Yesterday I finished up at George Patts.
For quite a while now, a mate and I have been homebrewing. We’ve had varying degrees of success ranging from exploding bottles to pouring entire glasses of head to great (drinkable) beer.
It’s great fun and a cheap way to drink. But one of the frustrating things about it is how slow the process is. From step one to drinking a cold beer you’re looking at two to three months, more than enough time to forget the small things you’ve done along the way to improve/ruin the beer.
So on a recent batch, we decided to do something different. Instead of brewing twenty bottles of the exact same beer we brewed ten variations in one batch.
Normally it would take two months to know if putting in an extra spoon of sugar has a positive or negative impact. This time, we put one spoon in a bottle, one and half in another and two in a third. Then we tried the same with raw sugar. And again with brown sugar. Then we tried one bottle with honey.
In two months, we’ll be able to easily analyse ten variations, which under the previous approach would have taken ten times longer.
And you should take a similar approach with your highly trafficked website. I’ve been doing a lot recently around split testing and optimising and here are a few things I’ve picked up:
Without even realising it, I massively improved my “test and learn” process and inadvertently started split testing my beer at the same time.
Funnily enough, those bullet points above apply to homebrewing too.
Last night I gave a group of Monash students a tour of our office. Funnily enough, exactly three years ago I was the student walking through George Patts hoping to one day get a job there.
It seems like even the laggard brands are now finding their way on Facebook. And what better way to kick things off than running a big promotion with a big prize.
What a year I’ve had, two media ‘scandals’ in six months. In May I was accused of writing offensive tweets that supposedly meant I couldn’t do my job and just last week I apparently cheated my way into winning a new car.
Between the two ‘scandals’ (and I use the word lightly) I’ve managed to be the most read article on The Age website, the lead story on Channel 10 news and even had a joke made about me by Dave Hughes on The Project.
Here are the five things I’ve learned about handling what is quite a daunting experience for a 22-year-old.
1) Anything can be a story
What I didn’t realise until recently was that anything could be a story.It doesn’t matter if it’s pointless or what I would deem ‘a non story’. It particularly doesn’t matter if it’s a scandal for the sake of being a scandal.
You might think the content of the story isn’t newsworthy, but you have to ask yourself, “What is the headline?”. Because if the situation can be condensed into a scandalous headline, the rest of the article doesn’t matter. And that’s why something as innocent as a tweet or a mention of the word ‘BFF’ three years ago can apparently be news.
2) Don’t feed the trolls
It’s quite incredible how crazy some people can be. Despite being ill informed and unwilling to be informed, social media has allowed these people a voice.It’s tempting to respond to their blatant stupidity or cruelty, but don’t. Trolls don’t argue with logic so you’re just wasting your time, and more importantly any response can be used as fodder by journos to make things worse.
Trolls are best left in silence.
3) Don’t feed the journos (some of whom are also trolls)
Again it’s hard not to, but by doing so you’re throwing fuel on the fire and potentially getting yourself into another news cycle.The quality of journalism and research in both of my ‘scandals’ were incredibly poor, yet the best option was to remain quiet and let the story die as quickly as it came.
No one ever got in trouble for not making a comment.
4) Do the ground work to win the SEO game
Articles and ‘scandals’ like these hurt people, especially when it comes to their Google results. One news piece could cost you and your reputation years down the track when a potential employer (or potential date) runs your name in a Google search.To avoid this as much as possible, you’ve got to be proactive. Thankfully I’ve got this blog that I’ve been writing for four years and a number of other platforms that help my search results. They will (hopefully) always trump a rogue journalist who decides to use my name.
It’s unreasonable to assume you’ll never be a front page story (just ask 21-year-old Zac!). The best defence you can have to protect your page rank on Google against shoddy journalism is a quality blog or website. If you don’t have one, best you get started.
5) Ride it out
Once the story breaks, you can’t do anything about it.If you’ve followed the advice above then the story should be dead within a news cycle and the damage won’t be too extensive. You can’t control how you’re portrayed or what people say about you, so you’re best to ride it out and remember that in a few days no one will remember or give a shit.
