Internet Psychology from Graham Jones

Welcome to another weekly digest of material from my website grahamjones.co.uk. Enjoy.

Google is forcing you to update your website more frequently

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Being number one on a Google search results page is a muchwanted position for most businesses. Indeed, it has spawned a whole new industry search engine optimization and has led to hundreds of books on the topic, training courses, webinars and a seemingly endless array of blogs on the subject. Experts explain that the statistics show that unless you are in the top 3# you may as well not bother because few people venture further down the page of results and almost no-one goes on to the second page. But that is all about to change. For a while, Google has inserted publication dates into the beginning of a search listing. Now, the company has announced that it has improved this system, meaning that the dates will be more accurate and that we will see more of them. This is going to have a profound effect on the way people engage with a search results page no longer will the number one slot necessarily be seen as the best shot. Consider a recent search for blogging advice. The first result on the page had no date associated with it. The second result is undated too, as is the third. But the fourth result shows 23 Mar 2011, while the fifth result is dated 11 Aug 2009. Now, if you want blogging advice what would you prefer? Advice from a web page which is relatively recent? Advice from a web page that is over two years old? Or advice from pages which could be from so far back Google cant even find their date? The chances are for this search results page, the Number Four entry the most recent is the one that is going to get the biggest share of traffic. The reason is simple human beings want the most up-to-date information. Anything seen as old, or out-of-date, is considered as less trustworthy than the most recent information on the same subject. Our early history has programmed our brains to believe that newest is best. Our ancestors quickly learned that old food went bad and poisoned us. Only the new, fresh, stuff was lifegiving. So our brains focus on new as being a positive attribute. Not only is Googles publication date system going to make us be more selective when we search, it also means a dramatic change for website owners. In order to become more visible than your competitors it means you need to be more up-to-date. Essentially, Googles little tweak to its search results actually means that website owners need to update their pages much more often than ever before, simply to stay ahead of the competition. Whatever your website is about, being Number One on Google may not
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matter as much nowadays as being able to show that your website is the newest on the subject.
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to retract their negative views, but the weight of numbers the data. This is just an example of data available to us which prior to the internet we could not collect or at least not easily. Prior to the internet, people could express all sorts of viewpoints now they can see how offensive they have been. The extent of the information which we can collect is now massive. So much so it has been given its own name Big Data. You can get information about the precise activities of your customers, your targets and prospects as well as all sorts of data on your competitors which was previously hidden to you, prior to the web. Only recently a friend of mine attended a seminar where one of the speakers was from Amazon whose presentation focused on the fact that successful internet marketing requires attention to detail of the data. Firms like Amazon know what you searched for, the books you have bought, what your friends have bought, what other people are searching for and what the competition is up to. Using complex software they aggregate all of this information to make it much more likely that they can offer you just what you want, at the precise time you want it. Try doing that with a bricks and mortar bookstore. For companies the size of Amazon, collecting and analyzing all this data is not too much of a problem. But for the average business it is tough. Do you pay for specialist software to do all the number crunching? Expensive. Do you employ teams of people to analyze the information? Time consuming. Or do you outsource the data mining to experts in each sector? Tough to manage. There is, in fact, so much data available to you that you could almost spend all of your day analyzing it so that you get to the minutest detail and find precise ways of targeting what you want to sell. But just because data is available does not mean you have to collect it or analyze it. There is a tendency within internet marketing to try to ever more narrowly target and understand specific customer behaviour. But what you need to ask yourself is whether or not such analysis has a return on investment. Much of the analysis of Big Data is often futile you can spend a lot of time and money analyzing the data for comparatively little return.

Google Announces Search Improvements (searchengineland.com)

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Megasitelinks, Better Byline

Image Dates

5 Ways to Use Google+ to Improve Your Search Engine Optimization (socialmediaexaminer.com) Google Updates Algorithm to Provide Fresher Results for 35% of Searches (hubspot.com)

Useful items

Kindle Publishing Fast Track Report The ultimate guide to generating autopilot income with Kindle books - Everything you need to know FAST!

