"Passion. Patience. Persistence"

The Work Week Graph

2011-11-03T22:09:00.003-04:00

Failure of Ratings

2011-09-25T06:11:00.000-04:00

Many people have developed a habit of reading reviews before going to a movie theater, a restaurant or a play. It is understandable since information is available and we are equipped to get the latest news within the palm of our hands, as long as we care enough.

Generally, reviews are helpful. Why wouldn't someone want to go see a movie that 10,000 people said it was great? After seeing the reviews for the movie Drive starring Ryan Gosling, my brother, his friends and I decided we were going to watch it. It is rated as 8.7 out of 10 and we were very interested. Especially me, I mean aside from the reviews, Ryan Gosling has basically been my weakness since The Notebook. You can easily find the ratings for the movie here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780504/reviews

To my surprise, I was disappointed. I am sure my brother and his friends were, too, as we walked out of the movie theater feeling like we just wasted two hours. There was nothing special to the script, and the highlights of the movie involved violent scenes and unreasonable killing acts. I wasn't sure what the idea that the movie was trying to convey but there was nothing "heroic" or "hypnotic" about it as some people have written in the reviews.

Ratings may very well be irrelevant to one's personal opinion. During the time when social media put an emphasis on the reputation metrics, it is important to understand that there can be a failure in ratings and the value of a product or service does not base solely on how many good reviews it gets.

The More-Customer Stories

2011-08-13T14:46:00.001-04:00

Gym was the last place I expected to have drama happened, but it did. Last week, the trainer from my aerobic class told us it was her last day. Not sure what the reason was. Some said it was because the gym couldn't pay her, others said because her parents were sick. No matter the reason, people were disappointed that there would be a new trainer. One of the girls, who has worked out there for almost 5 years, wrote a petition and managed to get 2 pages of signatures. They all went to the gym management expressing their wish to have her back....

The petition did nothing. We still ended up having a new teacher. Half of the class didn't show up, of course. If I were the gym's owner, I would be happy how much the customers were attached to the class. This class only took place 2 times a week, but it has managed to attract many people. Interestingly, the people who have been there for longer than 3 years were not necessarily people living nearby. That I think, was some business success.

Also during that same week, my coworkers and I were ordering lunch from this restaurant in midtown. The line was long and the restaurant was extremely busy. During the chaos, someone messed up our orders and we had to bring them back. While waiting for the order to be fixed, we were casually chatting about how our orders could be messed up so much. After handing the fixed order back to us, the restaurant manager said "We are sorry that this happened to you. I am going to keep this receipt, and for the next order, please give me a call. Your order will be on the house."

Two complaints were being handled very differently. I don't think local businesses pay enough attention to customer loyalty when they are out trying to get sales. It struck me how effective a Groupon campaign can drive traffic to local businesses and yet many business owners fell short in building and maintaining the loyalty. One thing I know from my own experience, that I would be more likely to come back in the second story and spend more.

Random Cloud Talk

2011-05-15T20:03:00.001-04:00

This is not really marketing-related, but I once entered a discussion about cloudsource solutions. One person asked "why would you allow your business information be in the cloud or managed by a cloud service? I mean all that information...." And I told him "why would you put money in a bank? You know them just as well as you would know your cloud service providers."
Cloudsourcing some parts of your business is one great way to cut cost. Companies who offer cloud-based service are responsible for finding the best people to protect their clients' data. These people work full time in order to make sure their cloud servers are trustworthy and more business owners will use such service. A lot of time, companies will argue having an in house team and server is adequate. However, the in-house team may not be specialized enough in data protection or your company probably will not have the best technology.

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The Conventional Way

2011-01-17T03:00:00.004-05:00

This past Saturday, I had an excellent conversation with my friend about success and how he defines it. Asking someone to define success is one of my all time favorites. One thing he said that I found to be valuable "If a business wants to stand out and be successful, either it has to be unconventional or it is conventional but with 10th times the effort." Unconventional is unconventional so there's no point trying to figure out the recipe. It is the conventional who makes the story.

First, it is the consistency. I got in touch with a few business contacts to see how far they have come with their startup projects from last year. Some of them became successful. Some others did not. Most of them were conventional. Not all of them were consistently good. Often time, the amount of effort being invested to maintain something consistent is underestimated. This is true, not only in the business sense but anytime one aims to accomplish a goal. You go to the gym in January. It is packed with people, majority of whom you have never seen before. Everyone is fired up and ready for a new start. But how many of those do you think will end up going to the gym after February, March or April? It takes effort to be consistent and consistently good.

