In laymans terms the success of Groupon lies in it’s ability to breakdown the feeling of inertia in all of us when we see a special offer.

All too often in the past we have the option of becoming complacent with the ability to shop around or come back later. Now with Groupon we have the urgency of a call to action that we know is ticking away like a time bomb.

But what is really great about the Groupon guys’ vision is that this isn’t enough. The daily deal model is a stepping stone to his fulfilment of the service thanks to the technology that all of us now carry around in our pockets.

Using the GPS enabled mobile handset that is now common place (or even the basic GPRS that all mobiles have) Groupon are launching a new service in the States called Groupon Now! It’s a simple idea. Firing it up gives you just 2 options – I’m Hungry or I’m Bored. Clicking will take you either to food options or entertainment options in your close proximity.

This is nirvana for advertisers and consumers alike. Not only do advertisers reach a wider audience and still make a profit, increasing brand awareness through the by-product of word of mouth, but consumers can act on their impulses when they want to and on their own terms in real time and space.

If you had the ability to get a deal wherever you were whenever you wanted it wouldn’t you?

I think this is the future of advertising. I just wonder whether it will help us get over the discount hunting mentality that is all too common in the UK when it comes to this kind of thing, or whether we’ll discover a new motivation for exploration and the urge to do something different, and do it together.

I’ve done this so many times I thought I would document the process for the benefit of others! So here it is – my guide to setting up your own blog.

What do I mean by this? Well firstly I’m not talking about an automated process – this is a full installation in your own hands so that you control everything. This means that it’s an install on your own domain name, which has lots of benefits for search engine optimisation over hosting on a sub domain as is typically the case for a blog.

I’m using WordPress, the worlds favourite blogging platform. It’s free to download and install. The set up is possibly the most complicated process in the whole job as you need a database connected to run WordPress and setting this up is fiddly. However there is a great guide on the WordPress site that they reckon can be followed in just 5 minutes.

Hosting is the other consideration. You’ll need a package that allows database use (one will do).

So what are the costs?

Well unbelievably the price of everything has come down so much that cost just isn’t a factor any more. Domain registration is as low as a few pounds a year. I use freeparking.co.uk and registered my new domain (www.brianaldiss.co.uk) for just $15 for 2 years!

I’ve hosted websites for 10 years and check out new providers all the time and right now I’m using Server Centre who will do you Linux webspace (good for WordPress) that includes the databse use you need for just £25 a year! Awesome.

And that believe it or not is it! Those are the only costs other than your time. Themes for your WordPress blog are free – you can pay if you want a fancy one or to upgrade.

Steps to setting up your own blog

Once you have registered the domain name and paid for the webspace you will need to let your domain registrar (freeparking.co.uk are mine) know what the Domain Name Servers (DNS) are for your web hosts (Server Centre are mine). For Server Centre Linux web hosting they are as follows:

Primary DNS: ns1.hu-dns.com
Secondary DNS: ns2.hu-dns.com
(you’ll need both)

Set them in the admin interface at the registrars. This connects the domain name to the web space.

Next stop is WordPress.org where you will see the download link clearly labelled. Download the latest version of WordPress here for free.

When you signed up for your web space you should have received a confirmation email that will have a whole bunch of other detail in there that you need to hang onto.

In there will be FTP details. FTP stands for file transfer protocol and you need it as you are in control of the files that are uploaded to your site. You’ll need an FTP client too. If you don’t have one you can download one of many good free options here. I’m a Mac user  and find Transmit does the job I need.

Stick you FTP details in; connect to your webs space for the first time; locate the public html folder where your files will reside, and upload the WordPress installation that you downloaded.

Now comes the tricky bit – the WordPress database set up

While those files are uploading you can go ahead and set up your database. I’m using Server Centre so obviously your access details will be slightly different with another provider. They’ll be a Control Panel URL somewhere in that email you received.

It will take you to a log in screen so you’ll need to details for this too (they are usually the same as your FTP details).

Find the SQL Server Database Wizard…

…and follow these steps:

1. Create a new database – any old name will do. Write it down somewhere along with the username and password. Click next

2. Create a new database user – any name will do. Write it down somewhere along with the username and password. Click next

3. Give that user full rights (you’ll need one admin account and this does need all rights).

Your’re done!

