Email - Productivity tool or time waster?

A French company recently announced it was banning internal email and in typical French fashion, without a trace of irony, it is an IT company.

It an interesting experiment. Sure there is a certain amount of correspondence that needs to be documented [in our industry rate agreements, approvals, amendments], but the majority of these are external and even then probably don't account for more than a small fraction of the daily deluge.

Actual conversations are so important in an industry built on relationships. And unless you are a secretary on Mad Men, talking is immeasurably faster than typing.

So, before you send that email, pick up the phone, or go for a stroll. Have a chat and let serendipity take its course. Some of the best ideas come from an idle chat around the photocopier...

Move Over Justin Bieber!

Google have today released the 2011 Zeitgeist listing the hottest search terms Kiwi’s searched for this year.

It is of no surprise that the Rugby World Cup made the top of the list as the fastest rising search term of 2011. A much bigger upset though would be that of Sonny Bill Williams trumping Justin Bieber off the number 1 spot as the most searched for image on google.co.nz - and it doesn’t end there. SBW also made the top 10 in the News search, Newsmakers and Fastest Rising People categories!

Besides rugby, Kiwis were also searching for information on the Japanese earthquake, the notorious, bunless Double Down burger and the Nek Minute video on Youtube.

The global search list is set to be released next week. Check out the top search terms in New Zealand here.

The Evolution of Google

Google has come a long, long way since 1996 – from the research project it was then, to the search engine power house it is today. The search giant recently released a 6 minute video encapsulating 15 years of evolution, highlighting its key milestones and possibilities for the future.

The video comes as a follow-up to one Google posted in August this year, shedding some light into the “methodology” behind search ranking and evaluation.

Underpinning Google’s efforts to revolutionise search is their goal to “get you to the answer you’re looking for faster and faster, creating a nearly seamless connection between your questions and the information you seek. That means you don’t generally need to know about the latest search feature in order to take advantage of it.” (Ben Gomes, Google Fellow)

As part of this release, Google also created a timeline of search features.

In our opinion, the most significant changes to Google AdWords came by way of enhancements to their standard paid search ad format with the inclusion of the advertisers domain name, or description line as part of the ad title and more recently, the shift from displaying ads on to the right of Google’s organic search results to below the last organic listing.

Other improvements worthy of mention include the introduction of Image Search ads which resulted in ads similar to paid search ads, but including an image thumbnail displayed above of search results. Also, the inclusion of Google Local resulted in Location Extensions; which provided advertisers with the ability to feed store information, Click to Call functionality and Maps integration within their ads.

Perhaps the most exciting development was the introduction of ‘blended search’, whereby a combination of the above ad formats as well as video content from websites such as YouTube was offered to searchers, providing a more comprehensive and interesting search results page.

Who knows what Google will come up with next?!

The Polls didn't see Winston coming...but Google did!

(Click to enlarge)

A look at web search interest in NZ for the keywords "winston peters" and "nz first" during November suggests that public interest in the party rose sharply in second half of the month, and appears to be correlated with the "teapot" tape saga.

Web search interest for Winston picks up following the emergence of the "teapot" tape on Nov. 13, and spike after his claim on Nov. 17 that he is privy to the contents of the tape.

Interest in the keyword "nz first" follows a similar pattern - suggesting that web search interest in the party itself may have been impacted by the publicity gained by Winston.

Source: Google Insights for Search

Google 'predicts' John Key to win the Election!

In the lead up to the 2008 US Presidential election, search experts noticed that search interest was consistently higher for Obama than McCain, and joked about Google ‘predicting’ the outcome of the election.

We decided to investigate Google searches for the leaders of our two major political parties, to see if Google can ‘predict’ an outcome in NZ as well.

We looked at web search interest in NZ for the keywords “John Key” and “Phil Goff” over the past 30 days. Based on this method, Google is currently ‘predicting’ a win for John Key!

Source: Google Insights for Search

Google+ Pages for Businesses

Google have released their eagerly anticipated Google+ pages allowing businesses, brands and organisations to have a presence on Google+. Previously, only personal profiles were available, with reports that Google had deleted pages found to be using Google+ for business purposes.

So – does your brand need a Google+ page?

