I promised a quick update on this when I had done my presentation for the Consumer Electronics Trade Foundation in Norway.

Back in August I posted an article on the fact that the Norwegian electronics retailer Lefdal sold iPod Nanos with a hard drive. I wrote the article mainly to show an example of the fact that more and more often there will be discussions about you, your product or your company out there on the net.

This was a short discussion about a typo in an ad. And people linked to it. Right now it’s the number one hit on a search for “kjøpe ipod nano” (buy an ipod nano). Number one of about 270 000 hits.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to join the dinner and the party together with the trade foundation after my presentation. Usually the most sincere and direct feedback is the one given during the evening. However, I got quite a bit of requests for other presentations from people in the audience, so I guess the presentation worked pretty well.

I used the example, and of course I needed to give the people from Lefdal a suggestion of how to react.

I don’t think they have missed a single sale of iPods because of my article. In fact I don’t think they have missed anything at all because of this little rant about a typo. But, they could have gained some cred by simply leaving a quick comment. Something like:

“LOL. Yes, this typo is slightly embarrasing. We make huge amounts of marketing material and do our best to make it accurate. It’s very nice that you appreciate accuracy and correct information. Of course we’ll fix this error for our next release.”

…or something like that. More than 500 people subscribe to this blog. Between 1000 and 2000 unique users stroll around in here every day. About 25% of them Norwegians. Not exactly millions of people, but a pretty valuable target group. I haven’t done any serious research, but I don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that my readers are above average interested in media, equipment and gadgets…

Okay, so this strange web site called eirikso.com has just written something about your company and you have no idea how big this site is. How many people will read this guys rants…?

First, I have to tell you that if someone write something about you on the internet you should never underestimate the potential amount of readers. One example is Vincent Ferrari’s “Insignificant Thoughts“. After posting a taped conversation with an AOL customer representative his thoughts where not so insignificant anymore. The big traffic drivers kicked in and Mr. Ferrari eventually ended up on NBC.

But, you want to do some quick research just to find out if thousands of people will read this stuff immediately or not…

1. Check the website itself

Is the site publishing how many subscribers it has? For this site the circulation is currently between 500 and 600 people.

Then, check the amount of comments. Many comments usually mean a bit of readers, and always mean pretty passionate readers.

Next is to check for any logos from statcounter, sitemeter, shinystat etc… Some sites publish their traffic.

2. Look up traffic data with alexa.com

Not very reliable on small sites, and tend to favour american sites, but will give you an indication of the traffic. In the illustration here the chart shows eirikso.com compared to the biggest financial newspaper in Norway, Dagens Næringsliv. And here’s the link to alexa.com. You simply enter the url in the search form and click “site info” when the results have come up.

3. Always google. Always.

If you search for eirikso in google you get about 50 600 hits. “eirikso” is not a very common english word, so this could be an indication of the fact that people mention this site out there. Also, the Google Page Rank of a site is an indication of how serious google finds it. The page rank is a scale from 0 to 10 where the most important sites have a page rank of 10 and the pretty insignificant ones have 0. Eirikso.com are currently on 5. You can check the page rank of any site here. (Please note that you should always check the site with www in the site-name. Ie. www.eirikso.com and not simply eirikso.com).

 

4. Use technorati blog tracking

Technorati have had their share of bugs and problems but they are slowly turning into a pretty good tool to find stuff in the blogsphere and to do quick checks on blogs. Technorati’s rank is based on how many blogs that links to the site you are checking. They currently track 57 million blogs. Eirikso.com have a rank of 15 071 right now. Far from the really big blogs, but above average in the crowd of 57 million…

5. Subscribe to the RSS-feed

Not all blogs publish their circulation. If you want a hint then sign up for the RSS feed of the site you want to check in Bloglines or Newsgator Online. They will tell you how many other users that subscribe to this feed in this reader. A very very very inaccurate estimate for the total circulation would be to multiply this number by  something between five and ten…

Feel free to add additional ways to check up on a web site in the comments!

…and what kind of horrible typo is this headline then? It’s Norwegian and translates into “Buying an iPod Nano”.

This article is a short rant and an important experiment. The Norwegian headline is part of the experient. More on that later.

First a rant about something that I guess most of my readers have experienced. Horrible errors in marketing material from retailers of consumer electronics. This example is only what I found after two minutes with an ad that came with our newspaper today. There are so many examples that I have played around with an idea of a dedicated blog on these issues.

Have a look at this one.

 

An iPod Nano with a hard drive. That’s truly exceptional. When I go to Apple’s spec page for the Nano the very first line of facts tells me that the Nano has flash based memory:

Hard drive or flash memory is a pretty significant detail about an MP3 player. Apparently not for Lefdal, the Norwegian retailer that keeps telling me that the Nano has a hard drive…

I actually read the marketing material from these shops. Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA etc… In Norway they’re called Elkjøp, Lefdal, Bonus etc…

It’s one of my strange hobbies and it’s part of my job to be fairly updated on what’s available for the average media consumer. The products and the prices.

But unfortunately I know too much about these products and end up thinking that these guys have to be inaccurate morons. The amount of errors and plain lies are simply sad.

Then, actually entering one of the shops asking questions to the staff is even worse.

Or am I the only one with this experience?

The important experiment

I am going to do a presentation for the Consumer Electronics Trade Foundation in Norway later this autumn. I am going to talk about big changes in the media industry. And about how blogging is changing the way they should communicate with their customers.

If this article on eirikso.com ends up with a high ranking in Google it will be a good example. I can stay on that stage and search for where to buy an iPod Nano, or “kjøpe en iPod Nano” in Google. And show them that an article that says that they’re all morons hits better than their own shops.

So, if you have a blog and a story about bad service or inaccurate marketing material from these kinds of shops then please write about it and link to this story as well. If possible let “kjøpe en iPod Nano” be the link itself…

Comment here as well, and I’ll update this post with a link back to you.

Update2
So far so good. I learn a lot from this experiment.
1. People in general agree on the fact that consumer electronics advertising is inaccurate and frustrating
2. Links really do boost google ranking: Kjøpe en iPod Nano
3. I look forward to my presentation for the Consumer Electronics Trade Foundation
4. I need to talk to Espen Andersen about Google optimization. His article that is linking to mine hits above mine! 🙂

Right now there’s quite a bit of traffic from ITpro. In addition to this loRdx, Mr. Sandvik, Tove, Sonitus and Anarkistix have been kind enough to link.

Update:
Links are ticking in. Espen Andersen is mentioning the iPod Nano Redux on his english blog Applied Abstractions. Because this post is mostly about lousy marketing you should have a look at his example regarding excellent customer support.

Espen links from his norwegian blog as well. If you are fortunate enough to manage the strange language of Norwegian you can have fun with this little story about Innovisjon AS.

Technorati tells me that links are ticking in from Henrik and Ole Bruseth as well. Both blogs in Norwegian. In my opinion Mr. Bruseths blog has the best name of a Norwegian blog ever. “Overstadig Bruseth”. And here I have to give a sincere apology to the 85% of my readers that don’t understand Norwegian.