google

Getting All Social With G+ And Hangouts On Air

I thought it about time I had another weekend sale, so tomorrow night at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST) that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

I don’t want to spoil the fun and tell you what it tomorrow’s sale is all about just yet, but let’s say I’ve actually seen the light and I’m going social.

Up to now I’ve dabbled a little in the social marketing arena with content locking via Like+, but I’ve now suddenly realised how important the whole social marketing scene is. I’m telling myself it’s because it’s all finally come of age, and not because I’ve been a little slow on the uptake.

😉

So I’ve now decided to extend my reach out into the social market and hopefully show you a few things that I’ve learned / am learning in the process.

For example, it’s commonly thought that G+ has been a bit of a flop in terms of competing with FaceBook. I no longer believe that’s the case as the whole idea of Google competing with FB on their own terms was a complete red herring. It looks like a lot of people (myself included) got that supposition wrong. I now no longer believe that was ever Google’s intention – they have something else in mind.

The main difference between the two should have caused everyone to stop and *think*.

FaceBook is a walled garden – what goes on in there once you create an account and make friends all happens within FB. They tried to open it up to the outside world by introducing fan pages, but it could be a case of too little too late.

G+ was open for all to see from day one. And unlike FB, you can go in and edit what you said in the heat of the moment.

Anyway… Whatever… Let’s assume that Google has something else in mind and that it will all unfold in time and become apparent to us all. So let’s not write off G+ just yet.

Secondly, Google introduced something in May that just last night slapped me in the face with all the force of a Monty Python wet fish.

This one thing coupled with G+ could change the way you do marketing for yourself and for your clients.

It’s called Google Hangouts (video chat like Skype for up to 10 people), which has been around for a while now, but has just had live streaming (On Air) added to it in May. The joined up thinking here and what slapped me in the face is that the live stream goes straight out to YouTube.

Here in fact:-

http://www.youtube.com/live/

When the live stream ends, it’s processed and automatically added as a new video into your channel where you can then edit the duff bits out.

You can even embed the live stream into your own web site if you want to so that you can get your customers viewing there instead of on the distraction of the YouTube site.

And it’s all free. *

Link this live streaming of video to the G+ system, and you can make sure that your business and pages outrank others of the same nature.

Think about that one for a moment.

Google will pay more attention to the G+ system of voting than anything going on elsewhere.

So you invite your group of followers, customers, whoever to your live stream and tell them that you’d really love it if they voted for your page, video, site, whatever with a G+ like. Tell them to consider it as a payment for the free content / entertainment / whatever it is you’re doing.

Doing so isn’t against their TOS, in fact on the YouTube Creator Playbook, they actually TELL you to ask for likes, subscribes etc in the content you create.

http://www.youtube.com/yt/creators/playbook.html

Aha!

I finally get it. But it’s taken Google Hangouts On Air to get me there.

I now accept that I have no choice but to get both social and viral and do it fast before too many other people cotton on.

I already have some ideas to do this swilling around in the mess of my brain and I think I know what I’m going to do with it all. More on this and that another time.

For now, tomorrow, we’re going to get social somewhere else with a plugin.

The system and thinking behind this plugin is viral and relatively easy to do too – if you get your act together.

I’ll tell you more about this tomorrow and kick off the weekend sale at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST) (Friday 27th).

Think hard about what I’ve said and make sure to have a nice day.  🙂

-Frank Haywood

* There’s actually no such thing as free. Somebody, somewhere, is paying for it, and as a general rule of thumb you get what you pay for.

Posted by Frank Haywood in internet business, social marketing

New Multiple Streams Theme (mst007)

Offer Closed

Update: Go back to your download page and pick up the theme!  🙂

Update:  The person doing the conversion has disappeared, but my regular guy is going to pick this up right after some other work.  It will probably take another week to 10 days.  So as an “I’m sorry” I’ve decided to extend PLR rights out to everyone who bought in the pre-order sale.

If you purchased, check your email for details.  there’s other good news about the image slider in there.

***

While we’re all waiting for the first version of Affiliate Click Pal to be officially released in the next few days, I thought we’d have another pre-order sale – this one for Multiple Streams Theme Seven (MST007).

Pre-order sales I’ve run in the past seem to be very popular, (especially so in the case of Affiliate Click Pal) so I’m continuing that tradition. 😉

Now you might be thinking to yourself “Hang on, didn’t I just get MST Eight a month ago? And this is now Seven?”

Well, yeah… There’s someone else been working on MST007 – actually two other people at different times – but that’s another story. It just needs to be said that Seven will probably be completed by Wednesday or Thursday next week.

At that time it will go on sale for $27, but in this PRE-ORDER sale it will be available to the first FIFTY customers for just $10.

Okay, what’s it look like and what features will it have?

[Middle click the image below to open in a new tab.]

As usual, it comes with a nice selection of pre-designed banners including blank JPEGs / PNGs and PSDs for them, plus umpteen sidebars, a selection of built in page templates, plus plugins (Ads Manager, Redirection, Squeeze Page Templates), and a set of theme options too.

The theme options allow you to turn on and off the header, top boxes and top and bottom ad areas, change footer text and add analytics code if you don’t have the Script Manager plugin. The theme also supports the WP 3.x features of custom menus and backgrounds.

And finally, we’ve included a slider area at the top under the menu where you can place presentational images, extra ads etc.

I know that in the image it looks like a carousel, but that’s an “artists impression” if you like and should be taken with a pinch of salt. I admit the design looks really cool, and if we can include a carousel style rotating image that will be great, but more likely is it will be a slider.

