ambient

As someone who just spent the last two years building technology to help large advertisers optimize their search campaigns, I’ve been eager to get a better handle on social media, what works, and what the best tools are. In the last week since launching Gridjit, a social portal for Twitter, I’ve learned quite a bit.

Here’s a quick list:

• Bloglines seems to be more comprehensive than Google Blog Search in what it finds.
• Twitter is heavily indexed by Google and Bloglines. Surprisingly, Ask.com does not seem to make use of Bloglines for its own search results. Seems like a natural use and could start to differentiate them from the other engines. Too bad.
• Ask.com does do something very interesting with Bloglines. If you want to be indexed by Ask, they recommend that you create a Bloglines account and register your site in your Bloglines profile. It’s their take on Sitemaps, and I think it’s a great idea. It’s slow though (Gridjit is still not indexed).
• If you’re into web analytics (who isn’t?), GetClicky should be your new friend. I find it much faster than Google Analytics, its results are truly real time, the interface is beautiful, and its availability in iGoogle (Google, duh.) makes it a killer app. It’s not suited, it seems, for sites with tons of traffic, so I’ll let you know what I do when I get there.
• Yahoo, in terms of search results, is actually doing a very nice job. I found their results to be much more accurate, IMO, than even Google’s for Gridjit related sites.
• Twitter is even better than I thought. I don’t know of a better way online right now to meet new people, create friendships with people around the world, and share ideas about what works.
• I am seeing a crazy amount of innovation coming from Europe and Asia. I received quite a bit of email from people in those regions and, as a result, was introduced to some of the projects going on outside the US.
• In short, SMO is most definitely the new SEO. For some background information, I designed, developed, and helped launch a product called Organic Insight at Covario (formerly SEMDirector). I learned a lot about SEO, and I’m seeing that I have to relearn almost everything. Amazing what just a year or two does.

Earlier today, I wrote about my experiences with two online life insurance brokers. I actually had Mack’s post about a woman’s experience with Panera in mind as I wrote it.

Because both of the insurance brokers don’t come off as Web 2.0 type companies, I figured that neither of them would ever see what I wrote, and that was unfortunate. I would always want to know how my customers or prospects felt after they had an encounter with a service that I was offering.

I was pleasantly surprised when Sean Cheyney responded to my comments and explained more about his business and the way it works. Because I have no reason to do otherwise, I take his comments at face value and now the company he works for (AccuQuote) have a much higher standing in my opinion.

It takes a lot of time and energy to track down people who are talking about your company and even more integrity to engage them in conversation. If more companies did this, the concept of “PR Nightmares” would largely go away.

People want to talk to other people. That’s why social media works.

Our exchange can be read here.