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Online Shopping Tips

October 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Google Give Advice On Online Shopping

The following article by Angela Lai, VP Engineering, Google Wallet, gives valuable advice, hints and tips about online shopping and how to protect yourself from fraudsters. The original article can be found here.

As people in many parts of the world do the last of their back-to-school shopping and prepare for the holiday rush, we thought it was a good time to share a few recommendations for a safer online shopping experience.

Protect your Google Account
Whether you’re buying a bestseller on Google Play or tapping your Google Wallet-supported phone on an NFC terminal at your favorite coffee shop, it’s important to understand that Google Wallet uses the security features of your Google Account to protect your credit cards. In other words, you need to guard your Google Account just like you would your physical wallet. If you leave your wallet lying around unprotected, somebody could steal it and make unauthorized purchases or worse. The same consequences could result if you don’t properly secure your Google Account. That’s why we encourage everyone to create a strong password that you don’t use on other websites, enable 2-step verification on your account, and keep your account recovery information up to date.

If it looks too good to be true…
If you haven’t shopped from a particular merchant before, it’s worth taking a few minutes to do some research. For example, search for reviews from other buyers who have experience with the seller. Legitimate merchants should provide you with contact information that you can reference if you have any questions or problems with your transaction. Never wire money to a seller you haven’t reviewed very thoroughly and stay alert for phishing attempts, spoofed invoices, and “work from home” money scams that try to cheat you.

Only send information over secure connections
Look for the https:// in your address bar when transmitting any sensitive information like credit card or bank numbers. Your banking website may use additional methods to demonstrate their authenticity, and if so, keep an eye out for them to help avoid scams. Online threats are here to stay, but you can use the right tools to prepare yourself for when that one-day sale beckons or the holiday blowouts come calling. For more safe shopping tips, visit our Good to Know page here.


Posted by Angela Lai, VP Engineering, Google Wallet


Google Commerce

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Don’t Just Build Links, Become a Thought Leader

May 16, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Become The Expert In Your Business Area

I cam across this great article by Nick Stamoulis about becoming “the expert” in your business area. It makes so much sense, and the interesting thing is, it is not just confined to the SEO and internet marketing niche. ANY business owner, well, actually, EVER business owner should be doing this. Giving good quality information that will help their customers and potential customers.

Whether you are a plumber, accountant, builder or chiropractor, what ever your business, if you follow Nick’s simple tips, you will increase your business.

Here are Nick’s tips:

Here are 4 tips to becoming a thought leader in your industry:

1. Start producing more content.
If you are only writing one blog post a week, while a good place to start for many site owners, your solitary piece of content is not even a drop in the bucket when you compare it to how much information is being churned out online every day. Even in a relatively small niche, your content has to compete with blog posts, articles, white papers, videos, podcasts and more. One piece of content is probably not going to make your brand stand out for long, even if you are able to write a piece of content that captures the attention of your audience. You need to give your target audience a reason to remember you, check out your blog a couple times a week, subscribe to your newsletter, follow your social profiles and so forth—and that means you need to product more content. If you want to become a thought leader, you have to consistently produce great content proving you deserve to be recognized.

2. Don’t be afraid of giving away too much free information.
In my opinion, one of the worst things a company could do for their SEO is write a bunch of great, juicy, quality content and then lock it behind a login. I know that many companies are concerned about giving away too much information for free (why buy the cow, right?) but the truth is you have to prove to your audience that you are an expert—and this means providing them with relevant, useful information. Don’t expect your reputation to mean much to an organic visitor that has never heard of your brand before. You have to prove yourself to them and your content is the best way to do that.

I’m not saying you can’t put some of your content behind a login (or a lead form), but the majority of the content you produce needs to be openly published so both the search engines AND your customers can find and use it. Think about it–who are the thought leaders in your industry? Chances are most of them have blogs where they talk about the latest industry trends, best practice tips and so forth. They are willingly sharing expert advice, which helps further establish themselves as industry thought leaders!

