May 25,09

Australian Book site fail, loses the sale

[ NB> to see how Dymocks handled this, quick note at bottom, follow up post to come ]

I had a mission. A simple mission. All I wanted was to replace a copy of a good book that was so good, someone has lifted it!

The book itself is not the issue, but it was a good project management book which I like to keep handy to explain to people our project management documents and process.

Anyway I digress. Too late to stop at a book shop and none of the local major stores show in store inventory, (Gee wouldn’t that be such a good idea! Live store inventory) and my preferred local bookstore Coaldrakes at Milton, is nearly closed and doesn’t have it in stock. I want it now. Well more importantly I want to order it now and just have it turn up quickly.

Help - Google! Yes look at that Angus and Robertson has it, Dymocks has it. That’s a start. Amazon has it (of course) and they will ship tomorrow which means less than 5 days and I will have it. How do I know this? Well I have always gotten my books from Amazon quicker than they promise.

Angus and Robertson, ships within 24 hours 7-14 days till I get it. Okay that is one slow camel it is coming on, unless of course it is actually coming via the USA, in which case I may as well just order it from there.

So back to Dymocks. Well look at that, yes they have it and can ship immediately, even better they seem to be the only site on the planet that has it as a downloadable PDF. Wow that is better; I can store it and not waste any paper. Except the electronic version is dearer than the paperback (now that is odd). The electronic version is enough to make me jump in and buy it.

This is what happens next: (more…)

Apr 04,09

Early wrap up on SMX Sydney

In case you didn’t get the flurry of tweets on my account this week, you wouldn’t know I have been at SMX Sydney 2009. SMX stands for Search Marketing Expo. This pretty much sums up the conference.

I have been working in the web for a rather long time now, and pretty much from the beginning, there has been a need to find relevant content. It is a constant that hasn’t changed; just the ways we get to it has changed.

Before there was Google there were other engines, and since then optimising content has been necessary to get your content found. Note I say content not sites.

One of the important elements from SMX this year is the prevalence of the new windows to content that exist, and that change is always occurring.

Does it mean traditional Search practices are dying?  Definitely not. In fact, with all the Social Media hype about at present, one could not be blamed for thinking Search had dropped of the relevance radar.
It hasn’t.

(more…)

Mar 05,09

Not just a web site! What is your web strategy?

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting to the members of the Cairns Chamber of Commerce. I was asked to speak more of ‘the web’ rather than web sites per se.

This was a relatively easy topic (or so I thought) for me given it is the big issue we try to help our customers understand every day (and our organisation).

I have included the presentation slides below which kind of show some of the message.

The main theme for me was “are you paying attention?

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Feb 11,09

When free turns to paid. Twitter for Brands (business).

Filed under: Business, Marketing on the web, Social Networking, Web 2.0 — darryl @ 11:44 am

Over the last couple of days the news is out of the box, that Twitter is considering charging brands (this is still to be adequately defined) for using twitter and possible related services.

Those of us that have been tweeting and observing for a while have wondered what Twitter’s first play would be in commercialising this empowering service.

We all know it can’t be free forever (sadly), but exactly how it would first change its positioning was always hotly debated but never clear.

twitter-for-brands

Our brand your twitter.

So why a brand? Well obviously some of the larger ‘personalities/celebrities’ on Twitter use a lot of Twitter resources, e.g. @GuyKawasaki and his alltop blasts, @stephenfry with his huge following and many fully blown commercial brands.

Whereas a business by definition is not necessarily an individual and many could hide behind the distinction.

Questions and comments are raging across the blogosphere as to what / who would constitute a brand, and how exactly would they be targeted. The obvious assumption is heavy users who are benefitting in promoting their brand or utilising Twitter (either directly or via API) would be charged in some form of user pays model.

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Feb 05,09

Politics at the Coalface

Filed under: Marketing on the web, Queensland Leaders 2008, Social Networking — darryl @ 11:02 pm

Today at February’s Queensland Leaders forum there was a lot of reference, understandably, to the Global Credit Crisis, Queensland’s mining industry and of course, with guest speaker Lawrence Springborg, how poorly Queensland Labor are handling matters.

I had hoped, albeit naively, that from the LNP leader we might see less politicking in this smaller forum, than Premier Bligh, and Wayne Swan, when they visited.

Alas, that wasn’t the case. To give ‘The Borg’ credit, he arrived before any of the speeches commenced, stayed until well after they finished and was more than happy to take questions. Unfortunately, that was quite in contrast to the Premier when she visited.

Several interesting questions were thrown up to the Opposition Leader, one being his position on Climate change and Energy sources, given Queensland’s heavy dependence on Coal Mining and export for its  income.

(more…)

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