Google has lots of excellent tools to help you research your niche - including Google Trends,  Google Reader - and now Google Blog Search.

And they’ve just added RSS and Atom feeds to the Blog Search, to make it evn easier for you to get fresh information from your Target Market.

Simply click on the links under “Subscribe” in the left-hand column of the Blog Search front page to subscribe to any topic or story in any feed reader, like Google Reader. Google also offer an iGoogle gadget that lets you embed the Blog Search front page right inside of your iGoogle page or any other page where iGoogle gadgets are accepted. You can browse topics and drill into stories from within the widget, and you can customize the gadget to choose which topics you want to follow.

And Google have added two new features to the Blog Search homepage to better help you discover what people are talking about right now on the web: Hot Queries and Latest Posts.

Hot Queries lists searches currently popular in Blog Search — it’s an easy way to quickly dive into the trending points of conversation on the web.

Latest Posts, on the other hand, shows new posts from popular blogs. While Hot Queries highlights what people are looking for, Latest Posts lets you find out about stories even before people start searching for them.

There’s a lot of great, fresh content being published in blogs every day.

So use these tools to help you research your markets and plumb new depths of your inch-wide, mile-deep niche!

Happy researching!
John

I spent a fun and insightful day last week at Nick Tadd’s Social Media Workshop. Altogether a very useful and thought-and-action-provoking day!

One of the questions I raised with Nick was the desirability of using corporate versus personal branding and accounts when using the social media.

Nick has since posted a very interesting blog post examining the issue of Social Media Schizophrenia on the Ecademy Social Media Club (SMUDGE) Forum.

Nick concludes that “…The answer is to simply be YOU…you should focus on one core business, the one that you feel most passionate about. Build your on-line brand, personality, and profile around that one business. Once people LIKE and TRUST you, you can then expose them to your other business activities, even if they are totally un-related.”

As I noted in my response to Nick’s post, I believe the choices are not necessarily straightforward, and will depend on the individual, the business, target market and the industry.

And, as the social media and the way they are driving business strategy are here to stay, it’s well worth thinking through the issues as they affect YOU and YOUR BUSINESS…

As Nick (and Penny and Thomas Power, the founders of Ecademy) point out, the mediums available for promotion of one’s business are rapidly changing as we go into the 21st Century - largely due to the changes social media have brought, as well as the ‘information overload’ that we now have thanks to the internet as a whole.

As a result, we’re well into the ‘age of recommendation’ and the tendency to follow people, rather than brands (viz Penny’s KnowMe-LikeMe-FollowMe analysis).

There are many big corporates who use the social media - especially Facebook and Twitter - very successfully to promote the brand (Dell, etc) , rather than individuals - and this is an appropriate approach where the brand already has global or growing recognition.

Many senior executives do, of course, also have a personal Facebook and/or Twitter account, as this allows the corporate to put a more human face on the brand and plays to the above factors.

Many senior executives do, of course, also have a personal SM account, as this allows the corporate to put a more human face on the brand and plays to the above factors.

There’s an interesting TechCrunch blog post on how Charities are using Twitter very successfully to raise funds - this of course is using a corporate branding…

Celebrities are the prime example of using the social media to great effect on a personal branding basis, as people follow them (or their stage name personas) as ‘fans’.

There are also those who use the social media both with a ’sober business persona’ and also with a zanier ‘ the real me’ persona - eg Simon Leung (of Adwords List Building) - @SimonLeung has 39,900 followers, while @CoolSi has 43,600.

Using a personal brand on the social media may also be less easy for smaller businesses, eg the local hairdresser/cake shop or online graphic designer, unless the proprietors have ‘big personalities’ and/or are already well known in their business/area.

For the smaller start-up business/entrepreneur, social media are inevitably going to be a necessary part of core strategy for the future – it’s more and more a question of making the product fit the media, rather than vice-versa.

However, as they may not already be known by their persona, whether to use a corporate or personal branding will depend on a range of factors, including the business, the industry, the target market, personality, etc…

So thanks Nick for a timely post - all good ‘grist to the mill’…

…and I’ll include some questions on these aspects in my Free Tele-Interview with Thomas Power on Wednesday 8th July on “How To Use Social Media For Business Promotion”.