3. Specialize in something.
Too often most people (especially marketers) feel the need to become jack-of-all-trades. I can understand wanting to know how different factions play into your niche, especially when they influence each other in some way (like how social media or content marketing works with SEO), but in order to become a true thought leader you need to be exceptionally good at one thing and know that industry inside and out. In order to provide people with valuable insights and not just general advice, you need to understand the subtleties of your niche; seen it all, heard it all, done it all. Thought leaders are, amazingly enough, leaders in their fields mainly because they know it better than anyone else.

4. Never stop learning.
A thought leader has to have their finger on the pulse of their industry; what’s coming down the pipeline, how are customer behaviors changing, what industry trends are shifting and so forth. In order to stay ahead of the curve (or at least keep pace with the pack) you need to know what is going on! Read other industry blogs, attend conferences, follow other experts on social networking sites–just keep yourself immersed in the way things are and where they are going. Getting stuck on the way things used to be means you’ll soon be an expert of old knowledge and no longer a thought leader.

Your content is worth so much more in the long run than a few inbound links! Make sure you are working it to it’s full potential.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.


Search Engine Guide : Small Business Search Marketing

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Announcing the April 24 DS3 release!

April 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Over the past few weeks, we’ve been working on some exciting new features that will change the way you use DoubleClick Search V3 (DS3). While none are ready to be fully released, some of these features are currently in limited release to a few customers and include:

  1. Search Query reporting: As described in this blog post, Search Query reporting will provide you with insight into the search queries, or terms, that are driving visits for your ads and the revenue you derive from these queries.
  2. Floodlight column reporting: Will give you more power to select the level of Floodlight reporting you want to see, in an easy-to-read column format. You’ll be able to create the equivalent of a column (such, as Actions, Cost/action, etc.) that’s filtered to the selected Floodlight activities.
  3. Change history: Will provide you with details on all changes made to your account, including user changes, inbound sync updates, and automated changes from the DS3 bid strategy system.
  4. Reporting stats for labels: Labels are a great way to manage and report on keywords outside the traditional campaign structure. With this new feature, you’ll be able to see stats for these labels.

If you’d like to get a sneak preview of any of these features, and help us to test and improve them before they’re fully released, please contact your Technical Account Manager or email [email protected].

For this release, we did make an improvement to the bidding process for bid strategies: The bid strategy system now breaks up large bid changes. When the system determines that a large bid change is needed to optimize against the specified goal, it will now break up that change into increments. Previously, the system would change the bid all at once. This new bid smoothing feature helps to alleviate customer concerns over drastic bid changes. For example:

  1. In a bid strategy, the DS3 system determines that the ideal bid for its keywords is $ 9.
  2. The max strat bid is $ 2, so DS3 is constrained from applying the ideal bid. DS3 sets the bid at $ 2.  
  3. The user changes the max strat bid from $ 2 to $ 10.
  4. Before this release: The system would change the bid from $ 2 to $ 9 all at once.
    With this release: The system will make a series of bid changes. For example, it may change the bid from $ 2 to $ 4, then to $ 6,  and $ 8. As the system recalculates bids over time, at this point the system determines that the ideal bid is now $ 8.56. So the next bid change will be to $ 8.56.

Read the Help Center release notes for information on issues fixed in this release.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team


DoubleClick Search

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27 Awesome Ways to Get People to Listen to You

April 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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This guest post is by Nick Thacker of livehacked.com.

I’ve been creating stuff lately—blog posts, articles, tweets, videos, ebooks, etc.—and I realized something:

The biggest struggle I’ve had during it all was getting people to listen.

While blogging and submitting articles, leaving tons of comments, and submitting guest posts, can garner an initial positive result, it’s tough to keep at it. I wanted to share a few ways I’ve found to really get people to listen.

How to get people to care, listen, and take action

1. Ask

I can think of no better way, and no way that’s led to more open doors, than simply asking people to do something. Sure, it takes guts—but that’s why you’re different. You have the guts—go ask!

2. Advertise

If you want a measurable and controllable result, give advertising a shot. It may not be perfect for your niche, but chances are there’s at least something you can advertise in some way. Most pros say to give it at least six months, too, so if you don’t have the funds, this may not work. Check out Project Wonderful for dirt-cheap ads that have gotten me results in the past.

