If Google were a cake, would it look like this?

(photo's courtesy of ladyironchef.com and herecomesthefood.com.au).

Yesterday I visited the Adriano Zumbo patisserie in Balmain (made famous by MasterChef) and found this delicious looking Google-named cake. For those interested (and who wouldn't be), it is a passionfruit and banana cream tart.

For those working in online marketing, see if you can expense it like I did (kidding!).

Remember this (excellent) post I did about offline marketing inspiring online? It showcased some really creative ideas for advertising outside, and I commented how this could be used as 'buzz' or PR online to direct people to your site.

Today there was a post on Searchengineland along a similar vein, it was about outdoor advertising which can be integrated into Google maps (online).

The one I found the most intriguing was where Google Maps could replace the content on billboards (for example in Times Square), with new ' virtual ads'  in its streetview. Apparently, Google has already been granted a patent to do this (although the link in that story doesn't go the relevant patent).

Other ideas for getting advertising in Google Maps was to use land advertising (e.g. huge sand impressions), sky writing, rooftop advertising or even sponsoring a town to rename their town to your brand name! (crazy).

I have one to add to their story though - how about your fleet vehicles? If you knew where Google car was going to be, wouldn't you place your fleet vehicles there? E.g. like how I Google Street Viewed Covent Garden, and I got this:


This kind of Google Maps advertising wouldn't be suitable for all Google advertisers obviously. It would be suitable for those advertisers who want more branding opportunities - and due to the fact that maybe your customers aren't necessarily using Google Street View - I think you would have to do it hand in hand with some quirky PR campaigns.

Etsy is an online portal helping sellers world-wide sell their handmade or antique goods on the internet. I love it because it is full of original handicrafts, and is also a really fantastically maintained site with easy usability.

Etsy is a great example of ecommerce and social media. Apart from their own website and blog, they also appear in social media (e.g. Twitter and Facebook), and actually make good use of those mediums by highlighting specials or featured items.

Their blog had a fantastic post the other day, cautioning their users on 'social media etiquette'. Basically, the Etsy blogs often feature sellers stories, the comment sections of which are often becoming full of 'I also sell' links.

These comments are also finding themselves on the wider web, on blogs mentioning Etsy, and it is making the Etsy founders uncomfortable because it doesn't fit in with their vision of their 'community'.

The whole concept is very interesting - trying to prescribe marketing behaviour in a community filled with users who want to market their products.

The post is called How Not To Spam While Being Active Online, and is a great article for any online community. They had a great simile for people who randomly comment on blog posts trying to sell their own goods...

You're at a gallery opening, discussing the paintings with the artists and other attendees. Someone bursts into the room shouting, "I MAKE PAINTINGS TOO!" and tosses a fistful of flyers on the floor and leaves.

It is obvious to any PR, marketing or sales person that that is not the way to sell your paintings. Instead, you might want to mingle, admire the art on display, get the names of interested people, and drop very subtle comments or distribute your card to a few key people. Doing this online, on a blog post or forum for example, requires you to read the actual posts, other peoples comments, and leave something insightful yourself. Becoming a useful member of the community first, and selling much later, will ensure that you are welcomed back to that blog again and again, and avoids alienating potential customers.

This 'netiquette' (i dislike that word) is a problem for the wider web, and I assume as people start to delete or ignore spam, those sites who have 'nicer' communities may become more popular than those who don't.

is addictive.

For a long time I assumed it was one of the online marketing myths, but I have found that actually people DO spend a lot of time on Yahoo Answers, and in fact it is just as valid as any other social media site.

Yahoo Answers is a place where people can post questions on almost any topic and have strangers answer it for them. These questions and answers are stored on Yahoo for a long time, and can be searched to find information. It was established in 2005 and has since

The sections cover everything from health, family and relationships to maths and science. It has been criticised for not being very 'accurate' and more about 'social networking', but that is what makes it such a fun site in which everyone can contribute, and surely what makes it so addictive.

So how can you use it in your own marketing? Lets go back to my favourite fictional store, the online shoe store. Say this was your store and you were an expert on all things shoes. Then you could register on Yahoo Answers and look for questions related to shoes or fashion.

If someone is looking for your product, or asking a question about yours or a related product, then you can answer them, maybe use your store as a resource, and thereby extend your brand name to a potentially interested buyer.

Any links you include in your answers won't be made into clickable URLs until you are a level 2 contributor - which takes a bit of dedication.

Make sure everything you write on Yahoo Answers is truthful and accurate as possible, and don't go the hard sell (remember, this isn't the way to use social media). Yahoo Answers is a community, and you don't want to be banned or ignored for being an annoying contributor.

Apart from introducing you to new, relevant customers, Yahoo Answers is just fun and interesting as of itself. An ability to help people out and feel like a smarty-pants makes for a good website.

According to Compete Site Analytics, Yahoo Answers received 65 million visits in the US in 2009,  but it is actually used all over the world.

One report I love for making improvements to any Adwords campaign is the 'Search Query Performance' report. This is very different to the 'Keyword Performance Report'.

The Search Query Performance report show you exactly what terms people searched for when they came to your site, whereas the Keyword Performance report shows you what keyword in your adwords account  the click was attributed to. In Google Analytics, you will see keyword performance results, not search query performance.

For example, in your Adwords account, you might have the keyword "leather shoes", which is a phrase match keyword.

If someone typed in 'white leather shoes' and then clicked on your ad, the search query performance report would record one visit against ' white leather shoes', whereas the keyword report (and Google Analytics) would record one visit against "leather shoes".

So what can you do with the search query performance report? Here are just a few things you can do after analysing the kind of search queries people are using to arrive on your site;

1. If people are arriving using search queries irrelevant to your site  - for example if you sell shoes and people are arriving on terms like 'shoe polish', then add the negative term 'polish'. The search query report can help you find negative keywords you might never have considered.

2. If lots of people are using similar terms, you might want a dedicated ad group and dedicated copy for those. E.g. if a lot of people are arriving from terms related to 'tennis shoes', (and assuming you sell tennis shoes), then you might want dedicated ad copy and an ad group for tennis shoes.

3. Similarly, make sure that what people are looking for is related to the landing page you are sending them to. If not, make a new ad group for those terms and have a dedicated landing page.

4. If there are a lot of uses of 'synonyms', then you might want to add them as their own keyword in your account, which will make them more relevant and might reduce your cost per click.