Friday 15 May 2009

Introduction to WolframAlpha search engine

Launching soon is WolframAlpha, a search engine which is doing what Ask Jeeves tried to do in the late 90s - answer questions, sort of.



Get a good understanding of how it works with this introduction screencast.

Unlike last year's launches of Cuil and Wikia Search i'm far more excited about WolframAlpha as they are focusing on a part of search that isn't currently serviced sufficiently. The more factual infosheet side rather than a method of redirection to other websites (which is what Google does).

For me, it could take over from Wikipedia for provision of immediate-response factual based information (i'm not suggesting it will usurp Wikipedia, just for those times i need straight facts).

Queries such as, "What's the GDP of Germany?" or "Where is the ISS at?". Neither questions i ask as often as i type in "BBC football" into Google mind.

Relevant web links
Web tool 'as important as Google' - BBC News

Friday 8 May 2009

Monitor the online buzz around your brand

How to ensure you know what people are saying about your brand in social media, and what you can do to influence the conversation.

This was the title of a panel debate about buzz monitoring at Internet World 2009. Chaired by Tom Nixon of NixonMcInnes, with his colleague and two other speakers whose names I can't remember, one from Huddle, one from Attentio.

ENGAGEMENT

Get EVERYONE in your company engaged. Get everyone monitoring your brands, or the brands relevant to them. The more eyes you have out there the more you will pick up and the less you will miss.

Some tools to help you monitor your brands
Twitter Search
  • Google Alerts - Type in a search term, such as your brand, and set up an email alert or RSS feed.
  • Twitter Search - Search for terms and brands to find real time discussions on Twitter.
  • Google Trends - Monitor regional interest in topics and their appearance in Google News.
  • Technorati - Search the blogosphere for your terms and brands. Google Blog Search also does this, although not quite as well.
  • Trendpedia - Free tool from Attentio who was one of the speakers. Not sure of effectiveness but worth a play.
  • Company Buzz - Application on LinkedIn. Essentially it's just Twitter Search.
Tools to aggregate some of this content to you

There are lots of tools to monitor buzz but having to go from one to the other every day would be very time consuming so there are a variety of methods to get this information to come to you.
Newspaper with the word RSS on it
  • Email alerts - this is part of Google Alerts and obviously lets you get the information to your inbox. Any RSS feed can also be set up as an email alert with a variety of tools, Feedburner is a good one.
  • RSS readers - most if not all of the tools above output RSS feeds of your results. You can plug these into a reader such as Netvibes and iGoogle.
  • Addictomatic – This is an RSS reader with a difference. It's automatically set up to look at a number of sources and tools. Just type in your brand or terms, here's one I made earlier for number 1 breakfast spread, Bovril.
  • RSS manipulation - you can combine, change, filter and do pretty much anything with RSS feeds using Yahoo Pipes. It's not that simple for non-techies though, here's my short demo.
Things to bear in mind
Pack of Camel cigarettes
A pack of fags
A camel looking curiously
A mammal
  • Setting up an alert for a brand which can also mean something else may bring irrelevant results: For example "Camel" can mean the cigarettes and the mammal with a hump.
  • You could therefore nail it down by searching for "Camel cigarettes"
  • Or look for buzz where both the words "Camel" + "smoking" are used
  • And don't forget there may be other non brand names you can monitor, such as your CEO's name, any campaigns you are running, competitions you are doing, anything else about your brand that might be being talked about.
RESPOND
  1. If someone is interested in your product, the sales team can act on this and chase.
  2. If there are problems or issues with your brand then the relevant people can address these. Such as customer services or your technical support employees.
  3. People like to know they are being taken care of.
  4. Respond with AUTHENTICITY and have a clear consistent VOICE
  5. Be INTERESTING, USEFUL and HELPFUL
  6. This is a representative of your brand talking, don't reflect badly on the brand by being petulant or of no use.
  7. Also remember that it's just people you are talking do, ditch the sales and marketing speak, be yourself.
Related posts
YouTube, Facebook, BBC, Reuters discuss social media (Feb 09)
Stop pop-ups popping up, online advertising needs to evolve (Nov 07)
Aren't Google Alerts clever? (Nov 07)

Thursday 7 May 2009

Should Google News pay publishers for their content?

Working for a publisher the discussion has come up on a number of occasions that surely Google should be paying us for the content we provide it via Google News.

Rupert Murdoch had a whinge about it last month:
"Should we be allowing Google to steal our copyrights? If you have a brand like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, you don't have to."
While, the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, Robert Thomson came out with the slightly ridiculous:
"There is no doubt that certain websites are best described as parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the internet."
Both quotes from the BBC article about this subject.