3. Guest post

We all know this one, so there’s no use recounting all of its benefits here. Suffice it to say there have been many successful blogs that have used this strategy almost exclusively to get attention.

4. Share

Almost anything can be shared—blog posts (as in guest posting), ideas, network leads, products, etc. Which leads me to:

5. Joint ventures

JVs are great for getting your message out to huge lists of people, for the price of sharing your profits with another marketer. Check out the Warrior Forum for an entire board dedicated to JV opportunities.

6. Create a video

ProBlogger.com has been writing a lot more on using video content lately, and I know I’ve done a few trailers for my own book as well—with much success.

7. Create an infographic

Neil Patel of QuickSprout has used infographics, sent to major blogs and news sites to use exclusively (for a backlink, of course!), and it’s gotten him plenty of great traffic—and lots of attention, as well. Take time to create a graphic that’s compelling and telling for your market, and see where it goes!

8. Write an ebook

Just about every blogger has, or aspires to create, an eBook. These days, having an ebook is almost expected—where’s yours?

9. Self-publish a book

Having a “real” book tends to lend credibility to our efforts—being able to have a print copy of someone’s work in hand really does “feel” different than an electronic copy. Check out Amazon’s KDP Select program, Lulu, and CreateSpace for more.

10. SEO

I like to think of SEO as one of those “slow-drip” strategies to get attention—it takes time to build, but it’s almost essential in competitive industries. I recommend Glen’s post over at ViperChill.com if you’re doing SEO on WordPress.

11. Use the 80/20 rule

Pareto’s law states, “…For many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.” To use this in your own marketing, try to promote other people 80% of the time, and your own work 20%. This establishes you as a connector and sharer of helpful content, not as a spammer.

12. Build a platform

Essentially, all of these tips can help you build a platform, but if you focus on actively building a brand, slowly but surely, chances are you’ll stick around longer—and people will pay more attention to you!

13. Leave more comments

Leaving more comments on blogs you read regularly does two major things: it gives you a link back to your site (no matter what your stance on “rel=nofollow” is), and it starts a conversation with the site owner or author of the post. Trust me when I say many blog owners will recognize their repeat commenters—be one of them!

14. Leave better comments

We’ve all heard the rule: leave lots of comments, and people will visit your site! Well, yes and no—they’ll see you quite often, but unless you really make a concerted effort (read: spend more than 30 seconds) on crafting and submitting a thoughtful, value-adding comment, people won’t care about you or your cool blog.

15. Write epic content

Corbett Barr, author of ThinkTraffic, says we need to write “more epic stuff” (I’ll let you click through to his exact words…). I’ve said we need to write “more epicly” (because I love epic, made-up adverbs, I guess), and it’s true. Gone are the days of 500-word-or-less posts giving generic and thoughtless advice. Take time to craft your work, edit it, and then expound on your thoughts some more. Add in images, pictures, infographics, and more. Then edit and do it again. Then you’re ready to hit Submit.

16. Article marketing

Article marketing seems to have fallen off a bit after the infamous Google updates, but sites like E-zine Articles and GoArticles certainly are not going anywhere. Use them to further promote your work—your off-site SEO can greatly benefit from some well-crafted, useful content. Don’t go overboard, and be sure to maintain your consistently great writing style—remember: the Internet is forever!

17. Write pillar posts

The first time I’d ever heard of a “Pillar” post was right here at ProBlogger. It makes perfect sense, too—if I visit your website, right now, what articles are going to serve as my “Start Here” roadmap through your muse/meme/world? Guide me like I’m a first-time visitor to your market, and tell me—through general, broad-form Pillar Posts what I can expect to find on your site. Here’s an example of one I wrote on social media for writers.

18. Start a newsletter

If you plan to be online for an extended period of time, you should really consider growing an email list of subscribers, and sending them an enewsletter regularly. Newsletters have been proven to bring in more authority traffic and ready buyers than most other marketing methods, because you’ve already qualified them as leads.

