E-book review: 50 Kick-Ass Keyword Strategies

One of the many facets of WonderGroup is search engine optimization/keyword research. One of the blogs that has helped inundate me with information on SEO is the Wordtracker Academy, which emailed me earlier this week to promote a new e-book.

Check out 50 Kick-Ass Keyword Strategies here. Here's what I thought of it:

PROS
--> Very digestible-- each tip has its own clear, bulleted page with no additional fluff.

--> While much of the content is basic to SEO, many of the tips offer new perspectives and helpful tips.

--> The book provides a great list of free tools I hadn't used before.

--> The author, Aaron Wall, is great about keeping a conversational tone, and using anectdotes and examples to clarify his points.

CONS
--> It feels like no one even proofread this thing once. Words like "chuncks" (chunks) and "coveing" (covering) would have been caught with even a basic Spellcheck, and mistakes like "inking" (linking) and "forward" (toward) mean that no human took the time to scan the final product. This kind of thing drives me crazy. They even misspelled URLs they were making a case for ("competer.com" for compete.com). Sloppy.

--> The first thing that I did was print the book off so I could read it at my own pace, mark it up, pass it on, etc. While mostly this wasn't a problem-- the layout is really great for reading it on the printed page-- the book is heavy with hyperlinks. If the URLs had been spelled out instead, I could see this book being much more useful in the long-term. My printed version is much less useful than it could have been.

OVERALL
--> Worth the $27 we spent on it, because the content is the most important thing and there's a lot to be learned here.

Ahab vs Fail Whale, Orwell <3 Google Maps?

Something I've never heard about George Orwell before: "I think he would have been a blogger."

This morning, Jenny W. pointed me toward two interesting articles. The first is from The New York Times and discusses a project to put all of George Orwell's diaries online, in blog format, 70 years after he wrote them.

The coolest part of the blog (which you can visit here) is that it's not just churning out the passages, but is milking the inter-connectivity of the internet by linking to maps, definitions (since some 70 year old phrases don't exactly translate in 2008), etc. It reminds me a bit of this TED Conference video, in which Erin McKean talks about online dictionaries: they are currently just digital versions of their hardbound counterparts, but they could be doing so much more.

Jenny also sent me a bit about Moby Dick a la Twitter. I've blogged about something like this before, and I'm a little conflicted: I think it's an interesting use of micro-blogging, but essentially is the wrong medium for the message. Where the Orwell diaries are bringing new functionality and education to an overlooked piece of literature, reading Moby Dick through Twitter is more or less a gimmick.

There! Proof that I am not obsessed with all things Twitter!

Thanks for sending the links, Jenny. Anyone out there want to argue with me about Melville this morning? ("I grin at thee, thou grinning Fail Whale...")

Social media rations: a query

My brother and I were talking (online) about Twitter, and he said something that struck me:

I feel like the more I tweet the less I want to blog. Like Twitter steals all my good ideas.

("Tweet" means "post to Twitter," if I haven't covered that before.)

So there's the idea that "Twitter steals all my good ideas." I've found the same thing: why stretch out an idea that I was just able to sum up in 140 characters? If I've already distilled an idea down to its most succinct form... what more do I need to say? It has made me a more haiku-like person, I can tell you that.

But the thing that really snagged my attention was the first part: "The more I use (social medium 1), the less I want to use (social medium 2)."

Do you feel that you have an allowance? For instance: "I have x amount of energy/time, which I can either spend uploading pictures to Flickr, updating my Facebook stats, or writing a meaty blog post."

Have you ever experienced this? Which social media take precedence for you?

How to Build a Social Media Campaign

Yoinked from AdRants (thanks Steve!), an interesting video about the basics of social media. It solidly explains a concept I grapple with just about every day. The author mentions a few helpful tools, some of which you've heard me talk about before and all of which you should check out.

"And remember, online, nothing fails faster than 'phony.'"

