David Dalka attends and reports business events and conferences to discover the future of business where technology, organizations and customer exeperience meet. Also serves as emcee, moderator and motivational business keynote speaker.
Google (GOOG)
Google Blogoscoped has an interesting post about trends today, here is my contribution. It’s interesting to see people search for this, are they investors, searchers or advertisers? Perhaps it’s all three groups. People are obviously looking for the “next google”.
After over half a month, Google finally put up a site on the URL in the September United Airlines Magazine.
It’s interesting that this took over half a month for Google to properly coordinate this simple media campaign between a magazine and a micro site. It certainly shows all is not well within Google’s recruiting department.
Robert Scoble: Keynote Speech: Naked Conversations
Talks about history, blogs are best way to get stuff indexed in Google.
There is an informal conversation network. Tells the story about how a few people he told that he was leaving Microsoft. How that spread and then a largely unread blog was the one that first posted it is why you need to pay attention to *ALL* bloggers, not just him.
Talking to bloggers is more important than covering Walt Mossberg.
People who read blogs are far more likely to click and take action.
The auto blog reader is more likely to click through to other auto sites.
Most people understand search engines. Talks about google.com and how people search “Yahoo” and vice versa. It demonstrates that it’s a Google world.
If you pipes are leaking, you need a plumber. So you type in “Chicago plumber leak” and you need to be on the top of the organic search results. Links are important and so are other things. Changing the content every day helps the algorithms. Blogs, due to the frequency of content update are excellent tools to do this.
He talks about the plumber blog that gets link due to the knowledge. Also talks about how he got a ripped off once with a carpet and is blog entry ranked higher than the company.
A dirty secret about Google is that the ad click through rate is lower there du to the higher educational level of a typical Google user.
People will link to audio and video more than they will text. Suggested video press releases. Be different. Hugh’s cartoon’s are different. Video and Flickr and other sites can create buzz.
Talked about the “Dell Hell” issue. (strangely few in the room had heard of it – shows how far we have to go) Tells the well known Jeff Jarvis story.
Talks about how to listen. (I would say this is Robert’s biggest gift)
Then gave examples of how he linked to complaints directly when he joined Microsoft, fascinating!
Currently, HP story is a great example. They have not listened to the blogosphere. It is making the ethics crisis there worse.
Every project should have a story behind it. Talked about channel 9 naming story and how Microsoft built transparency. The PR folks didn’t pay attention to our blogs and Channel 9 until we were in the New York Times. It’s so funny how that works. Tells more about telling good stories and how important that it. It’s all about story telling process.
If you post something it shows up in my RSS aggregator. Using RSS is far more productive!
How do I get my content viewed in new places…talked about second life.
Valleywag recently wrote about a bad pitch. Democracy Now, Z Fank, Ipod can aggregate. Steve Jobs used Rocketboom to do the recent Apple launch.
Again, HP – where is the engagement in the ethical issues?
Ragan PR conferece 2006
On September 1st, I posted this entry. It still hasn’t changed. Will Laszlo Bock waste the entire month’s advertisement? He’s almost halfway there now!
In a smart move, Ford hired outside it’s own industry for it’s next CEO.
Imagine that, hiring someone for their knowledge and competencies, realizing that fresh perspectives are necessary to lead in a different way and solve unique and complex problems. Great article and a better decision. Are you listening search engine and interactive marketing leadership and boards of directors?
Good luck, Alan Mulally, you are taking on an immense challenge.
Why do I love holiday weekends? Because the major media goes home and there is a ton of great blog posts out there based on people’s core thoughts everywhere I look (including my blog) instead of the major media discussion follow on. In fact, why does David Sifry of Technorati make the mistake of classifying these big media sites as blogs at all if they don’t allow trackbacks, comments and true discussion? David you should really fix that.
What Scoble talks about in his post along with a cast of great comments is interesting and all too accurate. But the notes about lack of retail investor involvement are encouraging, I don’t think we have Silicon Valley restraint to thank for that I think we have Enron and Sarbanes-Oxley (higher cost of doing IPOs and being public now).
In Flickr doesn’t suck, the Don McAskill post states, “Companies triumph over market leaders all the time. They do it by innovating and executing brilliantly.” What a refreshing thought process. Sad to see it on a site discussing 19 zillion unnecessary photo sharing sites that gets tons of traffic discussing this topic, but refreshing nonetheless. So, maybe people are focusing on the businesses that tech guys are building and hyping because they are missing the critical element – business skills, search engine optimization and related expertise. A product manager is someone with a combination of business and technical skills in every successful company I’ve ever been a part of, I doubt this rule will change. People need to think bigger than “Google will buy us”.
What is wrong with Frothy Bubble 2.0? It’s not based on basic business principles like customer satisfaction, unmet needs and workable business models. I can spot this stuff a mile away when I talk. For example, when I went to Search Engine Strategies last month, one Web 2.0 person I know asked me, “Why are you going to such a boring conference, dude?” That sentence wouldn’t be right without the dude would it? Well, I had the time of my life and I learned a ton of great stuff to boot! Meanwhile his project is $100,000 in expenses and no revenue in sight.
So what is there to do? How about looking at some of the business plans I’ve seen that make sense, have revenue models and either go into new markets or attack fundamental basic flaws in the existing search engines? Naw, that would take real work, less photos at parties and it would take brainstorming and thinking outside of the box.
Think about it, pick up the phone if you have a real idea or you are an angel investor – especially if you are one that doesn’t even own a camera – then I really want to hear from you!!!
The September issue of the United Airlines onboard magazine, has one of those full page Google recruiting micro site ads on it. You’ve seen those nifty ads with the cute childhood pictures on it. Well, the URL in the full page ad doesn’t work at present. Great use of capital to create shareholder value…NOT!!! This is just another in a long series of embarassments by Laszlo Bock’s team where the recruiting process doesn’t function.