19. Start a podcast

I’ll admit—this is one area I haven’t tried out yet. But podcasting is not something that’s going to go away anytime soon, either, and if you’re a bit more technically inclined (or if you own a Mac), you can start podcasting almost immediately. Some of my favorite authors run very successful podcasts. And I hear that ProBlogger will be running a post on the topic in the next couple of weeks…

20. Write more

This one’s simple: let your writing be its own platform. The more saturation throughout your market you have, the more opportunity there is for people to find you.

21. Blog less

Maybe getting more attention needs less of your attention? Follow blogs like ZenHabits and Lifehack.org to get your head in the game. Minimalize, simplify, and relax: those of us working 80+ hour weeks probably don’t want to! Focus your energy on those things that really matter. Remember the Pareto principle.

22. Do something ridiculous

I like to think Tim Ferriss is so well-liked because of the fact that he does things not many of us do. If you set out to do something spectacular, you’d better believe we want to hear about it! Even better: do a video blog journaling your experience.

23. Be controversial

The idea that all press is good press may not be entirely true, but there’s something to be said for being staunchly defendant of a topic. Instead of posing neutral concepts, get on one side or the other. People may hate the post, but they’ll come back for more.

24. Send follow-up emails

This is something I’ve started doing more and more, recently—almost to the point of being annoying. Follow my blog, I’ll send an email. Say yes to my guest post idea, I’ll shoot you a thanks. Buy something from me—you got it! A “thank you” email is on its way. Doing this is just giving a little bit of personal attention to your network, and they will reciprocate.

25. Add value everywhere

Forget this tip at your peril. No one likes a conceited or arrogant person, and online it seems that anonymity has made this even easier. Figure out how to help one person, in one small way, every day. Then help them.

26. Sell something

When people have something to sell, I’m usually more apt to think of them in higher esteem. Even if the product looks terrible—hey, they went through all the trouble to create it, right? (I might not ever buy it, but they do carry more authority because of it…)

27. Do something for free

And the best one of all: even though we won’t always admit it, “free” is sometimes expected. This behavior isn’t justified, but it exists. Cater to the expectations of your market by offering something to them for free. Your blog doesn’t count.

Maybe you’ve tried every single one of these ideas—in that case, I’d love for you to comment and let us know how they went! But I’m sure there are many, many other things you all can think of to add to this list. So, let’s get to it: leave a comment with more ideas, and we’ll keep the list going. Maybe one day I’ll turn it into an awesome infographic!

Nick Thacker is a blogger, writer, and author of fiction thriller novels. He likes to hack his life to be more productive, live better, and write the best he can. You can check out his site at LiveHacked.com, or subscribe to the LiveHacked.com newsletter here.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

27 Awesome Ways to Get People to Listen to You

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Fab Friday is Eventful

April 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Author Photo

It’s Fab Friday again! This week, we’ve got another Google Maps API Developer Relations screencast. This week, Andres Ferrate discusses the Google Places API Events feature:

In other video news, Tuesday during Maps API Office Hours, I had a conversation with Paul Rademacher, author of the first Google Maps API site, HousingMaps about the origins of the API, and his latest project, Stratocam, which lets users view and share beautiful satellite and aerial imagery. If you want to watch or join future office hours events, follow our Google+ page.

In upcoming events, I will be at Wherecamp.eu in Amsterdam on Saturday the 28th. By the time you read this, I may already be there! Andres will be at the Oregon Central Coast Web-Mapping and Geo-Enabled Tools Meeting May 16th and Brendan Kenny will be at TXJS June 14th. And of course the whole team will be at Google I/O at the end of June.

Posted by Mano Marks, Maps Developer Relations Team


Google Geo Developers Blog

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See what happens when Gary Oldman directs Jack White’s live show

April 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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The American Express Unstaged series, in partnership with Vevo and YouTube, matches a musical act with a visionary director to create a unique online experience. Previous match-ups have included Duran Duran directed by David Lynch, Arcade Fire directed by Terry Gilliam, and My Morning Jacket directed by Todd Haynes.

