The GottaQuirk eMarketing blog The GottaQuirk blog is a great resource for information about internet marketing. It’s an up-to-date resource on the happenings in the fast-moving eMarketing industry. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 2 4686

Articles from The GottaQuirk eMarketing blog

Content vs. Context 2007-09-21 06:00:06 We’ve heard it said time and again that content is still king, and with the sheer amount of information available on the Internet a content management system is essential in dealing with what would otherwise be an overwhelming task of keeping up to date. With Rob being something of an RSS evangelist I found myself setup with dozens of feeds within a day of being at Quirk. This number has since continued to grow and the amount of time and attention my feed-reader gets is bordering on being decidedly unhealthy. The fact is that I wouldn’t have a chance of covering a fraction of the reading material that I now get through were it not for my RSS. It’s a tool that I can’t see anyone who’s serious on keeping up to date on trends getting by without (be their focus of business online or off). Including an RSS button on a blog is generally accepted as keeping Web2.0 savvy. That being said I do believe that there are some cases in which RSS functionality would ac ...

Newsletter Wednesday 2007-09-19 08:05:56 In today’s newsletter we featured Part 4 of our “How To…” series on Social Media, Content Sharing: So hot right now. If the Social Media environment seems a bit overwhelming (and with the sheer amount of Social Media sites out there it can be) then this series will prove to be a great starting point.  We also featured some great industry articles, blog posts and virals – which, if you didn’t receive the newsletter, you can check out here. Our new Facebook group, SearchStatus Rocks! was also mentioned – if you’re a fan of the tool you should definitely go and check this group out. Don’t forget to have a squizz at the positions available at Quirk – who knows, you could be our next Star. We’re always open to feedback so if there’s anything you’d like to see more or less of in the newsletter just yell. Comment on "Newsletter Wednesday" ...

Facebook draws a bullseye on your profile 2007-09-18 08:25:22 You probably completed your Facebook profile in the hope of showing your high school sweetheart (who dumped you at the Matric dance) that someone wanted to marry you after all. Oh, and that you’re now a brain surgeon and own a wine farm in Constantia. Sure the information helps people to know what you have been up to since high school. But have you considered exactly how much information you’re giving away on this social networking site? And anyone with that kind of information is bound to use it for financial gain sooner or later. According to the Inside Facebook blog, the popular social network’s new Flyers Pro advertising product allows advertisers to display PPC adverts to audiences segmented by: Profile Keywords - such as “PS3,” “Gucci,” or more niche interests Workplace - such as “Google”, or anywhere else recruiters might want to hire away top talent Relationship Status - those in a relationship, single, engag ...

SA's 'Young Guns' 2007-09-18 07:35:54 South Africa’s FM Campus is a magazine published by Financial Mail and is promoted as a publication aimed at students and lecturers. The publication serves to place news, current events and industry trends into an academic context. It’s a really good read and you don’t need to be a student or really even remember those hazy student days to subscribe so head on over and do it now (online version). Last week the cover article, “Young guns making it online” was written by Michael Salzwedel (a former QuirkStar) and focused on some of South Africa’s youngest and most successful web entrepreneurs, many of whom are still students themselves. Some names that were featured included Evan and Ryan Shein, Adriaan Pienaar and Tyler Reed but the one that really caught my eye was Quirk’s brand spanking new Star, Rafiq Phillips. Salzwedel describes Rafiq as “a well-known figure in the local online world, first started making money on the Internet b ...