Exposure is a must. My friend was telling me about a school charity project. They basically made a tour around the school and tried to shake as many hands as possible. Every time they got a handshake, they took a picture of it. At the end, they made a large handshake picture constructed by all the small one that was taken. The big picture was sold and the money went into charity. Great idea, great execution. Now some may say that that is not original. There is a software that will help constructing that type of pictures. That's not the point of the story. Aside from having a creative handshake picture, what made it successful was the handshake itself. What is a better way to get exposure for the project than shaking hands with everyone? Most likely people will have a conversation about it.
New Year is fun thanks to resolutions. It's a beginning of all sources of personal growth. With consistency and exposure comes great things.

You Can't Analyze IT

2010-10-20T01:44:00.006-04:00

I went with my friend Ana to see the Social Network movie for the second time this past weekend and it didn't cease to impress me. I could care less about whether that was what happened to Mark Zuckerberg. The movie was very well-written.

After that, I ended up having a good discussion with her about it and the success of Facebook. She brought up a very good point. It goes something like this "You can keep analyzing it but the truth is, there is no explanation for something big to happen. It just reaches its "tipping point". Same way with Friendster or Myspace back in the day when we didn't know what Facebook was." Working with Google Analytics on a daily basis, Ana knows too well how often online marketers are asked to explain why something is good and something isn't. However, what she said made perfect sense. Most of the time, you can't assign one reason for why something is such a success or a failure. It is usually a combination of things, events and people. It's the point where imagination and execution meet. Plus the IT factor.

So, what will be the next big thing?

I am gonna end this random blog with another favorite quote of Ana "I can't imagine life after Facebook, but I said the same thing with Friendster and Myspace before. Nothing is impossible."

Picture: my city in Vietnam. I had a nice visit in back in September.

Assumptions for A Return

2010-07-21T01:11:00.002-04:00

Marketers are easily accused of making too many assumptions. Partially because we don't always have resource to test everything, and a lot of time we need to assume certain things correct for others to be proven. Mainly, however, it is the fact that as humans, we all tend to search for the answer to our own opinion anyway.

That is why you can never track online behavior enough to come up with a set of rules that correctly apply to every case. What we are really tracking is only a very small aspect of behavior in a very particular setting, maybe at a particular moment. The right question then would be "how can we make the most our of our own bias?" or "how do we minimize our bias and maximize the return?"

Following is some of the advices I've collected that have helped me. I figure it might be useful to others. Especially during the time that Yahoo and MSN are going through a major search partnership, Google is implementing new keyword matching options, and FourSquare and Skype are fighting to make headlines.

1. Get a different set of eyes on your data. You make this neat and detailed report but do other people see the same thing?

2. Get a different set of data (from someone else) on the same subject. Assume all the data are correct, reference other people work could help see a fresher aspect.

3. Don't be stubborn. If there's a negative return, it is important to find out why first before trying to stick to the losing strategy.

4. Look outside of your project. Environmental factors, it's marketing 101, but how many of us actually look. Have we paid enough attention to our competitors?

5. Okay your assumption is wrong. Move on fast. Many times in paid search, we have the luxury to turn around more quickly. But for other channels, it is still important to be quick. People's behaviors change without warning anyone.

6. "New" does not always mean "Better". This includes new tools, new reporting system or even new people managing certain accounts. Large businesses don't change their agencies every year for a reason.

7. "New" could mean "Better". Is your current strategies, tools, methodologies, etc suitable to the changing environment? Do you need to start thinking about tapping into a new segment of consumers yet?

If you have other suggestions to share, feel free to write a comment or drop me an email. I'm always open to improving my assumptions.

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p/s: The picture is the wonderful nature that I got to see during July 4th weekend. It's not really related to the topic but I figure since it's my blog, I get to do whatever I want without worrying about visits, bounce rates or conversions. What a luxury! ;)

5 tips for managing a PPC search campaign

2010-04-06T02:11:00.000-04:00

1. Never assume anything without supporting data. It is not unusual for search marketers to have assumptions or intuitive feeling. I was once told "You have to assume something is true for others to be explained" but without data, it is advised to not take any major action.
2. Identify your top performing keywords: Depending on the account's performance history, conversion type, quality score, landing page and other factors, there are sets of keywords that work better than others. It is important to know these keywords and how much they could be paid to still maintain the profit margin.
3. Constantly monitor changes in search volume: Change in click volume could be due to internal or external factors, but regardless of the reasons, click volume can provide prediction of future changes of the market.
4. Do not ignore other channels: It's hard for search marketers, especially paid search, to look past the click/cost/conversions data but a lot of times, changes in campaign performance are due to influences from other channels.
5. Do frequent deep-dives: We don't always find valuable insights from digging into data but each time a deep-dive is done, search marketers will understand the campaign performance a little bit more. It is definitely worth it.