Finishing the WordPress installation

By now all of your files should have uploaded to your webspace in your FTP client. At this stage you don’t need a theme – the default will do. You can follow the steps on the WordPress site if you like, but it’s nice and simple:

1. Locate the wp-config-sample.php file in your local WordPress folder. Change the file name so it is just wp-config.php. Open the file (notepad will do). Add in your database parameters that you wrote down… you did write them down didn’t you?! DB_NAME, DB_USER & DB_PASSWORD need to be changed, the rest stay the same. Upload the file;

1. Go to your new domain name in a browser and you will see a config prompt. Click the button.

2. You’ll now be prompted to get your database ready to talk to WordPress. Click next.

3. Add all those details you wrote down. Leave Database Host and Table Prefix as the default. Click submit

4. The nest screen is a prompt to say that you can delete the config file for security after installation – it’s worth doing. Click ‘try installing now’

5. This is the final screen. Fill in all details. Make a note of the username and password again. Leave the default check box checked to allow your site be indexed in search engines – an importnat step in this whole process… Click install

Hopefully WordPress will install and you’ll be prompted to log in on the next screen. If not it’s always those access details that are wrong – check your config file,  that’s usually where the problem is…

Well done! You’re in! This is what your dashboard should look like:

And this is what your homepage should look like with the default theme in all it’s glory:

Good luck . Hope this helps. Plenty of other WordPress tutorials online to get you going from here. happy blogging

It’s based heavily on 2 sources: the Pro Blogger How to Blog post and Antony Mayfield’s Blogging for Business ebook.

One of the key things to consider if you are a business starting blogging is that collaborative writing tools are a worthwhile investment. However it may be a good idea to start off by using draft post titles to collate ideas.

This is a guest post by Tim Aldiss from his blog: aldissandmore.com

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The start of a new year heralds a series of articles about predictions for digital trends 1, 2, 3 for the year ahead, but instead I thought I would summarise where I believe we are after the year gone by.

It’s all too easy to start by thinking by platform. For example the last 5 years at least has always been heralded as the year of mobile, and it certainly looks like this year will be the year of the tablet, but it is of course important to think platform-agnostically! It’s also easy to start by thinking about channel. Has online stolen more budget from offline, has paid media spend been nibbled away by social media investment, etc, but again here it is important to think across channels, on & offline and ‘through the line’.

I believe that the most obvious trend for 2010 has been the shift towards thinking about the end results – the outcome & the user experience – and how greater understanding of this can help not only all of your marketing activity but also your business as a whole.

Every business gets to a stage where it realises how important expenditure on research is. That level of awareness is added to by a mix of worry that the research may in some way not be accurate or relevant depending on the methods used. Well it is now more possible than ever to research end users, and in almost real time, to get low cost information that is ready to use. Take a look at the success metrics around Direct Line Insurance’s ‘ideas lab‘ as an example .

For me this shift to the focus on the user experience is a revelation as it also reflects my decision to move out of a direct role in marketing and back into web development where, working with Cubeworks, I now have a great opportunity to align my 10 years experience in SEO with Cubeworks core strength in User Experience Design.

For years Search Engine Optimisation has been the mother of channel-based strategies. It’s always been proven as the most cost effective path to new and returning customers. To an extent it still is, but the problem with search is that it is still dominated by Google, and by an algorithm that has for a long time been showing it’s flaws. A recent post on Stack Exchange sums up Google’s problems currently.

Google are diversifying their offering to benefit their revenue to the extent where people are seeing different results sitting in the same room as eachother. They aren’t trying to fix the problem with their algorithm the way they used to which means that it’s more and more open to abuse. However search won’t be going away any time soon as more people use online more and more regularly, but other avenues of reference are being used more in the decision making process than search alone.

Enter Social Media and all it’s goodness. Sceptics of it’s viability as a business function were finally laid to rest by the news late in 2010 that Google’s algorithm now uses Social Media metrics to influence it’s rankings. Brands can now no longer avoid using Social Media to compete in search. Social Media is now an activity that all aspects of business are involved in.

I believe that the best lessons of 2010 will continue to be the winning investments of 2010. Creating and then correctly leveraging all of your assets, where people are and in a way that they like and find genuinely pleasurable and meaningful to use is the top line of any digital strategy today.

Here’s a fantastic infographic that sums up what’s needed. Reassuringly it’s only 5 years old!

As tracked by Experian Hitwise traffic to UK websites from their Social Media category is higher than traffic from the Search Engines category.

However what Hitwise don’t explain in the blog post is that they measure traffic in a very different way from what you might expect from an analytics package.

Modern day browsing behaviour means that we very often have more than one tab open in our preferred browser (if not more than one browser open as I do as I type). UK Internet users very often check their Facebook feeds during the work day (some more than others) and when you refresh that page to update your feed this counts as a user action to Hitwise – something which inevitably inflates this figure.

This isn’t a bad thing – it’s merely Hitwise’ way of measuring human behaviour rather than just clicks so it represents an interesting measure.

