by Dev Basu on November 7, 2009
It’s That Time of Year Again
Fall is a wonderful time when students like cracking out the books again, and getting back into the world of academia. Between being knee deep in building a business, and staying on top of all the crazy changes the Local Search world has seen lately, I like to give back every year by delivering guest lectures at the University of Toronto at Scarborough. This year, I had the unique opportunity to have a different experience than talking to students about SEO and Internet Marketing as a career. Instead, Professor Chris Bovaird got in touch me with to talk to his 3rd year class on the topic of Personal Branding and leading the life of a consultant.
The course, known as New Ways of Work: Consulting, Contracting, and Freelancing is aimed at entrepreneurial students geared towards freelancing, self-startups, and general contracting. I spent an hour or two discussing why having your very own personal brand is so important, followed by some tips and tricks I’ve learned over the years in the process of prospecting, pitching, proposal writing, and closing the sale. Here’s the slide deck I presented:
Disclaimer: The images are copyrights of their respective owners. The quote ‘people shop similarities, but buy the differences’ is courtesy Mr. Rick Shaban, sales guru extraordinaire.
by Dev Basu on October 20, 2009
More Robust Reporting Eh!
When the Enhanced Dashboard reporting interface first went live in June 2009, I couldn’t wait till its new reporting features rolled outside the US and onto Canada and the rest of the world. The last two weeks have been pivotal in that type of progress, with reports that users in Europe and India being able to view the enhanced dashboard, complete with impressions, actions, and common search queries. I’m happy to report that as of today, the enhanced dashboard reports have been rolled out to all Canadian users.
As a recap here are some of the top features of the new reporting interface:
Top Additions to Google Local Business Center
- Graphical Impression and View Counts (akin to Google Analytics)
- Driving direction requests by view count that tie back to the Postal Code or City, State driving traffic.
- Top Search Queries triggering Local Maps
If you noticed the strikethrough above you’re probably wondering why the neighbourhood mapping for driving direction requests hasn’t rolled out to the Canadian reporting dashboard yet. This is something that irks me a bit as well, as that type of data should technically already have been gathered by Google over time, in the same way it is for US businesses.
Yet progress is progress and I’ll take it over the lack of any reporting at all.
