Why Facebook Ads Are Better Than Google Ads

In the light of the Facebook IPO going south, and the bad publicity around General Motors cancelling their $10M Facebook campaign, I thought it would be worth noting the reasons why I believe Facebook ads are far better than Google ads .... for certain markets.

As a Marketing consultant I manage the marketing for several companies.  I use both Google Adwords and Facebook ads - a lot.  But I especially like the effectiveness that Facebook ads give.

Read why here:
http://onlinebrands.co.nz/2012/05/23/facebook-ads-better-google-ads/

Migrating from Gmail to Google Apps - What a Nightmare!

So I've finally made the switch.  Instead of just forwarding my email address to my gmail account, and registering my email address as a "send from" email with Gmail, I have now registered my domain with Google Apps.

One of the benefits of this is that instead of my emails being sent as "mygmailaddress on behalf of the_email_address_I_tell_people" people now just see that the email is being directly from my email address.

But that seems to be a very minor gain for the nightmare it has been transferring to Google Apps.  I am honestly surprised that it is such a complicated transition.  I have a Google account with Gmail, Documents, Google+ Analytics, Webmaster Tools, and a range of other services connected.  Now I have a Google Apps account.  Since I already had my email address linked up to my Gmail account, I was hopeful that the transition would be easy.  How wrong I was!

I did a bunch of Googling, and found a number of helpful guides, but even still, the transition is only half complete.


Here is the best article I found:
Migrating from Gmail to Google Apps
It covers Email, Calendar, Documents, Feeds, Bookmarks and some other services.

Here my notes in case they're useful for you:

Migrate GMail > Google Apps Mail
The first challenge was to move all my existing mail to my new Google Apps mail account.  There are a number of suggested ways to do this, and even companies that will do it for you (paid service of course).

In the end the way I had to do it was via POP!  On my original Gmail address I enabled pop.  (Settings > Forwarding and POP).  In my new Google Apps account I then added my Gmail address as a pop account for it to check.

Some things to keep in mind:

• I told it to skip the inbox when using that POP account.  Once the emails were all downloaded I went and adjusted the rule, so that new emails sent to my old Gmail account no longer skip the inbox.
   
• All the mail was received as "Unread".  You can mark all mail in your account as "read" by creating a filter.  Basically:  Settings > Filters > Create a filter that says "Doesn't have the words" - and insert a random string of characters that none of your emails will have. e.g. adfadhdafyuafhadfe   Then tell it to mark all that email as Read.   Just remember to delete the rule after you make it!  Otherwise your emails will continue to be marked as read.
  There's a simple video example here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxzTFADzk2c
   
• It doesn't preserve your labels or filters.  This was a bit annoying, but quickly solved.  Go to Settings > Labs > and turn on "Filter Import/Export".  You can then export all the filters from Gmail and import them into Google Apps.  Explanation here:   http://lifehacker.com/5164463/import-and-export-your-gmail-filters
  
  I told it to run all the filters on existing email, so any automated labels were put back on. The only labels I couldn't retrieve were manually added labels, which I'm not too worried about.
  
• In my old Gmail account I then archived all mail in the inbox.  So now when I log into mail, if I see that there is no email in the inbox I know I'm logged in via the wrong Google account.  (As you can tell from this comment, I'm not an "Inbox Zero" perfectionist!)

Migrating Documents

I read a few articles and in the end decided that downloading all the documents from my old account and re-uploading them into my new account was the best way forward.

I could have just shared the documents, but I couldn't change the ownership of them that way.

Migrating Google Analytics

I run a MCC (My Client Centre) account, so I can see multiple clients in one dashboard.  Unfortunately there is no way to give another user admin access to MCC.  So instead I had to go into each account and add my new Google Apps account as user with admin access.

Blogger

For Blogger I went to the settings for a specific blog, and added my new Google Apps account as an author. 

Overall, my aim was to finish using my Gmail account and now use my new Google Apps account for everything.  But after working through this so far, it appears that a full transition is going to be very difficult for many products.  So I think I'm now stuck with two Google accounts!

I sincerely hope that Google will work on easy migration from a personal Google account to Google Apps accounts very soon!!

New Website Launched - Goldstar Heat Pumps

I've launched a new website for a client a couple of weeks ago - Goldstar Heat Pumps.  They used to be called Goldstar Electrical.  But they had made the decision to focus on heat pumps, so came to me for marketing help.

We decided to rebrand the company as "Goldstar Heat Pumps" with the focus of becoming the number one company in Hamilton for heat pumps and air conditioning.

So we created a new logo for them, developed sign-writing designs for their new vans, and launched a brand new website.

So if you're in Hamilton, Waikato or Bay of Plenty, and want  expert advice and installation on your heat pump - and a very sharp price - I recommend talking to Goldstar Heat Pumps.

Hacking My Way Through Wordpress

I've been building a couple of projects in Wordpress lately.  It's by far the easiest (and yet still powerful) content management system I've used.

Especially when you're willing to shell out a few $$ to buy some premium templates, widgets and support.  It gets things up and running really quickly.

But when it comes to customising some of the code, to get it to operate slightly differently, I definitely hack my way through in a not-so-expert way!  Last night I spent 2 1/2 hours trying to get the Advanced Expert widget to just display the "read more" tag at the end of a custom excerpt. 2 1/2 hours of trying to work out the logic of what this widget was doing.  If I had been to a web design course and learnt programming properly I think it would have only taken about 15 mins to work out!

But I'm pleased to say that in the end I got it to work just as I wanted.  And also posted the solution on the Wordpress forums, to hopefully help out others who have the same issue as I did.

Would be nice to know how to program properly!  I'll just have to make lots of money and be able to afford to employ programmers full-time!

So anyway, in case you're interested, you can view my solution for adding the "read more" tag to a custom excerpt in Wordpress here.