Should Google pay publishers for content? - No

It's right to expect to be paid in some way for content that you have spent time and money to produce.

Maybe when advertising revenues were strong it was something you could afford to ignore but now this source is receding digital needs to step up and produce another channel of profit. However, stating that Google should be the one to provide this revenue is a rather naive argument.

Google has found a way with Google News of taking what is available for FREE on the internet and making money off the back of it - through referrals to the rest of their offerings.
Stack of European newspapers
Off the back of this the main newspapers received a boost in traffic from Google News. When ad budgets were high, all was good. Increased traffic meant increased revenue from cost per impression, cost per click & cost per acquisition advertising business models.

But with no advertising money available thoughts turn back to the evil G. Surely it makes sense that if Google are making money from this content when no one else is then they should share this pot around.

Well no it doesn't, it's a crap argument. The publishers are offering their content for free online, to everyone. You can access the same content via traditional search engines (Google, Yahoo, Live Search) but nobody is asking for cash from referral here.

Until the content is not available for free on the internet, Google are never going to volunteer cash. They'll wait until somebody calls their bluff. If all the main newspapers pulled their feeds from Google News then they might enter into a discussion. This hasn't happened, yet.

Despite this Google still felt it was necessary to bitch back at the publishers claiming,
"[Google] has shared £3.3bn with publishers through ads program AdSense in the last year".
Well good point, but firstly Adsense is opt-in so doesn't apply to all publishers on Google News and secondly by making this statement Google is admitting that they do indeed owe the publishers something, schoolboy error.

How else can publishers make money online? - Subscriptions

Up until very recently most of the big players online were reluctant to broach the other obvious money from content method - paid for content / subscriptions.

The big UK exception to this is the FT, who in 2007 introduced a hybrid system where you could have 30 views per month before having to pay.

Subscription models become more viable with less money from advertising as site traffic and unique users become less important to the bottom line. Quality, uniqueness and diversity of content take over and differentiation from the competition becomes a sales tool for attracting the lucrative subscription market.

With the addition of subscription revenues, less revenue is needed from advertising to meet commercial targets. The lower traffic figures as a result of content gating and its knock on effect on advertising is therefore diluted.

And not to forget, Google News will still index your site (albeit with the 'subscription' tag).

Example Google News result of a subscription only publisher

The future? - Unique online offerings

Gated content is the online equivalent of buying a newspaper. Getting Google to pay you is the online equivalent of getting the newsagent to pay for your newspaper before selling it on.

"Online equivalents" are lazy ways of trying to transform business models to the digital age. In true 1990s buzzword speak it's not thinking outside of the box.

The brands that will prosper online are the ones that start to use the internet for its strengths:
  • Huge audience
  • Extremely fragmented demographics
  • Extremely niche markets available
  • Extremely flexible routes to market
  • Personalisation and tailored news opportunities
  • Portability
  • This list is in no way complete; tell me more in the comments!
Instead of indiscriminately slapping a subscription wall around content, publishers should take a leaf out of Google News' book.

Use your generic consumer focused general news content as a free traffic driver - that's your website's bait. Let anyone view it, pimp it to every news aggregator going and if advertising returns you still have pages with high traffic. It will also keep your website brand out there.

Use this driver to push your paid-for content. Charge for all truly unique content, ie.
  • Areas of news that only you produce and people need - ie. industry focused business news, such as the FT provides
  • Premium reports - a tech magazine could publish SEO guides, link building guides, technical help
  • Customised reports - Repurpose your unique content into bespoke industry reports for companies and charge for it. Ie. Look at where a company has been in your news and help them to create a report of their brand values in their industry.
  • Sponsored content - Do you have a specialist news channel? Offer a sponsorship package where a company could provide content, sponsor competitions and get involved with your readership in a way not possible with banner ads.
  • Apps - With the rise of iPhones & Blackberrys, apps are big business. Create something so unique you can charge.
  • Sell bespoke content creation - Companies like their customers to think they know their markets. As a publisher you are in a unique position to provide your content in formats that companies can align themselves with - i.e. targeted minisites for brand building.
If people really need something and can't go elsewhere they will pay.

Be creative with pricing strategies. Online items can be sold on an ad hoc basis (download this PDF report for £10) or via a number of tiered subscriptions providing varying levels of access to your content (£900 a year for full unlimited access).

Want to know how to make lots more money online (not a spam link!)? Then read this fantastic presentation by faberNovel about Google's business model.

Related posts
Don't let Google boss your website around
Getting more hits from Google News
Google and Max Zorin, Bond baddies set on world domination