Four Point Parking and Google Map

2010-03-03T01:29:00.003-05:00

This took place a while ago, but I recently got virus on my computer that delayed me on blasting this out to the world (yes, times like this make me want to switch to Mac and avoid all virus problems). A friend of mine recently got her money back thanks to Google Map. What happened was that she and a few others traveled to California. They parked at a spot without knowing that it was intended for handicapped drivers. Other handicapped spots were marked very clearly, hers was not. Maybe because she never failed to follow the laws and probably disagreed with the accident fine of not knowing enough, she took a picture of her parking spots using Google map and sent. The picture pointed out other clearly marked handicapped spots (in yellow) vs. her not-clearly-marked spot (in red).

Result? She got the ticket reduced from $300 to $50. Not too bad for speaking up. At least she didn't have to pay for someone who forgot to re-paint the parking lot. Now I really wonder if similar things happened to others. Who knows, maybe Google map have served many others beyond its intended purpose.

SEM Campaigns - Do You Always Want To Be On Top?

2010-01-31T19:49:00.008-05:00

Search marketing allows business owners to have control over their messaging via paid ads on the search engine. Ideally, the best positions are the top positions, but as search marketers, you probably know that is not entirely true. Have you ever dealt with clients who literally sit all day stalking for the ad positions and make a point to complain when the ad is not on top? Not any of my clients in particular, but I know there are many business owners out there who expect number 1 position because they think since they are paying for the ads, such thing needs to happen. Managing campaigns for these clients can be tough sometimes because good results don’t seem to be enough. It is the search marketer’s job to educate his or her clients about how it works, but for business owners, here are reasons why top positions don’t mean everything:

First positions do not guarantee conversions, regardless of whether it is lead or sale campaign. For many campaigns, you might even notice that conversions happen more likely at position 3 or 4. It is more important to find out what positions are the optimal positions rather than trying to reach the first.

Top positions cost more. In addition, by focusing your attention on whether or not the ad is on top, the time inventory is reduced for the effort to increase success in sales and leads. Especially if your campaign is managed by an agency, focusing on top positions and not goal conversions is not a way to go.

Search behaviors are different depending on the product or service, seasonality, targeted internet users and other market factors. I once talked to a guy who said he never clicks on an ad at the top positions because he knows they are ads. Of course, he is an extreme case since not every internet user chooses to not click on the paid search ads, but such search behaviors need to be taken in consideration. Search behaviors for a campaign need to be watched carefully so if there is a shift, marketers are responsive enough to the changes.

There are obvious benefits for having top positions. It might be similar to having your product displayed on the middle shelf in the super market or on the front page of a magazine. The point is not to ignore the benefits that top positions bring but to value them as much as they are worth.

You Are Probably A Search Marketer If.....

2010-01-14T03:43:00.008-05:00

1. You consider it's normal to caps lock the first letter of every word.

2. In your head, you unconsciously follow your friend's sentences with synonyms.

3. The Twitter limit is 140 but you only need 95 (25+35+35).

4. Sometimes, you feel as if you are an accountant, an English teacher, a statistician, etc.but well, you are a marketer.

5. Without factoring in the client and internal communication, you spend 10% of the time creating, 50% of the time tracking and the rest of the time fixing things.

6. It is normal to check your campaign's progress in the middle of the night. People don't stop clicking.

7. You have dreams of spreadsheets.

8. When people asked you to really explain what you do, you start with: "you know when you type in Google..."

9. Professional certified test days might involve free drinks and cool perks.

10. You read this and create a sheet to track how many % of this is true.

Search 101

2010-01-12T03:28:00.013-05:00

Search marketing is a form of online marketing that thrives on the ability to reach highly targeted customers when they are researching for information of a specific product or service.

In layman’s terms, search marketers bid on a set of keywords that best describes the product or service to be advertised in order to keep the ads (associated with these keywords) at the most profitable positions.

However, we all know that no human-defined concept remains in layman’s terms, especially search marketing. As the internet and technology continuously evolves, new concepts are constantly added. Since it is search 101, I’ll answer the top common questions asked by non-SEMers, but keeps in mind that this is like a drop of water to a sea. Please email me with your specific questions and I will be glad to help.

