Kerstin Baker-Ash

Google Zeitgest 2008 - What Does it Mean?

So Google has published its 2008 Zeitgeist, letting us know what kinky things us netizens (time warp: 1998) have been searching for during the year. The interesting parts of the results weren't the terms that hit the top ten, but the terms that weren't on the top ten, especially in the UK.

First off, where's credit crunch? I stopped watching news reports more than once a week because I can't get away from the term, and yet it's not factored into the top ten results.  Maybe it's because we're bombarded with credit crunch this and financial markets that - we're sick of hearing about it and therefore don't search for it.  An interesting aside I found from the Times Online; the term credit crunch had been used in a report by the US Federal Reserve way before our time in 1967, so it's not one of those insta-hit catchphrases that a worried broker coined when subprime issues really started to become a problem. 

Of the top ten UK searches, I recognize 7.  Terms like BBC's iPlayer, the iPhone, and Barack Obama are hardly surprising results.  I have to admit that I've never heard of Friv, Cam4 and Jogos - although there's a reason I'm not linking to the latter two. It's worth noting that they're rising searches, and just like Sarah Palin might fall off the list for Google's 2009 Zeitgeist. 

iPhone fell one place from 2007, and only Facebook survived the year to still claim a spot in the 2008 list. What does that mean for social networking? It certainly doesn't signal doom and gloom, but I'd venture an opinion that it does signal the maturation of social networks (and following on from that, a hard audience to crack if you're creating a new social network - sorry, Hoff). 

If you get a chance, look back at some of the most popular search queries in years gone by. Five years ago, Prince Charles, Winnie the Pooh and Eastenders topped the popularity polls in the UK, while way back in 2001 (when the first Google Zeitgeist was released), search queries were naturally dominated by Nostradamus, the World Trade Center and anthrax.

There's nothing earth-shattering to be revealed in the Google Zeitgeist. It's meant to be a finger on the pulse of the world, and it's a pretty accurate one at that. Social networking, world events, entertainment and recipes for cupcakes and meatballs - pretty much sums up 2008, doesn't it?

Why I'm Not Compelled To Advertise On Facebook, Part II

After last week's post about Facebook serving me a sponsored poll about birth control, I wasn't too surprised to see other poorly targeted ads being served when I log into Facebook. This latest one takes the cake though:

As most of you probably know, I'm Canadian - born and raised. My accent hints to my roots every time I open my mouth (although sometimes, okay, I kind of sound American), and I'm pretty open about representing my hometown on my profile:

My husband has concocted a story about being born abroad to parents who got in through the skilled worker program, never taking up Canadian citizenship in the process. Now that I'm an adult living in the UK, I want to return - and that's why Facebook targeted me for immigration ads. I'll just put it down to extra-poor targeting capabilities; more choice needs to be available before advertisers should put their confidence in Facebook as an advertising platform.

Holiday Recap - The Condensed Version

Ola everyone! It's been a packed couple of weeks, with some time off for good behavior and a presentation at SES Toronto. I want to do an entire post recapping a great two days at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, so I'll leave that for later.

We had a plan going to Canada this year, which involved trying to relax as much as possible, see some family and then relax some more. We got off the flight, cleared customs (after a lengthy Q&A session with, I assume, a new customs officer who asked me to not only recite my parents' addresses but my entire family tree and their whereabouts in Canada) and drove straight to the cottage. The mosquitoes are bad this year - so much so that they seem to have forgotten my unappetizing flesh (summers spent being bitten in Muskoka used to have a great effect, they didn't like the taste) and instead ate me alive. I had about thirty bites on my legs and arms in total, but my husband fared far, far worse; on one leg alone we counted thirty-three, and that was below the knee. It was also nice to be back at the place we were married - nearly three years ago. Wow. The garden path is still there, as is my family's sign for it - they think my husband is a saint; I agree!

My grandmother's family came from deepest, darkest Europe in the middle of the 19th century, so it's neat to see things that they've built or contributed to during their time in Canada. We visited the road named after them, as well as the war memorial where my grandmother's cousin has his name. There's something wonderful about connecting to your roots, and I count myself very lucky to have my grandparents as tour guides.

We were able to take in a little wine tasting in Niagara while we were in Southern Ontario. Inniskillin is our old standby, but we also tasted at Pillitteri and Cave Springs. Unfortunately, we're good kids and don't import more than our limit allows, so we only have two bottles to show for it. If you know of an Ontario wine importer in the UK, please let us know - my first name at this domain. I'd even be happy to do a blog post about it for gratis - these Brits don't know what they're missing!

'Tis the season to get married, fa la la la la, la la la la. We had the pleasure of attending the first of three weddings this year, this one in Maidstone. The weather was fabulous, we got to schmooze with family and friends and it was a great party. We'll be back in Kent in three weeks for another wedding and another chance to wear a hat. English weddings are wonderful.