Details at: www.ThePowerNetworker.com

I look forward to you joining us on Wednesday!

Cheers!

John Thornely

I caught a Twitter and blog post from John Haydon about a video tutorial on feeding your Twitter stream with your Flickr activity by Ian Wilker that you may find helpful.

This is a great approach for posting images that tell a story or update your Twitter followers - especially for businesses or non-profits organisations that communicate their impact with images, but have limited time for social media marketing.

As John noted, this process seemed so easythat he’s done a screencast while he connected his own Flickr and Twitter accounts.

So, my thanks to John Haydon and Ian Wilker. Follow John on Twitter.

I came across this useful video on “How to tell a story” by Scott Simon.

While the video is aimed at journalists, it is a very useful reminder of how to tell a story in your copywriting…

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Hack or Copywriter, we humans love stories and your story needs to grab your readers’ attention!

And if you want your story (or copy) to go viral, as Scott says… “Give your audience something they can pass on” - a catch-phrase or idea.

Happy copywriting

John

Here’s your invitation to a Tele-Interview I’m doing on July 8th with Thomas Power, Chairman of Ecademy, on how to find buyers and network using Facebook and Twitter…

“Can you afford to not to be in a market with 300 million Prospective Buyers?”

That’s the question that THOMAS POWER, Chairman of ECADEMY, asked us at the first #Twalk Twitter workshop recently hosted by Ecademy.

And that’s the question he’s going to answer in a Tele-Interview on Wednesday 8^th July…

Twitter and Facebook are the two KEY markets that are HOT right now and dwarf all the other Social Media sites as the place to win new prospects and build sales.

As Thomas says: “Twitter is growing beyond exponentially, with 1000% growth in the past year and 100% in the past couple of months alone! Projected use should reach 100 million by Christmas and it’s set to explode in the next year, once the school-age generation really catches on.”

And, with 200 million users, Thomas says “Facebook is a huge and active marketplace. So any serious entrepreneur is missing out badly if you’re not using it!

“You need to get into Twitter and Facebook NOW.”

As on-the-pulse entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki says: “Twitter and Facebook are the best way to market your product today - and both are free”.

Only 200 lines are available and are likely to be snapped up fast, so REGISTER NOW at www.ThePowerNetworker.com if you don’t want to be left behind…! It’s FREE!

Talk with you then!

Google added a new set of tools on it’s search pages last month that will help you find new untapped niches!

So go and check out the enhanced Search Options capabilities – including the ‘Wonder Wheel’!

First, go to Google and do a search – say for “lose weight”. On the results page, look just below the Google logo (in the light blue bar below the line), and click on ‘Show Options’.

Down the left side, you’ll see a menu of options. Click on ‘Wonder Wheel’ and you get a map of your search term and related search terms – the spokes.

Click on any of the spokes and you begin to dig into sub-niches – just keep repeating to find sub-sub-niches.

You can also get a list of similar results (spokes of the wheel) by clicking on the ‘Related Searches’ link in the menu on the left side.

At each step, check the number of results for the search (in the upper right hand corner) until you get to a ‘manageable niche’ (say <200k websites) where you’ll be able to compete effectively for the keyword… You can also use the phrase-match option by putting your search term in “inverted commas”.

And don’t forget to check the organic and paid search results being displayed on the right side of the page (your competitors).

Also, click on ‘Review Sites’ and ‘Forums’ to check out the opposition or find topics or material for your own pages!

Pretty useful and quick way of checking out niches – huh?

Oh, and the spokes of the Wonder Wheel should give you ideas for associated products and further pages for your website…

And don’t forget to check out the other Search Options – you can filter by time period and the Timeline gives a useful indication of interest in a topic (and is a bit faster to use than Google Trends for a ‘quick-and-dirty’ appraisal).

When you use the Search Options in conjunction with Google’s Keyword Tool (just type the niche term into the tool to check the number of searches for that and related terms) and Google Trends tool, you’ve got some of the fastest and most powerful free research tools available to internet marketers!

