Please also have a look at another survey being done by Sinéad Cochrane for postgraduate research. Her survey is targeted at both people that write blogs and those that are just readers. It should only take a few minutes of your time and she’s offering a prize.

I found the link to her survey via Darraghs blog. His bio says he’s a storyteller and I can confirm it. He writes some great posts that are a pleasure to read. Go read some of his posts after you have done the surveys – he won’t be around much longer as I imagine his sister will kill him when she sees what he has posted.

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• Business Blogging Survey
• Survey on Irish Bloggers and Irish Blog Readers

If you have anything you think should be included – be quick and let me know. Shortly after the deadline the version will be locked and sent for print. Online versions will be available sooner I’m sure – but people still need a copy in their hands.

From their web page

”
From designing a website for the user experience, through building brands online, leveraging search engines, social media, and blogs, to campaigns, online PR and digital marketing. Hear from high-profile, industry leaders during this information packed day.

All delegates that attend the event will also be able to sign up for a free membership of NetImperative.com at the registration desk usually charged out at £99.00+VAT.
“

Have a look at the IIA site for more details:

https://secure.iia.ie/events/event/188/net-imperative-dublin-roadshow/

• If it’s mission critical then you need to have it running. You can’t afford the downtime while you try to find someone to fix it. Review the downtime costs versus the warranty and repair costs.
• The manufacturer should be able to give you MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) and MTTR (Mean Time To Repair) values. MTBF gives you an idea of how long the system is likely to run before things start to break and need replacing. MTTR gives you an idea of how long it will be out of action.
• The MTBF and MTTR values are handy but ask candid questions about the kinds of things that can break and how long the individual jobs need to repair.
• A single component might be able to be replaced on site but there mat be a shipping time. Should you keep spares on site?
• The whole equipment may need to be sent back to the supplier. How long would that take?
• What happens during non business hours or the holidays?
• Does any regular maintenance work need to be done?
• Does the equipment need to be taken off line to do maintenance?
• Does the MTBF number assume all maintenance is done?
• Does a specialist need to do the maintenance?
• How long before someone is physically there to fix the equipment? Some contracts give a 1 hour response time but that only means an engineer has been assigned.

THE MTBF is based on best case conditions. I suggest having an informal chat with your supplier to ask how the real world scenario is and what you can do to ensure the equipment is working at its best.
Remember: If the equipment is old – no one might know how to maintain it – even if you have a contract. Check yearly with the supplier how the supply of spare parts is, the engineers technical knowledge. Trust me – They’ll tell you if it’s time to buy new equipment.

In connection with the Geansai Gorm competition I ran a Google Adwords campaign. It fit very nicely with a Google Adwords training I was providing and I thought it would be fun.

The competition finishes on Monday 1 Dec at 15:00 so I thought I’d prepare some details of the results I achieved and add my personal conclusions.

Keep in mind that I have not actually maintained the ads so please don’t take anything here as a “best practice” example. Maybe a “wasted opportunity” example. I guess that’s the first lesson:

Lesson #1: Make sure before starting a Search Engine Optimisation and/or Adwords campaign that you are going to have the time to maintain it.

The Geansai Gorm Ads

I created the initial ad as a joke and then decided it might actually produce some interesting results. It was along the lines of:

I nearly got sidetracked into creating ads to see how much bad language I could sneak into Adwords but that’s a project for another day.

Lesson #2: Even if Google policies say no – you should experiment. You might get away with it.

What surprised me was how quickly people started clicking on the ads. I guess there was a general curiosity to really see what gobshite was spending money on ads that linked to Geansai Gorm and had no incoming revenue associated with them.

Lesson #3: Keep your ads interesting and catch people’s attention.

I must admit I was a little concerned with getting lambasted by Damien Mulley for messing around with his competition and was relieved when he left a comment on the blog. I might still get a telling off when he sees that I used his name as one of the keyword phrases. It’s a big no no to use someone else’s name/trademark in that way. I’ll buy him a pint the next time we meet and beg for forgiveness – hopefully you’re open to bribes Damien.

Lesson #4: Don’t break trademark rules – you’ll seldom get away with buying a beer and saying sorry.

After the bad language ads I had something a little different:

This actually did pretty OK for something I put about 10 seconds work into – I was getting a click through rate of 1.56% (i.e that percentage of people actually clicked on the ads). At that stage I added some extra variations and decided to stop messing with the ad and see how it ran over time:

That’s when the campaign started to fall apart. The number of impressions (how often the ad was displayed) was increasing quite rapidly but the click through rate was dropping. If I was doing this for a real product then I’d need to start tweaking my ads.

Lesson #5: Keep tweaking your ads and try out different variations.

So why were the ads “failing”? Maybe people misunderstood my sense of humour and thought they would be linked to an inappropriate site. I suspect that the number of people searching for Geansai Gorm was actually quite low and the ad had been seen by most who were interested. The large number of impressions was most likely people refreshing the pages to see if their position on Google had changed. It’s quite possible I’d reached some form of saturation and without doing something to reanimate the “target market” my ads would continue to fail.

Lesson #6: Never loose focus of who the ads are trying to attract.

I didn’t change the ads afterwards which means my totals were not as good as they would have been for a properly maintained campaign. If nothing else this experiment made it clear to me how important it is to maintain the ads and make sure they stay focused.

The Geansai Gorm Ad Results

The ads were started on 6 Nov (a little over a week after the competition started) – what are the results?

Upto Saturday:

- 9895 Impressions on the search network
- 112 Clicks

- 54341 Impressions on the content network
- 20 clicks

At the end of the competition today (Monday):

- 11,233 Impressions on the search network
- 126 Clicks

- 63,209 Impressions on the content network
- 24 clicks

I used just 4 keyword phrases – picked because they were the first things to spring to mind

- Geansai Gorm (118 clicks – up 14 since Saturday)
- Ireland SEO (3 clicks)
- mulley.net (3 clicks)
- Damien Mulley (2 clicks)

Conclusion

Not exactly what I would call a stellar success rate. A total of 150 clicks with a CTR of 0.20 percent. I’m glad I was not actually selling anything. Of course – how do you measure success? If I just wanted to get my name displayed then I can say it was a success if someone remembers the ads when I meet them at some business event. In that case the total cost of €28.36 €33.52 is a bargain.

I just hope they don’t remember my name and the word gobshite at the same time.

As for the competition – as far as I know the rules exclude me using this blog so I can’t enter. Having said that – this blog did appear at slot 77 at the closing bell. You can’t be lazy when it comes to SEO – it won’t get you anywhere.