Err, it’s not my book!
I had to laugh today … a bit of pre-Christmas humour …
I use Google Alerts to track some client issues and also to track some marketers, to see where they get mentioned on blogs and in the news.
They’re a great way to not only keep track of what gets posted online, but you can also use the alerts to let you know of relevant new items on blogs, to then go and contribute and gain some valuable traffic.
Of course, I keep a track of my own name to see where it pops up.
An alert arrived today with this content off a blog:
Visitors to your site will submit their information using your forms if you use convincing sales copy. I think Dean Kennedy is a phenomenal resource to tap when creating your content. He may be unequalled in the field of writing copy. Buy his book, The Ultimate Sales Letter, and read it thoroughly.
I thought this was fantastic!! Alas, it’s not true of course!
The author isn’t referring to me here … he’s referring to Dan Kennedy! Quite often at marketing events people see my name and say something like “hey, that’s just like Dan Kennedy” — or on the odd occasion they call me Dan by mistake. That’s how ingrained Dan Kennedy’s name is as a world-famous marketing guru!
I don’t mind that name association of course, not that I’m any relation!
I have found, however, the Kennedy name has brought to my attention some excellent marketing resources over the years, so I have three Kennedy’s to thank for increasing my knowledge of this craft.
All of Dan Kennedy’s books are on my shelves, as well as much of his other products. Ian Kennedy has also influenced my knowledge. He is Chairman and founder of K & D Bond International (and often referred to as the ‘Father of Direct Marketing in Australia’) — I met him back in 1997 and have an autographed copy of the book he co-authored with Bryce Courtenay called ‘The Power of One To One’. Another famous Kennedy in marketing and advertising is Canadian John E Kennedy who in 1904 coined the phrase “salesmanship in print” to define advertising.
So it is quite amusing when my name pops up in this way (at least to me!) … albeit attributed incorrectly!
Nowadays I compete with an American footballer and the former NHL hockey player who both share my name, so it’s a bit of a challenge in Google at times to stay noticed!
Indexing At The Speed Of Google
It’s now 10:15am.
While I was sleeping last night — around 2:50am this morning — my website scored a visitor from Latvia (fresh stats are thanks to the WP-SlimStat-Ex plugin I use with WordPress, although I also run the awesome Google Analytics package).
Anyway, in the stats I can see the search term the visitor used to reach my site, and I often then put that back into Google (in this case, www.google.lv). And I can see that in the natural search results, I was ranked on the page in positions 1, 2, 3, 4, 7 and 8 — and that’s even with my last name spelled as “Kenedy” instead of “Kennedy”!
But — I can see how quickly Google updates its indexes at times — only one HOUR ago (9:13am), I had made a post in the Warrior Forum, and this post was already in the Latvia Google rank at position number ONE!
It wouldn’t have been there at 2:50am … which shows just how quickly — less than one hour — a public forum post ended up in Google, and in the Number 1 natural rank position.
Is it just me, or is anyone else also blown away this lightning-fast “Google-speed” … how incredibly quickly Google keeps up with the online world?!
Lazy-breaking news?
News is “instant” nowadays, right? We are in the accessible 24/7 broadband information age. “News as it happens” has been a media catch-cry for several years.
So I did chuckle this morning when seeing this “breaking” news about the end of daylight savings — four hours AFTER it actually ended.
When I was a teenager, working in a golf shop, the end of daylight savings was always a good day in the shop: golfers turned up early, and with time to spare, spent it in the shop and made extra purchases. And plenty of golfers who were regularly “last-minute” arrivals got to relax for a change (unlike the chaos at the start of daylight savings!).
Maybe back then they’d appreciate the 6am news in a “breaking” sense, but in 2008 that time delay — given the “instant” environment of news reporting — is actually noticeable.
Chipmunk Audio Fix
If you’ve been watching any videos lately where you start hearing chipmunk sounds — it’s not your fault! Don’t touch that dial!
If you make videos with Camtasia prior to version 5.02 (as an SWF file with MP3 audio for online use), this is a MUST read.
What’s happening is that Adobe’s Flash Player and Techsmith’s Camtasia are having a spot of trouble … which is affecting videos made with Camtasia.
Fixing it solves two problems:
- Your site visitors are no longer thinking something is wrong with their browser, video or audio setup — so they can focus on the content and what you want them to do; and
- You stop sounding like a chipmunk!
Techsmith list the issue on this tech support page and how to fix it. Credit to Robert Plank’s blog post where I was first alerted to the issue.