Lefty G Balogh

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 not to use scare tactics I just love the honest naivity of the person who wrote the threatening message below. It really shows their desperation, and that this really was premeditated. They wanted to conceal their identities while also make an impact. The way it was carried out, however, turned it into a hilarious …

How to choose freelancers for social media and SEO tasks So how do you pick the right freelancer for SEO and Social Media #1 Trial and Error #2 No freelancer is good for everything #3 Maintain a healthy level of competition #4 Squeeze but do not squeeze too hard #5 accept nothing but good quality …

Eating Spammers for Breakfast No freudian slip, no mistake, that’s what all social community managers should do. Out of selfish, financial reasons, getting rid of spammers is the best way to protect your community. The cost of spamming in Social Community Management It is expensive. Very Expensive. Yes, it is quantifiable. Yes, it is measurable. …

Create Your Next Presentations in Flash to Impress Your Audience Creating a presentation in flash required a professional flash developer and took a very long time. Every little element was custom made. Not any more. You can create a professional flash presentation yourself in a few minutes without knowing how to write flash code. Social, …

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 …

Was it really that hot? I was just fidgeting on Baidu when up pops an Alexa what’s hot entry: my little letter to the big brand. Thanks Alexa. It would be rather interesting to know how it got there – what exactly is the trigger or the threshold for all the Alexabar indicators that my …

Taking stock of how many members and Likes there are in each group ELTE: 563 members – 18 Like-s BME: 1553 members – 5 Like-s Corvinus: 1333 members – 7 Like-s ELTE is a bit of an odd one out, because I had already started with a discussion in the group, telling people that we …

I can buy your hand but I cannot buy your heart. I can buy your analysis but I cannot buy your dedication. I can buy your time but I cannot buy your aspiration. I know that. You know that. But what you also need to know is that I do not need mere executives. I …

Any decent smartphone will do. But. Two importamt factors will impact you ability to blog from your phone. Camera. Yes. It matters. A lot. And size. Yes. It matters. A lot. Not all phone cameras were created equal. Do some research and do not settle for anything but where the reviews say that the cam …

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. …

  London WAW on 30 November 2011 A hundred and twentyfour people have signed up already… You can tell it’s e-metrics… And you can also tell it’s hotshots like Jim Sterne on Anyway, I’ll be reporting from the event via Twitter using the usual #wawlon hashtag. And will follow up with a lil more detail …

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 …

Dazzle Your Audience – Make Your Presentations in Flash Making a presentation in flash used to be long and tedious, and would require a professional flash coder. Good news is: not any more. You can make your flash presentation yourself in no time without any technical knowledge. Better news: it is free. Prezi offers a …

The best bit is where it begins to scale Analytics is often seen as a “yeah we should have it but all our resources are tied down with product development at the moment” kind of issue. So it is all too often that data-based decisions are eternally relegated to the bottom of the priority list. …

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 …

I probably said this before but I am running 3 active blogs now. This one for my professional me. One for my son and another one for food and cooking. And one of my biggest challenges has been tagging and categories. So Iooked at a few plugins to help me tag 1000 posts (yes, a …

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 …

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 …

Every door serves a single purpose. To grant or block passage into a house. Hence it needs three UI elements. Lock for the residents for authorized entry. A bell for notification that someone wants to come in. And a letterhole so the low priority borderline case mail may enter with certain limitations. A door with …

Blogging is about sharing. Sharing should be personal and timely. It makes no sense to post a video about your birthday 2 months late. Nor does it make sense to write a press release about your children starting school. This also applies to corporate blogs. A different tone acting, reacting and interacting with your colleagues, …

How to make a professional presentation video It is easy to make a presentation video using the Prezi online platform. It is free and easy to use, and you can choose from several ready-made presentation video templates. Prezi is not the traditional sequential presentation. It invites and encourages interaction, so your video presentation will be …

There is something heavy in uncovering bad news, low performance or a faulty process. You almost wish you hadn’t. It would be so nice if it just went away. In a puff of smoke it would be gone.  But the best thing is that now that you know, you have the opportunity to fix it. …

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 …

Cookie or no cookie. Unless you literally live under a rock, completely self sufficient, you have a digital trail. I remember ten years ago when the term survaillance society first became the descriltive term for a dystopia in the future. We live that future today. I am not gonna talk about ouw electronic transactions or …

A few odd things in online community management Unless you are using one of the big platforms, you are likely to run into rogue users, forum users, group or online community members, who will ignore, twist or reinterpret your rules, or will make you realise you need to add another one to the list. So …

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 …

You saw this Facebook fanpage that has thousands of fans in your industry. So you looked into the issue a little and figured that Social Media marketing is what you need if it is as easy as it looks. Off you go to the first web-marketing agency and place an order for a well rounded …

I guess most business owners think that once they have the logo, the business card and the colours, this whole branding stuff is done. And don’t get me wrong, I know mine isn’t the best either. The point I am making is nevertheless valid. Consistency across the different channels is the most difficult to achieve …

I don’t represent Adobe or Omniture in the social media space anymore, but I used to do exactly that. I’ve been following your blog posts for several weeks now, and figured I would give you my two cents since the series of posts trashing my former brand has reached considerable length. First, obviously, I hope …

How to make a stunning presentation online Making a presentation online is easier than you’d think. You don’t need to buy an expensive software, or pay for a pricy service. Prezi is your way to make a presentation online that will impress even the most tech-savvy audience. It is free, and you can both download …

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 …

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 …

Genuine question: post a comment here – where does the growth of you business come from? Are you signing bigger deals with the same people? More deals with the same lot? More deals with new customers? Or let’s take a step back: have you got a growth strategy? What is going to deliver it? More …

What’s a good digital marketer like? Tech savvy. OK. Sociable. Fine. Learned in the SEO and the social media toolset. Friendly and respectful. Driven and independent. Quick learner. All good, mate. All good. So how do you measure all these? Give me the KPIs we can quantify that will unambiguously mean that I have a …

Every day for a start. Make it a habit. Why? Because we are entering an age where digital skills are more important than handwriting. An age where books are no longer printed o  paper. And communication is more often electronic than not. This is the official line. But you should because it is fun. It …

For a fair few weeks now I have been talking to a desing agency about some serious branding we’ll require and we just got to a stage where he’s gonna send me a proposal. It is a good reminder how difficult it is to specify abstract concepts such as brand so they can actually be …

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. …

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 …

Discussion is at the heart of building online communities One of my favourite set of group rules is from the India Leadership Network on Linkedin below. The most important message is right at the start: “Discussions that can be cultivated”. Many people tend to use discussion board either as their own advertising billboards or as …

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, …

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 …

Yep. The ones that can only be opened from inside. Yep. The ones that keep your organization’s status quo. Yep. The ones that protect existing circles of interest. Yep. The ones that keep today’s winner where they are. Yep.  The ones that keep all those people busy. Yep. The very ones that safeguard you today …