What’s the difference between SEM and SEO?

SEM (Search Engine Marketing), aka PPC (Pay-Per-Click) or Paid Search, referred to the marketing effort to improve rankings of ads via paid placements on a search engine. In most major search engines, the paid placements are at the top or on the right hand side of the search result pages.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) referred to the effort to increase a website’s visibility via non-paid search results, aka organic results. The organic results are below the paid placements and they take up the majority of the results on a search engine results page.

Who should run a search marketing campaign?

It is ideal for any business owner who wants to control the marketing budget and effectively measure the success of the investment. Anyone with enough understanding of how search marketing works can run a search campaign. This type of information is easily accessed online as many search marketing experts have shared their knowledge online.

How do search marketers decide what keywords to bid on?

Search marketers depend strongly on third-party tools, data and analysis to predict trends in the behaviors of internet users. In turns, they come up with a few sets (or a few hundred sets) of keywords that work best in achieving their goals. Advertisers will then put these keywords through different tests driven by multiple market and internal factors. They will refine the list and make strategic decisions to bid on a list of keywords with highest return on investment possible for the business.

Have more question about Search? Email me at admin@linhlanh.com. I'd be glad to help!

I Am Going To Do Some Free Writing Before I Get Distracted Again

2009-10-25T21:17:00.008-04:00

Last blog, I mentioned doing some research on real-time bidding and share it here. Well, it didn't happen and I will explain here shortly why. But before I go into discussing anything at all, I would like to thank my dear friend Ha from Missouri for having asked why there wasn't any new post on my blog. I admit I have been slacking a little bit lately, and thank you for reminding me that keeping a blog updated is just as important as having good content. Definitely easier to say than do ;-)

Back to my unfinished real-time bidding project. I put it on hold because of late, work has been giving me great learning opportunities.What I know from reading about PPC is nothing compared to actually doing and experiencing what works and what doesn't.

A great example, I used to think very simply that if a campaign was not performing well, I would make some bid changes. If things got better the week after, it meant I did my job. That is not always the case. When factoring things such as lead time (the time between when people begin their online search and actually convert - make purchases, sign up, register, etc), seasonality (fluctuation of performance between periods) or specific promotion offers, the performance of a SEM campaign becomes a different type of problem. More specifically, if the common behavior of internet shoppers for product A is to research it three weeks before actually buying it, optimize the campaign weekly might result in the under spending on keywords with high conversions just because these keywords don't seem to get any conversion at first.

Another reason is that life is full of distraction. When I was researching and contemplating on how real-time search might turn out in the next year or so, Yahoo introduced their new campaign management tool, unemployment rate was announced to be at 9.8% (this is not the latest number), the client monthly reports were due at the end of the week, or a friend kept texting about having lunch soon because she had something very important to tell, etc etc. It's like the whole world is moving at this super speed and if I spend sometimes on doing random things like blogging about real-time search, I will definitely fall behind.

I am not complaining though, be busy is always a good thing. But of everyone who is or will be reading, half of the people do not know what real time search is. Majority of the other half don't care or care about something else (like post-click, pre-click attribution or semantic search) and maybe 10% of the people will really be interested in real-time search. Actually, 15% now that Bing introduced their new Twitter index portion at www.bing.com/twitter ;-)

For the 15% who cares:
- Real-time search will definitely make contextual targeting more interesting
- News websites should watch out for a new type of competition if they aren't able to deliver in such real-time manner.
- What about segmented real-time search? Organized real-time info.

Have a joyful week!

Advertising Events in NYC

2009-09-20T15:11:00.005-04:00

The next few weeks: You should search for these talked-about events. They all take place in NY:
- The Influencers organized by Girls in Tech NY
- PPC: Not Just About The Numbers sponsored by Clickable (Webcast,Tueday, Sep 22)
- Advertising Week Sep 21 - 25
- Adeaters, Sep 25 - Digital Wednesday
- SMX East Oct 5-7

Last week: Panel of Discussion
The best thing about attending a panel of discussion full of experts is the chance to analyze and gain industry's perspectives that are different than my own. I encountered such an opportunity at the Sempo Meetup event last week. The event featured Stephen Baker, Kevin Lee, Mike Moran, Mike Grehan and Bill Hunt. It started out with Stephen presenting some thoughts, especially over his last written book - The Numerati. When Stephen use Gordon Bell's MyLifeBits project as an example, the audience got really enthusiastic.... Follow are some of the ideas being brought up that got stuck in my head after the evening:

- Memories/History vs. Truth:
History is written by the victors. I don't think the ability to record history in details will change how people interpret the past. The way history has been written depends less on the amount of events being recorded but more on how people reacted emotionally to the events themselves when they experienced the events or saw in a video later on. What can't be recorded is human emotion and that's usually what makes everything complicated. Therefore, truth might not be what being seen or interpreted at all.

