The Apprentice, Series 7, Episode 7 – R.E.S.P.E.C.T

I’ve decided to launch a new magazine, it’s going to be called Ego and it’s going to be full of things that I think people will like, even though they’ve been telling me that they want something else – yeah? I’m going to make a decision here, yeah? This is the direction we’re going to go in, yeah? It’s probably not going to appeal to big budget advertisers, but that’s ok, because we can stick a load of chatline numbers in the back, yeah? Because sex sells, yeah?

We’ve seen glimpses of Natasha in ‘creative director’ mode before, in the pet food task, but she was given full reign this week and by golly, she threw herself into it. Tom got given his Cassandra hat back after his comment that they needed to work out where the advertisers would want to spend their money and create a magazine to fit that market, and you could see him looking genuinely bemused when Natasha pitched the lads mag idea, straight out of 1995.

They won the task, but mostly because the other team managed to string together mistake after mistake after mistake.

They met the focus group who told them that they wanted to be treated like people, who happened to be over 60, people interested in the same things that everyone else is interested in, people with a sense of humour. They even gave them a potential name for the magazine, Zimmer. The name they eventually went with, Hip Replacement, was quite poor, but had it been treated with a bit of irony, as originally intended, then it might have worked. However, Jim’s treatment of the design managed to suck any humour out of the name, and left them with a cover that actually looked like it could have come from the front of a magazine for people who have just undergone orthopaedic surgery. I only have a limited knowledge of selling ad space, but I suspect you can’t run a freemium mag on adverts for stairlifts and electric blankets.

The main problem was the utter failure of Jim’s team to see their magazine’s target market as actual people as opposed to a demographic bump.

If you want to get your readers on side it helps if you respect them (or can at least convincingly pretend that you do), so treating the over 60’s as though they’re the same as the over 90’s is never going to go down well. The over 60’s aren’t ‘old’, they’re the baby boomers, they’re amongst the healthiest, wealthiest, best educated people in the country, and they are used to people catering to their needs. Take them for granted, and patronise them and they will simply ignore you, because they’ve got more interesting things to do and there are plenty of other companies out there offering to separate them from their savings.

By the way, all of that goes for any target market, any demographic and any customer. It’s a buyers market out here, in almost every industry, so you can’t just throw something together and hope for the best.

As for sacking Glenn, ok he may be a little uninspired, but I’m calling that one as a tv sacking – the only reason Jim has been kept in is to create a bit of tension in the group. I’d have had trouble restraining myself from climbing over the desk and strangling him at several points if I’d been in that boardroom.

Next week, they’re off to France, and from the preview clips, it looks like Helen has been paired up with Susan. This makes me happy. Helen seems to be the candidate with the most professional approach to the whole process, so we might see an episode without Susan being told to be quiet while the grown-ups are trying to have a conversation.

The Apprentice Series 7, Episode 6 – This Time, It’s Personal

Week 6 in The Apprentice mansion, and it’s the well known logistics task – hang on, what? Are my eyes deceiving me or is this a new sort of task? I’ve had a look through previous series and I can’t find a comparable one anywhere, which, for an apprenticologist like myself, makes an interesting prospect. For one thing it means I can’t sit there screaming at the screen “HAVE YOU NEVER SEEN THIS SHOW BEFORE???”

So, we’ve got the teams as modern day Steptoe’s taking away commercial and industrial waste, paying to dump the rubbish, and trying to sell the good stuff. But as much as it looked like it was about hard graft and getting on with it, it turned out to be more of a minefield to be picked through carefully. Which leads me neatly to what I want to talk to about from this episode – interpersonal communications and relationships.

The only person on Team Venture that seemed to grasp the complexity of the task was Susan, who appears to have taken on Tom’s mantle as this episode’s Cassandra. But while Tom normally gets ignored, poor Susan was made to feel like the worlds biggest idiot for suggesting that they should be offering to buy the office furniture rather than trying to charge to take it away. But smart though she (normally) is, Susan has clearly been cast as the child of the team. Therefore she becomes someone whose opinion can be disregarded without risk, and who needs to be chided for their mistakes. The problem here is that she has a tendency to adapt to this role – she backs down too easily, and she’s complained about things not being ‘fair’ so often that you could legitimately add that to this years’ Apprentice Bingo (speaking of which, we got this series’ first 110% tonight from Glenn). Her perceived attitude as a whining child is so bad that Zoe brought her back in to the boardroom, even though Shugsy pointed out that she seemed to have understood the task while the two blokes, with experience in the business had decided to take a back seat. That might have done for Zoe were it not for the fact that the other person she brought in was Edna.

