. Don't ever take it personally
I've written more words than I care to admit. Writing comes easily to me. Yet with the most carefully constructed pieces of personal reflection, I get people who disagree and volley in personal attacks merely because they have no other way of engaging the material. You can't ever let this get to you. Never return the insults, simply delete the comments outright or ignore them and have a laugh. Once you've invested so much into your words that any criticism hurts you personally, it's time to take a step back from the writing.

Over time, I've learnt to engage with people on different levels and subtly redirect conversations when they get out of hand. But my days of hanging around internet forums are forever over and I am honestly happy about that because there are much better places on the internet to interact with people.

I'm not saying that forums don't have their advantages, but they are fast becoming more and more selective with their users as most users turn towards Social Networks, which offer a greater level of control over your experience.

-Thomas
Adventures in Advertising
Pensive Video Gamer
Short Stories and other Curiosities

Fatigue and guest posting

2010-01-25T15:01:00.002+11:00

I've been working too much lately. Seven days a week, five within an intensive retail environment. This is why I haven't posted anything for the last week. It's difficult to construct something worthwhile when fatigue has built up.

Fatigue I can handle, especially as I'm an insomniac. Fatigue is my modus-operandi. That and using outdated Latin phrases or wanky French words, which I just cannot resist. I love the French language and cannot wait to learn it fully, but first I must learn Mandarin for my upcoming journey to China.

But it's the stress of the position that prevents me from writing effectively. For example, if you look at the previous paragraph, you'll see how it's half finished because I went off on a tangent. Now, I love tangents, I'm always exploring them in my mind and when I'm stressed, I'm more likely to get sidetracked.

Now, even though my friends have found my randomness to be witty and humorous, it doesn't translate at all to writing. When I'm on one of my tangent fuelled rants, people have a lot of trouble following my logic or even what I'm saying. So there is a lesson to learn about writing. Keep it focused and on point, otherwise you'll lose your audience. Writing requires energy of a different kind to physical energy. You can still be exhausted after a long day's work and still write. But if you're distracted or stress, forget about it.

Despite not having the energy to post on my own blog, I have been posting regularly on other peoples Blogs as a guest poster. I'm going to start a new section tag for all the guest posts I've done (mainly to keep track of it for my own benefit), but here's a link to my first article which has been featured on the Idea Lady's website.

It's not my best work, I'll readily admit, but it's still my words being featured on other websites. And this is all part of social networking and getting your own brand name out into the ether.

Today, I'm entering my 17th consecutive working day without a break. I wonder how many more I can go?!

-Thomas
Adventures in Advertising
Pensive Video Gamer
Short Stories and other Curiosities

Google Reader and the Ninja

2010-01-18T12:11:00.002+11:00

Google Reader is a handy application from google that organises and collates all your blog feeds. It gives you a powerful interface which displays the feeds without you having to visit all the sites individually.

What makes this application so cool? How about off-line browsing!

That's right with Google Reader you can download and store around 2000 articles (it will do it automatically for new posts) using Google Gears (a browser extension). This means you can now do your reading where ever you like, on the train, on a plane or even while on the can.

Pretty soon, there'll probably be an integration with Kindle and other types of e-Readers which will seriously make me consider buying one, including even selling out and getting an iPhone or perhaps the new Google phone.

The beauty of this application is that it's a serious time saver. Google are constantly upping the ante regarding their functionality and the Google reader is a serious leap forward.

There is also a hidden Easter Egg when you're on the main screen. If you press UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A you'll unlock the ninja display. That code is called the Konami Code because it's used in heaps of Konami video games.

It's integrated into Google completely, so if you have a google email account, it's ready to go. However, you don't need to register to use it, your other email accounts can also be used for verification. Go forth and explore it now!

-Thomas
Adventures in Advertising
Pensive Video Gamer
Short Stories and other Curiosities

Customising a blog: an ongoing process

2010-01-08T14:48:00.006+11:00

Setting up a blog on the first run is a very time consuming process. For my latest blog (which I'd put off starting for months), it took me roughly 4 hours to create all the elements you see on the page and set up additional accounts (like flickr).

It's very tempting to sit back afterwards and look at all the work and think: "Phew! I'm all done, that's it for design!"

