Carrying that torch forward comes Room Key, a search engine with a singular purpose: to search a location for available hotel rooms between dates. This is an entrance into an already crowded market dominated by websites like expedia, the differentiator here is the focus and presentation. Most competing services are more holistic, Room Key seeks to do one thing well. Its slick, simple and presents few options, the advantages of such a narrow, focused service.



Yet it is missing some pretty no-brainer features. There is no social media connectivity of any kind, no ability to review services (or pull in reviews from other sources) but most critically no price comparisons with competitors. At all. This hardly instills confidence in the user, when competing services have this feature front and center.

Of course, the real competitive advantage here is being founded by 6 giant hotel chains, meaning it has essentially unlimited resources. It can push itself through with lower commissions charged to hotels (potentially no commission to the hotel chains that own it) and create a price war. Still, If the launch into 2012 is middling, plan b can always kick in: pump millions into advertising and hope it catches on. And it will have to catch on, Room Key is a late bloomer in a well established market.

The payola system under which congress operates has been increasingly scrutinized, yet understanding how it works is the only way to understand how such madness could even be proposed, let alone receive bipartisan support. Fortunately doing so is as simple as as a glance below.

Its about the money, Lebowski!

The proposal is the greatest threat to the internet globally that as ever come this close to implementation. In response, the netcoalition is considering a complete shutdown in protest, an alliance built on net neutrality. Its members include AOL, eBay, Facebook, foursquare, Google, IAC, Linkedin, Mozilla, OpenDNS, PayPal, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yahoo! and the Zynga Game Network.

Counter-SOPA, Step One

The expected date is January 20th, four days before the senate vote, and would be one of the important events in internet history. Web communities have already taken to flipping representatives votes, targeting house republican Paul Ryan, in the appropriately titled “Operation Paul Ryan”. God speed.

Either way, it remains an interesting piece of functionality. Because its predictive capabilities are based on popularity, you gain almost disheartening insights into peoples searches. There’s a disturbing amount of Justin Bieber flying around yet the features failure of imagination is a rather amusing, if not cold reflection.

Seeing what the world is searching for is a novel game, but for the feature to last it needs a little more purpose. I suppose, if you only ever find yourself looking for what everyone else is looking for the feature is a time saver. For everyone else, its usefulness relies on typing a keyword with unique starting characters: as with Aurora Borealis, “aur” will take you straight there.

But as it will inevitably produce what you need before you finish typing all letters, the delay between page loads means the spontaneous results are enormously outpaced by ordinary typing. There’s no obvious way around this, after all, Google is simply processing each keystroke for you in advance of a manual search. The result is stopping and waiting to see if Google figured out you were looking for Phillip Larkin, and instead seeing pictures of pumpkins. This becomes far less efficient than simply shaping up and typing the man’s name properly.

A good thing too, as people finding “Microsoft” having only typed in “Mic” would make PPC a nightmare. Producing ad’s for specific keywords is a key business not only for us, but for Google also. So, even if instant on images becomes available to all users, it’s a safe bet its influence on SEM will be nada.

Negative reviews can actually increase sales. A negative review can help potential customers feel like they have done their homework and move them further toward making a purchase decision. Negative reviews can also add credibility to your positive reviews. And perhaps most important, negative reviews give businesses a chance to respond and show how in tune they really are with their customers needs.

When under attack from either a legitimate complaint or a crackpot customer, you can’t afford to ignore the negativity. So how do you plan to turn it around?

Never respond to reviews unless you can own the issue and think it through before you do. Don’t take it personally and react objectively. Your response should describe how future customers will not have the issue, and offer to fix the issue. Always write with your prospects in mind so that they feel they are really being listened to.

Don’t Ignore It, it Won’t Go Away. Staying quiet simply because you don’t think it’s serious enough to warrant a response is a sure fire way to fan the flames of discontent. The best way to contain a mess is to handle it at its source. If problem is growing, get in the conversation quickly and do what is needed to calm it down. Often just a few words and genuine concern from you to set things right will be enough to soothe the hype, get the conversation back on track and turn an angry customer into a vocal supporter. People love being listened to and their concerns addressed.

Remember that old fashioned customer service is even more alive and well in the digital age.

You may even be able to take the properly solved issue and turn it into marketing gold. Ask the now happy customer to write a positive letter of thanks and then market that to demonstrate to others just how great you really are.