We’ve compiled a list of Pros and Cons from the many recent blog posts on the subject.

Pros include:
• One feature unique to the platform are ‘Hangouts‘; the Google+ group video/audio chat feature. These provide an exciting opportunity for live interaction with fans, although the fact that they can only have a maximum of 9 participants limits their reach. The Black Eye Peas recently hosted a ‘Hangout’ backstage prior to one of their concerts, check out the video here. Note that Google are working on a “Hangouts on Air” feature, which allows a Hangout to be viewed by any users who have added the brand to their Circles. In the meantime, some brands have taken to broadcasting their “hangouts” to a wider audience, using TV and YouTube.
• Integration with search via the 'Direct Connect' feature. Users searching for a brand on Google.com with a “+” sign in front of the brand name have the option to add that brand’s Google+ page directly to their Circles from the results page. See Direct Connect in action in this video.
• Brands can sort their audience into ‘Circles’; segmenting their audience so they can target groups of followers with particularly relevant posts.
• Opportunity to capture more +1’s for your brand; Google aggregate +1’s across your website, ads, search results & Google+ page. Your +1 total is displayed on your Google+ page.
• The potential for integration with other Google products (e.g. Google Search, Places, Maps and YouTube) in the future is another reason to create a Google+ page.


Cons include:
• Smaller user base – Google+ has an estimated 40 million users worldwide vs. Facebook’s audience of 800 million.
• Unlike Facebook pages, running contests and promotions is not allowed on Google+ pages.
• Only one person (or email address) can be the admin of each page; meaning you’ll need to share an email address, and won’t be able to track who posted what on the page. Multiple administrator support is promised in the future.
• The mechanism to follow a Google+ brand page is not as simple as it is on Facebook (where you just click the “like” button). With Google+, users need to add a brand to their Circles in order to see its posts in their Stream; depending on the user’s preferences, this may require creating a new Circle. This requires a little more effort, and may be confused with the “+1” button on the page (which publicly recommends the page, but doesn’t result in the brand page being followed).
• Google+ pages are currently totally separate from a business’ Google Places page, and the two must be managed separately; it would be ideal to be able to link the two pages.
• Vanity URLs (e.g. https://plus.google.com/brandname) are not available, so Google+ URLs tend to be lengthy and difficult to memorise.
• Currently, there is a lack of analytics capability, so it is difficult to gain insight into who your fans are and which content they’re interacting with on your brand page. 'Ripples' (a visual representation of the reach of individual pieces of content) give some insights, but not to the level of other platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Google say that more advanced analytics tools are coming soon.

Should your company set up a Google+ page?
The short answer is – it depends.

Whilst Google+ pages are lacking in some areas when compared to similar platforms like Facebook, it’s important to remember they’re still very new, and that Google are working on a number of updates. It really is too early to dismiss them!

I feel that future integration with other Google products – and the potential for improved visibility in the search engine results pages (SERPs) – will be Google+’s differentiating feature. This will certainly be something to watch.

Another consideration is the competitive landscape – if your competitors are developing a presence on Google+, it may be wise to consider adding it to your social media activity.
Additionally, the possibility for fraudulent activity may be a motivating factor. It is reasonably easy to set up a fake Google+ page for a brand or company; creating your own page may reduce the likelihood of a fake page being set up in your business’ name.

Like any social marketing activity, brands should ensure they understand their target market and have a clear content and engagement plan in place. They will also require a suitable resource (either internal or external) to maintain page content, as well as specific objectives to measure success.


Want more information?

• Watch Google’s video about the new Google+ pages for businesses.
• New Zealand companies who are already using Google+ pages include Air New Zealand and NZ Herald.
• We found some great blog posts at Search Enginge Watch, Likeable, Search Engine Land, Clickz, Ad Age & TechCrunch, which were used to research our post.

And in breaking news...

The HMS Rawalpindi has just been sunk by a German battleship - exactly 72 years ago today.

How do we know? And why do we care?

We know because a 24 year old history grad Alwyn Collinson has embarked on a six year project to Livetweet the entire second world war.

And we care because this is the most creative use of Twitter we've heard of in a long time. Emerse yourself @RealTimeWWII.