Vast amount of online data reduces marketing effectiveness

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The British Member of Parliament, Diane Abbott, was in hot water for her comments on Twitter recently which many people deemed to be racist. After several hours of criticism against her, the offensive Tweet was removed and Ms Abbott made a public apology. It was yet another example of the so-called power of social media. Of course, it was more about the power of data. People make all kinds of comments in bars and at dinner parties, but they dont have to retract what they say because any complaining about what they say is relatively small, from one or two friends. Online, people get to see the true extent of the feelings against their views. In a bar, a single person might actually be voicing the views of a majority; but the person who makes offensive remarks has no way of knowing that they only see the one complaint against them. But when they say the same things online, they can see the endless array of Tweets against them. Online, the extent of opposition to anyones viewpoint is made obvious by the amount of the Tweets or Facebook comments. Indeed, people even set up Facebook pages or groups to complain and make their views known. Anyone who does say something controversial can be in no doubt as to the extent of the opposition against them, thanks to the obvious data in the numbers of people Tweeting, or the extent of Facebook opposition. It is not social media that has caused people

The only data you really need to know inside out is exactly what your customers want from you. And often it is not data that can tell you that it is simply asking them. In much the same way, if you were a British Member of Parliament it might be wise to ask people what they think of your viewpoint, before publicly declaring it on Twitter!
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Big Data Provides Insights from B2B Social Media (socialmediab2b.com) Big Data Often Isnt Really, Says Bain (forbes.com) Big Data: Why All The Fuss? (informationweek.com)

Useful items

Niche Video Site Builder This is the most popular video website builders. Improved years after years, it now powers more than 350,000 video websites on the Internet with its unsurpassed features.

Lawrence family shows us all how to behave

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Doreen Lawrence: A tireless campaigner for justice (leaderswedeserve.wordpress.com)

When the history books are written the names of Doreen Lawrence OBE, Neville Lawrence OBE and Stephen Lawrence will be writ large, along with the rest of this ordinary but amazing family, including Stephens brother, Stuart. It is almost unbearable to read the unbelievable way in which the Lawrence family has been treated since the tragic death of their son. The police, the politicians and the local people who knew the identities of the killers Gary Dobson and David Norris all worked against this grieving family. Few people can be hard enough not have a tear in their eye when they see the TV coverage of the case. Neither can most people feel anything less than revulsion for the police spy video exposing the killers as extreme racists, which was shown for the first time on BBC Panorama last night. The way in which the Lawrence family has behaved against all the odds, and against hatred which the rest of us cannot even bear to imagine, has been remarkable and a lesson to all of us. The Lawrences could have been angry, they could have hit back, they could have given in. Their solid determination, their humility and their focus is something which should serve as an education to the rest of us. Their behaviour is all the more remarkable because they live in a community where they are surrounded by people who know who the other killers are. In spite of todays sentencing, there are at least three other men at liberty who were involved in the killing of Stephen Lawrence. And their families and friends know who they are. Those family members and friends are clearly happy to see racist thugs walk free, rather than see justice done. Yet every one of those people who should fess up to the police knows they are actually doing the wrong thing by staying silent. These people are caught in the conflict between gut feel and logic. They know in their gut that they should report their knowledge to the police and provide the evidence. But their logic kicks in and says if I do that Ill get kneecapped (or whatever the favourite technique of South London thugs is these days). It is a conflict which was highlighted in recent psychological research, showing we all have such thinking problems to deal with. Yet it is clearly a conflict which the Lawrence family overcame. Their gut feeling was obviously that someone should be brought to justice for killing their son; yet the logic surely must have been that with institutional racism endemic in the Metropolitan Police, there was no chance. In spite of this, the Lawrence family ignored the logic and stuck with their gut feelings thankfully. It is such a shame that several people who know who the other killers are do not do the same. If online we can learn anything from this tragic and historic case, it is that if we can only be half as determined, focused and polite as the Lawrence family we can succeed in whatever our gut tells us is the right thing to do.
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What is your blogging plan for 2012?