But that would be disastrous.

Designing a blog, or your page should be an ongoing process where you experiment with new widgets and new code to see how it integrates itself into the blog.

There are many advantages to doing this, like:

finding a useful widget that makes your page more appealing to your readers
upgrading your own knowledge of manipulating and tweaking your blog
becoming more knowledgeable about products and services on the internet
learn by physically doing instead of dry theory and words

By experimenting on your own blog, the site becomes dynamic and less likely to be stale. But too much change and you'll alienate your audience who may have gotten used to the particular way your site looks. Always have an outlet for feedback and a way your audience to contact you.

Getting back in the groove

2010-01-08T14:30:00.005+11:00

It's been over 3 weeks since I last posted on this blog. Sure I have a great excuse of it being Xmas and New Years, and sure I can also say that I'm working 2 jobs and am flat out. But that means only that I've failed to do anything on this blog for 3 weeks.

I've succeeded in doing nothing.

And because of that my steady traffic has dwindled and now I must start raising my profile once again. Not only that, I'm out of the habit of making time to read/respond to peoples posts. The longer you spend out of the water, the harder it is to get back in.

At least the damage is only 3 weeks instead of 3 months.

In the past I've made the mistake of leaving a blog too long and having it dry up. Once the ideas stop flowing the blog will die shortly afterwards. To have a successful blog, you've got to keep at it and keep building your connections.

So learn from my mistake and don't procrastinate. Jump in and blog something.

Anything!

Now that I've started, my next 2 blog topics have jumped out of the tangled mess that is my mind. See, you've just witnessed my advice come true in this blog post.

Yes, I totally agree with you...

I am awesome!

Spambots: the ultimate indicator of incompetence

2009-12-21T11:40:00.007+11:00

For those who have no idea what spam-bots are all about, here is some quick info about them. But basically, it's an automated program that looks for any page it can comment on and throws in a link to it's originating site. The point is to get better Google page ranking or just flat out spam advertising for any site traffic.

It's the most idiotic type of spam.

And it's cluttering up the internet with garbage.

Recently this blog got hit by a bot (which means that the blog is on the rise and becoming more noticeable). Look at the first comment here and you'll see a vague response. Usually these types of responses are also filled with grammatical and spelling errors. Most publishing platforms (like word-press and even blogger) have filters that automatically take out the links or delete the comments outright.

But, some people still insist they have their uses. The only use I've ever seen for automated responses is as an indicator of incompetence. Any blog that publishes auto-response messages are either too stupid to see the exploit for what it is or too desperate for comments to care.

But the internet is being clogged with these stupid comments and messages with the sole purpose of generating quick and free advertising. If you want solid credibility, stay the hell away from spambots and auto-response scripts. Why? Because anyone who has a clue about blogging, publishing or the net can recognise them for what they are.

And the next thought your readers will have will be about your credibility.

Is this what you want them to be thinking about while reading your material?

Once again, I'm the exception to this rule because I've only allowed the publication of one to use as an example for this post. I'm well aware of the irony here.

You don't plan to fail, you fail to plan

2009-12-18T16:45:00.005+11:00

This is a new section I'm starting about my past (and present) mistakes in blogging, copywriting and life in general. I've created a new tag called "my mistakes", which leads us to my first mistake of not planning out this blog properly before I began it.

It's kind of understandable (in my mind anyway!) because I had no idea where the blog was going when I first started, I was just told to start blog that could be associated with my company. And it was simply going to be a professional showcase of my knowledge and abilities. However, as I've become more proficient in blogging, social networking, brand building etc. this site should reflect those changes, and yet not lose the process of the journey.

So it's an okay mistake to make and learn from because it can be fixed without much hassle, depending on how much content you've already deployed. Over the weekend, I'll be planning exactly what I want from this blog, what new content will be covered and where I want to be in the next few months.

This is an important thing to remember when planning your blog: look to the future and define what you want from your blog in the next month, next six months and next year. If it's generating visitors, then you need to define a target number and the steps that will leand you there. If it's content then you need to think about relevant topics to your niche and how you're going to make it worth reading. Everyone has a blog, anyone can write, so how is your voice going to be different?

