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Matt Kohut is blogging on engineering issues over at Lenovo.  Initial posts look very interesting, especially his discussion on fuel cells for laptop power.  Check out the initial post here, if you’re a geek like me.

A few years ago I listened to a customer service guru (forgot the name, sorry) talking about a certain airline that had a Boeing 727 delayed for more than 5 hours on the tarmac, before offloading the passengers and telling them they weren’t going anywhere.  The police had to break up the crowd.  The company was thrilled they only had three complaints.  The guru pointed out “those three were the only three that cared enough about you to tell you how angry they were.”

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Now that we’re into December, it’s a good time to remind everyone that it’s time to thank your customers.  Be it a simple holiday card (hand signed if possible with a personal note…) or something more elaborate, such as a gift basket, etc.

We should remember that it’s not 1983 anymore – unless the customer is also a close friend, bottles of hootch, cash gifts and,  in general, gift cards are probably not appropriate (I’d like very much to hear your thoughts on the topic). Booze is off the list for the obvious fact that you really don’t know if someone drinks, and cash/gift cards are off because many companies have outright policies against this, as well as many customers see it as crossing the line. 

Here are five suggestions that would show appreciation without causing issues: (more…)

I had an interesting email from a customer this morning.  One of his sales managers was complaining that they’d almost been excluded from a major deal because their company didn’t come up under a particular search term.  The problem is that search term, while relevant, wasn’t anything we’d optimized for.

It’s very hard to tell someone “You should have listened to me.”  I honestly hate that.  In this case, it wasn’t the fellow who emailed me but a marketing wonk who was dimissed right about a year ago.  She’d had her preconcieved notions of what the brand was and that was how we were going to optimize, even though I pointed out repeatedly that no one would search on branding slogans.

I told the fellow that we really needed to identify what the correct search terms were.  That’s where proper optimization starts, in knowing how people will search for your product or service, and then making sure you’re there to find.  Simply getting a high result for a term isn’t right.  You need to have a high result for *relevant* terms. 

Let’s look at an example.  In this case we have a company that makes software for managing garbage truck routes.  While your brand may be “Global Rubbish Solutions” you can expect that you will get virtually no search hits on that term.  You really need to think in terms of what a customer would search for if they needed your solution.  One would expect highly relevant search results from things such as “trash route software” or perhaps “route management system.”  A proper list should have a bunch of different potential terms.

That’s your start.  Now you at look the historical data (via WebCEO or your Google Adsense console)  as to how many times those terms have been searched recently.  With that information in hand, you will start to get a clearer picture of where your real search market lies, and how to ensure your site is properly represented.

Don’t make the mistake of optimizing on what you *think* the right search term is.  Spend the time to actually research the terms, and in doing so, you’ll maximize the potential of your SEO campaign.

Live in San Francisco…. 

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David Churbuck hit an issue that’s been on my mind for a while yesterday – that is the effect of YouTube on media and news in general.  Basically, YouTube and the cellphone video recorder are(have) changed the world. 

Think about the Michael Richards (Kramer from Seinfeld) incident.  No video phones, no racism complaints, career not quite so over. Or the LA police beatings, no video, no issue.

The problem is that, regardless what you think of MSM (mainstream media in talk show vernacular), they’re basically straight and level on ethics.  No plagiarism, no set ups, no lies and distorsion.  Okay, you can make a case for the Dan Rather bit with the President’s National Guard service, but for the most part, we can stipulate that they’re basically on the level.

That stipulation doesn’t carry to blogs and user generated content.  There’s no general assumption of journalistic ethics.  For that matter the supreme court has even gone one step further, they’ve asserted that reposting of libelous comments is not itself a libelous act. 

Take a look at what happened in Canada recently.  One girl provoked the teacher, while the other waited for the teacher to fly of the handle, then videoed it on her cam phone.  Taken out of context it seemed like the teacher was utterly out of control. Maybe she was, but the truth is the kids did a set up job on her that would get you fired at any news organization in the United States.

