Oh no. Not how to succeed in social media. AGAIN

Why do I keep clicking on them?

I mean those tweets, email suggestions, blog recommendations on Great article - 10 absolutely mind-boggling tips to really make the most out of social media. Or Twitter obviously. In fact Twitter first of all.

Haven't I learned by now?

Doesn't matter how A-list an author they are written by. Doesn't matter how A-list a blogger they are recommended by.

All these articles say the same xxxxing thing, over and over and over again.

But would like to recommend one post though. Its - ummm - well - ok, so it is about - no, forget it, oh ok its this one:
How to use Twitter to grow your online business.

Did happen to think this was an unusually good and practical example of the breed.

Seth Godin's Broad Brush

I don't know why, I just got this thing about Seth Godin.

Maybe it's because of the way, in the silly sheeplike hero-worshipping world of the internet, you can just feel the unthinking breathless admiration when people type his name.

Maybe it's because his short posts often seem to me to sacrifice meaningful detail in order to create an appearance of punchy innovative thinking.

Probably it's a combination of the two.

Case in point: this post

The central idea here is simple:

• You can go about seo in two ways


• Try and rule the search engine results for your keyword - Godin uses plumber as an example


• Or make something so special out of your own company that you don't need search engine rankings for the generic term because everybody is searching for you


• The first is impossible so try number two

Now, while I applaud Godin's encouragement to people to create something special, his argument here is so simplistic as to be laughable.

I mean, who even searches for plumber nowadays?

Google has recognized that unqualified generic terms like plumber are pretty useless for many searches by including the one box of 10 local results in the middle of unlocalised searches for thousands of generic terms.

Web savvy plumbers nowadays wouldn't be targeting terms like plumber but more useful and more ruleable Google results like plumber London or plumber West London or even plumber Housnslow. And that's not to mention plumber combined with whatever other qualified searches punters tend to use (reliable? 24 hour? emergency?)

And while, as I said, I do like the way Godin wants people to create something remarkable (and I do, I really do, I think being remarkable is a fantastic thing to aim for), I just can't help feeling that in the real time-pressed world with mortgages to pay and children to care for, I just can't help feeling that for many plumbers as for many middle aged female web designers, being remarkable is just not a realistic aim.

Doing a decent job for clients is about all I aim for. Really decent. Something they will be pleased and maybe pleasantly surprised by. But remarkable? I just havn't got the time. Not if I'm going to earn enough money to pay for the mortgage, the education, the...

And under those real world circumstances, well, thank goodness for the the myriad of qualified search terms that are worth ranking for. Thank goodness for the nitty gritty details that don't seem to exist in the wonderful purple world of Seth Godin.

Google thinks its God like Microsoft used to

You know the feeling you get when you are doing something in Office and that silly helper thing pops up and asks you if you want to do something you dont't? I mean that Microsoft just stoppit feeling, stop thinking you know what I want because you just don't.

Well, that's the feeling I just got from Google.

I was searching for the Biblio Chair.

First I searched without quotes. Got Digg and some blogs, plus loads of links to bibliography pages.

Which is when I got that deja vue sort of feeling. Hey Google, if I wanted to search for bibliography, I'ld search for bibligraphy. Stop thinking you know what I want because you just don't.

I always used to think that Office Helper was a symptom of Microsoft having too much power and thinking they understood everything. Now its Google that thinks like that.

Which is part of the reason why I hate the idea of personalised search so much. I want to look for myself. I dont want Google censoring my results in the mistaken belief that it really can know what I am looking for.

That's the end of the Googlesoft experience.

But as a postscript, then it was just Google being annoying in its own particular way.

I put quotes around Biblio Chair. Got Digg and the blogs and lots of Digg derived pages without bibliography this time. Annoying. Wanted to find out how much it cost. Not read somebody elses tedious take/promotional efforts on it.

Anyway, clicked on the Digg link. Oh great. The Digg page was linking to Treehugger. More second hand commentary.

So off I trot and at last found my way to the company that makes the Biblio Chair (have a look at it. It is mighty cool).

Can't totally blame Google for absence of the source page. The product is actually called the bibliochaise. And the company who make it have a Flash website where you can only link to the home page and the website is not optimised at all.

But Digg? Treehugger? tumblr? blabla.blogspot and blablabla.typepad? Who in the real world wants them?

We are all leaping enthusiastically into this brave new world of transparency and consumer power.

Sometimes it just seems like all it adds up to is loads more verbiage to wade through.

And incidentally, none of it is any more trustworthy than old style company promotion. Sometimes, I long for a bit of simple promotional company fluff. At least then you know where you are.

Search rankings dead? I don't think so

Yes I know this blog is supposed to be about the middle age and families and stuff.

But my irritation at the sheep-like search engine optimisation community is just too powerful to resist this opportunity to give my fingers free reign at the keyboard.

It's just this rankings are dead thing. People have been saying it for a while. But Bruce Clay made a splash about it recently (splash link is to a video if there is anybody else in the world like me who hates to wait for a video to load that will then take up 10 times more of your time than the equivalent text content). And I guess he got what he wanted because he got a lot of coverage and links from saying it.

But now everyone and his dog is saying it.

Now I'm not saying all this talk is groundless. Follow any of the links in the above paragraph to find out about how more localised results, video, images and oh dear yes Google's personalised search will or may effect the way Google orders search results.

And I have no beef with the other point the seo sheep bleat: the one about how high rankings are useless if the people who come to your site don't convert (buy/contact you/sign up) when they get there.

