Hi folks,
I am back. Yes, there is still not enough junk on the cyberspace and I am doing my best to fill it up.
Spain was great fun. I highly recommend paying it a visit if you are looking for a different kind of European vacation. A few caveats though. 1. People smoke a lot. So, you just need to be mentally prepared for it. 2. Food ingredient is excellent but sometimes the seasoning can be a bit heavy-handed. 3. Petty crime is, so I understand, rampant. Fortunately(?), I, apparently, look too poor to be a target.
So, the whole first half of September was a blur. I was too busy being a tourist to pay attention to the Google numbers or PR activities. Of course, I have to pay for this indulgence once I am back and I am slowly digging myself out of it.
**Google. I must give it to them, they do make life easier for their customers. In addition to being the most effective engine for clicks, they have started an user group for people to share ideas. So, I promptly join the group as soon as I hear and started to post questions and suggestions.
I killed my Yahoo account. It did not perform well and from all the feedback that I was able to gather (users of Google and Yahoo services), I was not able to find out how to improve the Yahoo performance. So, after sticking it out for all these months, I have put the Yahoo account on the pay-as-you-go plan and let the account run to zero.
Something that I thought Yahoo was being unforthcoming was that the "pay-as-you-go" plan is not an option that can be selected by users. So, I had to request this setting via support email. Oh, and Yahoo also made finding the support email much more tricky than necessary. On Google, it is on the upper right hand corner and it is clearly a click-able option. On Yahoo, it is marked as "Support" in smaller font and grayed out in color so that the "natural (mine anyway)" reaction is to assume it is not a click-able option.
I find the whole arrangement very annoying. If I need to kill my program, I am not exactly in the best frame of mind as it is. So, by making it difficult to do, it only generates ill-well. I don't know what the fine folks at Yahoo are thinking...
Not sure I have mentioned the whitepaper posting service before. It works well. As of last count, it increased the whitepaper and case study request rate by 5x in two weeks when compared to comparable prior period. The catch is that the landing page is not setting up to capture the exact click-route, so I cannot say with 100% confidence on the performance. But, it surely helped.
On the PR front, I am happy to report that our new PR firm is doing an excellent job. Did an interview with a trade reporter last week and got the write up yesterday. Scheduled to talk with another reporter tomorrow for another trade rag who is supposed to be influential. (We'll see.) Then, there are two analyst briefing that we will be doing one for tomorrow another next week.
The trick now is to monitor our sales/leads flow to see what is the impact for all these activities.
One problem with the PR firm. They were going to do the writing for case studies. The first one case study is pretty wanting. In terms of style, it is kind of boring to read. In terms of talking points, I do not think that the key points were as clearly articulated as it could be. I am sure that I am partly responsible for it somehow. I will try to sort it out with the PR firm. Then, if it still does not work, I will hire an outside writer.
Will catch up by and by. October is going to be crazy. I can feel it already.
**By the way, it is true that sleeping on your own bed is the best. I especially missed my pillow which is made with organic fabric and organic millet hulls. I do not think that Spaniards are that big into organic stuff like people in California are.
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