Being on the front foot is also smart and if you identify a problem even before you have received any complaints then get out there and provide the answers before the questionsstart to inevitably roll in.

But what feeds them?

Relevant Blog content tuned directly to a businesses core objectives and specifically generated to audience needs is critical to generating interaction. While they are more meat and potato’s than slick and sexy, Blogs are the food that feeds discussion, and participation in the broader social media space. In business, Blogs are a direct feed to your companies website and a premium content marketing platform that organically and continuously drives and supports your overall marketing strategy. Intuitive social media participation then kicks in and and if the overall quality and relevance is high exponential growth follows.

Atomic Search recommend a ten point checklist to click your social media blogging up a gear:

1. Don’t be Blog boring! Bring your brand to life with a distinct, unique and relevant voice that aligns with your your brand values. Make it interesting, exciting and ‘must read’ and write in a conversational tone that makes your brand feel ‘human’.

2. Make it matter! Don’t waste peoples time with what you are interested in, make sure the people you want to read your blog are interested too. You can still deliver the necessary corporate goals of increasing brand awareness, attracting new customers, and increasing sales, but ensure you thoughtfully and insightfully provide product-related content, answer customer questions and attract new prospects with rich and rewarding Blog content.

3. Be the master of your universe! Stay on top of and in control of your content. Keep it moving. Make it work for you but don’t be so controlling that your blog loses objectivity. Manage out overly malicious interaction but replace it with perspective that manages and reports on issues in a more balanced and favourable light.

4. Stay on the pulse! In this 24/7 world offer an always-on 24/7 message platform. In today’s world, blogs provide a conduit for distributing brand-favorable messaging and content that’s relevant and timely. Maintain your Blog daily and respond to posts quickly and effectively.

5. You’re in the drivers seat! Control the context in which your social media message is distributed. Blogs are a branded social media environment where your firm controls the message. As such, it allows you to get in front of the social media chatter with relevant information.

6. Make it interesting! Distribute a variety of media formats. Blogs can handle branded content in the form of text, photographs, videos, audio, presentations (aka PowerPoint), and PDFs.

7. Engage and grow! Power social media interactions and engagement. Blog content provides currency for social media engagement on other social media platforms. Incorporate social sharing options for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ to maximize your reach. This helps create earned media impressions. Include icons and tailored calls-to-action.

8. Pull Rank! Enhance Search Optimisation by using keyword-rich content, searchfriendly architecture as well as linking to other content within your blog and website and inbound links from other blogs and websites, blogs support your Search Optimisation efforts, so always deliver content with that in mind.

9. Get out there! Distribute content. Through email and RSS feeds, blogs distribute your branded information to a valuable opt-in audience. Additionally, blogs allow you to connect other marketing components across various platforms by providing a targeted location to direct prospects and customers with a URL.

10. Stay on track! Have metrics that track back to business goals. Blogs provide a variety of ways to support marketing strategies. It’s important to determine which ones you’ll use and install the appropriate analytics package to insure that you’re not counting comments.

The bottom line is that blogs are a content marketing platform that support your social media efforts across a variety of business objectives. By building your blog with regular posts providing useful and/or entertaining information, you will create an outpost that can be leveraged to expand your reach or quickly respond to evolving issues.

On friday afternoon, the anticipation grew in the office. The excitement was evident in everyone’s faces. Shoes were polished, trousers were ironed pristinely and hair do’s were perfected – especially our very own Rory’s! He’s a pretty slick dude! The vibrant smell of aftershaves and perfumes now replaced oxygen in the air. James cracked open a bottle of champagne with a face that read – “I’m as proud as punch“. TO ATOMIC we all cheered. This was a big deal, we were off to the annual B & T Awards.

Our category nomination was for The Digital Services Company of the Year. No mean feat by any stretch of the imagination being up against such talented organisations like Adconion Media Group, BlueArc, Switched on Media and The Video Network. Unfortunately we didn’t win the award but our congratulations goes to The Video Network who scooped the prize. Well done. We were, award ceremony virgins before Friday, therefore we would like to think this is just the beginning of something very special that looms in the near future for Atomic. We will continue to engage with our clients, innovate and most importantly provide the same, if not better awesome service experience that we pride ourselves on.