We’ve seen a lot of confidence from Edna, a lot of poise, but not a huge amount more than that. And her approach in the boardroom did her no favours, as she confidently claimed that she trained Chief Execs to do their jobs better. She’s clearly highly qualified, but Shugsy just didn’t like her demeanour that much. She got as close as we’ve got to a ‘with regret’ firing this series, but I don’t think he’s going to miss her.

What you say is important, but how you say it matters too. Several people will tell you that only 7% of meaning is gathered from the words that you use – that’s rubbish (appropriately enough), and anyone who does claim that doesn’t know what they are talking about. Even so, it’s easy to concentrate on the content and forget about the delivery. Being believable is almost always more valuable than being right, being convincing will get you further than being correct.

Of course, ideally, you want to combine the two, so I’m going to make a bit of a recommendation here. If you know what you’re talking about but you struggle to get things across, you could do a lot worse than having some presentation training from Simon Raybould at Curved Vision.

Next Week: The candidates have to come up with a new niche magazine. Oh goody, branding, media, positioning – I’m going to enjoy this.

The Apprentice, Series 7, Episode 5 – You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think that I’d seen a preview of this week’s episode of The Apprentice before writing yesterday’s post on naming products and companies.

Naming Rule 3 – don’t depend on people being clever. Cat Size? Really? Really? Shocking stuff.

That wasn’t the worst of it tonight though, both teams could have done with applying what I shall now call Lydia’s first law of marketing communications – It’s not about you.

Week 5, and it’s the opportunity for grand scale cock-ups with the advertising and branding task – This is the episode which has brought us Germinator and Pantsman in the past.

Glenn is PM for the cat food team, and Vincent (or Dogtanian as I shall now refer to him) is PM for the dog food team, appropriately. The curse of the PM seems to be striking again – They’ve got ideas that they are attached to, and they are batting away questioning voices like King Kong with some bi-planes.

Both seemed so intent on making sure that they had come up with the best idea, that they didn’t notice that what they’d come up with was, essentially, rubbish.

Which brings us to Lydia’s second law of marketing communication* – your market is not everyone.

You know how clothes that are described as ‘one size fits all’ never seem to fit anyone? The same principle applies here. You may well want to sell to everyone, but people have different tastes, different needs, different hopes and fears, and in the case of tonight’s tasks, different dogs.

It’s an easy trap to fall into, you want to sell as much as possible, so the logical thing to do would seem to be to create something that everyone wants to buy. But, ignoring the advice of your focus group and highly qualified expert on dog nutrition is not a bold move, you are not pushing the boundaries of what a dog food can be, you are being an idiot.

Niches are good, you want to find a niche, and in an overall market of 8m you should be able to find a niche of a decent size, a niche where you can create a product that people will actually want to buy. And if you pick a niche, rather than trying to appeal to everyone, you’ll find that your marketing is more cost-effective as well (remember Naming Rule 1 – You are not Google, it works here too).

Dogtanian had to go really, despite his entertainment value.

Meanwhile, back at the house: Shugsy and Nick are right, there is some odd dynamic going on with Jim and some of the other contestants. Lord Sugar has had words with him, so we’ll see how he responds to that – sometimes it’s just what the candidate needs to get a bit of perspective (remember Claire from 2009?). But woe betide any candidate who doesn’t take the advice to heart, they won’t be leaving with a “with regret” firing.

*I can probably keep coming up with these all day.

Corporate Identity – 3 rules for naming your business – or why Shakespeare was wrong

Give him his dues, he had a way with words, Our William, and on a lot of things he was spot on. A man is indeed a piece of work, and parting is, very often, such sweet sorrow, but when it comes to roses of any other name, he was a little off base. What if the rose wasn’t called the rose, but was called, say, throatwort, or bladderwort, or manglewurzle? Its scent wouldn’t change, but it would still be somewhat less appealing. I can’t imagine many people phoning Interflora to ask for a bunch of mother-in-laws tongue for Valentine’s Day, can you? No matter how sweet the smell.

Which is my roundabout way of saying, choosing the right or wrong name for your business could have serious financial consequences. With that in mind, here’s my 3 rules for naming your business.

Rule 1) You are not Google.

Google has a lot of money, a lot. And they have a lot of money to spend on marketing and brand recognition. Google could afford to take an obscure word and create a meaning for it precisely because Google could *afford* to spend the time and money to create a new meaning for the word.

You don’t.

If you call yourself Ploofo, or Weeelay, or Fwumph and you can’t afford to achieve the global dominance of a multinational company, you are going to have a difficult time being remembered and not being confused with Plumph, Woofo and Fweelay (who, as we know, sell completely different products and services).

