Re: http://www.digitalthinktank.org/

Dear Nestle,

I wanted to get in touch given your vast interest, expertise and knowledge of barking and ask if you would be interested in the opportunity of taking part in an exciting upcoming venture.

I’m out of town next week, so I’d like to invite you to be part of a group of expert barkers who will watch my house for me.  Just think, you’ll have the chance to say you contributed your superior barking skills to help The Great Moochie! (down boy, I know this is exciting)

You’ll be able to:

* Inspire ideas and influence the thinking and strategy about barking

* Share ideas, debate with and meet likeminded barkers from around the world

* Receive assorted bones and chew toys: my way of saying thanks for joining in!

I hope you’ll participate in this great venture since I really don’t want to pay to have my house watched next week. 

Sincerely,

Moochie, Dog of the Serengeti

P.S.  Please don’t contact our employees and ask for free consulting services.  We charge for our work product just like you charge for your chocolate.

We are very excited to announce that Beth Harte  is joining the team at Serengeti Communications.  Beth brings a unique, and hard to find combination of experience to our clients:  Her roots are in integrated marketing communications, but she’s also been on the ground, gettting her hands dirty in Social Media on behalf of many organizations in recent years (most recently at Marketing Profs).  Her ability to connect the dots between Social Media and the many other elements of an integrated marketing program will be a great benefit to Serengeti and our clients.

Welcome Beth!

Note to readers:  This is my first post for Serengeti.  Read about me here.

Edelman recently released their “Trust Barometer” study and industry pundits were quick to point out the dark implications for Social Media.  See for example:

Wow! Edelman Trust Survey Finds Trust in Peers Plunges!!! Bad News for Social Media Mavens

What does the decline of peer trust mean for marketing?

Here is my official response:

Dear Lions,

I know you love to roar (especially from the top of a rock) and you’re working really hard to convince the world that the Big Cats still hold the keys to the kingdom.  Keep roaring if you must, but give us a little credit.  Do you really expect us to believe that the creatures of the Plain no longer trust one another and consequently demand to have all information verified by several additional sources – sources that just happen to have a longstanding relationship with the Pride?

Oh, and don’t you feel just a tiny bit sheepish about pointing out the stench of rotting carcasses?  If it’s such a problem, stop eating the antelope for dinner.

Sincerely yours,

Moochie, Dog of the Serengeti

In Google’s zeal to become the fastest, most relevant search engine, they’ve gone and crushed the user experience, especially for high volume and often newsworthy search terms.

Below is a SERP for the keyword “Toyota Recall,” the #1 trending keyword in Google today.  The page delivers a news one-box immediately followed by the “latest results box.”

Is pushing the first organic result to the bottom of the viewable page area in the best interest of the user?  I would argue—without a doubt—no.  Google News and Latest Results are entirely separate databases with significantly less refined algorithms.  Google News rewards sites based on criteria such as site authority, novelty of content, breadth of coverage, and user preferences.  It has little or nothing to do with the quality of the article itself.  News sites can have their brief moment in the traffic sun simply by releasing a well-timed article with a decently optimized headline.

With even less credibility, take a look at the “Latest Results.”  Who is FrankRamblings and why the heck am I looking at his tweet? He’s not a journalist nor is he a subject matter expert on cars/Toyota, yet his opinion stands above Toyota’s message in a SERP. The whole point of a freaking search engine is to organize by relevance!

The solution is simple

1. Remove Latest Results- at the very least, remove the Twitter results.  There are no reasonable metrics through which to qualify tweets.  Number of followers or total number of tweets is in no way indicative of quality.  It might be possible to eventually identify nodes of authority through combined social media data, but it’s certainly not possible now.

2. Create one-box quadrants- Why doesn’t Google attempt to quadrant one-boxes for news based results?  Google could display news, latest results, video, and images all within the confines of one quadrant, offering more choice and attractive click-throughs for the customer. Moreover, Google could present news videos the way it displays articles, based on existing paid Youtube Channels. The only reason the solution would be unattractive to Google is if the search giant believes it would distract the user from clicking advertisements.

3. Provider Users with X-Out control- Don’t like a one-box? Simply remove it from your results. This flexibility would give users more choice and control of a SERP in a way that end user data never will.

4. Improve Google News- Google News is exceedingly inefficient at detecting original content.  Instead, it frequently rewards larger news aggregators that have content trade deals with smaller/regional news providers.  Since Google News is authority based and often inept at detecting fresh content, the larger site is frequently rewarded based on its authority.

In short, I think Google would greatly benefit from some landing page testing.  Might I recommend Google Site Optimizer?