Sorry, went off on a bit of a tangent there!! The night itself was superb, from the simplest minute details such as tablecloths, glasses and cutlery to the more functional (and way more important!) party items such as the cold beers,  fine wines and delightful food. It was exceptionally run so a big congrats goes to all the organisers at B & T.

Some of the big winners on the night were Play Communications, winning 3 awards – Employer of the Year, Experiential Agency of the Year and Specialist Agency of the Year.

Adshel won the Media Sales Team gong. The Best Advertising Campaign went to The Monkeys working for The Sydney Opera House – “The Ship Song Project”. This was an excellent campaign with nearly 200,000 views on FB. Check it out, its worth a view:

The Ship Song Project

Personally, my favourite award winners of the night came from The Best PR Campaign. The proud winners were ”Naked Communications” working for the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) on a project called “SpeedKills”. Speed was the name of the chosen town in Victoria’s countryside and it would soon be renamed to SpeedKills provided they received 10,000 likes on FB. This occurred a lot quicker than anyone anticipated and the campaign grew exponentially with added “likes” daily. The minuscule town with a total population of 45, yes, you read it correctly, 45,  also got heavily involved and soon it hit the headlines globally – this being the ultimate zenith and thrill for any PR campaign. See some news articles below.

1. News.com.au
2. DailyMail
3. ABC

As of today (5/12) the FB page has 34,239 likes. Why dont you go on and “like” it?

The big award of the night – B & T Agency of the Year went to MediaCom. One judge pointed special praise to CEO Toby Jenner - ”It was the Titanic and Jenner has refloated it, steered it round and got it steaming.”

The night ended with more beers, music and some exquisite dance moves from Jeremy . It was clear, we all had enjoyed ourselves. Although we were slightly disappointed not to have won an award, and had acutely sore heads the next morning, the hunt goes on, we learned some invaluable insights and took away great experiences away from the night.

Hopefully we will see you again next year B&Ts. Thanks for having us!

A month earlier, 25 year old Trevor Eckhart posted a youtube video exploring the workings of IQagent, software built into 140 million cell phones in the United States. Despite a six year presence in the telecommunications industry, this was apparently the first time a living soul had asked what this company was actually doing. The results were explosive, showing a rootkit (meaning, buried into the very code of an operating system and hence unknown) monitoring all keystrokes and text messages, presumably being able to transmit and store that data as well.

What started it all

When the video finally went viral, CarrierIQ probably had one real chance to pull the mother of all damage control out of the PR playbook, but instead chose to respond with a cease and desist, claiming training documents readily available on their website had been “stolen” by Eckhart. Finally submitting to interview, the unfortunately named marketing manager Mr. Coward was asked whether CarrierIQ could actually read the text messages it was monitoring. His response? “Probably yes“.

The sequence of events that followed are almost too tightly jammed together to really timeline, needless to say it involved more disastrous interviews and statements, every remotely related company in the world becoming a CarrierIQ denier, Al Franken opening an investigation and the growing idea that the company was actually a CIA proxy.

If every story needs a moral, the moral here is that every company needs access to public relations. The sheer speed of transmission means opening responses are simply critical: because that’s what sticks. Every carrier in the world will now be asked if they are installing logging software onto their phones, and the answer will uniformly be yes. To quote Lionel Hutz however, there’s the truth, and then there’s the “truth”.

No SEM company can operate without analytics, and our industry isn’t without issues of its own. I’m only a few strokes away from some pretty Orwellian data, visualizing exactly which users are clicking which button on a website, for one. Yet the lessons are clear; encrypt the data, keep it bulk anonymous and stay the hell away from logging keystrokes, no matter how benign or unused the function really is.

Either way, it remains an interesting piece of functionality. Because its predictive capabilities are based on popularity, you gain almost disheartening insights into peoples searches. There’s a disturbing amount of Justin Bieber flying around (actually I was looking for Justin II, Google) yet the features failure of imagination is a rather amusing, if not cold reflection.

Seeing what the world is searching for is a novel game, but for the feature to last it needs a little more purpose. I suppose, if you only ever find yourself looking for what everyone else is looking for (Selena Gomez in lingerie, for example) the feature is a time saver. For everyone else, its usefulness relies on typing a keyword with unique starting characters: as with Aurora Borealis, “aur” will take you straight there.