There’s a lot of good words already out there, with hundreds of years of meaning already attached to them. Use them, they’ll do some of the work for you. They’ll stick in people’s memories more easily. They will save you money, and stop making you look like your marketing plan is ‘to be like Google’.

Rule 2) No-one else cares why you have chosen that name.

The name Copperwire means something to me, something quite personal and important. I could share that with you, but I’m not going to, because this isn’t “true confessions of a communications junky” and there are only a handful of people in the entire world who would ever make the same connection, or care about it.

There is something else that is personal and important to me, my poor dead cat, Daisy (b.1987 – d.2006). Daisy was a real communicator, for a cat. She was very vocal, she had different miaows for ‘feed me’ ‘let me out of the house’ and ‘please leave me alone, I was trying to sleep’. Communication was always clear and straight to the point with Daisy, she was an excellent role model for a budding writer. I could have called my communications business Daisy’s, in tribute to the finest moggy a girl could have. And, knowing what I (and now you) know about her talent for being understood, that wouldn’t have been an entirely perverse choice. But to anyone outside my immediate family it has no relevence. To most people, Daisy isn’t even a typical cat’s name. And even if they knew about my dead cat’s ability to embody utter disdain if we offered her the wrong food, they wouldn’t care.

Your brand doesn’t come with footnotes. People don’t see the reasons behind the branding choices you make, they just see the outcomes. If your proposed name relies on people knowing and caring why you chose that name, pick another one.

Rule 3) Don’t depend on people being clever.

I was so proud of my first business name, Baohaus. It was an art sourcing service that was going to operate on a ‘by appointment only’ basis. Geddit? By Appointment Only, BAO? Baohaus, Bauhaus (German aesthetic movement)? Clever eh?

Hmmm.

I spent the following 18 months correcting people’s spelling, or pronunciation (one friend still pronounces it as though it rhymed with Baowolf), or explaining that we didn’t just source German art from the early/mid 20th Century. The final straw came when the local paper did a feature on me and my business, and misspelled the name throughout, including, significantly, in the website and e-mail addresses.

You don’t want to make your potential customers and clients work too hard, after all, remember Rule 2) they don’t really care about you. If they can remember that your name is a play on words but can’t remember which one, or they can remember that there are a couple of letters swapped round in the spelling, but can’t remember which ones, you are making it more difficult for them to find you, or recommend you to other people. Most of the time, that’s pretty much the opposite of what you want a name to do.

Naming a business or product or brand is hard work, especially if you are a small company or a sole trader. It feels very personal, it feels like it is all about you, but it’s not, it’s about the customer- it’s always about the customer. How can you make it easier for your potential customers to find you, understand you, remember you and tell people about you? What do your customers know about and care about? What name will your target market respond to?

You didn’t get to choose the name that your parents give you, but you do get to choose the name of your business, or brand or product. Be kind to it, give it a name it can live with, give it the name it wants.

The Apprentice, Series 7, Episode 4 – Show Me The Money

Task 4 and we are well into tenuous link territory*, with the teams being taken to The British Museum before being told that they were going to have to sell spray tans to the good people of Birmingham. The key information that Shugsy gives them is that the beauty industry is booming with enormous mark-ups on beauty treatments.

Lord Sugar mixes the teams up again, and we have Zoe elevated to project manager on one team (told you) and Felicity put in charge of the other (it is just me, or does she remind anyone else of Nicky Graham from Big Brother in full “who is she? who is she?” glory).

I had a fair inkling of how this week was going to go as soon as Tom looked up from the information about the locations and said “hang on, there’s only one treatment room, and it’s 3 floors away from the retail area – are we sure this is the right location?” (or words to that effect anyway).

The answer to this should have been “Noooooooooo, what a schoolboy error, how could we have been so stupid as to not notice that in a task about selling treatments, we need to make sure that it’s easy for us to sell a load of treatments?” The answer Felicity came up with was “Yes, I’m sure, I’ve taken advice, please put that down and start looking at the products”.

ooops

During the product demonstrations Tom was honing in on the details again, looking at the profit margins, taking lots of notes and working out which treatments gave the best profit per minute – all good stuff. For a while it looked as though they were going to atone for their poor location choice by ensuring that they would make best use of their limited resources.

Flash forward a day or so, and there are 3 team members twiddling their thumbs in the remote treatment room and 4 team members putting all of their energy into selling low mark-up, plaited hair-pieces (mmm, that Bavarian waitress look is so on-trend this season). Call it a process or a sales funnel or a selling strategy, but whatever you do, you need to be constantly guiding customers towards the products you want them to buy, which in this case was the pound a minute treatments, not the expensive clip-in hamster.

