вторник, 25 декабря 2012 г.
Wednesday, the 20th of December
Tuesday, the 18th of December - SEO LOGIC!
18.12.2012
Slogan of the day: SEO LOGIC!
- Today, after few hours of working on a new, additional keyword
list, where I staked all the words we used in our recent (this fall) marketing,
I realized, finally how our new keyword list should look and what needs to be
done for it to look this way. I was written on the wall all the time, but only
now I did realize the logic behind it. Ah, sweet logic. Without you nothing in
this miserable world would be consistent and clear. You give me the opportunity
to see through the garbage and find out the escape route from any mind-boggling
labyrinth. Thank you for clearing my thoughts from the mist of ignorance one
more time...
- Anyway, back to my discovery. I understand that in order to
optimize keyword efficiency and website traffic one should not use as many
keywords for a single page as possible (ok, that was obvious). Actually, one
single word with some of its variants to broaden the possibilities would be
more than enough! And every page and subpage should have its own unique keyword
that could describe its specific place and role in your overall brand
structure. If we assume that your website structure already reflects precisely
enough you real company / brand structure, than every page in this structure
would accordingly, reflect every specific aspect of your company / brand, then,
by adjusting appropriate keyword to every one of them you will cover all your
specific keywords AND all your specific products / services / brands / news /
etc. Isn't it brilliant when you look at it that way? Instead of main page-centered
structure your website will gain sort of web-open structure, where it will
"breathe with all its skin"
and start gaining traffic from all possible pages equally. You will also
make your site much more client-friendly: instead of aiming aimlessly through
the labyrinth of your website, frustrated and disappointed, they will gain
comfortable access to the exact page they need in no time. I'm finally fascinated
about my SEO work - now, when I managed to understand its logic and see its
true aim and purpose.
Monday, the 17th of December - Worst-First
17.12.2012
Slogan of the day: Worst-first
- I dedicated all my day to keyword search, analysis and
sorting. First, I made a table with all our website pages and categorized them
(main, product, education, services, etc.). I was not sure what to do with all
additional pages, like "contacts", "our recent clients",
etc. (whether they require keyword attachment or not?) so I hid them and
concentrated on four main pages: Home, Product overview, Services overview and
Education overview.
- It became obvious almost instantly that my recent keyword
list (that I made a month ago) was rubbish. Great that I never send it to
anybody, actually. Back then, I was trying really hard, but was not realizing
the basic keyword search mechanics and marketing direction in which we are
going to push our website. This is not to say that now I realize it completely,
but some important things, that was missed then, now finally are getting to my
head:
- We
need 5-10 (at the very most) keywords per page.
- These
keywords have to be unique and reflect fully page's contents (text).
- If
keywords and page contents does not match - then it is spam.
- Words
must be very specific, and when I say that I mean VERY specific (this requirement
ensures that we do not frustrate our visitors who are misguided to the main
page through a very specific query, or vice versa);
- We
need to put heavy accent on some words that describe things we are doing GOOD
and do not push things that we do, but are not very good at).
- Words
must correlate with our current marketing course
- Apart
of all above, every word should be also analyzed carefully through the google
analytics keyword tool and SEO rank checker (thankfully I've already managed to
handle these tools pretty ok, so that was not a big problem).
пятница, 14 декабря 2012 г.
Friday, the 14th of December - SEO!
14.12.2012
Slogan of the day: SEO
- Or products and services on LinkedIn company page are
getting more and more
"impressions". According to LinkedIn, impression defines as "the
number of times recommendations for this product have been viewed organically
on LinkedIn". That means that the products & services pages I wrote
(well, copy-paste from our site, actually) are actually being visited and
gaining some popularity. I don't know if 7 impressions in 2 days is a big
number or not, but, nevertheless, it's always pleasant to see your work actually
brings some results.
- Back to keywords, now for good. My boss told me that I
should prepare complete SEO for our new website before the year ends, utilizing
keywords from the list I made earlier. I've already read SEO-tipping article,
where the question of keyword-per-page quantity is risen and
analyzed. As always, when it comes to SEO there is no strict and define theory,
rather countless practices and "micro-theories" based on these
practices. Even SEO themselves confess, that there is nothing certain in their
work, and the key thing you have to remember is that nothing is certain and
reliable enough, experiment and innovation is everything and there is nothing more
true than your own experience.
- Such a strange experience: making graphics through code! I
was asked to make some changes in our upcoming email campaign email design. As
always, it proved to be a puzzling but interesting task, requiring some logic
as well as mathematical imagination and spatial sense. At first it was really
difficult to understand, how to manage tables columns and rows properly, but
once I captured the basic inclusion logic, it all became easier and clear.