It’s been a crazy few experiences, certainly not something I want to repeat. Hopefully I don’t have to follow these tips myself ever again.
Two scandals is enough for one lifetime.
I don’t pay for most of my content, and I haven’t for a long time.
Even my once beloved DVD collection has been replaced by torrents. My music and television shows have long been downloaded and most recently, I’ve even started torrenting my books and reading them on an iPad.
It’s fair to say, I don’t pay for content. But I want to.
I do realise that someone needs to pay for it, and I’d be willing to do so if it was easy and 100% of the money went to the team who produced it.
I’d happy throw a few dollars to an author of a book if I knew it was going directly to them (and their editor, etc.) Likewise for a band, and it could even for movies and television shows. What I don’t want to pay for is the unnecessary cost of middle men, distributors and physical production.
At the end of an ebook, television series or album, there should be an option to donate/pay, with the proceeds going directly to those who produced it.
I went paint balling on the weekend for the first time. Not only did I leave with a few welts across my back, but also with a feeling of how poorly the business was managed from a digital experience sense.
The website was hard to find and hard to use. It wasn’t intuitive and lacked a number of features that would make the process of organising 20 guys on a buck’s party much easier.
Everyone talks about the next generation of entrepreneurs starting up the next Facebook or Angry Birds, but I think there’s a bigger opportunity; your everyday businesses, particularly services. Paint balling, plumbing, computer repairs, and car washing; everyday analogue businesses.
But unlike their current-day counterparts, the next generation of business start ups will be run by digital natives. They’ll have killer websites (personalised, localised and mobile optimised) and will crush their competition in SEO.
I’m in half a mind to ditch this advertising nonsense and see what I could make of a paint balling business.
And then I let them in on a secret. Angry Birds Blog wasn’t the first thing I built. Nor will it be the last.
Some of you may remember an online business I tried to get off the ground that failed miserably. None of you know about a number of other websites I have that get less than 100 hits a month. And as we speak I have another project in the works for people who like beer.
It doesn’t matter if you build something and it doesn’t work. It doesn’t have to be a success for you to learn from it. And if it’s so bad that you need to pull the plug, then do so and go and build something else.
That’s the thing about the internet; you can always be building.
This is not normally the type of content I post here, but I figure it’s a great piece of knowledge to have and is usually an easy way to get some fan growth. And at the same time you’re reducing the potential risk of your brand in someone else’s hands.
‘Move fast and break things’ is a philosophy I’ve stolen from Facebook’s work culture. Anyone who’s seen The Social Network movie will know this ideology is at the core of everything they do, demonstrated by the regular Hackathon events they host where programmers stay up all night building for the purpose of building.
The outcome isn’t necessarily important. It doesn’t have to be perfect, nor necessarily functional. But by moving fast and breaking things, they approach problems in a different light that creates new solutions and new ideas. Many of Facebook’s features have come out of these Hackathon events.
So why am I writing about it? Well, I think it lends itself to great advice for graduates looking to land themselves a gig in digital;
Build something.
Building something these days generally costs next to nothing. A lack of technical skills is no excuse either given Google is at your finger tips. And the only thing you’ll need you should have plenty of as a student; time.
Time to move fast. Time to break things. Time to learn. Time to build something.
As an undergraduate I built this blog. Everyone’s got one now (not to say you shouldn’t build one too), but you could build a YouTube Channel. Or an online store that sells socks. Or a video that gets 1,000,000 views.
Throw yourself in the deep end. If it fails, pull the plug and build something else.
Six months ago I started a website called Angry Birds Blog. Like me, I realised people were searching for walkthroughs, Golden Egg locations and information about the game. The website now receives 95,000 hits and brings in $150 a month. But that’s nothing compared to what I’ve learned over the past half year about SEO, SEM, AdSense, affiliate marketing, design, coding, ad placement and more.
And I reckon if you can build something, that’s probably more impressive than talking about your empty resume in a job interview.
Edit: I sold Angry Birds Blog in September 2011 for a nice little sum.