Stay tuned for a blog dedicated to the fantastic show at SES Toronto, including a recap of a great Twitter session from Lee Odden, Dave Snyder and Chris Winfield. Definitely my favorite session of the conference, so thanks for that!

We had a great holiday, but it's nice to be home. Until next time, Canada.

My Un-Opinion: Is Social Media Better Suited to PPC or SEO?

This discussion has been popping up all over the industry, and has recently become a buzz topic at work. I wanted to generate some external conversation into who "owns" the social media landscape in an agency setting. It's a bit like a discussion of two job candidates; who's better suited for the job, and who's space can this easily slot into.

The Case for SEO

User-generated content on blogs and social networking sites are a goldmine for keywords and the direction of any SEO campaign. Social media is scalable as well; small stuff on Twitter can snowball into a group on Facebook and a video on YouTube, with users doing the content generation for you. Companies can get keyword-rich sites with quality backlinks - an easy-ish way to increase traffic, conversions, etc etc by using free brand advocates. Score one for SEO.

The Case for PPC

Paid models for Twitter Applications such as ThinCloud are making it easy for people to get exclusive eyeball access to hundreds of thousands of users, using a bid system (sounds like PPC, eh?). Expect to see a bid auction system emerge for a myriad of social media feeds soon - there’s a reason for $15 million round c for a certain social media app. Comcast, Dell and Southwest Airlines are just a few of the big-name companies using Twitter now - and they haven’t even monetized it yet. Expand your horizons; sooner or later, pay-per-click auction systems are coming to a social network near you, so it pays to get in on the ground floor of PPC. I'm talking about new, funky technologies and applications mostly - Facebook, Bebo and MySpace have been monetized for display and PPC for years.

Obviously, the comedy third option is that nobody "owns" social media and it belongs between the realms of PPC and SEO. I have a feeling that one segment is going to have to stand up and take greater ownership of the landscape though - I'm just a bit biased. Then again, we have search marketers completely devoted to social media now - maybe it's a pillar of its own?

The Value of Twitter

I'm relatively new to being a twit. My interest in social media and community integration started a while back, but I didn't get into Twitter until much later in the game, but nonetheless, I'm hooked. I joined Twitter back in March, after hearing absolutely everyone talk about it at SES New York; I haven't looked back. I can follow some of the people I consider gurus of the industry, and I've gotten a lot of helpful information and tips from just being "out there". However, I'm wondering if other people get real value out of Twitter? My "follower" rate has gone up exponentially since joining, and I'm not in it to get more followers by just adding new people to follow. I want to make sure that I'm getting the most out of the noise, not just have other people.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy getting new followers. What I don't think is useful is to follow a bunch of people to try to get them to follow you back. It's a nice feeling to get someone following you on Twitter, but it almost makes me feel cheap to see that they're following five thousand other people in addition to little ol' me. In an ideal world (hey, I'm on a utopian bend at the moment, please forgive me), people would follow each other for genuine value, but where there's the potential for spam, spammers will always be. It just doesn't seem that these spammers are very intelligent.

Twitter spam has been tweeted about a lot lately; can it even exist? Just this afternoon, Stop Twitter Spam blogged about their theory of so-called spammers shutting down the service. If you read further down, they talk about charging super-users a fee. Sure - if you can have a system which calculates the value of each contribution that a super-user offers. I'm not saying that Robert Scoble, or Jason Calacanis are perfect or not noisy by any stretch of the imagination, but a lot of people would argue that their popularity (even though they follow a massive amount of people) and insight is valuable. What the not-so-smart-so-called-spammers don't realize is that most people don't have auto-follow. Also, if you're following tons of people and are that desperate to get people to follow you back, chances are what you're trying to say isn't worth hearing about.

I'm selective. I want real information, entertainment and rants - not messages about how great you think your web design company is, or how great your weight loss regimen is. So that's why I'm not following you, but following some pretty interesting and funky people. In short, Twitter spam can't really exist as long as you don't feel it necessary to use auto-follow. And feel free to un-follow me if you don't think I'm providing any value to you, whether it be my witty commentary on the guy who orders for his entire office and always manages to get in front of me in the mornings or replying to other twits. I value conversation, and would love to engage in one with you.

Sorry if you thought this was a post about Twitter having $15 million and not using it to upgrade their architecture...

Back to my block list, then.

The Social Web and Paid Search - Can It Work?

We all know that there are millions of examples out there for social media and SEO to run harmoniously through dewy meadows holding hands and singing Joan Baez songs, but what about their rich and lonely paid search friend? The advent of social networks have promised those of us on the paid search side some way to monetize and mobilize the masses that engage in social media on a daily basis; it just hasn't happened yet.

Sure, I've seen the ads "targeting" people on Facebook, my favorite being this:

Advertisers are promised a hugely relevant sample to advertise to, and yet their efforts get them what you see above. Simply, this translates into a really poor CTR. Bob Gilbreath blogged about his recent experience with Facebook advertising, which got him a whopping 0.2% (read 12 people out of 71023 who saw the ad) of CTR for a supposedly highly-targeted audience. Is it any wonder that paid SEMs are shying away from advertising on social networks?

