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

Uninspired, Unmotivated, Uninvolved! 2007-05-10 04:31:10 Johan Schepers pointed me to a sneaky little Google Ad that appears when you type "Standard Bank" into Google. The ad seems to be intermittent (maybe for budget reasons so don't click dammit!) so here is a screenshot: The cool part comes when you click through to Gideon Galloway’s My Standardbank Story site, the tag line: “Uninspired, Unmotivated, Uninvolved!” - Definitely my experience. The shocking story of how Standard Bank treated me, a supposed valued client. - Gideon Galloway Basically Gideon was a happy Standard Bank customer until he tried to buy a property, you can read all the ins and outs of what sounds like a truly revolting and lengthy process on his site. The site even has a tell your story section where you can go and give an account of the bad service you’ve experienced and a Hellopeter feature which states that the bank has over 1900 compliments and complaints – no prizes for guessing that the vast majority are complaints ...

Who does Google favour most in SA? Part 2.1 2007-05-09 06:42:18 After our initial search for the Top 10 SA sites that Google favours, we found that a lot of the questions were left unanswered. So we decided to dig deeper to try and discover what makes these pages better than the rest… 10). Ananzi.co.za Description - 8 May Page Rank 6 Links from EDU domains 115 ananzi.co.za Pages indexed in MSN 5,644 Links from GOV domains 10 ananzi.co.za Pages indexed in Google 3,800 Links to home page 120,643 ... Google

Peer-to-peer lending or social loan sharks? 2007-05-09 02:22:50 First off thanks to Grant for pointing this BBC article out to me. Before I joined him for a smoke-break yesterday (even though I don't smoke) I'd never heard of social lending. Having been fed this piece of information I returned to my desk and went digging for more. Aside from the obligatory Wikipedia article, I also took a look at two of the more prominent social lending networks – Zopa and Prosper. Essentially social lending, or peer-to-peer lending, aims to circumnavigate the necessity for a bank. A networking site, such as the two mentioned above, creates a community of money seekers and lenders. Both sites are founded on the same basic principle – people post the amount of money they're looking for, the rate at which they want it and how long they'll take to repay it. Lenders are then able to bid to the borrowers, ensuring a competitive marketplace. To ensure that these network sites don't just degenerate into a meeting place for loan sharks and their despera ...

SeaWorld's Social Media Success 2007-05-08 06:46:18 Rob sent me the link to this Todd Defren post on the awesome new roller coaster at SeaWorld in San Antonio – the Journey to Atlantis, this morning. I’m a real girly, girl and a bit of a wuss (read a bit wuss) when it comes to these kind of things – even the mini coasters are too much for me, so while the ride looks like it's nothing short of spectacular it’s the social media campaign that’s been crafted around it that’s got me (and probably every social media enthusiast out there) excited. The Journey to Atlantis site is awesome. Not only can you get all the details about the ride and check out pics and videos but you can share your own content too. They have utilised existing content sharing sites, and have a Flickr group as well as YouTube and Veoh channels to which fans can upload their photos and videos of their experiences at SeaWorld. Of course there’s a blog and a del.icio.us page too. Congrats go out to My PR Pro for doing a bang up ...

Who does Google favour most in SA? 2007-05-08 05:07:06 Today during my daily expedition on Google, I found that I’m still Google’s favourite Werner de Bruin. Well, basking in my own glory, I thought to my self: “Self, where would I rank for only my first name?” The results came in and out the window. Not even in the top 100!!! I didn't really expect to rank anywhere - about 80% of the top 100 pages use Werner in the domain name. So maybe I should setup my own website? Coming soon… Alright, so with my ego passed out on the floor, I looked for other Google favourites – favourite TV Series (M*A*S*H), favourite Cartoon (Cartoon Network), Motor Car (Cadillac), Website (Wiki). Idea – what was the favourite best optimised website on Google (W3.org)? Let’s tweak it a bit… So, in South Africa, who does Google love the most? And the Top 10 were: Mail and Guardian South African Government University of Cape Town CSIR University of Witwatersrand Independent Online ZA ... Google

The state of blogs today 2007-05-08 04:41:31 A mention in a recent blog by HEADLINE payoff’s Paul White on MySpace claimed that blogs about “personal things” are effectively “emotional masturbation” and that he generally shies away from the term ‘blogging’ as a result. The thought behind it is so obvious; I wonder why I had never thought of this myself. Blogs still have a lot of stigma attached to them, often considered to be the tool used by masses of youngsters to voice their teenage angst. But to a certain extent, the only time that these blog does get any significant media attention is when they've been used as a 21st century suicide note, expressing what the media like to call an ‘unanswered cry for help’. It’s no wonder that companies are dubious about Blog Power. Personally, I don’t t mind happy blogs, but whinging blogs that have no structure, storyline or point, annoy me. They’re almost like the spam of blogs, even though the intention behind it ...

Why we don't make good ads anymore 2007-05-07 04:09:42 A friend from the UCT’s Research and Administration Department mailed me this article which contains some interesting comments from the big leaders of Ad Agency conglomerates.  Written by Ian Burrell the article starts like so… "Why don't we make good ads anymore? Advertising is an art form ¬ but as consumers' attention wanders, many of its practitioners fear that it's no longer reaching the heights it was once capable of. So is the industry suffering an ideas crisis?" The problem with some of the comments in the article is that they do not give an account of how these "good ideas" affected the brand's turnover. Why was a campaign that ran for 10 years great, other than that they had enough media spend to milk the warm and fuzzy feeling as long as they could? I am sure some campaigns did have a tremendous boost for the bottom line using this technique, but a lot that walked away with awards and creative praise did not. For me, they k ...

