I've moved to isabelleokane.com

My blog has now moved to http://isabelleokane.com/ and this site will no longer be updated.

See you there!

The search engine is dead...

Goodbye "search" engines, hello "decision" engines...

Microsoft are releasing a new engine called "Bing" which provides smarter results and is born out of the fact that 15% of Google searches are abandoned.

Bing claims to be "not just a search Engine - but a decision Engine".

Results are not just ranked by popularity but by logical categories & really excels when it comes to complex searches such as shopping or planing a holiday.

For example you can enter the dates of your holiday and Bing will aggregate results from various airlines & even can show you a chart of when the fares will be cheapest.

When searching for a restaurant you can refine your results by price, parking or even atmosphere.

It's not the semantic web, but it shows us we're well on our way to a smarter web....and I can't wait to try it, but it's not yet unveiled unfortunately.

For more details check out Business Week's article.

How to use Twitter for your business

I've been using Twitter for quite a while now and I think the only way to really understand the platform's dynamics - is to get stuck in.

However if you're new to Twitter and want help understanding how to use it and how to behave, here's a great article that's worth a read.


Personally I can boil it down into some DO's and DONT's

DO:
Be chatty, be real, be personal
Connect with your competitors and employees and help to create a twitter eco system around your industry
Allow your employees to Tweet, sometimes work related, but also sometimes about the great coffee they just went for
Use people's Twitter names, start to build up personalities...Twitter is social
Use Twitter to get a quick snapshot reaction from people about a business problem or idea, it's not consumer research but it's a damn good guide

DONT:
Encourage your followers to send spammy links - or do so at your own peril
Set up automated posts - or your account will look like an impersonal spam feed

How to get your brand into "sponsored conversations".

So you're starting to consider blogger outreach programmes and are not sure about how best to negotiate the area of "sponsored conversations"? Read this AdAge article...

The bottom line is be AUTHENTIC & be OPEN about any sponsorship.

Jeremiah Owyang echoes this thought and provides some very useful examples of sponsored conversations.

My take on the viral chart

I was checking out AdAge's viral chart and first off I must say I find it rather surprising that Vodafone's recent viral has done so well. I don't find them that compelling, and frankly their "voices" are very irritating...I just want to switch them off!



...really, is there anything that special about this series of virals? What it does have going for it is it's length - just long enough to tell a story without loosing interest.

Frito Lay's viral held my attention til the end - & this is obviously helped by my femininity as I am the target market for these clips.


One last observation is that being genuine works and we're wise to special effects making them - NOT funny, and when you're setting out to be entertaining via humour...you need to think again about treatment.

TMobile gets this.



Cadbury didn't



BUT (and this is a very big but) as regards creating buzz on the internet...in the form of various spoofs and takes, and viral "notoriety"...Cadbury's strategy is doing very well as you can see by the likes of this...



So when it comes to making virals, ideas that are bigger than the brands own execution and that inspire or provoke viral responses are a more effective way of generating buzz.

And by the way...Cadbury rocks with this piece of PR on the Saturday Night Project...(embedding was disabled but follow this link).

How App-Advertising is unlocking the power of mobile

Mobile users have for a long time been averse to marketing interruptions on their mobiles...but the birth of smart phones has created a new style of mobile marketing that consumers can't seem to get enough of...

Go Pure Blonde!

This is the type of marketing that really gets me excited. When a brand takes it's core values and extends them in such a meaningful, creative and not only impactful - but beneficial way. I love it!