- Glassdoor website (the one that I found a negative review
of our company couple of months ago) is now displayed on the first Google
search page when our company name is queried. It's with my positive feedback -
that's good, I guess. One marketing platform I found and developed by myself
adds popularity to our company. That gives me a reason to think that my idea to
exploit social networks and especially - ones dedicated to employees, was successful.
четверг, 13 декабря 2012 г.
Wednesday, the 12th of December - Supercritical CO2 Cycle!
12.12.2012
Slogan of the day: Supercritical CO2 Cycle
- New stage of online publishing: my boss suddenly realized,
that we actually can submit both press releases and news to some of this online
publishing services, and guess what - since our trainings can be basically
classified as events, he ordered me to submit all of our next year trainings to
all possible websites. I'm not sure if the plan is going to work, but I'll try
to do what I can.
- Major work today: I need to write new email that would
advertize our upcoming webinar and design it in html. Then schedule it and send
to all our customers and friends. Pretty usual routine, but I find myself
having hard times with writing those dame marketing texts. Last time I did one
was almost a month ago, or even more. I forgot everything I knew, and it was
not too much, actually. So right now, writing this text I'm trying to refresh
my writing skills, rise my intellectual tone and warm up my brain muscles.
- I had a conversation with one of our head engineers today,
regarding Supercritical CO2 Cycle Webinar that we are going to host next month.
But first, a little explanation. My boss was dissatisfied with my email draft
because I used unchecked information from the internet on it. So I was told to
go and talk to the engineer about our topic to get more specific technical
information. That's all. A brief story, actually. But that's just the
beginning. The engineer I talked to was a very nice, smart, polite and overall
interesting person. He's aged, but full of life, very joyful, light-minded and
responsive. He gave me a whole brief lecture about Supercritical CO2 Cycle
technology, which is, I have to admit, a very inspiring and amazing
technological marvel. First, it utilizes suprcritical CO2 work fluid - which
has density tens of thousands times higher than usual gas or fluid, and yet
also appears as semi-fluid, semi-gas sort of material that even the best
scientific minds have not studied well yet. Thanks to this unique working fluid
properties Supercritical CO2 Cycle (S-CO2) turbine requires less space, and
when I say less I mean LESS - it's almost nothing compared to regular nuclear
steam turbines (which are huge). Less in size means less manufacturing cost and
more energy production (with performance index 40% higher). I know it sounds
like I'm trying to sell out some brand new high-tech trinkets, but when I heard
all this from a person really competent in this field, it really amazed me.
Practically its a technology from future that, if properly studied and
performed, could dramatically change worlds energy producing business. And we
are in the middle of this, preparing the webinar and studying it, and spreading
the word about it to the people worldwide! I'm really looking forward to help
with this new webinar's organization. Hell, I should even ask if I could help
with the presentation design - after all, I'm familiar with Prezi and can do
some pro-presentation magic if asked!
Tuesday, the 11th of December - Letter of Disgrace
11.12.2012
Slogan of the day: Letter of Disgrace
- Finally, the day has come. My patience (as well as my boss)
has finally ended. We need answers, and we need the now! I was out of my best
to write this very polite, diplomatic but also straight and intimidating peace
of resentment:
"Please
Deal With Press Release Publishing Delay!
Dear
editors of [lazy publishing company name]!
Three
days ago (Friday, the 7th of December) I submitted our corporate press release
entitled "blablablba", but since then it was not published yet.
Please inform me if possible about the delay reason and the approximate time of
press release publishing, since this press release distribution is of critical
importance to our company.
Thank
you for your help and understanding!
Best
regards,
Valery
Petrov"
and send it to the delaying press release publishing
websites. Now waiting for their pardons and deepest regrets. Shame on them!
- A very interesting and odd observation I made recently: it
seems that two entirely different pr online services, http://www.prurgent.com
and http://www.top-best-news.com have the exact same editorial stuff! Even the
contact pages of these different websites are very similar! And the addresses
are exactly the same! And yet - they're not referencing to one another in any
way! Another internet mystery? Whatever the reason though, both of these gemini
-websites has delayed our press release publishing and will receive my letter
of reproach.
- Ok, I'm not entirely correct regarding the previous
statement. There is a link to the top-best-news that appear right after you
submit a press release to the PRurgent. So they are kinda self promoting that
way, I guess.
