Rob’s Recommended Reading of the… um Last 2 weeks or so

I’ve been a busy boy the last couple weeks with new clients coming online and the end of my semester at school rapidly approaching. I’ve been keeping a list of good stuff for you guys, it just hasn’t exactly made its way to the interweb until just now.

Does This Campaign Make My Ad Group Look Fat? An exploration of how Adwords is kind of like a Psycho girlfriend and what you can do to cope. I wrote this for my Adwords Monster Blog, it's been floating around the office for a month while we tried to figure out if it would be funny to people that aren't us. I think it's awesome personally :)

12 Reputations Every Company Should Monitor Online Some good tips from Andy Beal who will probably visit my website now that I mentioned him. Hi Andy! He gets into some things you might not have thought to monitor like key executives and PR people.

10 Reasons Why Everyone Should Love PPC I thought this was a great take on the upside to PPC. I really like the control you have over the medium, the ability to split test easily, and the ability to start and stop at will.

The True Cost of SEO I have to try to explain to somebody at least once a week that SEO is not free. The traffic is free, but what is your time worth? How much do you have to pay an SEO to get you started? How much did your web guy charge you to implement changes? That stuff costs money even if the clicks don’t!

Study Shows Targeted Ads Make Users Uneasy There they go again proving things that don’t need to be proved. Of course people feel a little weird when they stop and think about it. But if an ad is properly targeted a user shouldn’t notice it.

Best Practices When Moving Your Site (by Google) Google’s Webmaster Central Blog gives out some pointers on moving a site to a new domain without nuking your rankings.

Where are all the Google Data Centers? I’m such a cool guy I found you a map!

21 Reasons Why Twitter is Bullshit I’ve come to like Twitter, but I’ll admit at least 2/3 of this is basically true. I’m personally having problems with number 17: “Just ‘cos you work on the internet, and Twitter happens to be on the internet, does not mean Twitter is work.”

While I’m talking about Twitter, Check out this Video with the Twitter Founders. Notice towards the end when asked about monetization there is a 4 minute diversion about being a global resource first and the money will follow or some crap. They did however launch Twitter Japan with an ad block in it. Sign of things to come that actually turn a profit?

6 Ways That Bloggers are Like Rappers Pure genius :) Can’t wait to see Shoemoney on Cribs, he better have a Lambo or at least a Rolls.

The Web 2.0 Site Screw You Coefficient You didn’t know we did math here did you? A fun explanation of how unpopular features that might make money get implemented into websites.

Do You Have My Stapler? I didn’t realize Milton was on LinkedIn  And by the looks of things, his LinkedIn question drummed up at least 24 leads in regards to the whereabouts of his stapler.

Danish PM Finds Running Partners on Facebook How cool is that? Honestly. It’s stuff like that that makes me want to move back to Scandinavia.

You Walk Wrong! As somebody that logs 20-30 miles a week on foot this was really interesting to me. Plus it explains a lot of the weird aches and pains I get in my knees and hips. If I could walk around barefoot and not be looked at like a crazy person I’d be all about it. I would still buy shoes out of force of habit though. The Vivo Barefoot shoes they shout out in the article are kind of interesting to me, but I don’t think I would part with $150 for shoes that are barely shoes.

Some Recent LinkedIn Answers

Question: Seeking your opinions on MySpace and Facebook

I am writing a paper for a conference, in which I compare MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn with respect to professionals who may be using those services. And as I have a profile with each service, I have some observations and opinions I can work with, but I know I'm not smart enough to see everything.

So I want to hear from you. I know you use LinkedIn, or you wouldn't be reading this question. LOL If you HAVE a MySpace profile, and/or if you HAVE a Facebook profile, I would like to know (a) whether you think they are advancing your business or career in any way, and (b) what you particularly like (or dislike) about those services.

For purposes of my own research, I'm not particularly interested in opinions not directly related to the questions above, and I'm not particularly interested in the opinions of those not having profiles. But I recognize if you're one of those people you may need to talk anyway, so have at thee. LOL

Non-trivial, on-topic answers will get an "acknowledgement" credit on the paper -- which I'm sure will TOTALLY make your day. Woo-hoo! LOL

My Answer

I have a Myspace account (well a couple of them... one personal and one professional) and a Facebook account and they've both been helpful to me professionally. It's not easy to make it happen though. You have to develop good content, build links to your accounts, actually be involved and social on the site, and it helps if you do some other promotion whether it's online or in more traditional media (print, radio, TV).

I have a Myspace page focused on my business that has done very well with organic rankings in Google, Yahoo and MSN and has driven traffic and sales leads to my web site. A while back I wrote a blog post on my Myspace page about going to Milwaukee for a few days and ended up getting a request for a meeting while I was in town from a younger entrepreneur.

My Facebook profile hasn't been quite as strong professionally, but it is useful for keeping connected with younger professionals that aren't into LinkedIn. If you use the Groups feature, I think you can extract some good business value as well assuming you can promote your group enough to gain some traction. The other tool Facebook gives you that I think is too often overlooked is the super targeted PPC available. You can cut down Facebook's US network of 20+ million people to just people at a particular school with a particular major, or just people between certain ages in a certain town. It's not free but it is very cool.

Question: Can business pages on facebook join groups? Can they invite people to become fans?

My Answer

Unfortunately business fan pages can't join groups, probably because they're pretty close to a group to begin with. You can invite people though.

On the right hand side of the page there is a text link to "Share with Friends" and there is also a "share" button on the very bottom of the page in the right hand corner you can use to promote/invite people.

The other thing I've done to promote things like this is to add the URL to e-mail newsletters and relevant web sites. You can also use Facebook's PPC platform to promote a fan page if you are ok with spending some money.

Question: What do you think about the newly announced Google "Automatic Matching" feature?

It's been widely reported even though technically it is in beta. http://www.google.com/search?q=google+Automatic+Matching It's a way to expand your reach and spend the rest of your budget by allowing Google to find matches that go beyond broad or extended. I won't share my opinion, but I'm writing about it in an upcoming column and would love to hear what the LinkedIn community has to say.

My Answer

That is one of those "helpful" features that I turn off immediately. I really don't like spending my client's money just to spend money. I'm not anti-broad matching, the public is incredibly creative when it comes to creating a search query, but deliberate guessing by a computer in order to make sure all of my budget gets spent does not sit well with me. Adwords is most profitable to users when tightly controlled.
Links: http://www.smsrd.com/2008/02/google-budget-optimizer-house-always.html