Here’s something interesting. (Oh come on, it’s ALL interesting.) 😉

While looking at carousels, we came across a jquery slider that looks really good, and I think we want to move to this.

(In case you didn’t know, jquery is much better to use than Flash as the CPU load is waaay lower, and that means that people using older slower machines will get the same experience as someone using a brand new one. Not so with Flash. Anyway, back to the plot…)

This jquery slider we found will slide images, text AND videos. Aha!

Now we think THAT would be something that a LOT of people would find very useful.

And the especially interesting thing to me is because it’s jquery, any text and links in the text parts of the slider will be picked up by the search engines. You can’t do that with Flash.

So what I’m now thinking is that if it all turns out to be good, we’ll move to this new jquery script and “retro-fit” MST008 with this slider instead of the original.

This is all TBC at the moment, but we’ll know in the next few days if we can do this.

One last thing.

WordPress Authors In Google Search

Just before sending this out, Ron M (hi Ron) sent me some info about author images that Google are implementing in search. (In fact they seem to have a LOT of new social stuff coming in at the moment, which ultimately means bye bye FaceBook.)

Please be patient if we can’t get this in for v1 of this new theme. It’s brand spanking new, announced today (June 30th) by Google.

What this new feature in search does is it displays an author image next to the search result in Google if the right tags are implemented within the theme. WordPress 3.2 will include full support for this.

Now you might be wondering why this is so important. It’s simple.

Tests have proven that people are more likely to bond or accept a page or site if a photo of the author/owner is displayed. I have one on my own site for that very reason.

Google are now offering to display a photo even before people get to the site.

That WILL improve click throughs.

Think about it. All of Googles search results are plain text apart from videos. Anything that highlights a post such as a thumbnail photo is going to make it stand out from the rest.

And it’s free.

As long as you get the right tags in the right place, AND you have a Google profile, your photo will show next it. I think it’s probably worth the one-off effort to get this sorted for yourself. I’ll be getting mine online in the next few days.

We’re not totally sure just yet as to how this works exactly, and if we can implement this in the theme before release, we will. I REALLY want this feature included, and if we can’t get it out for v1, we’ll add it in an update.

***

In the meantime…

The fifty copies only at $10 PRE-ORDER sale for MST Seven will go live tomorrow at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST).

-Frank Haywood

Posted by Frank Haywood in internet business, WordPress Themes

Google Personalised Search

Is This The BIGGEST Change To Google Ever?

I came across this yesterday.  It’s a quiet little change to Google that seems to have slipped under almost everybody’s radar.  But to me, this could be the biggest change that Google have ever made, especially as it has the potential to render your optimisation efforts useless.

Since 2005, Google has been storing your web browsing history when signed in.  Did you know that?

The fact is, Google store EVERYTHING about you they can.  It all goes in their database.  Many people aren’t concerned about this, but they should be – I certainly am.  For instance, spend a lot of time visiting one of your own small niche sites and doing searches on it to check its position, and it wouldn’t take a genius to write an algorithm to detect that and mark it and you (by cookie, IP address, geo-location, OS, and web browser version) as a potential manipulator of search results.

(I actually think that’s the least of your worries, but we’ll save that for another day…)

Also see my last post about why you shouldn’t use Gmail.

Well it seems that from the 4th December 2009, Google will now store your searches even if you’re signed out, and use a cookie to tag you.  They’ll then PERSONALISE your search results based on what sites you’ve already visited which they already know from you clicking on previous search results.

This actually works then to put an extra layer of obfuscation between you and what results your potential visitors will find when they do the search.  You with me?

Put more clearly, because you keep visiting your own sites by clicking on them within Google, you’ll start to see them higher and higher in the results pages.  You would falsely think that your sites are doing better and better, but everyone else may not see your site showing in the results at all.

So while you see your site going up and going up, to everyone else it may be dropping a page every day.

Then you’d get the puzzle of seeing your site appearing to rank well, but getting less or no traffic.

Ohhhh dear…

Now this is only my first take on this change, I’m certain there’s other aspects of it which I’ve not cottoned on to, but I’ll keep thinking about it.

According to Google, you can opt out, and not be cookied (which I’ve done), but I get the feeling you’ll only be opting out of the bit you can see.  I believe your click activity will still be compiled by Google, simply because they can’t help themselves.

You’ll still be cookied remember, unless you block their cookie or destroy it after closing your browser.  And even then they have your IP address and geo-location, and also know what OS and browser version you’re using, so it wouldn’t be that difficult to be 95%+ accurate.

Remember, Google don’t care about your privacy.  What they care about is compiling as much data on you as possible, and making as much money as possible.

And because this is such a quiet announcement, most people are going to be totally oblivious to it, and not opt out – it’s not obvious this change has been made, and it’s not obvious how to opt out.  Watch the video carefully on the announcement page to see how to do it.

-Frank Haywood

Posted by Frank Haywood in internet business

Why You Shouldn’t Use Gmail

I don’t have much more to add to what’s been said in the comments on this news item on The Register, other than to say what I’ve said many times before.  If you’re running a business, then use a BUSINESS email address, not a free one.

Google chief: Only miscreants worry about net privacy
‘If you don’t want anyone to know, don’t do it’

And you should also check out the comments.  A few choice words there, but it merely reflects the anger you’d expect would be generated by someone making such an arrogant statement.

Google do no evil?  Don’t make me laugh.

Posted by Frank Haywood in Check This Out, internet business