Rock Solid Technologies

I met with a few people from Google this week and they made a point to watch the following Youtube video in the middle of our meeting:

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You don’t need to pay for job candidates to find your site. If they want they job, they can find their own way to your site. Use the following list of negative keywords to prevent your paid search ads from appearing for common employment and career-related searches:

career
careers
employment
hiring
intern
interns
internship
internships
job
jobs
recruiter
recruiting
resume
resumes
salaries
salary

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A few months ago I was explaining the social media strategy to some very successful sales consultants over lunch. In my passion for the topic I blurted out the phrase “they just don’t get it” in reference to some challenges we were discussing. One of the consultants called me on this statement and asked “How do you know if someone ‘get’s it’? How do you measure the paradigm shift?” I fumbled the answer and offered to send them a copy of Jeff Jarvis’ book “What Would Google Do” to explain it better than I could. But it is a fair question and it deserves a concise, well thought out answer. Now its 3:57 am on December 27th. I should be sleeping but I’m up with the stomach flu, and I definitely should not be thinking about work, but my thoughts on the topic are clear and concise at the moment.

The answer to this question, an the point of this post is this… The new media paradigm manages abundance, where as old media manages scarcity.

Supply and demand dictates that scarcity creates value (ie gold, time, wisdom, etc…). Conversely, abundance deludes value.

Traditional media specialists are tasked with managing a limited number of opportunities to display the message such as minutes of air time, percent of a printed page, or number of billboards. Let’s call this number of opportunities the “available shelf space” because it is easy to visualize. Because of the limited shelf space, media planners were measured on their ability to negotiate a good deal, get the shelf space before someone else does, and prove that the advertisement is actually consuming prime real estate within the valuable shelf space. In old media it was often assumed that better position, or more frequent displays of the message would deliver more results. And emphasis is placed on how nice the message appeared to be. You know how it goes… “Lets get so-and-so’s approval on this before we print this 10,475 times on the back cover of this magazine”.

Conversely, internet technology provides virtually unlimited shelf space. Advertisers can now display thier message for “free” and only pay when it delivers actual results. This situation aligns the interests of advertisers and media and has given birth to the pay per performance industry which fuels Google, Yahoo and Bing. The result is is a new method to measure success that emphasizes mathematical testing over creative brilliance thus creating “disposable ads” that are quickly deployed and tested against a slew of similar ads in a ruthless competition to learn the mind of the market.

Old media asked… New media asks…
Did my ad show in the right place/time? How fast can I learn the insights?
What is the cost per opportunities? What ads converted to revenue and why?
What can we do to attract more interest? What does the market want?

I’m going to abruptly end this post because I’ve just learned that Mike Moran wrote a whole book on the subject (see http://www.doitwrongquickly.com/). I’ll post more after I finish reading this book.

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Don’t let someone poach your good name in social media sites.  

Use the link below to reserve your profile name in the major social media sites.

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There are many ways to make money on the internet. The easiest way is to setup a web site and place advertisements on the site.  When visitors click on the ads, you get paid.  It’s that easy!  Google provides a FREE service called AdSense (see www.google.com/adsense) that allows you to easily place advertisements on your website.  Then your website can earn money while you sleep.
Google provides several video tutorials to explain how to use AdSense see  https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=34028&sourceid=asos&subid=ww-ww-et-resource_box&medium=link

Drop me a note if you would like more information on this topic.

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Many people think that a domain name, website and email are costly, complex, and difficult to justify.

The reality is that a new web site is free and easy. Most anyone with basic computer skills can setup an host a new website using a free service named Google Apps (see www.Google.com/a). This is a great place to setup a new website and host your email and calendar.

You can also utilize FREE blog software from www.wordpress.com to setup a website like this one.

Drop us a note if you would like more information.

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It is very important to get a domain name as soon a possible because…

• • • • • • • • • Domains are purchased on a first come, first serve basis. Someone else might buy the domain you want.
                • Search Engines consider the age of a domain when they rank pages

Use the links below to identify the best domain name(s) then register the domain(s) with Network Solutions.

• Domain Name Suggestion Tool
• Register Your Domain Name Here

When you register…

• Don’t make the domain private
• Don’t select any website design or hosting,
• Select “No thanks, I just want domains” at the bottom
• Don’t select forwarding, SE visibility, or Logo
• Select “No thanks, I just want domains” at the bottom
• Then pick the term length and purchase

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I recently had a conversation with Lorrie Taylor of Fox8 News Cleveland about my experience using LinkedIn to find a new job.  (The video seems to have some audio troubles towards the end – I’m not sure why)  Lorrie was very gracious and down to earth.  I’m sure this is why her investigative reporting is so popular with all of us regular people in Cleveland.

I explained to Lorrie how I used LinkedIn to contact 400+ people in my LinkedIn network after I lost my job in December.

In hindsight, I wish I would have been more prepared for the interview, so asked many of my LinkedIn contacts for advice on how to prepare and follow up on a TV interview. Following are some of the recommendations I received (feel free to add yours to the list). I’m always amazed at how many people care enough to send great advice.

If you are happy to see the topic of LinkedIn and Social Media on local Cleveland TV, please send Lorrie Taylor a thank you note, and explain what other topics you think would be helpful to people in Cleveland.

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Don’t use the www.Google.com search to verify that your AdWords ads are displaying properly because doing so will skew the metrics.  Instead, use the Google AdWords AdPreview Tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/AdTargetingPreviewTool 

This way you can test your keywords as many times as you want, without impacting the statistics.  

You can also test that ads that target geographies outside the one you are currently sitting in.

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