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Supposedly, today is the first day back at work after the Christmas break; dont believe it. The first day back at work is not until next Monday. Every year the media tells us that the day after the New Year Bank Holiday will see the rush to normality forgetting, of course, that schools do not return until Thursday giving parents a perfect excuse for a few more days off and going back to work later. The rest of the world has been back at work a week already, but here in depressed and dark Britain, any excuse for a few more days under the duvet will do. What this means is that even if you are back at work today, your activity will be lower than you might expect people you want to call will not be in and meetings get cancelled more often at this time of year because of the weather or due to the fact that my child is off school. Like it or not, the next couple of weeks are generally lighter than is good for us. So, what we need is to do something that is useful, that fills the void and which will improve our bottom line later in the year.

Without any doubt whatsoever the best thing you can do in the slack hours for the remainder of this week is to plan your blogging activity for 2012. Several research studies some of which I have written about previously show consistently that the single most effective method of generating new business leads is blogging. This is particularly effective in the so-called business to business or B2B sector (though Ive also pointed out that no such thing exists!). But blogging really, really works well when you are focusing on specific markets, rather than a wide spread of consumers with varying interests. If you work in a niche or you focus on a specific set of customers, blogging is going to be your quickest and most cost-effective method of getting business and maintaining it. So, in these less busy than normal days before next Monday, you will do your business a great deal of good if you plan your blogging for the coming year. The easiest way to do that is to follow my (completely free) Complete Blogging System. This shows you how to plan your blog effectively and easily. All you really need to do is to think of five themes one for each day of the week. Then think of four topics within each theme thereby giving you a list of subjects to cover every day of each month. Then for each of those subjects think of 12 different ways you can cover them such as an interview, an opinion piece, a debate, a news item and so on. In this way, you have a list of subjects for each month and then a way of writing about it each month. An example will help. Lets imagine you are an accountant and you have divided your five themes into: bookkeeping, software tips, tax, VAT and
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Stephen Lawrence murder trial verdict: Parents two-decade ordeal for justice (mirror.co.uk) Stephen Lawrence trial: Gary Dobson and David Norris found guilty of murder (dailymail.co.uk)

payroll. Then, perhaps, you have divided your software tips section into the following four subjects: Sage, QuickBooks, Excel and Business Accountz. Now, say, with the Sage subject you could do an interview with an Sage expert in month one, then write a news story in month two when the software updates are expected, in month three you then have an opinion piece from one of your customers and so on. Using such a plan you could map out your entire years blogging over the next day or two. You can see below how it looks you know each month exactly what you are going to do on any given day.

end of the athletic spectrum, come tomorrow the nations obese will be swearing that theyll eat no more chocolate and that theyll lose three stone by this time next year. On top of that, millions of smokers will be resolving to give up and to be cigarette-free before they kiss their loved one on Valentines Day. However, for almost all the athletes the gold medal will be a distant dream. For the fatties, the crisps and choccies will win the day by the time Summer gets here. And as for the smokers? Well, theyll still be huddled together outside the office, puffing away in the smoking shelter all telling each other next year Ill do it. Resolutions are hard, tough things to achieve. And the reason is they are all based on weak, popular psychology. Indeed, it is much the same piece of psychology upon which goal setting is based. The truth of the matter is that targets, goals and visions of achievement only work for a small percentage of people whose personality is target-oriented. Most people are not in the least bit turned on by goals. Yet, every business book you read on success or achievement tells you to set goals. You try and fail. So you get another business book which tells you to focus on your targets. So you sort them out, focus on them and fail again. And so it goes on. The authors dont understand the plight of the people who fail to achieve their goals because most authors are target-oriented people. Hence it works for them why wouldnt it for you? Well, because most of us do not have goal orientation personalities. For people who are driven by targets most of them fail too. The target-oriented person who sets a resolution this year will also probably fail to achieve their desire to lose a certain amount of weight, for instance. Why? Because much of the research on success shows that only massive, audacious, huge goals really work. Simply having a goal of losing a couple of stone may trigger the target-based personality types towards success, but often that success eludes them. What they really need is a goal like lose three stone by April and then compete in the Olympics in July. In other words, for goal oriented people, only the seemingly impossible goals actually work and produce results. The notion that you should have SMART goals in your life is sheer nonsense. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely goal setting means you tend to under- set what you could actually achieve. Massive, seemingly non-achievable goals are the ones that lead to most success in the target-driven person. So, if you are a goal-oriented person, your SMART resolutions will not work. And if you are not driven by goals, resolutions will not work anyway for you. So, they are frankly a waste of your mental energy and time. Unless There is another way to look at this. Instead of setting goals and targets, set processes. They work for all personality types. So, for example, instead of saying this year Im definitely going to write a book and add six new sections to my website say something like this year Im going to do some writing every Thursday morning. If you set up that kind of process you will find you probably have written a book (much faster than you thought possible) and you will also have produced all the extra content for your website as a result too. Similarly, instead of saying Im going to get 10,000 Twitter followers this coming year, say Im going to send one Tweet every morning and youll end up being more successful. What this means is that if you only have small resolutions, such as finding half an hour for writing every Thursday, then
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Remember, you only need five themes, four subjects within those themes and then 12 ways of covering each of them. You will then have a plan for the entire year ahead, enabling you to blog every day. If you are really free of time at the moment, you can get ahead commission articles, even write them in advance. Remember you can use blogging software to pre-load your website with blogs which will be published in the future automatically. What this means is that in these downtimes you can get much of your blogging organised leaving you the rest of the year to do what is your proper job.
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Be social: How to keep your business blog regularly updated (marketing.yell.com) 10 Amazing Blogs About Blogging to Start Reading NOW (hubspot.com) Everything You Need to Sell Your Boss on Business Blogging (hubspot.com)

