B2B and Industrial Marketing Blog
Tired of waiting for Outlook to open? I was surprised how long it took to open on my new 2.8G XP box.
Turns out that the “Enable Instant Messaging” function in Outlook was the slow down. Go to: Tools/Options/Other to turn it off.
[Insert Microsoft rant here.] Ahh, that feels better.
Here are the news stories I am working on:
I just got off the phone with a new potential client who was on our website. I promised him an email with a price quote ‘shortly’. And he asked what my name was. Not just because he wanted to hold me accountable for a promise to send a quote, but because we had started a relationship.
I always feel flattered when new prospects ask for my name or extension number. Of course, now that I am flattered, I am willing to help him in any way I can. Turns the tables on the conventional wisdom about salespeople and customers, doesn’t it? How do people react to your staff when the call your company? Are they starting or building on a relationship?
Some digging turned up the entire article about blogging and b2blog.com at the Grand Rapids Press. The title in the paper was different than is on the web: Confessions of a blogger.
“The purpose is to let me express myself,” said Jung, 36. “I feel comfortable expressing myself in writing. I have this thought, and the only way I can make it concrete is by putting it into writing, having that invisible person to talk to. It becomes your soap box.
“At the very least, it allows me to express my thoughts and observations, whether anybody’s listening or not.”
The local Grand Rapids Press did an article about blogging which featured me and Mike Boyink. They don’t post ‘Flair’ articles to the web, but you can see my picture and the start of the article here for a week.
A new year, and new news on web search:
Thomas Register is now combining their multitude of Search-EZ sites into one comprehensive site called thomasregisterdirectory.com. They might be reacting to the changes in Google, which buried the EZ sites. The new site still has a PageRank of 0, so they aren’t ahead yet, but give it a little time.
Speaking of Google, someone forwarded a great article on the latest changes in their algorithm. The change brings two new terms to learn:
1. Hilltop–the patented tool that Google is now using to optimize its results.
2. LocalRankings–I’ve been ignoring discussions about this, but this is actually the new tool that Hilltop uses to weed out irrelevant PageRank weighting.
The article says that only about 20% of a page’s ranking is attributable to actual search-optimization, the rest is weighted by Hilltop and the more familiar PageRank. The ranking does, however, of course, depend on the right words still being there. Its just that your power to improve your ranking is limited to 20%.
Action item: Time to go looking for more incoming links from ‘authoritative’ sources.
History is always a good teacher. So, before I get too involved in planning what I am going to do in 2004, I re-read all my posts of 2003 and came up with this list. Its also a good way for a new visitor to get to know what this blog is about quickly:
More about some of my ideas for 2004 are coming up next, thanks to a good book.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! As a blogger, here is my present to my readers: suggestions for making your new year better. These are personal suggestions, not business ones.
Any of the above will cost you less than $15. Try one and see.
I haven’t posted much because of our recent factory move. And our T-1 line isn’t installed yet, so we are sharing a single modem line–which means no surfing. Actually, it has probably been good to keep the distraction of the web away when we should be focusing on getting our business up and running again.
What sucks is I am the one who ordered the T-1. Too late apparently. Our business manager should have, but he was weighing his options. So the salesman blew it in not warning us about how long the service takes to get installed. Maybe he doesn’t really know. But that’s the beginning of the story.
We ordered from SBC, who we also ordered phone service from. Turns out that even though our phone service was active on December 5th, we still haven’t had our toll-free lines transferred. Our old provider is forwarding our primary line, but I didn’t expect it to take this long. I was told last week that they should have been transferred by today.
As far as the T-1 line is concerned, it took almost three weeks from the time I signed the contract till the order for the line was actually placed with the phone company. Then I was told it would be installed ‘by’ December 22. It was actually installed on Monday. But no one has contacted me about test and turn-on, even though the installer said it should happen the following day.
Things are early, things are late, and I, the customer, am left wondering and waiting. Part of the complaint is the lapses of time, but more important would be keeping me properly informed of the lapses of time.
1. What I called the ‘Google Slam Dance’ at the end of last month I have since learned is called ‘Florida’. The name must be related to the controversial election results from that state, as the results of Google these days are very controversial. While numbers are down, I’m comfortable that people can still find my company, it will just take a bit longer.
2. So I went to see if my AdWords campaign is starting to look more expensive and found that my ads are now getting rated differently. They were called either ‘strong’ or ‘moderate’. Here is Google’s definition:
What do the labels in the status column mean? (Note: These values are determined by your keyword’s clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google search pages only.)
Strong – This is the ideal situation for your keyword and its associated ad(s), which are showing at full delivery.
Moderate – The ad(s) for this keyword are showing at full delivery, but there’s still room to improve the CTR on Google search pages if you’d like.
At risk – The ad(s) for this keyword are showing at full delivery, but may stop showing soon.
Slowed – The ad(s) for this keyword are showing less frequently than usual.
Disabled – The ad(s) for this keyword aren’t showing any longer.
3. I found that one recent term I had added was doing very well. 87 ‘views’ and 4 ‘clicks’. Yea, its only 4 leads, but it cost a quarter of the other key words and I helped 4 people find my site quicker. Seems that whereever I got the idea that people might search for my products with this term was accurate.
4. Google adwords singular/plural fix is apparently not working. I need to relist my plural terms again. Plural search: two ads; singular search: eight. Obviously I’m not the only one who thought that AdWords new system would take care of plurals for us.
5. My competitor with an obvious spam page is still getting serious rankings, despite the Florida algorithm.