I like to take an informal conversational tone, minus my usual sarcastic and offensive tone. Why do this? Because this isn't for my friends to get a laugh out of and enjoy. It's for a serious skill set display and to build my own brand:

I am Thomas George. I am a writer. I am awesome at what I do.

But, like every person, I still make mistakes and this is where you'll hear about them and find out how to turn it into something positive.

Being yourself, only don't; it depends

2009-12-15T13:44:00.006+11:00

I'm going to let you in on a secret about myself: I'm a social chameleon. I don't just change my behaviour in different circumstances, I also shift my personality as well. This has freaked out past girlfriends who've gotten close to me because they see me as this vibrant enthusiastic upbeat kid and then see that's not me at all once alone.

I'm not saying I'm an flesh eating snarling ogre, just a quiet and withdrawn troll.

This comes in handy when copywriting because you have to take on the ideals, the lexicon and even the mannerisms of the person you're writing for. You have to be them, sometimes literally, which is what ghost-writing is all about.

But when it comes to my own writing, it's really hard for me to find a middle ground. My writing for this blog isn't me, but it is.

It's Thomas at a job interview.

You won't see me being dirty or dropping f-bombs like they're going out of fashion. You won't see me pushing boundaries, which is something I love doing in my writing. You won't see me being ultra sarcastic or using hyperbole to the extreme.

It's true, I'm a self indulgent childish writer!

This is something you have to keep in mind when writing your blog, copy or any piece of writing that someone will look at. This is a record of you as a person. Your personal brand. One of my favourite bloggers covered this better than I could.

One of the hardest skills I've learnt (or have I?!) is the one about self censorship. I write this blog as though a potential employer, university professor or researcher might come across.

I'm still me, but not.

For every hour you spend writing..

2009-12-14T15:14:00.006+11:00

Over the past few weeks I've been monitoring my copywriting output against certain factors. Also from what other writers have written I've found a rule of thumb when deploying content and it breaks down like this:

For every one hour you spend writing copy...

Spend double that interacting with people on blogs with similar content and networking your name. This is also know as promoting your brand.

Spend double the time you spent interacting and promoting your blog by reading more blogs, information, books and making sure that you know the subject matter your talking about. This is considered research and will reduce the amount of times you end up looking like an ass.

Following that wont guarantee you success, but it will reduce the time you spend removing your foot out of your mouth, especially if you're as much of an over-opinionated wind-bag as I am!

If only I could follow my own advice sometimes!

But, I did find some interesting advice along these lines through another blog called thecopyblogger. Interesting insights into things to keep in mind when writing.

So, this post took me 10 minutes to write, 20 to post and advertise and an hour to research other material. To be fair, I actually spent around 2 hours because I follow links and get distracted by other things like candy and TV!

The death of the introverted writer

2009-12-10T14:57:00.003+11:00

After writing that title, I realised how redundant and inaccurate it is. And yet, I've decided to keep it because there is no way for me to explain it more succinctly. My writing influences have changed since I went to university because I became versed in the great writers of our times, which is pretty much why I went to uni. And as with all of the great writers in history, they are not easy to read.

Great writing needs to be interpreted, it cannot ever be blatantly obvious.

But that's not all because the real thinkers in literature; the ones that successfully challenge convention and redefine the boundaries of creative thinking are all introverts who struggle with success. One example is Franz Kafka a fellow born in my old hood of Czechoslovakia.

If Kafka were alive today, he would be blogging his angsty little heart out with practically zero page hits. As with all introverts, they live mostly in their own imagination and struggle with regular social interactions. In this day and age to be successful in writing (regardless of your medium) you need to have social networking skills.

You need to be extroverted if you want recognition.

But then again, Kafka's genius wasn't discovered until after his death, so perhaps his posts would stagnate on his blog. That is, until his neighbours discovered it on his computer while investigating the stench of his decomposing corpse. Thus would his work become known to the world.

I find myself doing more social networking than writing lately and what I write can hardly be considered my best or most thought provoking work. Yet it has garnered more attention than anything else that has been unleashed from the unrecognisable mess that is my mind.

It seems paradoxical to me.

But that's the way this world works. You find love when you're not looking for it, you find happiness unexpectedly, or success in another field than the one you want.

