Blitz or Burn: Branding, Selling and Being Human

April 6th, 2009

I’m about to launch a new blog venture with my virtual office mate (because we decided that’s the best way to describe us – though he’s much older than me, so sometimes I call him Grandpa just to piss him off), Ron Miller. It’s a blog with social media tips and how-to’s for the beginner and it’ll be launched in concert with our co-written ebook about finding your voice in a crowded online world. Very excited – but more details on that in the next week or so.

As things are getting set up, I decided it was time to walk away from Feedburner – my current feed client, the one that I use for the Writing Roads blog (where you are at this moment – in case you got lost).

Feedburner sends email alerts out up to 24 hours late. And it seems to have no earthly idea what my actual subscriber rates are. I’m so over it. I know that two folks that I really like (and who have been awfully successful), Guy Kawasaki and David Meerman Scott, use Feedblitz.

I have to say that I don’t love the way Feedblitz looks – in fact, I find the email alert layout to be a little, um, how do you say, ‘kinda boring’ as opposed to the polished look of Feedburner. Though they do list recent posts – the brand and look of the blog itself is lost. Check them out for yourself.

Feedblitz:

Feedburner:

So, I’m going back and forth…and then I turned to Twitter. And what happened was a perfect display of how you can manage, market and communicate your brand effectively with Twitter. (and I made my decision)

I simply asked the question – Feedburner or Feedblitz? I got a number of replies, including one from a man named @phollows (Phil Hollows). We started a conversation where he asked me why I continued to use Feedburner (um, I don’t have any spare time to make the switch.) And then, when I said that the new blog presented the perfect opportunity for me to try Feedblitz, he said,

“@writingroads That’s cool; start w/us on a new project and compare what we do vs burner side by side. I couldn’t ask for more :-)”

Come again? ‘We, Us, I’ At which point I went to his Twitter page to discover that Phil is the owner of Feedblitz. Nice.

Here’s what he did right:

He’s monitoring his brand.
He showed up to talk to a potential customer.
He answered some questions (like, is Feedblitz going anywhere anytime soon – and the answer is ‘no’).
He acted like a person, not a company.
His Twitter handle is his name, not his company’s.
He remained approachable and helpful.

For the record, I’ve heard nothing from Feedburner (hey, did I mention it’s owned by Google?)

If only there weren’t fees associated with Feedblitz. But, hey, to their credit, Feedburner, which is free, has done one thing well – they’ve proved the old adage: you pay for what you get.

Filed under Blogging, How To, Social Media | Tags: blog subscribers, copywriter, copywriting, feedblitz, feedburner, freelance copywriter, Google, Julie Roads, Ron Miller, rss, rss feeds, social media, Twitter, Writing Roads | Comments (10)

google can finally read flash websites!

July 2nd, 2008

This is incredible news because up until now – many of my clients were having to choose between the flash of flash and the flash of SEO. Flash’s wow factor was always dampened by the fact that search engines (like Google and Yahoo!) couldn’t read the flash. Expensive alternatives like making mirror sites without the flash or simply adding content on the site’s back end. Of course, blogs have played a key roll in site findability – and they still will – whether the search engines can read flash or not.

If anyone is interested in a flash site, but has been holding back because of non-searchableness (my word), I work with an expert team that specializes in flash, Stainless Communications, that created this: Bonobo Kids.

Filed under News | Tags: blog, bonobo kids, copywriter, copywriting, flash, Google, Julie Roads, SEO, Stainless Communications, Writing Roads | Comment (0)

does google know everything that i do online?

May 27th, 2008

Ummmm….Yes. Your internet participation is recorded in total for better or for worse: web pages, blogs, comments, emails (in some cases), reviews, social network pages, profiles…and on and on.

When people talk about you, it is duly noted and forever findable.
When you talk, it is duly noted and forever findable.

For Better.

1. This increases your site ranking, your visibility, your importance in the web world.

2. People can find you, in other words, your searchability also shoots up.

For Worse.

1. Everything is recorded – this means even emails in some cases – depending on the sort of server they exist on (for instance, some community servers are live, online and searchable).

2. People change, grow up, get smarter…but those old emails, web pages, blogs, comments are cached and keep hanging on.

What to do.

Well, you can erase cached pages, but I’ve heard it’s a pain. Better yet, look ahead. Be very mindful of your web presence. Think before you speak/write/post/share/comment. Without becoming a paranoid freak, try to remember that people will see what you do online…

Remember, web participation is vital to online marketing, so don’t stop…just interact responsibly.

Filed under How To | Tags: blog, Blogging, cached pages, commenting, copywriter, copywriting, Google, Julie Roads, online marketing, personal profiles, post, Social Media, social networking, web pages, websites, Writing Roads | Comment (0)

Can I pay to get on the first page of Google?

January 31st, 2008

If one more person tells me that their ‘friend’ paid $250 and is now ranked 1st on Google…

NO! You can’t do it! Here’s the deal: the search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN, dogpile, etc…absolutely have to rank sites based on relevancy and quality (content). Think about it. If you searched Google for ‘macbook’ and it returned sites that feature 12 year-olds bragging on their blogs that they just got a ‘cool new macbook for Christmas’, you would think to yourself, “that wasn’t what I was looking for’, you’d be annoyed, you’d vow never to use Google again, so would everyone else - and, here’s the kicker, Google would go out of business. Out of business! So, no, you can’t pay the search engines for a high rank. If they took your money, they would die. And, they don’t want to die.

You can pay them for a high rank for your AD! Ahhh…maybe that’s what your friend meant. They may look like search returns, but they are advertisements, paid advertisements along the top and right side of the Google search returns page. (And by the way, Google ads work best when written and keyworded by expert SEO copywriters!) (I have some names if you need them.)