Click on the screen below to see Google’s summary of Search Options and the Wonder Wheel!

Happy niche-spotting!

On the same day that Microsoft unveiled its new Bing search engine (see upcoming post), Google has announced Google Wave, a new in-browser communication and collaboration tool that is set to change the way we work together online.

Delegates at the Google I/O Conference last week were treated to an introduction to Google’s new market-leading product/platform, due to be released later this year – just click on the screen below to watch it.

In brief, Google Wave is a real-time communication platform that combines aspects of email, instant messaging, online meetings, social networking, web chat, wikis, polls and project management in one in-browser communication system. Business colleagues or friends can come together to discuss topics or share information and files.

You can see more about Wave at About Google Wave or Mashable. Some of the key capabilities and extensions include:

• Real-time: you can see what someone else is typing, character-by-character.
• Text, Photos, Maps, Polls and more: you can share all these and more.
• Playback: You can playback any part of the wave to see what was said.
• Embeddability: Waves can be embedded on any blog or website.
• Applications and Extensions: Just like a Facebook or Twitter application, or an iGoogle gadget, developers can build their own apps within waves – anything from bots to complex real-time games.
• Wiki functionality: Anything written within a Wave can be edited by any other participant.
• Simultaneous Translation: As well as an automated spell-checker (‘Spelly’), there is even a robot called ‘Rosie’ who can translate simultaneously between 40 languages!
• Gadgets & Robots: Google’s Wave Gadgets Tutorial and Wave Robots Overview outline what is available and what could be developed.
• Open source: The Google Wave code is open source, to encourage developers to produce new applications and extend functionality. Thus, for instance, you can combine Twitter ‘tweets’ into a ‘twave’, and so on.

I/O Delegates were given access to the beta version of Wave, to help Google develop both the platform and applications for it. Google has deliberately developed Wave as an Open Source application, so there are likely to be a myriad of new applications available by the time Wave formally launches – and over the following months!

So, all-in-all, within the year, Google Wave is likely to become a hugely powerful – and free – open-source collaboration platform with many, many applications and extensions.

Just watch the presentation above and let your mind imagine how on-line interaction and meetings are likely to evolve – and the host of extensions and applications that will be available very shortly – with Google Wave!

And just imagine the whole new ways you will be able to develop leads for your business and then interact with your prospects and customers…!

Join the Wave!

What a reminder that the Internet world is constantly changing!

Google announced it’s new on-line communication and collaboration platform – Google Wave – on the same day as Microsoft unveiled it’s new search engine ‘Bing’ (it’s replacement for ‘Live Search’).

And just preceding this was Wolfram Alpha, the new search engine that’s reputed to actually answer your queries with useful results!

While many see Bing as being an attempt by Microsoft to catch up with Google and Yahoo, and they’ll be spending a reputed $100M on advertising in the coming year, it is unlikely to do more than dent Google’s lead.

Microsoft Search continues to struggle to gain market share from Google, who last month secured 64.2 per cent of all search queries in the US, compared to Live Search’s paltry 8.2 per cent.

And Google continues to enhance it’s own search engine with capabilities that include the ‘Wonder Wheel’! It’s a great tool to help you with your niche research – see my blog post Find Untapped Niches With Google’s New “Wonder Wheel”!

As well as looking rather like Google Search, some of the results options in Bing are similar to Googles’ new Search Options - although in Microsoft’s overview of Bing, they say that it’s supposed to provide much more fulfilling search responses.

But what does this all mean for you?

Well, in addition to using these new tools to help you find new niches, pull in more prospects and communicate better with your customers, just stop a moment and imagine how on-line search, interaction and meetings are likely to evolve – and the host of extensions and applications that will be available very shortly – with these enhancements and platforms!

I’ll be posting further articles on these developments, and how you can use each to enhance your own marketing, on the Internet-Tycoons Blog and Forum.

Spin the Wheel, cry ‘Bing’ and join the Wave!

WARNING: YOU HAVE 3 SECONDS!

That’s right! Research indicates that you have between 3 to 8 seconds to get a searcher to click on your listing or to make your visitor decide to stay on your website, rather than ‘click on’ and go elsewhere.