Unless you're introverted. Then all that comes after you live a horrible life of neurosis and self doubt. It's only after you've punched your ticket that people realise how unique you really were.

And I really don't want to be that guy shoving his "uniqueness" in peoples faces.

Articles Directories

2009-12-07T10:02:00.006+11:00

Most blogs and information articles are now being tracked by third party sites and assessed for relevancy and consistency. If you've ever visited Technorati, you'll know about the authority score, which is a great indicator of your expertise in the field you're talking about.

These article directories are what I'm researching today and I've discovered more than a few inconsistencies. I’ve had little experience with these sites before so as usual I’ve done a background search on Wikipedia and found some interesting results because it doesn’t just give a general description, but also a slanted add for a specific add:

Article standards developed by SEO experts are a word count of 400-500 words and a keyword density of approximately 2%-3%. Article submission sites like ePubster allow article submissions and contain job boards for authors to freelance writing services for website owners. Ezinearticles also gives authors a way to submit articles but charges authors for multiple submissions. Expertscolumn require Authors to submit unique Articles and rewards Authors through Revenue Sharing services generated from the Articles. While article submission sites allow link backs for SEO, they have limits to how many are normally allowed. Link backs should be keyword optimized using HREF tags with keywords in the title tag. Writing standards also prohibit keyword stuffing, so articles are reader friendly for humans and not just crawlers.

The first thing I noticed was the suspicious capitalisation of certain words like “Authors” and “Articles”. This is a great indication that the person writing the article has an agenda specifically related to Google keyword links. Once I explored the Expertscolumn website I found it to be a very dodgy Indian based scam, where they try to solicit people to write content for their site and give vague promises of monetary influx for the traffic generated.

Then, at the bottom, they recommend you DON’T use a Google adwords account, but another product they’re linking. I didn’t even have to go through their lack of content to see how much of a scam it is.

I wonder if I would have been able to spot it without all the marketing information I’ve soaked in over the last few weeks. Certainly I wouldn’t have suspected it on the Wikipedia page without knowing all the stuff about search engine optimisation that I know now. I would have blindly assumed that the vast editorial process of Wikipedia would have picked it up.

It seems that it’s easier to look like an expert in any field online. Hungry Beast, one of my favourite shows on the ABC also recently did a prank like this, releasing a report about how gullible Sydney residents were over Melbourne people. They copped heavy flack over how believable their reports were when the media picked up the story and didn’t do any fact checking.

But I wonder how many of us do fact checking over any information we soak in over the net?

My advice: Question EVERYTHING. Believe NOTHING.

Except that. Ha!

The SEO noise can only get worse

2009-12-02T23:03:00.010+11:00

Everything I do is centred around Search Engine Optimised words. This means that anything I write needs to be loaded with the correct keywords that people search for on Google which will in turn raise our clients importance in Google search results.

One of the key balancing acts of my role is to keep the copy I do interesting and readable while stuffing it full of those SEO words. This is tedious at the best of times, but some people don't even bother doing this. Do a Google search for "small business marketing", go on. I'll wait.

Did you notice how the first page was filled with nonsensical results like: "Small Business Marketing: Small Businesses" or "Business Marketing- Small Business Marketing"?

The first thing that strikes me is how awful that search string now is. It is cluttered with SEO loaded pages that read like a 14 year olds myspace page (Amateur Capitalisation Of Every Word Makes Me Look So Professional And Cool, Don't You Think?).

Secondly, the search page is almost useless now because it is almost impossible to get any informational differentiation between the results. All they are focused on is cramming it full of keywords.

Over time with everyone doing this do you think Google will get better or more cluttered with indecipherable search results?

No, you say? You're positive the staff will change Google around to work again when the complaints start rolling in!

Sure, they may tweak the overall design, but people will keep up with these changes and adjust their SEO to match. In fact, a whole industry is blossoming with the singular purpose of messing with search results to yield better results for their clients.

So what happens to Google when the primary function of its existence is no longer effective and people cant tell one result from another. Random clicking? How long before they give up and turn elsewhere?

Personally, I don't even use Google for certain search strings any more due to all the SEO clutter. I go to outside third party sites who vet and evaluate websites on a much more strict and tightly controlled basis. Technorati.com is an example of this.