Monday, the 10th of December
10.12.2012
- They decided not to use "+600 years of collective
experience" paragraph anymore. It was our CEO's recent innovation - eccentric
textual gesture to both surprise, empathize and (probably) cheer up our clients
and customers. It is still out there - on all our major websites and press
releases, emails and LinkedIn groups, but my boss today told me that I
shouldn't use it anymore. Whatever the reason of its departure, I will inevitably
miss this idiotic but unusual line. Farewell, little abomination of marketing
ignorance, you filled my heart with joy and my throat with laughter not know
how oft... Rot now, on the graveyard of miserable ideas, along with the
marketing calendar, sandy hurricane victims and all the others.
- Finally something new: today I started updating our
LikedIn company page with new group description, keywords, products &
services pages, etc. It's actually kinda interesting. I've read a few articles concerning
this theme:
http://learn.linkedin.com/downloads/LinkedIn-Products-and-Services-Guide-01-2012.pdf
http://www.interactiveinsightsgroup.com/blog1/linkedin-superguidetutorials-tips-and-tool/
and found out some useful tips in it. My boss suggested that
we should advertise our EVERY engineering service aspect separately, be very
specific to cover as many keywords from our list, as possible. I also think
that it was a rehearsal of a kind - maybe testing our new keywords and website
structure blending together, I don't know. Anyway, as for me it was only
partially a good idea, because of two reasons: first, now our products &
services page looks too cluttered (instead of two blank as it was before), and
second - It requires me to do a lot of copy-pasting kinda boring and stupid job
that I hate. It also increases my chances of making some typos, and, consequently
- my bosses time required to check them. So in the end, he's making only worth
for himself. Hah, thinking about it actually makes me happier...
- It appears that my keyword list is actually not as perfect
as I used to think. Lots of very crucial words are missing, and some of them
barely makes any sense. I guess this is the foreseen consequence of the fact
that no one had never actually spared a time to check it carefully. There's a
good side too - only I know about it's handicapity, so I can perform actions required
to fix it.
четверг, 6 декабря 2012 г.
Tthursday, the 6th of December - Press release publishing
06.12.2012
Slogan of the day: Press release publishing
- Back
to my old boring duties: publications of press releases to the numerous
websites and all other stuff. Also now I decided to take this old burden a little more seriously. I'm not
going to quit and will get this press release published on EVERY website on my
list no matter what cost. If it will require me to e-mail editors to death with
publishing requests - than be it. I've just finished new "your website gives
me an error, could you help?" e-mail form, next step will be writing the
"why the fcuk have you not published our press release yet?!" form
for those, who will not take their publishing business as seriously as I'm
taking mine now.
-
Proved to be an interesting research article about free online press release
services:
http://www.vitispr.com/blog/free-press-release-sites/
- Three
more highly recommended press-release publishing services were added to my publication
list:
http://www.openpr.com
http://www.prfire.co.uk
http://www.onlineprnews.com
All of
them proved to be very convenient, fast and well-designed services. The last
one has a particularly interesting feature: you can choose up to 7 different
industry categories to specify your release theme! It's a very high number
compared to the other s\websites, where the average is 2 or 3 categories.
среда, 5 декабря 2012 г.
Wednesday, the 5th of December - Mission accomplished
05.12.2012
Slogan of the day: Mission accomplished
- Notable Skype dialog we had today, me and my boss (before
i was asked to change "Final Product configuration" section name to
"Mission accomplished". I thought to do it my way):
I: I
changed "mission accomplished" to "objectives achieved"
Boss:
NO
B:
change it please
I: ok,
I'm changing
I: it
just sounded like some political slogan to me
B: that's
the point. We just had elections. Mental associations with positive outcome.
Just previously I found out that one of the Obama's
reelection slogans was "Mission Accomplished". Interesting marketing
move - to correlate big national election emotional lift with own brand via
usage of similar political slogans and rhetorics.
- Little off-topic, but nevertheless. It
appears that there is actually a story with this slogan. It was used by G. W.
Bush in 2003 in some military-related campaign, and later was re-utilized (in a
different context) by Obama in his recent reelection. Now we are re-utilizing
it for our product description. Quite a popular slogan, it seems.
вторник, 4 декабря 2012 г.
