• Who is Charles?

    I have been an Internet reviewer, reviewing websites since June 2007.

    Social media has been a phenomenon since 2007. It brings in the true two-way communication between the websites and their visitors. That's what Web 2.0 is all about. I aim to review what the world has become, and to give you my opinions and choices.
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  • Want to be reviewed?

    Over at my blog, I review you at no cost. But I will not be obliged to write reviews about your website, nor will I be obliged to write reviews positively. It is purely from my own point of view. There will have no deadline for me to finish any reviews if I am going to take up.

    Please prepare your product ready for me before contacting me. Thanks. :)
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Featured Post

Twitter Updates for 2009-07-02

By Charles On July 2, 2009No Comments






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Recent Posts

Winning The Web

By Charles On July 2, 2009 No Comments

This article is affiliated with Winners’ Circle, while Charles has purchased at $27 to be a member of this circle too.

Recently, I have reviewed a free ebook at Carl Ocab’s blog known as “The Ultimate Checklist of 500+ Proven Internet Marketing Strategies“.  After reading that book myself, I am totally convinced of the knowledge and experience that Gyutae Park has with him.  He has spent 9 years creating websites for himself and working for big companies such as Nokia, The Northern Trust Company, and the Bradford Group.  And he has done quite a lot of consulting job with several people for the website.

Today, he has already launched a new subscription website called The Winners’ Circle.  I have subscribed to his membership myself, and I got myself at the discounted rate of $27 per month for early birds.  After which, he will be keeping it at $47 per month.

I would think that spending $27 to find out more about how the experts think, and how the anaylsis works is really worth it.  Moreover, we get to have a free bonus of finding a niche for ourselves, plus access to his community to communicate with like-minded people.  The return-on-investment can be potentially high, but that’s only if you know how to monetize opportunity.

I don’t think I will re-write any of his sales pitch on my blog.  Just go to his website and find out about his offers yourself.

If you are really serious to make it big online, then it’s time you check out the Winners Circle.






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Why Offline Marketing Is So Different From Online Marketing?

By Charles On July 1, 2009 1 Comment

Having a marketing mind is indeed very important.  But it’s a totally new ball game over here.  Online speaks about just-in-time.  It means that your marketing materials must come in just-in-time for that particular event to come along.  It’s usually last minute, and if you manage to create this campaign over a month or so, you must be really blessed.

Accuracy of wordings (i.e. marketing communications)

The offline world speaks about accuracy in every word.  We are not talking that the online world write the wrong words.  It’s just that a little bit of spelling mistake is almost unavoidable.  And it’s usually very much more obvious.

No matter what website it is, I may sometimes find some human errors in terms of the wordings.  It’s not on purpose for sure, but it’s just how the information needs to go so fast that the number of times to vet through is almost zero.

Accuracy of information

Sometimes, just-in-time information may be erroneous.  Even newspapers and magazines do make mistakes too.  It’s just that we can’t possibly verify every single detail that we write on the web.  Or else, that will not be juicy news.  Allowing the relevant parties to vet through is as good as asking that person to modify it to their advantage.

Hence, the online bloggers (i.e. the fake journalists) will usually publish their thoughts, experience, and account of what actually happened.  It may be right or wrong.  But at the end of the day, we usually need more than 1 web sources to verify the information.  For example, can somebody tell me if Megan Fox is a guy or girl?

More eyeball impressions versus targeted visitors

Because it is very hard to determine who will be attracted by your offline marketing campaigns, it is better to look from the point of eyeball impressions.

In the online world, there are simply too much impressions to take care of.  Hence, we talk about targeted traffic – people who actually bother to find out more about us on the web.  And because the server is able to handle much more requests, it is able to filter out the unwanted visitors, and the actual salesperson will take over the role of converting the visitors who are already being pre-sold!

Offline Marketing Are Wasting Lots Of Papers!

Lastly, I know it may be out of point but I wish to say this… The offline marketing people are usually wasting more papers (i.e. very environmental unfriendly).  I know that their marketing information are already in the form of printed papers, they still need to vet through on draft papers again…

Yes, the online people may print on papers sometimes to vet through the information.  I would think most of the people are not printing papers to vet through.  That’s because we should vet through from the computer because that’s where our customers are watching!






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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-30

By Charles On June 30, 2009 No Comments






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Michael Jackson flooded the Internet!

By Charles On June 28, 2009 No Comments

I can still remember watching Michael Jackson’s music  videos when I was still very young.

This video is so nostalgic…

The news about Michael Jackson have hit the Internet so hard as the world is updating the Internet about Michael Jackson all over the place.  People are updating about Michael Jackson, while others are busy reading about them.  Twitter, Wikipedia and blogs are talking about him all over the Internet!






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Can We Still Buy Sponsored Links On Other Websites?

By Charles On June 27, 2009 No Comments

While the offline world is filled with lots of sponsorship and  people seem to be embracing them, the online world seems to have difficulty playing the same sponsorship  game as Google does not acknowledge sponsored links.  We have to respect Google in their direction because they have helped to mould the rules of how Internet games should be played.

Some websites ignored Google

We can see some websites ignoring Google as they don’t think that’s the only way to do an online business.  They get their traffic from social media and other websites.  They also work with sponsorship programs with other websites.  They are creating a world which the traditional media has been doing all along.  That is to work in partnership with larger media and to create a “loud noise” to the unknown untargeted world out there.