Perhaps whoever solves this dilemma will become the new Google visionary of the next decade?

Target and engage

2009-12-01T22:51:00.006+11:00

The singular focus of being a writer (which is my ultimate goal) is simply to write. With blogging that can also be the primary focus as content does matter, especially worthwhile content. However, that isn’t the full picture and if that is all you focus on, you'll most likely fail. I’ve written plenty of funny blogs which stagnated after a while due to lack of interest. Despite a few odd hits, I never really advertised, figuring word would get around naturally about how awesome I was.

The trick to making any blog successful lies not only with clever writing that captures peoples attention, but also engaging your target demographic and putting yourself out there as someone with an opinion. I’ve been experimenting with this blog, keeping the simplistic layout but also using Google analytics to keep track of my daily traffic and other statistics.

Whenever I’ve responded to certain blog posts about stuff I have an opinion on, I’ve linked my blog and watched how many people came visiting from that post. I should start to link back the posts to the blog, but relevance of the target traffic hasn’t matched my niche subject matter for this blog yet.

What that means is that this blog is very specific, dealing with subject matter in a non-topical way and therefore is very hard to find a niche or audience for. However, by linking posts back to this blog and directing the right kind of traffic back here, I’m slowly gaining headway with site visits that don’t just include my friends and family. This blog is now my most successful with regards to raw page hits in the shortest amount of time.

So there are the two things I’ve learnt and found that works within the blog marketing sphere:

Engage other bloggers
Know your niche

Incidentally, a big thank-you to my mother for being the only subscriber so far. Thanks mum, I hope you’re enjoying reading it and get some sort of entertainment value out of it!

The non-existent fine line

2009-11-30T11:53:00.002+11:00

There is a misconception about the thin line between being funny and being offensive. Being funny (or attempting to be) will inevitably offend someone, somewhere, somehow. This is something that cannot be helped or changed. You can avoid it by churning out emaciated dry copy which reads like an encyclopaedia, but then you run the risk of being boring and losing readers.

You may take a page out of the shock bloggers out there and just not give a damn. Maddox is the best example of this genius and he’s been around for over a decade. He talks pure tripe, but does it in such a hilarious way that I can’t help but love him for it. However, as he constantly complains: his inbox is inundated with idiots complaining about how he’s offended them.

This is despite the big caveats plastered all over his website: “If you disagree with anything you find on this page, you are wrong.”

I’ve always had a penchant for hyperbole and find the offensive and crazy stances quite funny. But the aspect that I can never handle well is how it tends to attract the unwanted attention of the over opinionated mouth breathers who pontificate without any contemplation whatsoever. Tact is definitely an underdeveloped trait in me.

Yet this presents the contradiction I discussed in my first post. Getting loads of attention is exactly what I’m after in advertising, but without generating the interest of the imbeciles while still being punchy and entertaining.

The simple truth is that it cannot be done.

You’ve got to pick a side.

So somewhere around the world, someone will read this post and indignantly soil their underwear.

I look forward to reading your emails.

Word Press: the crap generator

2009-11-27T09:21:00.005+11:00

Word Press is the premiere writing tool used for blogs. I've never gotten to play around with it much, but after a few weeks I find myself quite proficient with it. This is because it's very easy to use; with simple a interface and loads of support for both platform and delivery.

This is good because it allows more people access in delivering their copy to their audience. This is bad because it allows more people access in delivering their copy to their audiences. Have you read some of the stupidity out there? I've just come from a horrendous article from a news site (Sydney Morning Herald online) which has a recognisable and reputable name. Yet the site design is atrocious and riddled with auto-loading spam.

Despite this, I still follow a few blogs they deliver when I was referred to this rambling diatribe by a friend. My immediate response was to question the editorial process in which a reputable news service can publish such confused dribble. The whole article screams of inconsistency and unfocused rambling.

I'm picking up all these new analytical skills towards evaluating any piece of writing however absolutely none of those skills were necessary in identifying raw ineptitude of writing. Which sadly is the majority of blog content out there on the net.

Trying to not think about how my writing shapes up, instead I wonder how long it will be before search engines become intelligent enough to evaluate blog posts and automatically discard those that are too stupid or badly written from search result. I'm sure Google is already working on algorithms that do exactly this.