"You people"

Just sifting through some WonderBlog analytics. Here are some findings, just for fun, about our readers:

--> 60.66% of you guys use Internet Explorer. Firefox takes second with 31.73%.

--> We have one reader from Botswana.

--> Seriously though, about 99% of readers are from North America. Unsurprising. But we do have a handful of people in other countries around the world.

--> Roughly 38% of you have a screen resolution of 1024 x 768. Again, unsurprising, though I did expect that percentage to be a bit higher.

--> Tons of you are here for ToppsTown information-- it seems our "behind the scenes" posts with game tips and world secrets are drawing a lot of the attention. (In case that's why you're here, check out these posts for ToppsTown information.)

--> Most of you find us through search. Other interesting referrals: Twitter comes in at #5, and Triiibes.com at #7. Heck yeah!

--> Our most-visited posts are about ToppsTown, but other popular posts are from when we launched BeeMovieGame.com, when I talked about Nicktropolis (Jan '07!), and when I mentioned Dove Pro-Age (Feb '07!).

--> You guys hardly ever, ever comment. Lame.

Free the Airwaves

Evan pointed me toward this campaign to take back the airwaves. Specifically, with television going all digital (hadn't you HEARD?), there's a lot of "spectrum" available for use. But how to use it?

Google has some ideas! Watch the videos, explore the website, maybe sign a petition. What do you think?

When a geek goes off the grid

A couple of days ago, our beloved Jeff/Spidey took off for a family vacation. He's... somewhere... Canada or Montana or southern Uzbekistan... it doesn't really matter where he is, but I can tell you where he isn't.

He isn't anywhere!

When we talk about persistent presence-- which we do a lot, I apologize-- we talk about how technologies can make you feel close to someone, like they're in the same room or more in your life than perhaps they actually are. And we get an awful lot of backlash about technologies like Twitter, including a great deal of, "Who cares what you had for breakfast?!"

If Jeff had taken a vacation to somewhere with cell phone service, I'd be reading quick posts and seeing pictures by now. If he were somewhere with wifi, he'd be the one WonderBlogging. (Yeah right.)

But as it were, Jeff is completely off my map. No ambient intimacy. And thank heaven this is only temporary, because as expectations shift and technology becomes more accessible, the people off the grid are missing out on more and more.

The high school friends who never adopted Facebook? The old coworkers who never joined LinkedIn? The family members who still don't email? There's a special kind of limbo for them, and I think it's getting harder to crawl back out.

Simple game: Cubefield

Have you ever developed a game?

If so, did you at any point sit in a room and try to create The New Game, and in the process you keep piling on features and levels and obstacles until the game is so convoluted you have to scratch the whole idea?

Yeah, me neither.

Someone turned me onto this game today: Cubefield. Keep this game in mind as you brainstorm next time. The simplest games are the most addicting, usually.


Oh, and don't forget to dodge the cubes. When you don't, you lose. ...That's it.

P.S. If you want to make the game harder, try to take a screen grab while you play. That's why I get paid the big bucks, I guess.

Fire Eagle (*screeeeech*)

Check out Yahoo's new Fire Eagle, which I heard about through this Google Earth Blog post, which a friend shared me*. News travels so far to reach you...

The short story is that Fire Eagle helps pair your location (through GPS, etc) with services and applications that can use that data.

Do you have a friend who uses Brightkite, for example? They can now take that Brightkite info to other areas of the web. And as the Google Earth Blog post mentions, there are tons of mobile implications here.

Looking forward to digging into the site, though I admit I don't use GPS much. Fire Eagle is a good incentive to be more proactive in that arena. (Also a reason to get an iPhone or something.)




*Why did I include the path? People at work ask me where I find this stuff, and I just think it's interesting to point out all the different funnels that information has to pass through to reach me (and then you).

ToppsTown: demo video

Check out this awesome demo video that the team put together to promote the world! This is ToppsTown, in case you haven't signed up and have been living vicariously through me and my posts.

