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.

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!

There are many very useful resources out there on the Web – and lots of them are free! So why not make full use of them?

Here are some more you can try…

1. Alexa: http://www.alexa.com/

2. iWeb Tools: http://www.iwebtool.com/tools/

3. Way Back Machine: http://www.archive.org/index.php/

4. The Open Directory Project: http://www.dmoz.org/

5. Search Engine Land: http://searchengineland.com/

6. NicheBOT- http://www.nichebot.com/

7. Associate Programs: http://www.associateprograms.com/

8. Web Page Analyzer: http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/web-page-analyser.shtml

9. Conversion Ruler: http://www.conversionruler.com/

10. Favorite URL Bookmarking (FURL): http://www.furl.net/

Have fun!

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com 2008

To learn more about how YOU can
Profit From The Internet – Fast, visit
www.Internet-Tycoons.com

Google and other major Search Engines provide a huge range of services of direct value to those who do business online – most of them FREE of charge! In this post, I’m looking at:

The Google Home Page has separate links that allow you to search the Web, Images, Maps, News, Shopping, Mail, Video, Groups, Blogs, Books and many more. You can use all this functionality both to research your markets and to drive traffic to your websites—much of it free!

Google Apps features several web applications with similar functionality to traditional office suites, including Gmail^TM, Google Calendar^TM, Google Talk^TM, Page Creator^TM and Google Docs^TM – all FREE!

Google Apps can provide your day-to-day office systems functionality—particularly if you travel a lot and need to log in from other people’s computers or cybercafés. It can also shorten the amount of time spent on business interactions between companies, by allowing sharing of information, such as negotiating contracts using shared documents and performance reporting.

Gmail and Google Docs have become helpful for communication and collaboration. Gmail can be used to manage marketing campaigns by importing contracts, lists and using tags to create mailing databases. The use of these systems together can help streamline business processes.

These processes save time by eliminating the need for emailing documents back and forth. Using shared spreadsheets, organisations are able to eliminate the need to send hard copy updates.

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com 2008

To learn more about how YOU can
Profit From The Internet – Fast, visit
www.Internet-Tycoons.com

What Can Google Do For You to Build A Lucrative Business?

How many of us realise just how much power we have at our fingertips with the Web and just how much of that power is brought to us by Google?

But just what can Google do for you? Or, in reality, is it a more question of what can’t Google for you?

Well, the answer is that Google can boost your business and make you rich beyond your wildest dreams! But, as ever, there are only 24 hours in a day, and you’ll want to see success pretty quickly if you’re not to get disillusioned, won’t you?

So let’s have a quick look at some of the Google services that we’ll be looking at in future issues…

What Sort Of Money Can You Make Using Google?

But first things first! Before we go much further, you’ll want to know how much you can make using Google!

Well, that’s going to vary on your appetite, your market place and the products that you’re going to offer. Some people will be happy making a couple of hundred bucks a month, while well-run sites in busy market sectors can make well over $1,000,000 a month, just on one site.

When you are looking at market places that have 15,000 or 20,000 searches monthly and you’re in the top areas in Google, there is no reason you cannot make $1,000 to $10,000 a week or more!

What Google Tools Are Most Lucrative?

OK, so Google is not only the largest search engine but it provides search and on-page advertising, office applications (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc), maps, images, email, blogs, video, feeds, groups, forums, news, product search, shopping, payment, etc, etc. Google offers such a huge range of services that it would take a 20-volume encyclopaedia to explain them all - and I doubt if any single person in the Google empire knows all the answers!

But which of these will make you money? The answer is that you can make money out of virtually every aspect of Google’s services, although it depends on your interests and level of expertise .

Making Sense Of Adwords and Adsense

So let’s start by focusing on the linked services of Google Adwords and Google Adsense – these are the two principle tools that it’s simplest for most of us to start with.

Adwords and Adsense are part of the huge industry of Paid Search – usually known as ‘Pay Per Click’ (PPC).

AdWords is Google’s flagship advertising product, and main source of revenue. AdWords offers PPC advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads and, more recently, image Ads (‘Widgets’) and video Ads. The AdWords program permits local, national, and international targeting.

Adwords text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines and a website link. Image ads can be in several different sizes and videos are generally in the YouTube format (www.YouTube.com – Google bought YouTube in late 2006).

Adwords ads are shown either when someone searches for a trigger keyword on Google’s search engine on www.google.com (a ‘search’ ad) or can be displayed as an Adsense ad on a site published by someone unrelated to Google that has related context (a ‘contextual’ ad).

And the really easy thing about Adwords and Adsense is that you can set up your accounts for both in just a few minutes and absolutely FREE – and you can learn how to use them very cheaply!

But, used to good effect, they can be very lucrative.

How Do I Get Started?

It couldn’t be simpler, really! You don’t even need a website or a product to get started making money with Adwords!

You can set up an Adwords campaign and send traffic to an Affiliate site or a merchant site such as Amazon.com (although Google may not allow Ads from multiple affiliates pointing at the same website).

And, if you’ve not done this before, you’d be surprised at just how easy all this is! Please do me a favour – go and try it out!

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com 2008

To learn more about how YOU can
Profit From The Internet – Fast, visit
www.Internet-Tycoons.com