I was talking SEO this morning with the new Director of Marketing at Catalyst Studios, the infamous Christina Jackson. I was conveying to her what feels like to me a frustrating or at least confusing point about SEO for companies like Catalyst Studios. I would really like to know what others out there think, what your observations are.
If search engines (like Google, yes there are others, sort of..) are going to continue to prioritize the creation of original content in our sites and quality external links to our sites I see a couple pitfalls for service industries. I start to feel like it's not going to be enough to just do great work for my clients and have a thoughtful website that reflects my work and philosophies to the general public.
Reason #1:
I will be beat out by anyone who is blogging about the industry I work in. Which sort of makes me think that's a real bummer... Google will serve up a competitor who spends their time writing about what they do regardless of what they do, or how well they do it.
Reason #2:
Other than pro-bono work or awards shows, I can't think of a heck of a lot of good reasons anyone would like to my agency. This creates (IMHO) another time wasting ritual of me spending my time trying to figure out how to get links, or even taking on pro-bono work JUST to get them. How sad is that?
So, the agency I work for does some damn fine work. All our pages do their best to have the right keywords and whatnot, but to gain in the world of SEM I have to spend time and money writing stupid blogs like this exact one, hoping it's relevant to someone else, and having it point back to my agency subtly, and praying for a link that counts.
How do other medium sized agencies (or any service based company) feel about this SEM posturing practice? Waste of time, or cost of doing business simply because search engines can't find a better way to view us? Or maybe it's completely valid to say that if people aren't linking to me and talking about me I am not as important.
I really want to know how you feel about this!
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Before you run out and buy that new digital antenne
It has begun to dawn on us all how much of our attention is shifting towards video content. The climb of online social media video as a way to share and communicate ideas is proof that we just don't want to spend our time reading. Especially on computer screens.
I had lunch with an multi-Emmy winning producer today who poses the questions to me about what this all means. Will terrestrial video broadcast go the way of radio and record label? (it's dying, FYI)
One thing has become clear to me. Digital communication of any kind can all eventually pass through the same conduit, correct? The fact that we use radio waves, satellites, phone lines, cable lines, WI-FI, cell towers, and Bluetooth is simply a matter of awkward evolution, and corporate attempts to control communication channels.
In the end it seems to make sense to me that the highest bandwidth, most scalable and flexible channel will win out. Eventually it will be too much of a burden to force delivery through multiple channels. On computers cross platform sharing, and information syndication has shown us that already. People aren't willing to buy a format if the content they want isn't on it.
Will traditional broadcast channels start catering to an older audience? Will new generations shun anything that doesn't have an on-demand delivery system? What about format and compatibility?
Maybe there is a potential positive upswing to all this. When our networks, and media conglomerates stop bickering about formats and delivery channels they might actually get back to content. Maybe someday the media channels and content creators will be two separate entities who both have quality accountability.
Wouldn't that be nice?
I had lunch with an multi-Emmy winning producer today who poses the questions to me about what this all means. Will terrestrial video broadcast go the way of radio and record label? (it's dying, FYI)
One thing has become clear to me. Digital communication of any kind can all eventually pass through the same conduit, correct? The fact that we use radio waves, satellites, phone lines, cable lines, WI-FI, cell towers, and Bluetooth is simply a matter of awkward evolution, and corporate attempts to control communication channels.
In the end it seems to make sense to me that the highest bandwidth, most scalable and flexible channel will win out. Eventually it will be too much of a burden to force delivery through multiple channels. On computers cross platform sharing, and information syndication has shown us that already. People aren't willing to buy a format if the content they want isn't on it.
Will traditional broadcast channels start catering to an older audience? Will new generations shun anything that doesn't have an on-demand delivery system? What about format and compatibility?Maybe there is a potential positive upswing to all this. When our networks, and media conglomerates stop bickering about formats and delivery channels they might actually get back to content. Maybe someday the media channels and content creators will be two separate entities who both have quality accountability.
Wouldn't that be nice?
Monday, June 16, 2008
iPhone Game Development
We just got our SDK, and we're diving in. We've got two awesome projects loaded for our crack iPhone team, one for a client, and one for our kick ass selves. For those who know little about iPhone games let's just put it this way. With the iPhone you have a hand held device that rivals units like the Nintendo DS and even Sony PSP. The catch is that it's also a Phone, GPS, iPod, Movies, etc..Adding games to the iPhone presents more than just mobile gaming opportunity, with iPhone the primary interface is the touch screen. By some foreseen as a limitation, for others (like myself) seen as breeding ground for a fleet of games that take full advantage. The resulting library of games is sure to be more unique than ports of existing titles. I can't wait!
I'll be posting more soon, perhaps after our first beta is available!
Project Management 2.0
Friday afternoon last week, our crack interactive p.m. (Megan Potter) and I took a working lunch to discuss some of our floating ideas about interactive project management. We'd recently kicked the tires on a few well known platforms such as Basecamp by 37 Signals. In the end it seems that although most products out there have the essential elements we require such as:
In the end we decided to create a medium-elaborate system of our own using Google Apps, Blogger, Twitter, and some duct tape. Who knows, maybe after this we'll end up making our own flavor of an online interactive p.m. system and resell it as a service. I doubt it thought.
- to-do lists
- schedules
- client and project classification
- prioritizing
- collaboration
In the end we decided to create a medium-elaborate system of our own using Google Apps, Blogger, Twitter, and some duct tape. Who knows, maybe after this we'll end up making our own flavor of an online interactive p.m. system and resell it as a service. I doubt it thought.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Andrew Norell returns from Flashbelt
Nice to have Andrew back. After all, he's only our lead developer...