In a recent Conference Call, we discussed how you need to ensure the key elements of your website ‘grab’ your visitor and make them decide to stay, as well as eye-tracking studies that reveal the way that searchers view Search Engine Results Pages (’SERP’s). So here’s a bit more about how to grab your visitor and make him/her stay…

Eyeball It!

We are becoming ever more internet-savvy and impatient for results… Recent ‘heat map’ eye-tracking studies of search behaviour described by thinkeyetracking.com indicate that - in the last 3 years - we have gone from reading every line of the search results (the old ‘F Pattern’) to reading mostly just the results in the top left corner of the screen.

A study by eyetools.net similarly shows up the ‘Golden Triangle’, in the top left corner of the SERPs, dominantly viewed by searchers, with a brief glance at the top sponsored results at the top right.

And you should watch the video below, and view Google Blog page Eye-tracking studies: more than meets the eye, to understand just how fast the average person searches a web page to check whether it has relevant information!

And this applies to Landing and Sales pages too! As the eyetools study comments… “People don’t always realize that they can optimize their landing pages using eyetracking results to better convert their traffic into sales. If you’re paying for traffic, you can make a huge improvement in ROI by optimizing landing pages (30% boost in sales!)”.

Google Page 1

In the thinkeyetracking study, “87% respondents replied that they would modify the search terms or refine the search by category” if they couldn’t find their desired search result on the first page of Google, rather than go on to further pages.

So being in the top 5 to 10 listings on the fist page of Google results really does matter - whether for Organic or Search results!

Grab Your Visitor by the (Eye)balls!

Within 3 seconds of your visitor arriving on your website, the page needs to have convinced him/her clearly that they’ve (at last!) come to the right place!

Some of the key elements that will help convince your visitors stay on your website - and hence reduce your ‘Bounce Rate’ (people leaving from the page they arrived on) - include:

• Easy viewing of key information ‘above the fold’ in the ‘golden triangle’  - ie visible in top left corner of the first screen.
• A strong headline that includes the Keyword they used to reach your site
• A graphic that mirrors the Keyword
• Few distractions
• A clear reason to go on reading…

You can read more about background and strategies for this at the following websites

• Five Tips for Writing Effective Web Headlines
• 3 Match Types With The Same Quality Score

Don’t worry about the ‘Adwords’ angle etc – focus on what these tell us about how we need to grab visitors’ attention and lead them through our web pages by KEEPING THEIR INTEREST!

So the moral of the story is ‘think like your prospects’ - as they say, “walk a mile in your customer’s shoes!”

Grab your visitor by the eyeballs, take him/her by the hand and lead them briskly through your page sequence, feeding their excitement as you go, till you make them a ‘no-brainer’ offer they can’t refuse - what Mark Joyner calls the ‘Irresistible Offer’.

Happy copywriting!
John Thornely

How does Google rank bidders on its Adwords program?

That’s a perennial question that Google never answers directly - and as a result, leads the web advertising industry a merry game ‘catch-if-catch-can’!

It also leads to much misunderstanding by those who can’t afford to spend their days (and money) researching the actual performance of Google Ads… and find their ads being ranked in strange ways - or not shown at all!

So when a senior figure in Google comes out and clarifies the Google Ad Auction process, and how the ‘Quality Score’ of your ad (and other factors) affect both the ranking and cost of your ad (and whether it’s shown at all)… it’s got to be helpful!

And the video below, presented by Hal Varian, Google CHief Economist, is one of the clearest explanations I’ve seen of the importance of managing Adwords Quality Score and the effect on the Ad auction and your Ad placement.

Consulting Google’s Help pages is a bit like consulting the classical Oracle at Delphi - you never get a direct answer! But this is certainly the most easily understood explanation I’ve seen from Google on the auction process and ranking of your Ad.

If you’re not familiar with the basics of  Google Adwords, you can get a description of Quality Score here. But the video is clearer… So maybe Google does actually realise it needs to clarifyhow it’s rnking system works!

Happy Adword-ing
John Thornely