5 posts tagged “google”
I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the boardrooms of some of the world's largest technology companies such as Google or Microsoft at the moment.
Is the uncertain economic environment likely to make these industry players change their strategies and game play? Will technology companies that are currently reporting losses continue to invest in innovation and R&D as a means to try and drive economic growth? And can technological innovation be part of the solution to flip this economic downturm on its head?
I think we will see some of the world's largest tech companies continue to invest in innovative companies and research and development despite the economic uncertainty and fear of recession - and strive forward in the face of adversity.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that innovation continues to play an integral role in boosting economic growth and development. And technology, in particular, is being viewed as a major cornerstone for spurring innovation around the world.
I am interested to hear any specific examples you might have around how investing in innovation can help improve economic growth.
I have to share a fabulous new site that I have been playing around with: Google Trends for websites.
If you are a regular scourer of, say for example, a particular technology site - let's say iTWire, the Google Trends site lets you search for the website and then provides you with a list of similar technology websites that are frequented by the same visitors to iTWire - and sites that you may not necessarily be aware of.
The other cool thing about the site is that it lets you look at the unique visitors to the site over what appears to be a six month period.
When I searched iTWire, it provided me with the following websites:
This site is a great tool for any competitive analysis and research you are conducting for clients.
I have 18 fabulous free tools to share with you that monitor online buzz/ conversation for companies, with sincere compliments to Marketing Pilgrim.
There are many readily available tools available online that can assist you with tracking companies, reputations and conversations that are happening in the online ether that do not incur a cost. Please note, I am not endorsing these tools as the best/ most effective and the only means to tracking the above. These should be used in adddition with a monitoring strategy that is bespoke to the brand/ company.
The tools, however, are a great way to provide an snapshot of the environment a company and/or person is operating in, what is being said, likes/ dislikes, consumer comments, what the competition is doing and so forth. It will not give indepth, qualitative, well researched conclusions - obviously, as I stated earlier, other methods need to be incorporated into this evaluation process.
1) Track your industry using Moreover and Yahoo:
These sites offer RSS feeds for aggregated industry news and will let you track news that is related to your industry.
2) Track media using Google News:
You can even subscribe to Google alerts relevant to your company, product, a particular person, subject and so forth. You will then get instant RSS updates of relevant news items.
3) Track popular news topics/ buzz using digg and reddit:
These sites will let you track popular submitted news that relates to your business.
4) Track the latest in social media news using my favourite, technorati:
This site will let you track social media sites and and RSS feeds will give you updates whenever a blog mentions the company, subject, person you are tracking for.
5) Search blogs using Google Blog Search
You can set up Google blog alerts to track stories, information you are looking for.
6) Track Blog Comments using Co.mments:
Tools such as this track the comments that people leave on blogs so you can get more insight into what people are saying about a person or company.
7) Track Blog Conversations using BlogPulse:
This site will help you track who is linking to particular blog posts about the relevant company or person.
8) Track Blog Trends using BlogPulse:
This site also lets you track, for example, how well your latest product is going, or a competitor's product. It lets you track whether a keyword is getting growing blog mentions or not.
9) Bookmark using del.icio.us:
This site is pretty much an online bookmarking service that lets people share online. RSS feeds also make it easy to track whenever someone bookmarks a web page that includes the company, person you are tracking.
10) Track photos using Flickr:
You can use this site to subscribe to an RSS feed that tracks that will update you on any new image that matches what you are tracking (person or company).
11) Track videos using YouTube:
This is just one site that will let you search for new videos that may match what you are tracking.
12) Track tags using keotag:
This site lets you track to see if someone is using your relevant company and so forth as a key word.
13) Track forum posts using BoardTracker:
This site tracks what people are saying about your company, people on popular forums. The site will alert you by RSS if your cmpany is mentioned in a thread.
14) Track updates on Wikipedia:
This site lets you track what changes/ updates people are making to your company.
15) Track Patents using Google Patent Search:
This site lets you track patents that have been filed and are relevant to your company/ industry.
16) Track events using Yahoo's Upcoming:
This set lets you track upcoming events/ conferences that match your selected keywords.
17) Track keyword referral using Compete:
This site lets you track which websites get the most traffic for particular keywords.
18) Track anything using Yahoo Pipes:
This site lets you develop your own custom buzz monitoring tool and set up your own RSS tracking.
These are more than enough tools to get you started - so go make tracks!
