Fionn Downhill – Digital Shenanigans

Maximize Search Marketing Opportunities with Bestselling Author Bill Hunt Wednesday, February 24th, 2009
5:30-7:30pm
SkySong
1475 N. Scottsdale Road, Convergence Room #129, Scottsdale, AZ 85257

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Leveraging over 15 years of global search experience, Bill will review the current state of search marketing and his view of the future. Bill will talk about the things advertisers and agencies should be doing today to leverage the eventual upturn in the global economy to increase their business and client opportunities. He’ll also take a closer look at the synergies with other forms of marketing and how to maximize the real opportunities of search marketing to gain a larger share of mind of senior executives to drive global expansion and increased revenues.

About Bill Hunt (@billhunt)

Bill Hunt, author of the bestselling book “Search Engine Marketing, Inc.” has been a pioneer in Search Marketing and is considered the top thought leader on Enterprise and Global Search Engine Marketing. He is an internationally recognized Search Marketing expert who has spoken at conferences in over 30 countries. Press, industry analysts and corporate leaders frequently seek Bill’s advice to effectively leverage Enterprise and Global Search Marketing. Bill is the President of Back Azimuth Consulting, which focuses on helping companies understand the Voice of their Customer by aggregating multiple digital signals into actionable insights, product innovation and messaging strategies 

I found this great video on BBC. It is an interview with Warren Buffett where he talks about the influence his Dale Carnegie course had on his life which he completed when he was 20 years old. The tried and tested principals of Dale Carnegie are evident in Warren Buffett’s style and business ethics. I admire both men tremendously and when I grow up I want to be just like Warren Buffett (well a female version)

Steve Jobs today unveiled the iPad.  Starting at $499 in 60 days you too can have your own iPad.  So what’s so special about it.  According to Jobs its ”a truly magical and revolutionary product,”  To be fair to Apple most of their products are revolutionary and magical and Steve will just go back to his desk now and let the raging fans sell his new product for him.  The Apple brand has the most incredible customer loyalty and this is due in no small part to their ability to delivery truly remarkable products.  I am looking forward to trying the iPad but only after I get the hang of my adroid which I have had for a year now.

Webguild reports a comment from Bill Gates on Google’s China ultimatum.  You can read more here.

I think this bit is really funny:

“Now, if Google ever chooses to pull out of the United States, then I’d give them credit.”

This is a video made by Greg Jarboe, at Search Engine Strategies Chicago.  Greg and the people he interviewed are some of favorite people in the industry. Now I am sorry I missed it.  But its year end and not much travel budget left to play with.  I did not miss the freezing cold though. I would like Google to bring me 5 minutes without a change. The past few weeks, with personalized search, site suggest and some caffeine thrown in have been hectic.

I always use Google they are the best search engine but what on earth are they doing with real time results and incorporating twitter into the results.  I do not use Bing because I think their results are garbage and irrelevant most of the time so why does Google think they need to  make this move.  A search for Taylor Swift shows this rubbish in the middle of the results.  Google I don’t care!!!…I want clean relevant results and the fact that somebody just tweeted that they learned a Taylor Swift song on their guitar. this is beyond irrelevant to me.

Who Cares

On Friday the 4th of December Google made what is probably the biggest change ever to its search engine.  It affects every one of us who uses Google but Google did it without any notice or media attention.  This post by Danny Sullivan  explains it more clearly and eloquently than I could possibly ever do. Thanks Danny. 

I find this very troubling, the reason I find it troubling is that most people will not even know that it is there.  It is not like user personalization is new and for a long time if you were logged into a Google account, Google were tracking your history.  Now though everybody’s search history is being tracked and it is an opt out not an opt in feature.  Many people will  not want this but will not even know its happening.  I am not saying that it may not be helpful it may be to some people.  Personally, I would never want customized search results as determined by Google and the absolutely most annoying thing about this is that I cannot opt out permanently.  I can only opt out each time I search.  I am trying to imagine if Faceook, MSN or Yahoo decided to do this and store everybody’s information wihtout telling them to then use it to demographically target them in the future, I am pretty sure they would not get away with it.  Why can Google do this without giving notice.  Why? because they are Google no other good reason they have the absolute power they can do what they want.

Well we did it our first black Friday.  Got up at a respectable 7.00 a.m. and left the house at 8.00 to head first to Fashion Square.  Place was deserted and some of the stores were not even open.  When we did enter the stores they were quiet and I am not at all sure where the bargains were I did not see many.  Its seems that there are a handful of items at a good price and everything else was normal or with a slight discount.  It was just like any other Christmas shopping day and we did get pretty much everything we set out to get just not at very cheap prices.  We then headed to Nordstrom rack.  We were not dissapointed and we picked up some great stuff there.  A $400 pair of pants for $120 and a Juicy Couture shirt originally $180 for $50.  Good old Nordstrom rack my favorite store in Phoenix.  We went to Kierland later in the day and  picked up the last few items and still no rush or crowds.

My other daughter and husband went to Wal-Mart and said it was just like an ordinary Saturday they got everything they wanted as he was responsible for the electronic purchases.  Even got a new blender but we have strict no blender for gift rules.  A blender as a gift equals an instant divorce filing so the new very good blender which only cost $14 is now fully operational on the kitchen worktop. 

We went to Palm Springs on saturday for some R&R and paid a visit to the Cabazon outlet mall.  It was like a madhouse.  We only stayed 40 minutes after parking in god knows where miles away it was too crazy for me.  I saw on the news about the crowds everywhere so what gives is it Arizona? Does the fact that we have now lost more jobs than Michigan have anything to do with it.  Where is our presidential hopeful John McCain as Arizona slips deeper into the Abyss with a mother of all commercial real estate crisis predicted for the New Year maybe our Black Friday turnout is an indication of  just how bad our economy is.

A very happy thanksgiving to all my readers and friends.  After living in the US for 13 years and two years as a nationalized US citizen I have decided to brave my first Black Friday.   As a Black Friday virgin I have decided to take it easy on our first time out and start at 7.00 not 4.00 a.m.  I have convinced my teenage daughter to come with me.  I am curious more than anything else.  I have completely wimped out on going to the big box stores and will be hitting Scottsdale Fashion Square to first check out the new Barneys store.  I figure that might be a bit quieter but since its my first time who knows….

I am hoping to survive and I will report back on first Black Friday experience if I survive!!

Its the dream of the Internet start up.  Find an interested investor and get in front of them to give your passionate pitch.  Investors see many passionate pitches but invest in very few of them.  They are looking for passion, business acumen and an opportunity to make lots of money quickly if your pitch does not convince them of that dont bother.  You have to able to convince them that you and your business are that opportunity.

But if you are not already making a lot of money be prepared to give away a large slice of equity if you  want an investment.  Remember investors are only interested in making a lot of money.    However, if you cannot convince them that you are a credible person they can do business with then you are likely to leave your pitch empty handed.  These two young internet entreprenurs had a strong pitch but had to give up 50% of their business for a reasonably small amount of money. 

Hungry House - An online home food delivery service in the UK.  Here is their pitch.  They lost 3 investors quickly but finally won two.  All Dragon’s Den investment deals are subject to due diligence by the investor before proceeding.  I would love to hear from the Hungry House owners how it went after the Den.

Part 1

Part 2