Web2.0 - radio measures advertising 2007-09-17 04:13:45 Sigh – what a wonderful smile crossed my face when, last night, while driving around on a frantic mission to find my father a birthday present (sorry Dad) I heard radio DJ, Euphonik on 5fm offering prizes for a massive party. All he asked was for listeners to add him as a friend on Facebook then write on his wall. He also punted his show’s Facebook group, MY HOUSE::::5FM::::THE HOUSE OF HOUSE. Genius! Radio (along with other offline mediums) advertisers have long grappled with the problem of measuring the response to campaigns on their listenership. Using this, already a mainstream social networking tool, provides the DJ with the interaction tool to communicate and engage on a personal level with his listeners (exactly what a DJ looks to do). This is marketing at its best – I wish I had had an Internet connection to look at his friend count directly after the broadcast and then later to see how the public respond (looking at his friend count now he has over 850 fri ... Advertising

Gorillas, Chocolate and Television 2007-09-16 01:10:39 I’d promised myself that I wasn’t going to blog about the gorilla seeing as practically the rest of the world had done so already. But, having watched the clip a couple of times now, I feel that it may warrant a post after all. The gorilla in question is of course the Phil Collins loving primate that Cadbury spawned at a reputed price of over £6 million. Take a minute to let that sink in. £6 million!!! How many chocolate bars is Cadbury going to have to sell to recoup that? Watching the clip for the first time I found it amusing and ended up forwarding it on to a couple of friends for a good laugh. However, I saw no connection between a musical primate and a chocolate bar. Scratching my head at the extravagant sum of money thrown at this campaign I watched the ad a few more times over this past week, and I must say that the more I watch it, the more I like it. It’s the type of thing that brightens up your day. And the whole ‘Minute and a ...

Just Shut It 2007-09-15 02:58:45 I don’t know about you but it seems as if people are getting ruder and more inconsiderate by the day. One of my pet peeves (and to be fair there are a lot of them) are the “talking on top of their voice on their mobile phones in a very public places” type of people. Come to think of it people with loud and annoying ring tones really irritate me too – but that’s a topic for another day. Back to my original point – phone harpies. They really are everywhere these days shopping malls, work; there was even one in the library the other day yakking away about her weekend (which sounded really boring), the library for Pete’s sakes! So apparently I am not the only one who can’t stand this. Connex Trains Melbourne is trying to enhance the commuter experience by tackling poor commuter etiquette and have created fictional self-help guru Dr Martin Merton. In this clip Dr Merton highlights the need to put the mute back into commuter. The clip from ...

What writing AdWords Ads reminds me of? 2007-09-14 08:32:05 It's my second week at Quirk and I find myself in the middle of the all-girl PPC  team comprising of Heidi & Tammy. One of the PPC team's duties is to create the text based Google Adwords Ads for the various campaigns we manage for our clients. The tricky part of Google Adwords Ads is that you only have very few charters to say as much as possible in a way that attracts the user and makes them click on the ads. # Headline (25 characters, including spaces): The title attracts users who might be interested in your products or services. # Description (two lines of up to 35 characters each, including spaces): These two lines contain your product, service and other details (such as promotions). The content in these lines should be clear enough to communicate your intent and compelling enough to convince the user to click your ad and visit your site.So what did writing Google AdWords Ads remind me of? It reminds me of being a student, trying to use my pre-paid mobile phone ...

Apple: an ORM Case Study 2007-09-12 10:07:12 Earlier on in the year Rob posted his 10 Rules to Recover from an Online Brand Attack.  Now, following from Steve Jobs’ apology, we have another list of 10 in the form of ConsumerGeneratedMedia’s Ten Important Takeaways from Steve Jobs’ iPhone Pricing Apology. The list of online reputation management virtues reads as follows: 1.    Listening 2.    Responsiveness 3.    Restating the rationale 4.    Empathy 5.    Service as brand 6.    Accountability 7.    Nurturing trust 8.    Walking the talk 9.    Imperfect timeliness 10.  Forgiveness I won’t go into elaborating on each of these points but some of them do warrant special mentioning. Restating the rationale: Jobs did this and managed to show the reasons for his pricing strategy. By explaining that Apple is striving to serve the market as a whole he managed to f ... Apple