Meanwhile, at the other shopping centre, Zoe’s team seem to be generating a steady stream of customers for their treatment rooms (yes, rooms, plural – 3 of them!), with team members walking them the short distance from retail area to treatment are and making sure that they are happy while they wait. The only real hiccup over there seems to be that they have overestimated the amount of stock they would sell, with Susan looking a little like a lost puppy while Zoe explains the responsibility that comes with being the tasks self-appointed expert – “we took your advice, it turned out to be wrong, if we lose the task because of that advice we’re hanging you out to dry”. Mind you, they may have a load of self tanning lotion left over, but at least they aren’t trying to sell fringes to people who already have fringes.

The hair styling treatment wasn’t Team Flick’s first choice. They wanted the spray tan, but lost out in the battle for the booth with the other team. And I have to ask again, have none of them ever seen the show before? If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years of watching The Apprentice, it’s this… when you are competing with the other team for suppliers, show some enthusiasm for the products. Even if you think they are a pile of crap when they come in, slap on a smile and tell them you love them.

Series after series we see a team turned down for the product they want because the other team showed more interest in it when it was being displayed. Ellie’s excuse that they weren’t ‘girly girls’ in that team doesn’t really hold water – if you’re running anything more than a lifestyle business, then you have to be able to put personal preference aside and get enthusiastic about what will sell. And it’s important to cultivate as good a relationship with your suppliers as with your customers – your business relies on them just as much.

Some more general thoughts: Leon actually impressed me this week, once he got over his fear of not seeming manly enough around the treatments, he looked like he was doing a good job of charming people into the spray tan booth – I’m not sure that’s going to be enough to save him in the long-run. Still loving Tom, but he needs to make sure that he’s not just dealing with the numbers, and does take responsibility for other areas of a task. Also, I am now officially rather scared of Ellie – I can’t say any more because I’m terrified that she’ll come and glare at me.

*I suspect that the link here is actually that the Beeb and The British Museum are rather keen on each other, especially since A history of the World in 100 objects was such a success

Why social media recruitment needs to work to avoid the old anti-social problems

Remember back in the old days of the internet when pictures took whole minutes to download and we just had the words people used to make a judgement on who that person was. Remember how you could get to know someone without ever seeing their face and the only way to find out what they looked like was to actually be in the same room as them? Well thank god that’s all over and done with, eh? Isn’t it so much better now that we have video and pictures to accompany those words?  Isn’t it so much more preferable now you can really get to know people properly?

Well, yes, mostly – but if you’re a 21st century business and you’re using social media to recruit for new staff, there’s a couple of things you should bear in mind.

A couple of days ago Mashable posted a list of 10 creative social media resumes, and of their 10 examples, 8 included photographs/film of the applicants. “So what?” I hear you cry. “In this social era, it’s important to get to know the person you’re hiring – it’s all about the personality”. Which may be true, but it’s also means that you may be discriminating against large numbers of very talented people, potentially falling foul of equalities legislation *and* missing out on the best person for the job.

Now I’m not saying that *you* would discriminate against someone who was old/female/disabled/ugly/black/brummy/fat, in fact I’m absolutely sure that *you* would never dream of doing such a thing, but study after study after study after study shows that if you are a member of a minority group you are statistically much less likely to be invited to interview for a job than someone who is a member of the majority group – so plenty of people out there *are* discriminating.

This is particularly likely to be a problem in the creative industries, because if  you want to work in this sector then it can really help to have a creative CV, and the industry is full of relatively small companies who recruit on an ad hoc basis when someone talented comes along – and the more social media CVs become the norm, the more we are likely to see direct and indirect discrimination.

A Victorian judge once remarked that “the doors of the courts, like The Ritz Hotel, are open to all”. And YouTube and Facebook CVs are just as equitable, since there is nothing to stop anyone creating their own version to send to potential employers. But unlike at The Ritz, the currency required is not cash, but the ability to be photogenic, or good in front of the camera, or just simply to look like the sort of person that the company is used to hiring.

Even assuming that the person who gets the CV somehow manages to set their preconceived ideas aside (which would probably require them to be Mr Spock), someone who is visibly part of a minority group, will be aware that they are likely to face some level of discrimination when applying for a job. An application process that assumes that they will display their ‘otherness’ up front may well put them off, and if they opt for a more traditional CV then they risk being thought of as less creative, less talented, than the person who is unafraid to stand in front of a camera.