Personal profiling, personal branding and individualism all pretty much mean the same thing. Today, there is a proliferation of personal brands and personal trademarks being established and showcased within different organisations. This is not just left to the experts that are by trade PR practitioners and work in this field.
To explain individualism it in its simplest form, these days I get to include my blog link on my auto-signature. Anyone who receives a mail for me will be able to check out my blog, see what I look like and what my interests are. This is not only accepted, it is encouraged. I think it's great. I have been thinking about this for a good few years already, trying to predict the implications of new social media and Web 2.0 and finally it is actually becoming more widely accepted - all the visible signs are here. A few years ago, I would have probably had my wrists slapped for incorporating my work and private life by including something such as a link to my own very personal online diary to my signature. Heaven forbid, people should have flaunted their social lives to their employers, colleagues and most importantly to clients.
These days, the old rules do not apply. Not only do our clients know who we are and how we work but they also know a lot about our personal lives - who our friends are, what we do on the weekend and are free to form and pass judgement should they wish to do so. All the content is there for them to abley do so. The rapid rise and popularity of online social networks such as MySpace and Facebook means that things no longer remain sacred. There is no such thing as keeping work in the office and the concept of 'work life balance' remains just that - a concept.
Social media is changing the way we interact with one another, and in particular is shifting the traditional client relationships that we have previously known. Once upon a time, clients knew that they could only access us direct at work from 9am-5pm. Technology is completely transforming this (both for good and not so good). Nonetheless, it has become a necessary evil.
I am probably the worst person to comment on this topic. I like being in control and crave knowing what is happening at work and the environment that my clients operate in. Nature of the PR beast is that this operating environment is mostly in flux. I like that I can leave work at the end of the day but still have access to email on a PDA/smartphone, that I regularly use my wireless internet at home to complete work in the evenings and that my mobile is on and I am available 25 NOT just 24 hours a day. I'm sure that I am probably one of the few! I know Dolly Parton sings about it but for most, working 9am to 5pm (these days) would be a dream. Anyway, I have passionately wandered off topic. Now, back to personal branding...
I like that today we can offer our clients counsel on how to build their respective brands and how to profile themselves to the public and I also like that now digital media is allowing us to do the same. I blog because I love to, others blog because it has become their profession. Many people have created quite a name for themselves on the World Wide Web.
An online calculator even exists that measures your online profile and how successful you are, It is determined by how many results your name gets when searching in Google (I think I currently get about 1,200), the total number of responses in the first three search pages etc... It is almost solely based on a Google ranking digital strategy which is much like the strategies we pitch to clients, strategies that are growing increasingly important because of the pervasive nature of the internet, new technology and the importance these things play in the average consumers life.
Nobodies have become somebodies. The past few years have seen many online influentials become micro-celebrities, as Steve Rubel recently put it. Think of Rubel himself!. Ask anyone in the comms industry and I'm sure they will tell you who he is. This is the same with many bloggers and those that frequent video aggregator sites such as YouTube. I can count a fair few recent stories, more popping up each day, of people becoming famous from things such as videos they have posted to these types of sites.
We don't need journalist degrees anymore to become professional writers - look at all of the citizen journalists online. The most influentials ones can be you and me, and these days they are! No longer do you need a degree in Theatre Media to become an actor and no longer do you need to hire an agent to help promote you. New technologies are creating ways for us to make ourselves known to a global audience so today, less people are looking local.
I will be very interested to see what future developments have in store for us, what the next best things will be, where to go from here, web 3.0??? I strongly encourage you to participate in this fruitful space!
I stumbled across a really cool blog page that has all of the Google sites native on the one page. The author of the blog is a guy by the name of Ian Lloyd - clever guy!
It includes all of the Google tools, everything from all types of Google searches (web, images, Frogal, local, blogs, feeds, finance...), Google blogs, Google Fun sites, downloads, email and list goes on and on and on.
- Did you know that there a Google map of Mars?
- Did you know that there is a Google store?
- Did you know that Google has a suggestions page?
But the FUNNIEST has to be:
- Did you know that Google has a sets page?
If you type a word in the search, it finds all the predicted items that fall within the same category. For example, I searched 'teaspoon' and the search came back with wooden spoon, coffee mug, soup spoon, table knife, glass etc... It's purpose is to help those that aren't 100% sure what set a teaspoon should fall under. I should't laugh, it is a useful tool when searching things that little bit more complicated like 'elephant'. :)
He has created a great resource and I highly recommend that you add it to your favourites!