This New Year your online resolutions should be tiny

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So we are mere hours away from 2012 the London Olympic Year when Britains hopes will be high and thousands of young athletes will be striving for their best performances so they can get their hands on that elusive gold medal. Meanwhile, at the other

you will achieve much, much more than setting some kind of seemingly SMART objective. And, process style resolutions will work whether you are driven by goals and targets or you are not that kind of person. So there you have it permission not to set New Year Resolutions! Happy New Year..!
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out. Indeed, whatever business you are in, the online shopping experience appears to have several advantages compared with traditional methods. If you are not selling online, you are reducing your sales income.
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Bumper Boxing Day sees UK records broken, as 13 million hours are spent shopping online (thenextweb.com) Britain predicted to blow 410m shopping online on Christmas Day (thesun.co.uk) Is Amazon Killing (makeuseof.com) The High Street? [Opinion]

Easy Goal Setting for Your New Blog (problogger.net) How Making a Plan Can Help You Meet New Years Goals (socialpsychology.org)

Retailers are bound to do better online

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How to beat online distractions

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Retailers are predicting a bleak year ahead, with many already reporting a bad Christmas this year. Meanwhile, online stores have been breaking all records. On Boxing Day there were almost 100m visits to online shops with shoppers spending a total of 13 million hours browsing; this is a 20% increase on last year. There is little doubt now that the online shopping world is a significant threat to the offline retailer. If you have a real world store you can almost certainly offset your losses by opening up online. But why is online shopping so popular? Well, there are the obvious reasons convenience, deals, ability to compare more easily and so on. Yet there is a hidden reason as to why real world shops do badly compared with their online equivalents. This is revealed in new research conducted at the Queensland University of Technology which shows that accidental touching leads to less time spent in real shops. It transpires that when we are in a real shop and we bump into someone, or they accidentally touch us when we are picking up items in the store, we effectively make our excuses and leave. This study is the first one to explore the notion that being touched by strangers affects our shopping behaviour and it reveals that we do not like it. When we get touched accidentally we reduce our shopping activity. Busy stores may look good for a High Street retailer, but they make people spend less. Online, of course, you do not have this impact. People can shop conveniently, often more cheaply AND they do not get bumped into by anyone else. The result is they spend more time in online shops and spend more money. If you are a retailer and you havent yet opened up online, this study shows you are really missing