But I would argue the converse is also true. In other words, the old seo chestnut about great content that converts well being useless if nobody comes.

And how are people going to get there? Digg? Stumbleupon? Twitter? Friendfeed?

I don't think so, not if they aren't looking for the latest article on How Best To Tweet to your Tweeps or similarily naval gazing tactics that is.

No. The majority will be searching on Google. If I actually wanted something, that is where I would go.

And what would I click on? Why the results on the first page of course, maybe some from the second page, even the third if I really needed something. Would I be clicking on videos? No way. Why waste time? Images? Local? Maybe, if they looked like they might lead to something genuinely useful.

I had a sudden panic here. Am I just reflecting my age in the way I search? So I went and conducted a not entirely scientific survey and asked daughter 2 what she would do if she had to search for something. We picked buy New Rave clothes because that was something she recently had to do for a themed party.

So what would this tech-savvy screen-addicted YouTube-watching teen do? Well, she would go to Google and then:

• I definitely wouldn't look at the video" (yesssss!)


• I might look at the images but I would check they wern't something silly like Jennifer is wearing... (she was watching Friends at the time)

So basically, she would do the same as me. Click on the text results in the first page or two of the Google results.

So for both of us Google and the websites that rank are what count - however they got there.

Really, what I am saying is that I still believe the best way to get business for my customers is to get them on the first page of as many relavent popular Google search results as possible - ie to get them to rank.

That would certainly include optimising images for search; video too if it was affordable. Local optimisation for local businesses is obviously a must.

And I would absolutely ensure that what people who click on my customer's websites get when they come is content as good as can make it. I also would try and make it very easy for them to convert. All these things I would test with website analytics software (another of the shiboleths of the rankings are dead crowd.

And good content seems the best way to get promoted in personalised search too - except by competitors of course who, in the smallish local search results I am interested in for my customers, are as far as I can see the only ones using Google's personalised search so far. (Note to self: save anti-personalised search rant for another post)

There are others of similar mind.

As I see it, rankings, far from being dead, are still the number one consideration for SEOs. How we do it may change. But without them, it's us not the rankings but us who will be dead.

Time the Healer

Been a long time...

And reading my last post, I just cant believe how much my feelings have swung.

I'm not talking hormonal fluctuations, just the normal passing of time and what it does with the things that happen to us.

Last post - just a few months ago - I couldn't think about daughter 1 and her impending departure to uni without flashbacks to her childhood and tears welling in my eyes. Maternal guilt was running rampant.

This post - well she's gone. And am I crying? No. Do I think about her all the time? No? Am I waiting with baited breath for her calls and her Blackberry messages? No.

We talk and Blackberry message quite a lot which is great. I don't feel cut off from her. I still know what is going on. I still feel like her mother.

But I'm quite happy without her. The other three children provide enough entertainment and work to more than fill the time that I'm not working.

Next week, she is coming to stay for a few days with her boyfriend. And I am looking forward to it. But I'm also mindful that it will mean extra work for me (lazy lazy person that I am).

How far have I come from the distraught mother of 5 months ago?

So what do I draw from this?

Not much really.

Yes time heals. But everybody knows that. And it never helps at the time.

And I don't believe that the fact that I am thinking and feeling so differently now invalidates what I was thinking and feeling then.

That my children will leave me is a tragedy - a completely right and reasonable tragedy - that I will sometimes experience again. That the bossy five year old with a squeaky voice has gone is another tragedy that I know about but am not experiencing now.

So maybe what I have learnt is that time doesn't exactly heal. But it does change things. Until, of course, it changes them again.

Terrific?

Ok so tomorrow is now today and it's time for something terrific.

Only there isn't anything.

Instead, there is only sadness.

I just read a fantastic post by a mother of four looking back at the hope and love she felt 32 years ago when her first child was born and at how things turned out differently but also the same.

That post really struck a chord with me.

Daughter 1 is due to leave for university in a few months and she will be living in Scotland, a four and a half hour train ride or 30 minutes by plane away.

The family is breaking up. It hasn't always been the happiest family. In fact, sometimes things have been downright terrible. Even so, it was a family, my family, and I have lived inside it for nearly 19 years.

And soon, it is to change, shrink a little, lose a member. It feels like an amputation is beginning and I can already feel some of the raw pain. Images of daughter 1 as a 5 year old flash into my head all the time, a bossy little girl with a squeaky voice telling everyone what to do and all I can do is cry.

And daughter 1 is only the first. The others will follow. In 7 years, they will all be gone.

Pretty obvious stuff? Well yes, only... I hadn't really realised it before.

What makes all this really bite is something similar to what Ms. Moon, the authour of the post above, is experiencing:

I wish, oh babies, I wish - I could have done better by you sometimes. I do.

I wish that too. I wish it so hard I could gouge my eyes out with the strength of that wish.

Mothers feel guilt all the time. It comes with the job. But this is something more. I know I could have done better by them. I know I should have done.

Cracking content

I read the other day that if you don't write on your blog for a while, you should'nt apologise, you shouldn't even mention it. You should just set to writing some really cracking content so that your readers (who?) will just be grateful that you're back.

Hmmm cracking content. OK I'm lighting a cigarette (horrified intake of breath) and thinking.

More news from the kids' exam front? Not cracking. Walks with the dog? Not cracking. Lack of progress of builder at recreating our shower room? Definitely not cracking.

Think I'll go away and hide my head in the sand and come back tomorrow with something really terrific.