Lefty G Balogh

Expectations, Amplification, Results and Stakeholder Management I have been talking to a lot of people about social media recently. And I mean a lot. Various verticals, all levels of seniority from junior to the C-suite. One resounding theme has been “we are behind the curve”. Four CMO’s, all in the financial sector, all at the …

Them lot had a couple of really snappy ads, but this one sat particularly well on the chin with the social media guy like me. It is a nice reality check on the hyperlocal existence that many of us have… Of the 8 people around me on the train right now, none are talking to …

Do’s and Don’ts for Personal, Professional and Power Users in Social Media Michael, a loyal reader of mine, beat me to this. I have had this post in the making for a while when he sends me this mail: Hi again. I was wondering. What guidelines should a person have for themselves when making friends …

Inhouse development vs buy from vendor. Most people are aware of the pros and cons for both. More control, bigger wishlist, more customized solutions are prime factors when choosing inhouse development. Bigger investment upfront, increased headcount, more glitches and longer delays are major decisive factors against it. Third party products require less of a CAPEX …

You got wind of a competitor investing big money into Google PPC. If it’s worth it for him, it has to be a good investment. So you run into the first web-agency on high street and ask for an account manager who can get you going asap. Cool. They will love it. You agree on …

When someone suggested that Linkedin’s new skill endorsements are like what pokes used to be on msn, I thought it was a joke. I need to reconsider my position on it. Having seen at least five completely fictitious accounts being endorsed by real people, almost to the extent of Santa and Rudolf being patted on …

Hopefully one day this post will no longer be necessary. Not in the near future though. Because in the near future cameras will still beat processing power and memory. Just spoke to someone who says 45 megapixel cameras are coming out – in mobiles and tablets… So until it is sorted, you may need to …

Good or bad, they are a marketer’s strongest weapon. The sharpest tool in the box. The most powerful spell in the book. Because they help you tell a story. I intentionally chose three metaphors above. One that says successful marketing is like a fight. Another one that implies it is similar to crafts in creating …

The do’s and don’ts, the why’s and why not’s of hiring freelance copywriters, graphic designers and the like to help you launch a website This is a series of articles about what you can, should and should not outsource to whom. Don’t read this if you are a big company with a six figure budget …

Viral marketing on Facebook and LinkedIn If you have done your preparations, noted down your benchmark data, set up your autoresponders in your LinkedIn groups and tweaked your Facebook Apps, you are ready to roll. If you haven’t, go back to the previous take on how to prepare your viral marketing campaign. Your viral marketing …

Google Banned Keywords: List of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly If you are in PPC advertising, sooner or later you bump into this issue of banned keywords. Even if your accounts are not directly involved, your ads may be rejected because of something you unintentionally hit upon. The list of banned keywords is …

The ultimate Guide to creating a presentation that will engage your audience Creating a good presentation is a challenge. You need three ingredients: original content, confident presenter, and a presentation tool that enables not limits. Unique content Unique content is probably the easiest to get hold of when you are creating a presentation. You know …

Different people are different. I know it is stating the obvious but I will say it again: different people are different. You need to treat them differently. You need to talk to them differently even if you are talking about the same thing. Does your website talk to different people? Or was it developed by …

Marketing is about not blending in. Marketing is about being noticed. Marketing is not about survival, it is about growth. In nature small species tend to blend in more often than not. With one exception: birds. Their whole existence relies on unique branding, emphatic marketing, strong activity on the market all garnished with heavy advertising. …

I know that your web-people told you that you need to put some serious SEO efforts behind your site. “Because it’s gonna help you rank higher”, they said, and probably added that you need to do some link-building as well, because that is the bread and butter of SEO. Fantastic. But the truth is that …

How much are you going to lose if your Google Adwords Account is suspended due to a hack? Your PPC hacker wants to get as many impressions in as short a time as possible. No price is too high.  He knows you do not work over the weekend, and hopes that you won’t look into …

The devil lies in the detail, they say. But the stress is wrong. It should not be on the detail. It is on the devil and that it lies. Next time someone asks you for a quick and dirty opinion and gives you a small chunk of data – ask yourself: Why are they trying …

Why is it that the web is the only i dustry where user and usability testing almost never involves real users? Is it because it is so cheap? Or what? You sit in a can and you can tell the engineer sat in that cockpit in his office before it was finalised. You pick up …

The biggest disappointment of the year – the latest Android WP app upgrade If you are fortunate enough not to have had the upgrade automatically, take my word for it, and do not apply the manual upgrade. The latest app would not be good enough for a beta, never mind for a major “redesign” upgrade. …

Tag Cloud Tools: One for the eye and one for SEO There are way too many word and tag cloud tools out there. I tried most of them and the vast majority is plain useless – ie I am not going to use a cloud that gives 100 links back to the tool. Or, I …

Have you got one? No kidding. Have you? Not one of those paid ones. They are just marketers with a funky tag. (No disrespect guys but that’s who we are.) I mean one of those that does it for free because he loves the company and believes in the product. The one that actually knows …