I do believe that there's a light on the horizon though. As we become more sophisticated and willing to try new things, platforms are being challenged to think of new ways to reel advertisers in. The easiest way to do this is an auction system; we're used to it, we know it, and it doesn't take a huge learning curve to adapt to it. Integrating this with social media platforms in a content-style platform is going to be wonderful. Hold on... doesn't this already exist? Yes, it absolutely does. The problem (and the soon-to-come solution) is targeting. Platforms need to get their targeting sorted out, and people need to become educated about the thin line between targeted advertising and invasion of privacy. The best example I've seen for this so far has actually been ThinCloud's Twitter for iPhone platform, which regularly serves me up ads related to Mac products, external hard drives and other applications that can increase my Mac-loving (sorry for the awful Superbad pun). I'm more likely to click on it because they've made it extremely targeted. Why can't Facebook, which promises that, deliver? I guess everything is on scale, but I'm hoping that the next year brings about a change in the way people think about behavioral targeting. It's the next logical step.

Seeking Social Web Organization and Integration

I'm currently looking for a complete aggregator - somewhere where I can keep all my social media logins organized and updated concurrently.

I originally thought that OpenID would be a good solution, storing login information and preferences in one place. Also, you don't need to remember several different logins, passwords, etc. The problem with OpenID is that some of the larger players have been slow on the uptake, and they don't work well with a number of social media sites which I frequent regularly.

Secondbrain looked like it could solve a lot of issues around information gathering, but again it doesn't pull anything from some of the newer and more interesting networks, not to mention Facebook.

I might be a bit slow on the uptake, but where are all the aggregators at? Where can I keep one, big, box-like hold-all for Facebook, Twitter, Brightkite, LinkedIn, Tumblr, MyBlogLog, Sphinn, BlogCatalog, EatonWeb, Adsense Alternatives, Blog Search Engine, Superblog Directory, Blog Listings, Blog Flux Directory, etc? Are some of my feeds, directories and blog memberships too niche?

Interestingly, I've found that Sphinn is the best way to organize all of my profile data in one place - for the time being. There still isn't support for Brightkite or Tumblr, so I'm looking for suggestions. Don't be shy.

Why SEM?

I had an e-mail from a childhood friend of mine the other day; she's just graduated from university with a degree in International Relations (which makes me feel old, I remember babysitting her and her younger sister), and asked about my initial experiences and potential job fields after IR.

When I did IR in university, I had absolutely no idea I would be going into SEM as a career.  I fantasised about government work (when I was seven, I told everyone I knew that I was going to be the first female Prime Minister of Canada... thanks Kim), or something in public relations.  Sure, I had fiddled with website design, but a career in the "internet"?  Nah.  I gravitated towards government and policy, but there was always an element of the internet involved in what I was doing.  Campaign brochures needed to be put online, engaging with constituents was now done increasingly in cyberspace, and reputation management was a "must-do".  In the days before social networking became the norm, it was very much a hunt and peck approach to all of the above.  As I'd had a bit (and I must emphasise the minute amount) of experience with HTML and website design, I fell into an SEM role.

The element of government that started to irk me from the start was a culture of stagnation.  I used to joke with some of my colleagues that we had become institutionalised in our roles, never changing, never pushing forward.  Adoption of new technologies or new techniques, especially in my role at the Government of Ontario, was unheard of.  It took two years for an initiative to be implemented, and I understand why it took that long - I just didn't want to move at a snail's pace, I wanted action.

Fast forward to Dublin, Ireland, and I'm suddenly managing a PPC campaign within the travel industry.  I'm getting up to speed on the latest trends and techniques in SEM - still a bit slow on the uptake, but challenging nonetheless.  A year later, and I was working between London and Paris, practicing my French skills and attempting to get people engaged in best practices.  The next logical step was agency-side, and I haven't looked back.  I can be a thought leader within the industry, I get to network with people who actually understand what I'm talking about (okay, and some who don't - that's the fun part), and practice skills I never thought I'd use (economic theory, statistical analysis, national trends, population behaviour, etc).

The industry is so young and fast-moving that strategies and techniques change on a daily basis.  New innovations are commonplace.  I love public speaking and sharing ideas, so going to conferences, learning and now speaking at Search Engine Strategies in Toronto are just a couple of the great things that this industry provides.  Sure, it's a lot of hard work, but it wouldn't be challenging and mind-expanding if it wasn't.  My favourite part of the job is helping clients achieve their goals, and introducing new ways to communicate and engage with their customers.  I'm lucky to have clients who "get" search and are engaged in the accounts, which makes my job great.

So, dear friend - it only gets better.  You put into practice your IR training, and develop it into something challenging, intelligent and engaging.  I can't ask for much more.  Good luck!