For ThinkSearch this underlines the shift in emphasis for brands from traditional SEO marketing through to doing business in the social web and merely serves to underline the importance of ensuring your best practice SEO also embraces the benefits of the distribution and advocacy channel of Social Media which also often has direct benefits in the form of links to your website.

Read the full blog post from Hitwise here: http://weblogs.hitwise.com/robin-goad/2010/06/social_networks_overtake_search_engines.html

There are a lot of annoying things about Facebook, but the thing that’s been getting to me most (yes more than the privacy issue) is that whatever anyone contributes to Facebook remains ‘in the cloud‘.

It’s probably my SEO background getting the better of me, but I want to own that information, that content. I want it to benefit me in the traditional sense of content i.e. one that generates links, citations and attention to my websites.

Keeping an eye on the SERPs as we do at ThinkSearch we are now starting to see Facebook pages creeping into the Google results for more competitive search terms. If the balance keeps on as it does it will be Facebook that outranks you, me and our competitors. Obviously the supports the end goal of Facebook’s advertising revenue based business model so they are laughing all the way to the bank.

But what about that content. Well it occurred to me that there is plenty of talk about the new open protocol that Facebook supports - FBML (Facebook Markup Language) – but what everyone is scrabbling to do is support Facebook’s head long plummet to domination by integrating their content the wrong bloody way!

Why put widgets all over your Facebook page that plant your blog content into Facebook? Why integrate widegts into your blog that allow users to jump straight of back into Facebook leaving your site? Surely this must happen the other way. What about all that lovely user generated content? What about all those lovely references to your site and connections to others? Where is the benefit to all the effort that you have put in over the last 20 years of the web gone?

For the time being it seems like the FBML support is basic and developers struggle to implement the code in any other way than within the Facebook canvas i.e. inserting the content using an iframe as opposed to being written into your page, so the benefits are yet to be tested, but to me this is a treasure trove to open.

Amazing news –  Tesco have decided to offer it’s online shopping API to developers to develop what they will with their database and their product inventory.

In a very forward thinking, future-gazing move the supermarket giant are embracing Web 2.0 and opening up it’s doors to allow it’s data to be used elsewhere around the web as third parties see fit.

Interestingly a few months ago now The Guardian also unveiled an API which they called Open Platform. Back then there was equal bemusement as to the use that such an API could be put, and the same can be said of today’s announcement. There will also inevitably be a lot of small print to read!

Of course the whole notion of the API sits firmly within the Open Source movement, and came into the spotlight when Twitter launched, as a minute offering, with an API to allow developers to do anything they wanted to with the data. Indeed this is how Twitter rose to stardom – it’s not the geeky nature of being able to share every engrossing detail of your day, but the ability to chop up and present that data in as many ways as anyone might like to.

So for Tesco – well I guess a whole load widgets might come out of this. They do sell more than just groceries these days… can anyone else come up with anything off the cuff? What is the most useful thing you could do with Tesco’s database? There’s a bunch of bananas in it for the best idea!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jul/14/tesco-api-programming-shopping

In his latest post Avinash talks about media planning and display marketing from a stories and numbers point of view.

In “Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian & Telling Stories With Data” Avinash demonstrates how the free tools that are available today, such as Google Insights for Search, and Adplanner, provide a great (free) way to help much more accurately target your media, and in turn save you a lot of money. This is particularly so when compared to offline or traditional media.

Avinash also gives some interesting insights into how and where Google gets it’s data:

Ad Planner [does not use] Google Analytics data globally. It has an option where you can opt in your GA data if you want (but you have to go through a minorly painful process to do it – and only you as a site owner can do that).

I am going to go out on a limb and say that 99.9999% of the sites in the Ad Planner don’t have GA implemented on their sites.

It is not hard for you to check.

Search for cnn.com in the Ad Planner or hp.com or your mom’s / friend’s site. You’ll see data. But if you use WASP or do a quick View Source you’ll see none of them actually use GA.

If you want to learn where the Ad Planner gets its data here is the faq:

http://www.google.com/support/adplanner/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=15016

Google Ad Planner is surely a revolutionary free tool, but as Avinash hints, it’s the ay the data is interrogated and used that counts.

Here at ThinkSearch our analytics experts have many years experience seeing ‘The Matrix’ in data strands. Talk to us about how we can help you utilise these free cutting edge tools to your great advantage.

Luckily for us there’s an hour long video summary of the 8 posts, and it’s well worth a listen as it backs up Antony’s latest Connect post.

http://www.henryjenkins.org/2009/02/if_it_doesnt_spread_its_dead_p.html