- People vs Machine:
E-memories and how people will forget to do many things because machines are available were brought up. I was thinking because everything is automated, will human memories become poorer or they just choose to store different, more complicated things. The concept of what being valued is changing everyday, which requires marketers to find out what is relevant. Automatic tools do not capture the complexity of human minds and that is why a good marketing job is done with a person behind it.

- Social trends and the influence on internet marketing:
Many people are against online data collection done by internet marketers yet they willingly fill out a Facebook profile about their lives, things they love and hate. No one ever thanks data collection for enabling them to find a nearby store instead of somewhere halfway around the world online. Relevancy is not achieved overnight. It is not easy to explain by collecting data about a person, the person benefits from knowing about products/services he truly need. Would he like someone knocking at his door and handing out an irrelevant piece of paper? Capturing online data is not much of a difference than talking to a stranger on the street and learn about her life. Stop marketers from collecting data should not be a concern, having ethics for keeping data private is.

What's up: Right now I am researching on some real-time SEM, maybe that's my next blog post so stop by when you get a chance ;-)

"Optimize" Your College Life

2009-09-14T02:43:00.005-04:00

Brother,

Only a few more days and you will become a freshman in college! This will be one of many remarkable chapters in your life, and I am excited for you. You probably want me to tell you everything I know, but college is one of those things that you have to be there and experience yourself. Not everyone has the same story and I wish that your story would be good. Here's some of my suggestions which, hopefully, are useful for you:

1. Have goals...no wait, have measurable goals: Make sure you are heading forward to something. Evaluate your goals weekly,monthly,quarterly and yearly to see if you are still following through with your set of goals. Moving slowly sometimes is ok, as long as you are moving forward.

2. Stay relevant: Pick your courses and selective courses carefully. Make sure the skills that you want to learn are still valuable. Read the news.

3. Choose the right team: Hang yourself around good people. Much of things that I've learned in college are through people with whom I encountered.

4. Expand vertically and horizontally: College is a great place to test and fall. Test now, fall now and find out what direction you'd like to expand.

5. Watch the resource: Stay focus, party hard, have fun and make the most out of it like everyone has probably suggested, but never forget to check your resource. Health and time are the two most important in this category.

Enjoy the ride!

Sincerely, from your nerdy sister who might have overdosed herself on PPC How-to forums.

My Little Collection of Excel Useful Tips for SEM

2009-08-14T15:53:00.011-04:00

In my entire college life, I have never thought I would get excited over Excel. I guess I didn't fully comprehend how useful it is while sitting in school worrying about when the next English paper is due...Here are a few things that I appreciate a lot more about Excel recently:
1. Shortcuts:
Alt and "+" = AutoSum
Ctrl and ";" = Insert today's date
Shift+Space bar = Ctrl +Shift+"->"= Select the whole row
Ctrl and Space bar = Ctrl+Shift+"Arrow Down"= Select the whole column
Ctrl+F11=Insert a new (Macro) sheet
Ctrl+Pageup or Pagedown: moving from sheet to sheet
Ctrl+H: find and replace
My friend in college Ben used to brag to me about the fact that he never has to use the mouse for anything anymore, I did not know why it was such a big deal for him.Some of the stuff he did include Ctrl+shift+tab: navigate through different tab on Firefox, or Ctrl+Alt+tab: navigate through different applications used (like when you want to move from Firefox to Excel for example). Now that see how much faster to navigate by using shortcuts, I thought of Ben with much respect.

2. Microsoft Ad Intelligence plugin: Here's to Josh who I met on the SEMPO Boat Cruise. He's the one who shares with me this useful information: http://bit.ly/196SNE. I downloaded it but never used it myself. He told me that the search data is from several years worth of searches on Live. That's pretty cool, though I need to do some more research on how it is applied in a specific case. But you are much appreciated Josh!!!
There are many more but that's it for now, I am going to spend the rest of my Friday night with my friends before they boycott me for being on the computer too much.