Mobile Tracking, surf’s up, dude… If you think your analytics tools does the best reporting on all the traffic you get, you may be completely wrong. The World as We Knew It Creating a website and not using analytics is like driving blind. It is fun, adventure of a lifetime, but not very safe. You …

Websites for startup businesses are a major hurdle for several reasons. When most people realise that they actually need a website, the first few thoughts are always woolly dreams of a gigantic web-empire that brings in truckloads of money without human intervention. Then as planning progresses, first it’s the domain name struggle, then it’s the …

Yeah. I admit. I like my numbers. Integers. Percentages. Fractions. Numbers in all shapes and sizes. To me they are no longer the numbers they used to be in school. To me they are little signs that say whether or not someone has done a good job. And this morning my numbers said I did …

Ye shall not pretend to be rich and famous – or a brand or a company The fun thing about Twitter is that they have so many rules that just by simply having an account, you probably violate at least half a dozen of them. The not so fun part about them is that they …

Get your digital assets in place before you build an online community As I pointed out in an earlier post, building an online community is not easy. Since then I have galopped past the group who was #4, outran it by several hundred new members and also past the 1000 member hurdle. Why this is …

One of the pleasures of community management in social media is that you get to deal with flames, heated discussions, not completely void of mudslinging, personal abuse and shameless commercial plugs. These discussions can cause quite a bit of contraversy and oftentimes I am tempted to take sides. But as moderator, group manager and owner …

I am hereby notifying Google of being complacent in fraudulent click advertising activity by allowing its blogging platform Blogger to be used for misleading purposes causing advertisers, potential customers and me damage and inconvenience. The scan is simple: you pose as a recruiter and post nonexisting jobs with very attractive terms on Linkedin. People click …

The question is no longer whether we have data. Or maybe not even if we have enough data. The question is if we have the right data and whether we have the capacity to analyse it to make good decisions. Thoughts?

Open source intelligence has been around for a while. Investigative journalism is one form. Competitive intelligence is another. Espionage may be a third. Where all this comes into the picture is social media. I recently moderated a very heated debated among people working for rivals in the analytics niche. The row got bad and personal. …

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it is fine but if it is, do. Now. So I am making amends to my blogging strategy: the format and the frequency are fine. It is the daily topic selection I will be tweaking. This is the only place online where I do not need to do SEO …

The Current state of the market: No proven business model All the ad network business intelligence is rather woolly, there is not much hard evidence to back claims about its size. User behaviour is still almost completely unknown (how many of you have ever clicked on a mobile ad?) Many of the ad networks are …

As a result of this Quixotic Quest for a mobile analytics vendor, I started the “Omniture” group on LinkedIn. Join Today! Here I am, representing a company that has over 85 mobile operator customers, well over 10 million active users on five continents, genuinely interested in an analytics solution. So I search then dial then …

Read the following before you volunteer to write guest posts here I’d love to have guest bloggers here. In fact I already do have a few, but none are the usual voluntary type. My guest bloggers so far have been invited to write. This is not to say that if you want to write here, …

Why your boss does not care about Web Analytics There you are, sitting on top of this gigantic collection of wonderful analytics data, and your boss just does not care. He does not ask you a single question, does not ask for your opinion or insight, does not want you to help prepare important business …

Currently I am running 3 blogs myself and host probably another 5 or so for friends and family. I wrote over 500 posts for these blogs in the last 12 months. More than 800 over the past one and a half years. And I can’t remember the last time I posted using a proper desktop …

Protecting your digital asset portfolio – there is a lot more to it than meets the eye. Most people, even those who are responsible for digital marketing, tend to assume that digital assets are your images, b-roll, and maybe a couple domains that you own. This is a mistake. What is even a bigger mistake …

No, my blog is not four years old. Our Google pagerank turned 4. If I come to think about it, all by itself it is pretty meaningless. However, if I put it in a context, say the digital agencies offering SEO, social media and the like it actually is on an equal footing with many …

Latest LinkedIn Statistics at a Glance LinkedIn Infographics Update I am creating a new LinkedIn Data Visualisation. Add your comments and ideas about what you would like to know, and I’ll dig it up for you. Thanks. LinkedIn Membership Highlights 100 million members from 200 countries 2,000,000,000 people searches in 2010 on LinkedIn Executives from …

I am reassessing what I consider to be important qualities in data analysts and something that has recently bubbled to the top of the list is measuring the right thing. And the right thing for the business. If you do not know the real impact of your activities and channels, you will make wrong decisions. …

Hiring. For skill or culture? A few years ago I would have said skill without any hesitation. Today, looking back at my own experiences, talking to my peers on four continents, seeing the choices my bosses are confronted with… I am tempted to say on skill, I am willing to compromise. But I’d insist on …

Just like in sports, results are your ultimate measure in marketing. And just like in sports there is no excuse for non delivery. And just like in sport shortcuts give shortlived results and the new ways on top of the old ones will make you stand out and outperform your competitors. And the new ways …

SEO is good at bringing in free traffic. If you know that people in your online shop buy loads and loads of organic mint jelly, do your keyword research for related terms and optimise your pages and pictures and tags for those. It is the slow and steady here. No spectacular results overnight, but persistent …