Google Targeting Directory Links? 2007-09-11 05:22:18 A number of paid link directories have recently had their Google rankings plummet, according to Jason Lee Miller, in his article Is Google Hitting Directory Links?. Paid directory links have been on the hit list for some time now, but no one expected so many to just disappear without any notice from Google, informing them that they were being penalised. Whilst this may just be a temporary glitch in a new algorithm, it certainly does seem to be the materialisation of Google’s ever-growing threat to start ousting paid directory links, in a bid to improve rankings according to actual content relevancy. People may think that paid links are a legitimate form of getting their name out there and improving their rankings, but it can effectively be used as a manipulation of Google’s algorithm, so it should come as no surprise that Google dismisses them. If a business is looking to add their company information to a directory then, by all means, they should not get penalised for ... Google

There's a Cobra on the roof... 2007-09-10 09:33:24 … ok, to be fair there were plenty and they were the nice cold “beery” kind. Sigh – life couldn’t be better! With about 65 members of our “Friends of Quirk” Facebook group attending the event we were sure to have some fun – and boy, were we right! The event aimed to get us all together, have some time to share war stories (in particular Janine and Chris) from the past weeks/months and collectively wish our stresses goodbye. With the help of Cobra Beer, who very kindly sponsored our stress relief, we worked to achieve these goals. At 4pm the shift horn (yes we have one) went off and we finally downed tools. The beers were opened and by 5:30 the braais were going, the booze was flowing and stress was a thing of the past. By about 10pm the braai was winding down. Those who were left had the laborious task to tidying up the hundreds of empty bottles and returning the roof to the state we found it. All in all a good start to a Frida ...

Backstage Antics 2007-09-09 01:55:49 This Harvey Nichols clip reminds me a lot of the Musica ad that I posted a few months back; it uses a similar, clever concept and is pretty funny to boot. And despite the conceptual similarities between the two I’d still be keen to spread this around if only for the uniquely frenetic feel and atmosphere. Providing an exclusive and revealing look into the backstage antics of its latest "Foodmarket catwalk show" it shows a never before seen side to many of the industry's top models and designers. Coke snorting chickens, bulimic (or is it hungover?) goats, sheep with curlers – hell, what doesn’t this clip have? Check out the full page here. Comment on "Backstage Antics" ...

Internet People 2007-09-08 03:49:56 A long, long time ago (ok, ok not so long ago, I just like the way it sounds) you either had to be an A list celebrity or an international terrorist to be really famous. Now days all you need to do is put a video up of you singing some bizarre song about chocolate rain or dance around like a moron for a few minutes to be that famous… Yip YouTube has created a new form of famous and this Dan Meth video pays tribute to these Internet people. Fantastic! Comment on "Internet People" ... Internet

Seedcamp Roundup 2007-09-07 08:54:58 I’m mildly hungover and feeling pretty sleepy today after the Techcrunch party in London which rocked into the wee hours of this morning. It was held with the joint purpose of re-launching Techcrunch UK and celebrating a successful week of Seedcamp. In a nutshell, for those of you who don’t know, Seedcamp is an Incubator which brings together 20 of Europe’s top Founders and Venture Capitalists in a week long session of idea sharing and mentoring and culminates in the awarding of 5 VC grants. I was invited as one of the mentors. Mike Arrington has the full round up of the party here.  I will however sum it up by saying this: a Penthouse in Soho with a never ending supply of fantastic food and booze… the perfect recipe for my nasty little hangover, but what a great night! Techcrunch also announced the Seedcamp winners this morning. I was part of the judging panel and although we decided on them all last night, we were all under a strict embargo to keep ...

Hacking the Google 2007-09-07 04:13:25 “The Holy Grail was the dish, plate, or cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper, said to possess miraculous powers.” - According to Christian mythology   If only there was a magic link or key phrase that would allow you to outrank your competitors. A way to make sure that you always outrank anyone with minimal effort and no budget. Well, today is not your lucky day, ‘cause there ain’t no quick fix when it comes to SEO… So if you can’t beat them… and you can’t join then; what should you do? “Yes, a Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side of the Force, are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you, it will... as it did Obi-Wan's apprentice.” – Master Yoda; Star Wars A few weeks ago I came across a post by Dan Thies – Google Proxy Hacking. T ... Google