Sorry and Thank you

2009-08-07T01:08:00.005-04:00

- Sorry Mom and Dad for my weird and long hour working schedule. It is only temporary I promise.
- Sorry brother, I might not have time to go out with you as much as you want on your first month in school.
- Sorry friends for I haven't been calling or talking to anyone...it gets a little crazy over here.
- Sorry Vicky for visiting the city during my most busy week. I will tour the city with you this weekend before you leave me for who knows how long.....

and
- Thank you Mom for not knowing exactly what I do and still support me in my career decisions.
- Thank you uncle for telling me to keep on going
- Thank you roommie for putting up with me
- Thank you "jerk" for never getting tired of asking "when is your next interview?"
- Thank you CoZ for taking time out of your busy schedule and check up on my lifelong plan...
I truly hope you don't give up on me. This will change one day, however long that'll take.

When "Free" Means "Watch out! They Are Going to Scam You"

2009-08-01T16:35:00.007-04:00

I spent Tuesday through Thursday at my internship doing what I enjoy doing. The other two days, I call people I don't know to tell them about receiving free stuff. Yes, I am one of those telemarketers that no one wants to talk to...a slightly difference between me and a traditional telemarketer is that I am not selling any product or service, and you probably will not receive phone calls from me unless you own a Nail Salon in California, Chicago, Atlanta or Philadelphia areas. I convince nail salon owners to allow my company to advertise in their salons using our digital network (the company gets paid from companies advertising on these networks). Everything comes at no charge, all we need is for them to agree for us to play our programs in their nail salons. They even receive many cool free products from our partners (like makeup or chocolate, etc).

The job is simple...except people just...don't like free stuff. I am telling you. You will be surprised to hear all the reasons people give me for not wanting to receive free things. It's like the word "Free" has become the new sign for "watch out, they are up to no good" or something. Though I can understand why, I have run into many places/services with free things and a catch. Like if admission is free, the drink will probably cost you a fortune. Or if you want a free sandwich, you need to apply for Capital One credit card and such....

Then I thought about how many "free"s are still being used in a ppc or seo ads. (Haha, back to PPC again)...Free is so overrated these days that I wonder how many people actually type in "free" instead of going to free-stuff website like www.freecycles.org....

My roommate actually stops me from rambling on and on. We are heading out for a friend's birthday party tonight. Don't worry, I know I am obsessed with search news but I promise that's not the only thing I ever talk about.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Brainstorming for Yahoo on A Rainy Day in NY!

2009-06-26T12:42:00.010-04:00

Carol Bartz is looking for a solution to help Yahoo turn its situation around and there is still no definite information about a deal between Microsoft and Yahoo but here are some thoughts:

Yahoo has a large user base of Yahoo Messenger, why isn't there any effort to improve this segment. Maybe there is, but the fact that Yahoo has been doing a terrible job in preventing spams on YM accounts makes it hard to believe the company actually cares to maintain its competencies (from an user's standpoint). I don't know what is up with 360 blog either. For a long period of time, 360 is like every YM user's best friend. I still remember how disappointed I was the other day when I received Yahoo's email saying that they were gonna close Yahoo 360 on July 13, 2009. That's gonna be a sad day. I mean come on, "I am a lazy web user who doesn't want to think or work when it comes to social media and I don't want to move my blog to a new profile when I already have Facebook!"

Then I ponder upon how Yahoo could improve itself against the other two giants Google and MSN. It made me think of dearest online advertisers. Yahoo needs to improve its search service!!! (easy to say right? I know....) But here's an idea, how about Yahoo improves its search on YM, makes it more user-friendly. I am staring at the YM friendlist and looking for the websearch bar. It is all the way at the bottom of the list. Why don't they put it somewhere else? I don't know ....make it a bar that sticks out to the side of the chat tool or something....I don't know much about the technological requirements for that to happen but there are other ways to improve the search bar too. Like Linkedin, they have a bar to search for people/inbox/companies, etc all in one. I guess that's why it's Linkedin and not Yahoo.

Yahoo's recent news:
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=108772

Search and Display, Friends or Foes?

2009-06-17T09:50:00.013-04:00

Most people who came to the SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) Meetup last night were probably interested in the relationship between search (or Pay Per Click - PPC) and display, and then there were others who came for the free foods (which I am not gonna lie, I was guilty of this as well). However, besides the good foods (and sangaria ), there was a great discussion about the effectiveness of display advertising as well as how it can be measured. Display advertising is a type of marketing that includes means such as images, logos and banner ads to deliver a message to customers. It is mostly used for branding and is said to be able to influence behaviors. Theoretically, if being done well, a display ad could get people to accept a brand as one with high quality, make a purchase or sign up for a service. Companies are willing to spend a large portion of their budget to get people doing these kinds of things.

