I was at an industry specific casual gathering, which like so many others of its type attracted people of a wide range of skills and of skill levels. I was there with the intention of catching up with the people there I knew, and picking up on whatever interesting piece of information that might emerge.

I was talking to one of the people there I already knew towards the end of the evening, once the door prizes had been drawn, and most of the other people had already left. Now this guy is someone I don’t really trust. He reminded me a little too much of someone I used to know. Someone who was a little too good at making friends and getting away with whatever dodgy shit he landed them in. The person at this even had the same extraverted manners and gift for self promotion.

We got into a bit of a discussion. It was about my work, and more specifically, my expertise. And I got annoyed. Without a lot of effort, and without looking like an arsehole, he managed to make me feel like I looked stupid. Now unfortunately my ego got involved and I started to talk a little too much, and in too much detail. I did not mention anything really critical, but I still said more than I would have otherwise. Hopefully that is a small price to pay for the lesson.

So, do you want to get some more information out of someone? Here are a few pointers:

• choose a casual gathering
  • They are less likely to be wary in a casual setting then they would in a more professional environment.

• Have an audience whose respect they value
  • No-one likes to feel like their peers might begin to doubt their skills or knowledge. This works best in a casual setting. In an environment where people tend to talk shop freely, they are more likely to talk. In a professional setting, they might feel they would look indiscreet should they do so.

• Make them feel stupid
  • No-one wants to look stupid, uninteresting or uncool. As long as they feel the cost of talking to reaffirm their standing is equal to the gain in respect they might gain from their peers they will do so.

• Don’t push hard enough to look like an arsehole
  • After all, you want the rest of the crowd to still like you.

There are always people who are more than happy to talk about everything they do, and how they do it. They are the easy ones. Some, like me, prefer to not talk too much. After all, data is valuable. But everyone has a weak spot, and that night mine was my ego.

In practice people assign priorities based on who can make their lives the most difficult. It doesn’t matter how. It could be because of real authority, it can be from soft power or influence, or any of a large number of other forms of power or influence. These factors are so basic that I came across them at uni, in a Change Management course, but there is another factor. Who can shout the loudest or take up the most time.

In my experience, being annoying and never letting up works best if it takes time to deal with you chasing them, if they can’t brush you off without drawing more attention to an issue than they want, and if they dislike conflict less than you do. If you have no real power, and if you have no other source of influence, this is often your best bet.

Resources and support always get assigned in such a way as to make the lives of those handing them out the easiest. If you can’t have an impact, then you won’t get the support you need to get your job done.

If you have no official power, and if you have no unofficial influence, being a nice guy is a losing strategy. You need to be the person they don’t want to have to deal with. You need to make sure your projects and your requirements become their priority too. Even if it is only because they hate the sound of your voice.

I don’t think we’ll really know for a little while, at least until Google is done with tweaking it. But that does not stop people from being really sure they know what Google means. I had a fun filled conversation with one of these recently.

As it turns out, according to someone with stronger opinions than mine, a content farm is a site that is optimised for search and doesn’t provide deep content. I guess IMDB is in trouble than. Also, they are sites that prevent company and brand websites from appearing higher in search.

Apparently this is a major issue. Companies and brands have a god given right to all the free, organic, traffic they can handle, and it is the evil google and SEO cartel that is preventing them from having what it rightfully theirs.

So there you have it. The more you know.

I am assuming they mean super effective against idiots.

it is something called “Rich Ads in Search” (RAIS) and as the subject of the email promises, they would let me “own your search terms, enhance branding and increase click through”.

When it comes to increasing brand and product awareness, small and large businesses alike need to continue to be innovative in their marketing.

Rich Ads in Search (RAIS) allows you to deeply engage your target audience through images, video and multiple direct links to your site from your RAIS ad. For the locally owned business, RAIS is also an opportunity to be listed above larger competitors in the market for specific search terms.

For $1,000, you can own your own RAIS category for up to four months that’s just $250 per month*.

This means you will be the only RAIS advertiser featured for your list of selected keywords and will be the only north listing on Yahoo!7 Search. Your ad can contain a branded image or video asset, a search box and links to up to four pages on your website. This allows consumers to search your site directly without leaving the search page and enables them to click through direct to certain content on your site.

A local car window tinting company recently ran a RAIS campaign and achieved an impressive click through rate of 18%, increasing qualified traffic to its website.

It’s simple to set up your RAIS campaign: we’ll build it for you, all you need to do is provide us with the links and assets.

I am not really a fan. To start with, it is practically a return to the 90′s, with a spot on a web site being purchased for a period of time. Yahoo! can’t seem to let go of their portal glory days.

Oh wait, I forgot, Search is a portal. In fact this bears repeating; Search Is A Portal. Don’t believe me? Look at Google an Bing, how they are cross promoting their own content and how they deal with the big verticals like travel, finance, news and general trash media topics.

Yahoo!s problem with RAIS isn’t that they are pushing a portal style ad model, it is that they are not hiding it.

But they will be gone soon anyway, as soon as Microsoft AdCentre hits Australia.

But here is the problem; the myth of constant growth.

“Why is this a problem?” I hear all the internet marketers, both client and agency, cry. Well, I say that, but we all know it is just a rhetorical tool. back on topic. The problem is this as follows.

Lets say that your sales targets are set by some obscure formula that always seems to set a target of 10% over last year’s numbers. Now, hypothetically, lets say that there is about five different things you can do to a site to improve its organic rankings, and a few untouched query spaces available for SEM campaigns. Do you:

A: Do everything you can in the first 2 months to increase traffic (and sales, if you don’t suck.). Or
B: Do just enough to reach the 10%?

Now if you choose A, congratulations, I certainly hope you can get out and into a new job before you need to do 10% better than that first, golden year.

If you did B, you really are a bit of a political animal. You’ll be able to play the bonus scheme game for ages.