This is indeed a disturbing universe.

But as it will inevitably produce what you need before you finish typing all letters, the delay between page loads means the spontaneous results are enormously outpaced by ordinary typing. There’s no obvious way around this, after all, Google is simply processing each keystroke for you in advance of a manual search. The result is stopping and waiting to see if Google figured out you were looking for Phillip Larkin, and instead seeing pictures of pumpkins. This becomes far less efficient than simply shaping up and typing the man’s name properly.

A good thing too, as people finding “Microsoft” having only typed in “Mic” would make PPC a nightmare. Producing ad’s for specific keywords is a key business not only for us, but for Google also. So, even if instant on images becomes available to all users, it’s a safe bet its influence on SEM will be nada.

Over the course of the past few weeks Google announced numerous changes that impact over 33 percent of the search results; more recently Google disclosed 10 algorithm changes out of 500 that took place in the past year. Below are the ten modifications, what you need to know, and how to either benefit from or improve search rankings by adapting to the new rules.

1.) Header tags and their content continue to play less of a role. Google is less likely to utilize the descriptions and title tags provided on a webpage and more likely to determine appropriate snippets. To benefit from this continually ensure that pages utilize consistent themes. Thus when Google selects the snippets it is more likely to help click through rates when listings do appear in the search results.

2.) Boilerplate links will play less of a factor on a pages title. Google understands that many companies are attempting to ‘game’ the algorithm by obtaining multiple links all with the same anchor text. Start to use increased variance in the anchor text of external references. Google specifically mentions this will assist in generating relevant page titles, but it will also improve search rankings.

3.) Refinement of techniques to determine official pages. The key takeaway here is to gather external references from authoritative websites to ensure that Google view’s your website as one with a higher trust ranking. This will result in better search results for end users by eliminating many of the smaller websites. Maintain or develop your website as a leader in the industry and see increased rankings as a result.

4 & 5.) Fresher information carries more weight. This further emphasizes a previous announcement from Google. Reap rewards from this change by offering time dated sales and posting unique relevant content on a more frequent basis. Along these lines Google made modifications to date restricted queries, thus it is always smart to place a date on any new content created.

6. Retiring a signal in Image Search. The key takeaway is that external references to images themselves will no longer play much of a factor. Focus efforts on linking to pages and not images, even if the goal is for an image to appear at the top of the image search results. Change links that point to images from external websites to ones that point to pages.

7.) Extension of application rich snippets. This applies primarily to companies in the software industry, where it is now imperative to make Google aware of prices and increase the focus on positive user reviews.

8.) Google will now provide automatically translated English results to Norwegian and other languages where content is limited. Proofreading pages to ensure proper use of the English language is crucial since less formal usage will likely result in improper automatic translations.

9 & 10.) Better predictive capabilities for auto complete in certain languages. There are no suggested changes; continue focusing on relevant keywords.

The post was guest written by Brent Yorzinski.

Following on from getting shortlisted for the B&T Best Service Agency 2011, AtomicSearch has scored a place among Anthill’s Top 50 in its 2011 Annual Cool Company Awards, a national program developed in 2006 to recognise Australian companies that are doing things differently to bring about positive change.

Over 700 aspiring ‘cool companies’ were nominated for the 2011 awards, making ‘The Cools’ one of Australia’s largest business awards programs. The winners will be announced at an award’s function on Thursday 24 November 2011 and published on AnthillOnline.com.

“The Cool Company Awards are extremely egalitarian,” said James Tuckerman, Editor-In-Chief, Anthill Magazine. “Previous winners have included two-person start-ups, not-for-profit social enterprises, large private companies and publicly-listed corporations.”

“Judging takes into account far more than mere business variables, such as revenue and wealth. The criteria is geared to consider other qualities, from the disruptive nature of the product or service to the culture of the organisation.”

“Applicants either nominated themselves or were nominated by peers, work colleagues, family, friends and other ‘admirers’. A field of hundreds was examined (and cross-examined) before our judges were able to isolate three Finalists for each of our seven categories.”

The Cool Company Awards was launched in 2006 as a way for Anthill Magazine to publicly acknowledge and celebrate Australian organisations that are doing things differently to bring about positive change. In its sixth year, the awards attracted nominations from over 700 organisations, making it among the largest business award programs in Australia