Ever since Google created this whole new advertising form called search marketing (a type of marketing that allows companies to target and influence their customers when the customers are looking for information on a search engine), organizations and ad agencies have found it important to measure results. Search engine allows advertisers to look at metrics and be able to tell how their advertising budget is spent, how much of the spending results into conversions (a purchase/registration is made), etc.

So.... instead of using the budget on something that is difficult or almost impossible to measure (like whether or not people buy a car thanks to a car banner ad), companies choose to spend on PPC. The PPC ad is measureable and targeted. Unless companies do not fully comprehend the concept of PPC, it is hard for any of them to say 'no, I don't want to do search'. It's like saying no to having a tax accountant.

Is display advertising effective? I try to think of a last time I decided to buy something because of a display ad and I couldn't think of any. But I know some display ads are good, they get people clicking around, like the one with Obama's IQ score, I know my brother clicked on it to take the IQ test. Does that mean my brother ended up buying or registering for anything? Not necessary (he didn't). Does that mean he is influenced for future purchases? Maybe. People don't often realize they are influenced. When I see an Old Navy banner ad, I think about it but don't buy it until later when I go to the store. So how are we supposed to measure that kind of influence? A better question, if people see a display ad and then google it, finally they make a purchase, will the credits go to display or search?

It takes more than a banner ad, a search ad copy, a TV commercial or an email to change someone's behavior. Effective marketing/advertising is usually a process. After customers are influenced by different advertising forms and channels, search (if done right) is the best way to reach a large number of those targeted customers. Therefore, advertisers should use search and the understanding of search in coordination with other forms of advertising (display, TV, social networking) to receive the best result.

Girls in Tech NY and Clickable's Interesting Cafe

2009-05-29T00:32:00.010-04:00

This past week was quite eventful for me with different things going on almost every night. Girls in Tech NY and the Clickable's Interesting Cafe featuring Heidi Dangelmaier are two events that left me great impressions.

At Girls in Tech event, I met some powerful women, not because they hold executive titles or anything of that matter. What make them powerful are the positive attitude and the drive to define themselves in a field that has "men only"written all over it. In this age when technology is constantly evolving, the image of a tech-savvy woman is no longer someone with thick glasses, who has no social life or does not care about the way she looks.

I ran into lady-webmasters and programmers who could talk for hours about how they built their websites and what type of codes they wrote just as much as they could talk about shoes and bags. I get excited when listening to people talking about technology and innovations. Even if my background is marketing, not technology and I could not tell how tech-savvy they were, it is still delightful talking to them. Their passion for tech will definitely lead them to where they wanted to be. Girls in Tech NY definitely has the ability to encourage women to reach above and beyond. I told Tommy Jenkins - member of GIT at the time, the spirit makes me feel empowered, and I am not even in tech :-)

I enjoyed the discussion at the Clickable's Interesting Cafe as well. Heidi, the discussion leader, shared her story: "After feeling like a social outcast as the only "chick" studying robotics at Princeton Computer Science Department, Heidi Dangelmaier became passionately interested in gender and design..." She raised the awareness of changes in female culture and how these changes have an impact on marketing, technology, culture and society. Heidi showed concerns that social networking might have too much influence in shaping how young generations viewed the world yet it did not emphasize on authenticity, thoughtfulness and the depth of human relationships. She gave a powerful example of how anyone could comment one someone else's business regardless of the relationship between the person who published a story and the person who commented on the story. It is not pleasant to receive a negative comment, and people can be really mean when it comes to expressing their thoughts and using their agenda.

As a true believer in the natural development of social networking, I agree that social networking can sometimes be a disaster. Nevertheless, it is no difference than anything else created by humans. Social networking will always have pros and cons just as good and bad people always coexist. Maybe it is better to focus on how social networking could help rather than what needs to be fixed, because really, is there anything that is perfect?

Heidi's presentation was full of creativity for product brandings. Her experience and knowledge of genders and designs really provided me with insights into different groups of people. She presented cutting edge ideas when it came to ad-targeting and branding, and I definitely benefited from the discussion. There were many professional opinions in the online industry as well and I have learned a lot. College is really not the end and there are still so much more to learn everyday, especially in this constant changing age of social networking.

We Are Going Through a Cycle of "Connect, Abandon, Connect, Abandon"

2009-04-28T18:14:00.015-04:00

I still remember in middle school when the internet was new. My friends and I would get together at an Internet Cafe to ... chat to one another online (using YM or this super old interface called MIRC, I don't even know if it still exists). It is really amusing now that I think about it, but back then, that was trendy. I guess by chatting online, we could say a lot of things that we were not able to say it face to face or through telephones. We connected better with classmates who chatted with us often, and grew apart from others who we used to talk on the way biking to school. Sadly.