Some websites obeyed Google

Some websites want to work with Google as their partnership as they will be able to create a constant flow of targeted traffic, looking  for that particular keywords.   In the long run, Google is still the preferred choice because we will want to explore many other websites which I still can’t find any better websites which can do that currently.

Some websites tried to trick Google

Some websites just want to make a balance between getting Google’s incoming traffic, while working on their usual sponsorship program.  They may or may not know how to obey Google rules.  But they just work on their websites like a traditional media. i.e. They just work on the contents, and ask for sponsorship by advertising on certain high-traffic  webpages.

Some websites tried to balance sponsorship with Google

These websites know the Google game, making sure that every sponsorship program will adopt “nofollow” attribute in it.  It can be quite a blindspot when we should adopt “nofollow” or not.  But looking from the Wikipedia’s point of  view where they get a lot of targeted traffic from  Google, Wikipedia simply adopt “nofollow” on every link.  It’s easier this way anyway!

Conclusion

Can we still buy sponsored links?  Looking from TechCrunch, Problogger and Mashable, they must be enjoying a lot of traffic from Google while working on their sponsored links.  One idea is to actually use redirect links or “nofollow”.  What do you think?






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Videos of Transformers

By Charles On June 27, 2009 No Comments

It’s a Saturday! Let’s talk something different here.  Last night, I have just watched Transformers 2 movie.  Wanna do some collection of memories here. :)

Cars shown in Transformers 2

Transform Bumblebee!

Corvette Sting Ray Concept “aka” Sideswipe the Autobot reveiled

Video Review of Transformers Revenge of the Fallen movie toy; “Sideswipe”

Transformers 2: CGI Megan Fox Even Hotter This Time

What would a good movie be without a sequel? Shortly after the release of Transformers, director and producer Michael Bay tries to talk the Transformers into doing a sequel.






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Thinking of creative ways to get linkbacks to your website

By Charles On June 25, 2009 No Comments

Thanks KC for sharing with me this video. Everybody wants websites to link to them.  It’s a great way to bring in the traffic especially when the websites are very targeted.  The usual ways are to buy sponsored links (which Google don’t really like as providing “link juice”).  But to think of creative ways to attract links to you is considered as a “whitehat linkbait” by Matt Cutts.

Watch this video from Matt Cutts explaining one example of creating a linkbait from twitter.

When I saw this video, something just starts to bother me.  To get someone to link you, you have to do it in a creative way so that people will link you without asking for it.  That must be the clue given by Matt Cutts as a whitehat linkbait.

Do you have creative ways to generate whitehat linkbaits?

We may not have creative minds to help us to think of ways to get linkbacks.  But what can we really do?  I think that the very basic thing that we must do on our website is to create the contents that people will want to see.  It may not be the best contents out there, but it must be genuinely helpful.  This will attract Google to give you more traffic, and that is through the number of links to you from external websites.  If you are genuinely good, you will tend to attract a lot of people who are interested in you and will keep on looking out for more.  It may eventually create linkbacks.  Anyway, with the social media around, all of us may not need to have a website to link you anymore! We just need our Twitter, Facebook, or even just a blogger account!

So you have creative mind!

Ok that is a good thing.  But again, this is kinda subjective to blackhat and whitehat when you have the creativity to create linkbaits.  And also, I would think that the contents should hold some “water” when we actually read it.  It really displeases me when I see contents which are really bad on Twitter…

Seriously speaking, I have already given up thinking so much about creative linkbaits… Just focus my part and create my own branding online is more important than anything else.






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Big Corporates Should Start Employing Social Media Managers

By Charles On June 23, 2009 No Comments

Social Media is here to stay.  We have a lot of people now in the social media.  In my opinion, the big players such as Facebook and Twitter have created what social media is today.  But to get a big corporation to participate in social media, it is about building a new team or even a whole new department to focus on it.

It is undeniable today that we need PR department to provide useful press releases to the journalists.  It is also true that we need Marcom to guide the company in its brand communication to the public.  It is also undeniable that we need an e-marketing team to take care of the daily web activities as well as email activities.

What is really new is the social media team.  We need a new team here.  This team is very important to the company because they will start to listen out to the community what they have to say about the company’s brand.

Social media team has a few roles to work on:

  1. They need to listen to the latest information related to their brand. This can be done by subscribing to Google News,  and keeping in touch with Twitter noises.
  2. They need to build a community to talk to.  This will help in creating a powerful list for them to work on when they have interesting things for the community.  This can be in the form of Facebook groups, Twitter and Friendfeed
  3. They need to build an email list to talk to.  As the traditional way of Internet still applies, people are still using emails to check for any incoming messages.  This will be very direct and easy for the subscribers to keep in touch.
  4. They need to build a blog.   Blogging makes the company more personal to the public.  It helps to get the visitors engaged

It is actually sooner or later that this team will be formed.  Like I said previously, it is not a good choice to use agency to work on your social media campaigns.  Moreover, social media campaigns  are mainly not used for short terms.






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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-23

By Charles On June 23, 2009 No Comments






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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-16

By Charles On June 16, 2009 No Comments






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