It's 2008, not '1984' 2007-05-06 05:33:17 The US presidential campaigns have already been mentioned on our blog in Andrew's “Presidential Redesign” post and by Smallz in his “President 2.0” piece. The latest instance to crop up is this reworking of Apple's famous 1984 commercial. In Ridley Scott's original advert, widely hailed as one of the best commercials of all time, an anonymous heroine in running gear is chased through a George Orwell inspired dystopian future. The advert concludes with the heroine throwing a sledgehammer at a gigantic screen where Big Brother, a representation of Microsoft, is indoctrinating his subjects. In this latest scenario Big Brother has been replaced with Hilary Clinton and, instead of Apple, Barak Obama is touted as the hope for the future. The ad was supposedly unauthorised and was posted on YouTube under the username ParkRidge47, referring to Clinton's date and place of birth. Eventually the creator was identified as being one Philip de Vellis, a political ...

Killer Spam 2007-05-05 07:13:16 I have just received this email: Hello,  I wish to let you know that i have been paid by a client to assasinate you  at convenience,and i have signed a contract of $650,000 yesterday for  this.I have never met you before,but they gave me the full description of your  identity and contact,together with your photograph which my boys have  used to trace you.  The reason why they want you Dead is not disclosed to me as i was not  allowed to know,but you are now not better that the dead ok.  My BOYS are now contantly watching you,they are following    you-home,office,everywhere.....,you go and they are waiting for my instruction to    terminate you.And they will strike at convenience.  THIS IS MY MESSAGE-  LISTEN VERY WELL !!!!,the Police cannot do much to help you out in this  right now because you are being watched,any such attempt is very risky  cause you will push us to terminate your life ...

Millimetres Matter 2007-05-05 02:36:15 This new ad for the Samsung Ultra II Range is awesome. At a mere 5.9mm the Samsung Ultra II U100 (what a mouthful), the mobile phone giant is clearly of the opinion that millimetres really do matter! According to the website, “No insects were harmed in the making of Millimetres Matter but some did get a little sticky... Actually, they seemed quite happy to help clean up - by eating up the sugary mess!” Love it! Comment on "Millimetres Matter" ...

Change is as good as a holiday 2007-05-04 08:56:13 So as you can see GottaQuirk’s had a little revamp. There are more changes to come but play around in the meantime and let us know what you think. What have we missed? Have a FAB weekend! Comment on "Change is as good as a holiday" ...

Outsourcing your SEO campaign 2007-05-04 08:13:05 A lot of companies look towards outsourcing parts of Online Marketing campaigns, but what they don’t know is that the proverbial buck does not stop there. “In the direction that SEO is heading, one would need to consider a range of factors in order to maximise your success. Otherwise you could be missing out on the bigger picture.” – Werner de Bruin while typing this blog post. In a recent post on Search Engine Watch; SEO guru, John Tawadros wrote: “outsourcing a SEO campaign does not mean that you can sit back and wait for the results to be delivered.” John speaks about the many aspects that could go wrong during a SEO campaign, but I’d like to highlight some hurdles that you need to consider and overcome before even starting a SEO drive. Consider this: Spartan men were trained to fight and kill. So it’s no surprise that 300 Spartans had no problems fighting off 1,000,000 Persian Slaves... Design By not using the correct layout, y ...

Akismet the spam slayer 2007-05-04 05:06:14 After implementing Akismet spam verification into our comments and trackbacks, I am glad to report that we have had a spam free environment. So how effective has it been? Well in the last month our normal spam protection methods have been able to stop 1158 spam comments and 55 were able to get through (the 55 is the total of spam comments that were missed and valid comment submissions). Akismet was able to identify and block all the spam that came through. In addition to the spam comments it blocked, it also stopped a total of 2033 instances of trackback spam. So here is a good recipe to protect your blog from spam comment and trackbacks: 1. Implement the methods discussed in An alternative to irritating CAPTCHAs 2. Check the comments for spam using Akismet Note: You might ask why not bypass step 1 and just use Akismet? Well by adding step 1 you reduce the load by having to make the call to Akismet to check whether it is spam and thus saving critical system resources. In our exampl ...

Grubbygate 2007-05-03 07:15:28 Nick Robertson, CEO of the online fashion store, ASOS.com recently slammed some of his affiliates for “taking a free ride”. This is the quote that set off all the drama that followed, “Next year we’ll reintroduce affiliate marketing but as it should be, as opposed to affiliates as they were, there’ll be no silly commissions being paid to grubby little people in grubby studios growing income at our expense, getting in the way of genuine sales” Read more about the controversy that has been termed Grubbygate here and here. Shawn Collins even had a video response to Robertson's negative comments on Affiliate Marketing:   After reading these articles and watching the video the following points really stood out for me:   1). You MUST have an excellent relationship with your affiliates where you see them as business partners and assist them in marketing your brand - you will need a dedicated person for this. 2). The measurement and analytics ...

A generic online currency? 2007-05-03 06:48:23 LindeX is the official currency converter of Second Life. At the moment it has stayed moderately stable at about 250 Linden Dollars (L$) to the US Dollar. Check out the LindeX Market data here. Is the next step to have a generic online currency? Not only for Second Life, but for all worldwide online transactions?  Comment on "A generic online currency?" ...