After that, emails, and chat tools become less important. Facebook, MySpace and Twitter allows us to share so much more. They assist us well in the learning of others. For example, if my schedule doesn't allow me to get online for a week, I could stilll find out what my friends have been doing by checking their Facebook or Twitter, from their status updates to their photo uploads. I realize how much I care about someone by how often I look at their profiles, etc. On the same token, the best way to disconnect with someone for a while is by disconnecting from the person from your Facebook, not by deleting their phone numbers or stopping seeing them. All you have to do is to ....intentionally lose his/her Facebook. The sites give us the power to pick and choose who, when, how and at what degrees we can connect. When our perceptions of the world change, we go on these sites and change our profile picture, status or information thinking that would change how others view us. When we crave for solitude, we stop sending messages and start changing our privacy settings. We seem to have the power to manage the complexity of our minds through Facebook's profile layouts or Twitter's 140 characters. I guess that said enough about the importance of these sites to our lives nowadays.

Today, Kaila Colbin posted a great article on MediaPost about social networking and how search marketing can take advantages of the understanding of human behaviors. As the cycle of "connect, abandon, connect, abandon" goes on, we continuously seek for a better tool to interact with others. I am really curious about what's after Facebook and Twitter :)

Some Thoughts After "Googling Ourselves To Death"

2009-04-22T17:59:00.018-04:00

Today, one of the communication professors presented Googling Ourselves To Death. A few things that were mentioned in his lecture were:

- His concern regarding "the decline of intellectualism and democracy" around the world since the world wide web became a necessity.
- How Google has way too much power with information on the internet and webusers don't question their search engines.
- Search engine has become a way to make money instead of providing necessary and accurate information.

I already knew the lecture was not about how great Google was; and I have accepted the fact that many people out there are cynical and annoyed since Google and search marketing "mythically" became so significant (the same way they used to criticize television ads until everyone got tired of hearing it). However, it was disappointing that the examples and statistics given by the professor were not at all persuasive, and that he was not able to answer any of the questions regarding search engine and information sorting.

Being a college student with nothing but a willingness to learn and question what is thrown at me, I have no better way to challenge his points of view than through blogging. (Partially because I have attempted but he did not answer my question, and partially because I am not into changing anyone's opinions, at least not until I fully understand how Google does things).

A few comments I have about what was said:
- His concern regarding "the decline of intellectualism and democracy" around the world since the world wide web became a necessity: The professor provided statistics of how the SAT scores have declined for the past few years even with the rapid growth of information resources on the internet and the assistance of Google index. As bad of a test-taker as I am, I agree that SAT can be a great indicator of how intellectual people are. However, I do not see the relevancy between people doing worse in SAT and Google or the internet becoming more and more powerful. There are way too many factors involved for the statistics to work. Secondly, he stated that democracy declined and the evidence was that people didn't go out to vote anymore.Hmmm...I guess the increased numbers of people who voted for the last election, offline and especially online, must not be enough (not yet considering how the President has done much of his campaign online).

- How Google has way too much power with information on the internet, and web users don't question their search engines enough: Yes it's true that Google has a lot of power, but Yahoo, AOL, and Ask are search engines, too. Why aren't they being criticized as much? I swear I am not paid to defend Google, but just because Google has so far been used the most does not mean it has to be malicious and evil. Doesn't mean it is good or bad, just what works best for now. Yes it is scary that Google might know so much about you but isn't that the cost of exchanging information on the internet anyway? How about watching less movie like Eagle Eye and creating a better solution to replace search engines? And I am sure there are plenty of web users out there who question them.

- Search engine has become a way to make money instead of providing necessary and accurate information: The professor seemed to think it was all about who paid the most money for their key words to be on top. If only he could do a little more research about SEM to know that the higher quality scores that your keywords have, the less you would probably have to pay. There is a myth that big corporations lobbying Google for their keywords to be on top (pay the most money), but I don't think Google would accept that kind of money when what they might have in return is a bunch of irrelevant keywords and no growth potentials. Believe it or not, information is not free, and I accept the fact that I have to look at a bunch of ads to be able to get necessary information. Haven't we been through this already with TV ads?
I think that is enough writing for today. I am just glad I got it out of my system. Now I really wonder if the professor "googles" and finds this post...:)