For a moment, just focus! Ignore those links on the right hand side of the page. Resist the temptation to sign up for my weekly newsletter. Shut your eyes to the other tabs and windows open on your screen. Instead, for a moment or two concentrate. There that was easy wasnt it? Well, maybe not.! Your peripheral vision cant ignore those extra tabs. Your mind cant really ignore things I have told you not to ignore. Distractions happen and it is really tough to cope with them. In the online world, distractions are ever-present. When you visit a web page there is brightly coloured advertising, or there are videos on the page you simply have to click on. Then there are forms to fill in to get more information and all manner of interesting bits an pieces just on one web page. And thats to say nothing of the bing bong of that email arriving, or the Facebook chat window popping up, the Skype call coming in or the on-screen alert for any manner of services you use, such as Twitter. Gone are the days when you could sit in front of your computer and have a single, non-distracting window on which you could work. Now, your day is filled with an continual array of distractions. Perhaps you already have a New Year Resolution in mind, saying that you wont be as distracted in 2012 as you were in 2011; I suspect that resolution will be broken before the hang-overs form New Year parties are resolved. The notion that you can prevent distractions online seems difficult to achieve. But new research suggests there is a way.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School have for the first time ever been able to show that sustained training in mindfulness can alter the pattern of your brainwaves. In essence, what this means is that by meditating you can increase the level of alpha waves your brain produces, which are helpful in maintaining focus and specific attention. Meditation enables you to focus on what matters, to help you block out the irrelevant and annoying stuff. If you do find yourself distracted by the plethora of online excitement, then meditation will help. This new research confirms the mechanism by which it all takes place. So, if you are planning to be less distracted in 2012 when you go online you might find you need to meditate regularly if your wishes are to come true. And if you want some help along the way, then self-hypnosis audio programmes on meditation will help you.
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Your competitors might be doing better than you online in terms of search engine ranking and visitor attraction. Start by going to Alexa and searching for your known competitors and compare their statistics with your own. However, for a thorough check use Market Samurai. This is really a keyword analysis and search engine optimization tool but it contains a couple of useful features for spying on your competitors including the SEO Competition analysis and the Rank Tracker tool. Together they can help you understand what your competitors are doing well online and help you discover what you need to do in order to beat them. 3. Consider a re-design Does your website look fresh, up-to-date and with it? Or is it so 1990s? A couple of years ago black dominated the colour preference for with it websites; this year it has been loads of white space. Keeping up with the online fashions in design is necessary if your site is to be viewed as current. To find the trends in design for the coming year ahead, check out this blog post on Web Design Trends for 2012. 4. Plan your content One of the biggest problems for website owners is producing content to keep their website fresh and alive. Planning content is essential to making sure you produce enough material to attract and retain readers for the year ahead. So, now that you have a bit of a lull before the New Year why not plan your content for the year ahead. To do this you can download my free Complete Blogging System which shows you a simple way of ensuring you produce enough ideas. Essentially this shows you how to break down any time period into individual topics and themes so you can more easily produce the content you need. 5. Get a third-party analysis Sometimes you cannot see the wood for the trees you are simply too close to your own website to properly review it and understand whether it works as well as it might. So get someone else to look at your site and give you their view. Other people are also looking for something to do, rather than twiddling their thumbs in this Christmas to New Year gap, so ask your friends to run through your site and let you know what they think. It could reveal things you can repair or improve ready for the year ahead. Alternatively, for a professional opinion on your website you should buy a review from Website Opinion. So, there are five things you can do to while away the hours to improve your online business ready for the coming year ahead.

Why Bloggers Should Meditate (problogger.net) Meditation May Help Brain Tune Out Distractions (webmd.com) Remove Distractions, Focus on Webpage Content with Evernote Clearly Extension (madrasgeek.com)

Five ways to prepare your website for 2012

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So, its the time of year when you are picking the bones of the turkey, deciding what to buy with those gift tokens you were given and wondering how to fill your time between now and the New Year celebrations. Most of the business world is asleep, not back at work. The roads are empty and the shops are full. The TV is packed with childrens programmes and the radio is constantly reviewing the year. You are left to twiddle your thumbs. Except, of course, there is plenty you could be doing to get your online business ready for the coming 12 months. Heres what you can do with your website now so that your business is ready for 2012. 1. Review your website content Many websites grow and develop throughout the year resulting in articles which are simply out-of-date now, or no longer apply, or link to old information. Now is the perfect time to go back through your website and check everything is relevant and up-to-date. In particular you should check your site for missing or broken links. You can do this easily at the free W3C Link Checker. Alternatively get InSpyder Insite to check for broken links throughout your site and also check for spelling errors too. 2. Check out the competition