Tuesday, the 4th of December
04.12.2012
- Quite interesting, yet extremely bad timed task: I was
supposed to show somehow (graphically, less words - better) on the brochure the
consequence of actions performed by our engineers. Firstly they created
thousands of designs, then gave these designs to the calculating program, then
the calculating program selected five most suitable of them, and then our engineers
tested these five variants very carefully and precisely to find the best one of
them. I tried to avoid pointing and directional arrows as much as i could. In
my stylish and complex design they would look out of place. So, after some
thinking and experimenting, I decided to create a tube-like shape, that would
be connected to the points of the bottom list like if they were water pump
nozzles. Like if the these tasks "flow" through the bulletpoints in
the list and then formed consequence of containers of blue color containing
illustrations and comments to the actions performed. I was rather enthusiastic
about the idea, but its incarnation, due to a lack of time and effort, did not
satisfy me. Anyway, my boss found this variant too "crowded" and it
was rejected anyway. I'll save these design concept for better times.понедельник, 3 декабря 2012 г.
Monday, the 3d of December
03.12.2012
Slogan of the day: Sharing the final design!
- Working through the last week was hell. I haven't even had the time to write anything in my blog - and that's just not right! So, since I'm finally done with the bloody commercial brochure of our new product (the one I started over a week ago!), I decided to share it final and approved design with you. Yes you! Consider yourself extraordinarily lucky.
 |
| Te First Page - with logo banner on top and a box for additional informaation on the right |
 |
The
Second Page - with additional bottom banner for
Corporate information, blue box for final product
"niceand sexy" image and some space for general
info and QR Code (of course!) in between |
White spaces are designated for pictures, diagrams, photos, etc. The main idea behind this design was to create somewhat website-looking pages, with banners, menus and submenus. This method of data organization came to me rather spontaneously, intuitively - I guess I just used to see something similar every day in the web.
- If you are interested in using my design,
please write a comment or email me, so I can share its PSD originals for your convenience.
26 - 30th of November - Crazy Week!
26.11.2012
- Ordering layers and folders in photoshop is essential - I
understand it after encountering one commercial design that one of my
colleagues did. It was a mess and I spent a lot of time just figuring out what
layer matches what part of the image. There were no names, no grouping or
ordering. So the first thing I did was renaming layers and placing them in a
more convenient order (I found spatially-parallel order, where layer icons
vertical hierarchy is alike "real" layers vertical arrangement the
most convenient). Then I made several groups and subgroups (too many is bad -
easy to lose yourself in) and arranged according layers to them. Now I can work
with it without puzzling on layers location.
28.11.2012
- Design is all in the details. Keeping your fonts the same
size no matter what, ordering all contents in straight lines, cleaning pixels
here and there for the image to look more clear, clearing space and making all
the details look unified - that's the key. Even our lame corporate flyer design
started to look much better after I polished it for several hours, fixing all
the mistakes my mysterious predecessor left behind.
- I was always thinking of designing in photoshop as about the
graphical artistic experience, but now, after spending a week working on
brochure design, I'm starting to reconsider my views. It seems as for me more
like a kinesthetic and constructive-gaming experience, alike to my childhood
plays with construction kit and differently colored blocks. Definig lines and
curves, designating all sort of objects around them, making symmetrical or asymmetrical
constructions, polishing the details so that the final result will look and
feel perfectly. It's like building a pyramid, every single part of which must
be fitted tightly to another.
29.11.2012
- Converting GMT to EST time format. All-knowing internet
tells me with the voice of ChristinaC:
To convert GMT time to EST time, you simply subtract five hours from the GMT
time. For example, if it is 8 pm GMT time, it will be 3 pm EST time.
- A little time passed before I realized that converting GMT
to EST time format for brouchure was not very effective. As I understand now, these
two formats were chosen intentionally for different time zones / countries. For
example, 8 AM GMT is 3 AM EST, which is not a very convenient time for America,
but suit well for England and Europe.
- Finally I get my hands to some juicy data from our
engineers team! It was always right under my hand, actually - on the head
engineers computer network share. But from where could I know? Now I know what
dwarfs from Dwarf Fortress experience when they enter a strange mood and lacks required
materials, but then, just a few seconds before madness take over, finally achieves
them through some elvish / human caravan or fellow dfarfs aid. Fascinating
feeling - finally, some real work and no more roundabouts!
30.11.2012
- Once again, QR code seems to be of use: now i insisted for
it to be present on our commercial flyers and product brochure. I'm sure that
everyone including engineers and businessman on events as big as our company
participates in all have iPhones, iPads or some other QR-reading app of some
sort. In future, when all people on earth will have their Smartphones embedded
in their eyes, I believe QR codes will become a of the normal form of advertising
and even communication in general. It's as easy as it can be - literally, what
you see is what you get. No more boring reading - you scan, program decode
information for you and voila - you find yourself on the page you need, with
the product you wanted, etc.
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