According to Andrew, Flashbelt was "off the hook" this year. He said that Mario was amazing and inspiring as usual. Ham in the Fridge's dev lead Brad B dish out some game making "rock and rock and roll". As much fun as hearing Mono talk about themselves sounded, he opted for something else during that time slot. Perhaps it was Marc Jenson of Space150 talking about how to develop Flash sites and retain web standards and usability. Andrew, you're a kid after my own heart ;-)
If you want to know more about what Andrew took away from Flashbelt you can always ask him yourself.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
The Big Bang, an agency perspective on Flash
About a decade ago, the Internet exploded into a brand new canvas on which you could sell anything to anyone, anywhere. The underdog and entrepreneur suddenly had an affordable way to broadcast their message to just about as many people as the incumbent corporations could. How? Well, frankly... people were so mesmerized with the new household technology that they were willing to click on just about anything. There's a resounding irony found in the humorous website that once claimed to be “the end” of the Internet. As if to say “that’s all folks, you found every last page.” The general public had Internet fever so bad, it seemed as if they were literally participating in an endless virtual treasure hunt. As people's attention went to the Internet, business had to follow.
Enter the overnight success. The 49'rs of the Internet were taking over the headlines. Every business was now being told to get online, even when it made absolutely no sense for them to do so. The assumption was that if you got your business on the Internet you just might strike it rich like those other guys, but more importantly you could at lease keep up with the Joneses. I could write an entire article on what the Internet did to global and local commerce, in fact my lead developer wrote his college thesis on the matter at my suggestion. I will assume for now we all saw (all of us over 25) together how the Internet dramatically devalued billions of dollars of physical sales channels and made regional competition a thing of the past, practically overnight.
How then does an established company with millions, possibly billions invested in brand recognition and physical sales channels compete with these annoying rouge outfits on the Internet? By doing the same thing… only doing it better. Now, web companies were challenged with gaining back market share or being first to bring an offline product into cyberspace. With more money behind them they didn't have to settle for status quo, impressive budgets almost the likes of television ads were being pumped into the Internet. Now the underdog has some competition, as fortune 500 attempts to stomp them out the only way they know how in a medium they hardly understood… brute force... entertainment.
Well, it doesn’t get much more brute force then Flash 3 or 4. With this tool one could practically hypnotize a site visitor into clicking around and never leaving. Impressive animations started popping up all over the Internet. The industry once again had a way to separate out the big boys, kind of. Not everyone could afford to make Flash websites. The elite (and a handful of self taught animators) had their throne back. The fastest moving, most interactive and coolest looking websites were getting all the glory. Now that the market had this shinny new object it started turning advertising on its head. Brand new companies made up of kids were rolling large if they had Flash chops. The addiction continued and a whole new virtual industry was born with the mantra "who had the best Flash site?" We all wanted more, it was unstoppable. With this craze, came the inevitable poor decision making that led people to do such things as navigate sites, sell products, deliver content, or even create content all within the Flash plug-in.
Macromedia (the makers of Flash before the Adobe buyout) stood up and did everything in their power to meet the needs experience website hungry people (at the time myself included, sure… why not, right?) who also had to deliver some content with the pretty animations. I guess the idea was that if people were going to use a pinwheel for a fan, Macromedia would try to make it blow as much air as possible. None of us had time to evaluate why we expected such things from a plug-in, we just knew that the client wanted sales, but they wanted to be sexy. HTML was considered fairly unsexy at the time.
Enter the overnight success. The 49'rs of the Internet were taking over the headlines. Every business was now being told to get online, even when it made absolutely no sense for them to do so. The assumption was that if you got your business on the Internet you just might strike it rich like those other guys, but more importantly you could at lease keep up with the Joneses. I could write an entire article on what the Internet did to global and local commerce, in fact my lead developer wrote his college thesis on the matter at my suggestion. I will assume for now we all saw (all of us over 25) together how the Internet dramatically devalued billions of dollars of physical sales channels and made regional competition a thing of the past, practically overnight.
How then does an established company with millions, possibly billions invested in brand recognition and physical sales channels compete with these annoying rouge outfits on the Internet? By doing the same thing… only doing it better. Now, web companies were challenged with gaining back market share or being first to bring an offline product into cyberspace. With more money behind them they didn't have to settle for status quo, impressive budgets almost the likes of television ads were being pumped into the Internet. Now the underdog has some competition, as fortune 500 attempts to stomp them out the only way they know how in a medium they hardly understood… brute force... entertainment.
Well, it doesn’t get much more brute force then Flash 3 or 4. With this tool one could practically hypnotize a site visitor into clicking around and never leaving. Impressive animations started popping up all over the Internet. The industry once again had a way to separate out the big boys, kind of. Not everyone could afford to make Flash websites. The elite (and a handful of self taught animators) had their throne back. The fastest moving, most interactive and coolest looking websites were getting all the glory. Now that the market had this shinny new object it started turning advertising on its head. Brand new companies made up of kids were rolling large if they had Flash chops. The addiction continued and a whole new virtual industry was born with the mantra "who had the best Flash site?" We all wanted more, it was unstoppable. With this craze, came the inevitable poor decision making that led people to do such things as navigate sites, sell products, deliver content, or even create content all within the Flash plug-in.
Macromedia (the makers of Flash before the Adobe buyout) stood up and did everything in their power to meet the needs experience website hungry people (at the time myself included, sure… why not, right?) who also had to deliver some content with the pretty animations. I guess the idea was that if people were going to use a pinwheel for a fan, Macromedia would try to make it blow as much air as possible. None of us had time to evaluate why we expected such things from a plug-in, we just knew that the client wanted sales, but they wanted to be sexy. HTML was considered fairly unsexy at the time.
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