Tonight at 6pm PT, Gary Oldman will direct the live stream of a very special performance from Jack White. At a time when White is embarking on a brand new solo project, with his album Blunderbuss performing well both critically and commercially, we’re excited to see what he brings to the stage of New York City’s Webster Hall!

Watch the show unfold on Jack White’s official channel.

Tim Partridge, music marketing manager, recently watched Metronomy – The Bay


YouTube Blog

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New version of Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry® Enterprise Server now available

April 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Version 4.5 of Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry® Enterprise Server is now available with the following improvements:

  • Support for automatic user password generation in BlackBerry Administration Service (BAS)
  • New Configuration Settings page for easier enablement of common optional features, such as send-as and read-receipt support
  • Performance, reliability, and stability improvements
    Resolved issues that caused PST file corruption
  • Google Apps Connector attempts to repair any remaining corruptions automatically.
    Miscellaneous bug fixes

Editions included:

Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

Languages included:

US English

How to access what’s new:

Download page

For more information:

Release notes
Admin guide

whatsnew.googleapps.com

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Google Apps update alerts

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Customer relationships are key

April 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Each year we interview our QPX™ pricing and shopping customers to find out what we do well and where we need to improve. Since we started the survey in 2007, we’ve seen satisfaction with our products and service climb. We were especially pleased that this year’s survey yielded strong results. 100% of participants were somewhat or very satisfied with our QPX pricing and shopping products, and 96% were somewhat or very satisfied with the service we provide. One customer said that while there is always room for improvement, the service gets better every year — from the engineers to the technical support staff to the customer-facing team.

While it’s great to hear the positive feedback, the real value is in what we do with the suggestions for improvement. Our internal teams look forward to hearing the survey results and are focused on coming up with creative solutions to address any suggestions identified by our customers.

My hat’s off to all the teams that focus on making our products even better and giving our customers the tremendous support that keeps them so happy. We’re committed to listening to what our customers want and partnering with them to make them successful. I think that’s what makes these relationships so strong.

Posted by Eli Sanders, Director, Technical Account Management and Customer Support


ITA Software Blog

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New feature: Contacts delegation

April 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Contacts delegation allows users to delegate full access to the contacts in their “My Contacts” group without granting access to their mail or anything else in their accounts.

You may delegate your contacts only to other users within your domain. Like mail delegation, you may delegate your contacts to no more than 25 other users at the same time. Delegation allows the sharing of the entire “My Contacts” list only. You cannot delegate a subset of your “My Contacts” or delegate contacts not in your “My Contacts.”

Release track:

Rapid

Editions included:

Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

Languages included:

All languages supported

How to access what’s new:

- Navigate to www.google.com/contacts
- The “More” menu now has a “Manage delegation settings” option

For more information:

http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&topic=20016&answer=2590392

whatsnew.googleapps.com

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Introducing Google Tasks Porter

April 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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We’re happy to announce a new open source application that allows you to import and export your Google Tasks, called Google Tasks Porter.
Google Tasks Porter is designed with other applications that contain task lists in mind. It supports import and export via the iCalendar format which is used by a variety of applications, including iCalendar itself. It also supports import and export to Microsoft Outlook via a CSV format. Additionally, Google Tasks Porter supports export from Remember the Milk using its iCalendar export, and import to Remember the Milk via email. You can also download a list of all your tasks in an HTML format which is designed to be portable and parseable.
Google Tasks Porter allows you to create a set of “snapshots” of your data, each representing a list of all your tasks at a particular point in time. You can then save or delete these snapshots, and you can export a snapshot at any time to another application using any of the available formats. You can also upload an ics or csv file in order to import the tasks contained therein into Google Tasks.
The application is available on the web at http://google-tasks-porter.appspot.com. The source code is also available on Google Code at http://google-tasks-porter.googlecode.com using the Apache License, Version 2.0. Please try the application out and let us know what you think. You can provide feedback via the mailing list at [email protected]
By Dwight Guth, The Data Liberation Front


Data Liberation

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