Congratulations, you’ve been YouTubed.

The way we get our news is changing dramatically.  Even the network news is running video off peoples camera phones.  The disaspora of journalism has made everyone (that wants to) a media wannabe.  That doesn’t mean that they’ve ever heard the word “ethics” and it certainly doesn’t preclude the hidden agendas that so many bloggers decried in the Rather case.  We have met the enemy – he is us.

I’ve been wrestling with a bit of a conundrum for a while, and John Rogers at OpinionatedMarketers.com reminded me of it again the other day.  If the new marketing philosophy is correct, then the customer owns the brand, relevance is the most important thing, and one must engage and placate ones customers, etc…

Here’s the issue:  if that’s all true, then why spam, or even worse, adware?  Why do companies like Real Media (as John noted in his post) cram all kinds of junk into their installers to trick us into seeing  marketing messages we don’t want to hear?

The thing that makes me wonder is that so many companies are relying on outright deception as a part of their marketing plan.  If the customer truly owns the brand, would not these bottom dwelling denizens have headed for bankruptcy court by now?

I think the truth of the matter is this: new marketing demands excellent throughout the organization.  Unfortunately, not everyone is capable of excellence, hence they’re forced to seek “alternative means” and that inevitably leads to the dark side.  For some folks “good enough” is just that. 

Don’t settle for good enough – success demands excellence.  

Masterful guitar, and married to the wonderfully talented Susan Tedeschi…

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 (oops looks like someone violated a copyright there and got their video removed…here’s another good (and legal) one – mnc)

Mary Schmidt had a great Thanksgiving post yesterday, and I thought I’d post my own list of things I’m thankful for:

1. Friends and family of course.
2. Having this creative outlet (thanks Dave Churbuck for the push).
3. I thank God that I can swim well, and that I’m not swimming now.
4. For the people that put a smile on my face.
5. That I love my work because I spend so much time doing it.
6. My customers and readers, they are the best!

The rest is just gravy, but here is the more mundane list:

1. MP3s and the devices that play them.
2. What did we do without wireless? 
3. IM – the only reason my ear hasn’t fallen off.
4. Microsoft natural keyboards, the only reason I can still move my fingers.
5. Skype, because hour long conference calls to the UK shouldn’t cost more than your mortgage payment.
6. My Thinkpad, for reminding me about all the incredible features that my last laptop didn’t have.
7. The My Book, because everyone should be able to store information by the Terabyte.
8. Archive.org and all the artists and tapers who’ve posted their music.

And while we’re at it, why not the items I hope to by thankful for next year:

1. The continued health and prosperity of my family, friends, customers and indeed, all of you.
2. That every day was better than the last.
3. That I spent all my days with positive, smiling people.
4. My Lenovo Thinkpad X60.
5. A publishing deal for my next book.
6. For having a next book that was worthy of publishing.
7. For my secret personal wish that is but mine to know…

Jay got me on IM with a question a little while ago.  He’s working on the marketing end of a soon to launch web 2.0 project, and had a question about how his engineers are managing pagination.

It’s got the look of just about any other pagination scheme, little arrows pointing right and left at either end, with the page numbers with hyperlinks at the bottom…you know 1 2 3 4 5 …9.

The problem is this: the developer who worked on that particular bit of code decided it would be very cool to use AJAX (asynchronous javascript and XML) to code that.  It would have been easy enough to do in the regular code base, without any worry of page refreshes, but, heck, AJAX is cool.  Jay correctly identified this as a potential problem.

“Am I crazy?  I think this is death to us for SEO (search engine optimization),”  He asked.

Not only is he not crazy, he’s quite astute.  Google and the main search engines don’t process javascript, so they won’t be seeing his page links.  If Google doesn’t see the links, then the information isn’t going to be indexed. 

Be sure you’re technology isn’t getting in the way of your search engine optimization plan!