Which then begs the question, can everything we write be evaluated for skill based on a mathematical process?

Marketing Darwin

2009-11-23T13:18:00.005+11:00

I watched a very interesting documentary regarding Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Its focus wasn't so much on Darwin, but rather the men around him that helped his theory gain a foothold into the scientific community which instantly dismissed it due to religious indoctrination and programming.

This relates directly to advertising as Darwin's supporters had to generate interest inside a hostile market. They did this by debating established scholars and discrediting them in such flamboyant ways so that newspapers would report on them and thereby increase the overall coverage about his revolutionary and very controversial theory.

It got me thinking that if Darwin didn't have these ardent supporters engaging in the political stoushes marketing his message to the masses, would his work have been utterly dismissed as it originally was and lost within the annuls of time?

I've always looked at marketing as generating interest into products that couldn't do so for themselves, thereby making them inferior to those that spread by word of mouth. However I can see that I was very much mistaken with that outlook. Perhaps we owe one of the greatest discoveries ever made by man to the advertisers and snake oil salesman?

I feel a little dirty about this realisation.

Reading and research

2009-11-21T15:40:00.004+11:00

Most of any day is spent reading other blogs and researching specific topics in order to have some clue as to what I'm saying in any post or response. There are many different blogs I have to read, however after reading for a while it all they seem to all conglomerate into one miasma of self serving agendas and angles.

It's when this point is reached that I know it's time for a break. I don't believe I've ever been challenged as much mentally in any role as much as in this one. I've had to scrutinise words and phrases including my own to remove words and appropriate phrases that I don't use. Also, tightening my writing is something editors have advised me when submitting any journalistic pieces. Perhaps I'm finally getting the hang of it through sheer repetition.

As always I learn best by doing and making the mistakes instead of being told about them. It's weird that until I experience something for myself it doesn't crystallise and though it can be demoralising to an extent, I do enjoy the experience. Perhaps this reflects a penchant for my own mental self flagellation.

It's always good to know one's place.

Revisions of Revisions of Revisions

2009-11-20T13:31:00.007+11:00

Have you ever revised something so many times that any changes you were told to make were changes that you didn’t even change in the first place? One of the most difficult things to do is thinking along another person wavelength, to know what phrases and what inflection they prefer to use.

This is even harder when the person you’re attempting to imitate keeps changing their mind about the words they want to use. This is frustrating because it’s a necessary part of the process. After each revision I honestly think I have it right, only to discover it is anything but.

The most disheartening aspect is that with each new blog I work on, I figure I’ve learnt the tricks and now know what to look out for. I bring my fresh piece to the table with a smile of satisfaction, only to discover that once again I’m the heel.

Maybe next week I’ll be better.

The level of control you are unaware of

2009-11-19T21:04:00.000+11:00

There are many tips around about creating good copy and getting a small business web page noticed. These tips are already being used and one of them is to position a company as an expert in whatever field they are in.

So, as time goes on a cacophony of noise will arise, each one claiming to be experts in their fields. So these leave the consumer begging the question, "What can I believe or trust?"

Sadly, that reflects one of the fundamental shifts of advertising focus from 'trustworthiness' to 'believability'. In this day and age the focus is set purely on credibility and simply being believable because of the level of control an advertising company has over information on the internet is pretty much absolute.

Testimonials towards products are concocted, so are web forums and most importantly: search engines are specifically targeted to return information on searches that advertising companies meticulously manipulate.

So in essence, the best option is to be as cynical as you can be at every scrap of information you source on the internet.

Remember: Propaganda is only effective when you are unaware of it.

I wonder if it's possible

2009-11-19T17:54:00.000+11:00

My natural writing voice in very sarcastic and antagonistic. I do this on purpose because I've noticed that any piece of writing I do will receive more attention if I'm antagonistic towards the audience.

If I craft a thoughtful essay tightened and neatly constructed, very few people will argue with it or bother even replying because there isn't any wiggle room in my piece for them to refute me.

So part of my new role in copywriting is to deliver interesting pieces with hidden agendas. I wonder if I can write in that manner and somehow keep my off beat perspective about life and my adventures within.

This blog is my attempt to keep an interesting record of my experience, without being offensive or antagonistic in any way.