And if you'd like to see a higher-quality version, check out our homepage (for now).

ToppsTown: new Friends area

Remember when the Friends section was inside your ToppsTown Binder? No more, my friends! Look for a new Friends button in the same place you'd go to visit your Clubhouse or play games.


This gives us a lot more freedom to start adding interactive features. Visit any one of your friends to see their Clubhouse, send them a Heckle or remove them as a Friend. You can still flip their cards to see stats such as how many trophies they've earned, or their highest rank on the Game Zone leaderboards.

SesameStreet.org evolves

Sesame Street has revamped its site (thanks Cynopsis) and I think it's fantastic. I've spent quite a bit of time watching old Sesame clips-- I was a huge fan of the show when I was younger, as I've mentioned twice before.

Explore the site and see if it doesn't take you back. What a great resource for kids-- it reminds me of when my coworker Lisa brings her son to the office and shows him PBS videos. As the practice of watching videos on the computer together gains popularity, sites like the new Sesame Street will definitely be an asset to families.

(My only beef: videos should not start automatically with no pause or mute button! Freakin' Elmo.)

A Short Time Disconnected

Today there was a glitch with my twitter account. It stopped sending tweats to my phone. It was strange. It was as if I was suddenly disconnected from my friends and colleagues. I felt ill-informed and out of sync. I'm telling you, this social thing can be quite addicting. It shows the power of this social trend as well as the potential of it's power. Just something to keep in mind.

Eepybird & Sticky Notes

I received an email from Eepybird, highlighting a preview of their new "Sticky Notes" experiment. (Post-It must not be behind them.)

Here's the video... which, honestly, lacks something in comparison to the Mentos & Diet Coke experiments. But here we go:

Persistent presence: Twitter & your bedroom

"Persistent presence" (or "ambient itimacy") is something I talk about quite a bit at work. (Jeff makes me do it.) Basically, technology helps you feel as though you're more intimate with someone than you are-- for instance, I know what's going on in my friends' lives even if they live half a nation away because of Facebook or Twitter (or a combination of multiple technologies). There's more to this idea, but that's the basic gist.

I was describing to Jeff how persistent presence helps ground me during business trips. The way I explained it: when you're away from home, sometimes all you want is your own bed. Your favorite chair. Your bedroom, where you know where everything is. You yearn for that familiarity... you want to be home.

I get that sense of familiarity from sites that I frequent. I love going up to my hotel room and logging onto Twitter: no matter where I am (Omaha, Little Rock, NYC...), Twitter always looks the same. There's the bright teal that sets it apart, and my friends engaged in their @fest.

You probably have the same sites that you visit frequently enough that you would notice if anything moved (just like items in your bedroom or drawers in your kitchen). Maybe you freaked out a little bit when Facebook revamped (or rejoiced when Delicious did).

If I could pack up my bedroom and bring it with me on business trips, I would. For now I have to leverage the power of persistent presence and my sickening familiarity with social networks to make me feel at home.

Vanishing act

Business travel kills all capacity for blogging. I have been bouncing around like mad lately, so I apologize for the recent lack of stimulus!

I try not to be a total Godin Groupie, but today's post about architecture was made for me to pass on. A huge chunk of my job (let's say 40%?) is information architecture. IA is a field I wish more marketers knew about, understood, respected, and recognized the necessity of. I'm going to pretend that's what Godin's post is really about.

I recently had the opportunity to teach some bright high school students about information design/architecture. They were riveted, which honestly surprised me. They loved seeing the skeleton of a website, and how different that is from a finished product. They really seemed to grasp the need to organize before you design a site, though they hadn't considered it before. Such a good sign, because in a few years when they enter the workforce, this will most likely be The Way Things Are.

The tribe has reopened

If you haven't been reading Seth Godin's blog, you might be unawares of his Tribes project. If you are related to marketing-- and even if you're not-- you should read the his full post here. You lucky dog... he has reopened membership and you should apply.