That Was the Week That Was - July 2nd

My computer hates me. For some reason, it believes it should be given a break every now and then from the constant workload and overnight tasks I set it. So I’m interpreting last night’s meltdown as a form of tech protest. 

So it looks like I’m without the main machine again until the weekend, forcing me to resort to quick posts in my lunch hour at work and working from the mini laptop – the Asus Eee – at home. As long as I get the treacherous tower back by the weekend, I won’t start panicking about downloading this Saturday’s ‘Doctor Who’ finale.

Speaking of which…

Doctor Who and the Search Engine of Death

A website lives on traffic, and sometimes the hardest part of being a blogger is finding the topics that people want to read. It is just wonderful when these questions become easy.

Last week’s ‘Doctor Who’ episode certainly created an online furore. So it made perfect sense to produce a blog post that would rank highly for the popular search engine keywords ‘doctor who finale spoilers’ and variations thereof.

The resulting post – ‘Doctor Who and the Spoilers of Evil’ – has started to do its job, drawing a huge amount of traffic from Google and the other search engines. In fact, this Google traffic far outstrips any other traffic source for the last 24 hours, impressive considering how much StumbleUpon traffic this blog receives. At this stage, the post has barely received any SU traffic, receiving its huge performance entirely from Google, which is just fantastic, and demonstrates how the right content at the right time is better than almost any other SEO strategy.

One way of tapping into popular search topics is to use Google’s Zeitgeist tool. This tool ranks the search phrases that have seen the most increase within the previous month, providing a useful aid for bloggers to decide on the topics that people are most interested in finding.

Although the international version hasn’t been updated since December 2007, the different countries are served with monthly top 20 updates. For example, the latest report for Australia covers the searches with the highest increase in May (June should follow any day now). Interestingly, it seems the number one spot is currently taken by ‘baseball’, followed by ‘Mother Theresa’. So if you can craft a blog post about Mother Theresa’s love for sneaking between bases during a pitcher’s wind-up, you can expect more traffic from Australian users.

The ADMA Forum

As mentioned last week, I spent a few days at the ADMA Forum – a conference for marketers and businesses interested in cutting-edge direct marketing strategies. The most interesting seminars, for me, revolved around email, interactive and mobile marketing.

I spent a long time talking with many of the exhibitors about their experiences in the Australian market. One overwhelming trend was the sense that all marketers were extremely excited to find opportunities to use the imaginative strategies and try out new ideas in the online and mobile spaces, but that Australian business was still very traditional and hesitant.

Australia has always lagged behind the rest of the world in adopting new marketing trends. I recently wrote an article for Nett Magazine (in Australian newsagents from July 18) pointing out the benefits of email marketing and blogging in a nation where most businesses haven’t started exploiting these trends. The blogging section was very hard to find sources for, as very few Australian businesses, outside of the SEO field, currently use blogs with any success.

Predictably, therefore, there were a number of people saying how much they wanted to try some of these strategies, whilst lacking the budget, the clients or the nerve to do so.

Writing With W

I have to share this with you, a wonderful piece of writing I discovered through StumbleUpon.

The Young Writer’s Blog recently devoted a post to a Victorian piece of writing by an unknown author. At 450 words long, it is remarkable for only using words that start with the letter ‘W’. You have to read ‘Winnie and Walter’ and wallow in the witty and wholly wonderful wordplay.

An Award – CopyWrite Wins an Award!

Finally, thanks to Webmistress over at Plotdog Press for awarding CopyWrite the ‘Arte y Pico’ Award. Awarded by Plot Dog to five blogs in recognition of support given, comments made and general all-round blogging community spirit, it’s a nice award to have.

The rules of the Arte y Pico award require me to similarly award five noteworthy blogs, meaning this award is more viral and link-building, which is only a good thing.

Therefore, without further ado, the five blogs to which I am awarding the Arte y Pico award, for their wonderful support and general all-round faberooniness, are, in no particular order;

1. Smithereens from Daniel Smith
2. Get Paid to Write Online from Sharon Hurley
3. The Weakest Link by Erik Johnels
4. Rob's Megaphone by Robert Stevenson
5. Dancing About Architecture by Riayn

The Rules thanks to arteypico.blogspot.com:

Rules:

1) You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserving of this award; through creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributing to the blogger community, no matter in which language.

2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.

3) Each award-winning blog has to show the award and include the name and link of the blog that has given the award to them.

4) The award-winning blog and the blog awarding the prize has to include a link to "Arte y pico"blog , outlining the origin of this award.

5) To show these rules.

And Finally…

’Kung Fu Panda’ is the best animated film from the Dreamworks stable since… ever. Shelley and I loved it to bits. Go see it.

My post on the state of British comics received plenty of positive feedback from others who feel as I do, but not much in the way of traffic. If you enjoyed British comics growing up, have a read and give it a Stumble or a Digg if you enjoy it.

Class dismissed.