In a standard recruitment process, where candidates apply for a specific job vacancy, there is usually an attempt to avoid these issues – personal information is used for monitoring purposes and removed from applications before they are processed . But when you are making judgements on a case by case basis, as CVs drop into your inbox, it can be much harder. How do you know whether you are dismissing or accepting them because you feel they would/wouldn’t be a good fit for your current team, culturally, rather than on the merits of their qualifications and experience?

The irony is, of course, that the creative industries thrives on new ideas and new points of view, and the more diverse the workforce a company has, the more opportunity there is for them to discover new concepts and new markets. If you limit your new staff intake to the shiny, the polished, and the self-assured standard, then you risk ending up with a shiny, polished, standard company that produces shiny, polished, standard results.

But how can you get round this without cutting yourself off from the talented people that want to approach you? If you’re happy to accept spec CVs resumes and applications then here are my suggestions:

Set some guidelines, for instance no photos, no details of your age or gender, and any videos must feature someone other than yourself – Unless you are recruiting for a job that specifically requires someone to spend time in front of a camera, there is absolutely no reason to expect them to have that skill in order to get the job.

Or set some creative job related tasks for them to do, let them show you how good they are – yes, you’re hiring the person, but this isn’t some cheap hook-up dating agency, you really do want them for what’s on the inside, so give them the opportunity to let that shine through.

The Apprentice, Series 7, Episode 3 – Knowledge is Power (if you use it wisely)

Hurray! It’s the shopping episode! I love the shopping episode. And once again, we are faced with a whole raft of candidates who appear never to have seen the programme before. From failing to identify products, to failing to pick them up in time, we saw all the usual mistakes. And while you could blame logistics, or time management, or negotiation skills for the loss of the task, in the end, it all comes down to not knowing your stuff and not doing your research.

The teams have been mixed, which gives us the opportunity to watch Vincent try to be charming while assuming seniority over all the women in his subteam (nothing says respect like taking the phone out of someone’s hand while they are in the middle of a conversation) – Susan is in charge of one team, and Scouse Gavin is in charge of the other.

They both start of with the same plan: identify the products, track down the suppliers and then go and get them – But the similarities end there. Susan’s team seem to be working as a team, which is pretty unusual for The Apprentice at this stage. Within quite a short amount of time they seem to have got their list sorted and they’re ready to get out the door. Over in Gav’s team however, it’s a bit more like trying to herd 6 year olds, with everybody deciding to do their own thing, and nobody doing anything. Poor Gavin, within 5 minutes we could see that this was not going to be a fun task for him, at all.

We know they’re not allowed to use the internet to do any research, and presumably they’re not allowed to discuss prices on the phone either, but so often they fail even to make use of the knowledge that they already possess.

One of the first things that Susan said was that she wanted to head to East London to get better prices, but somehow they ended up in Mayfair buying their top hat and organza. Likewise, Zoe pointed out that NW and SE as postcodes, were probably not that close to each other, but still they decided that they would source items from both areas. And if they’d stopped to think about it for a minute they’d realise that getting 10 kilos of PG Tips for £100 would be a reasonable retail price, so expecting chamomile tea flowers from a rare tea company to come in at £30 was frankly delusional.

And if you know there’s a gap in your knowledge, it makes sense to try to plug it somehow, but it would have been much more sensible to have called some general hospitality companies and said “do you know what a cloche is?” than to have called The Ritz and asked for their list of suppliers – and they should have known that too.

Because knowledge is only powerful if you use it – if you know that your target market is single men between the ages of 18 and 35, then use that information to refine your message; if you know that people who buy your service also tend to buy another service, think about how you can use that to your advantage; and if you know that the boss is looking for someone who can handle people with difficult personalities, then flapping like the maid in Tom & Jerry isn’t going to impress anyone. Sorry Gavin, you seem lovely, but you really ballsed this one up for yourself.

Predictions for future weeks – Shugsy is going to make Zoe team leader next week, and the more Vincent has to work alongside the female candidates, the more I’m going to want to scrub myself clean after each episode – bleeeugh.

Mad Men: Season 1, Episode 3 – when life gives you lemons, change the face of advertising

This is part of a series of posts on Mad Men and what we can learn from it – it is not a comprehensive re-cap of each episode. To find out why I’m doing this, have a read of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Men World.

The 1960′s were when advertising changed, not just with the introduction of television, but with the understanding that you don’t sell with advertising, you seduce.

I’m not talking about sex here, but about advertisers moving away from the “buy this now, it has X features and costs only Y$” approach, to one that builds a rapport with potential customers, and enables them to identify with the product.

Which brings us to the one aspect of this episode that I’m going to talk about today. The scene is Don Draper’s office, and the team are in there, trying to work out what to make of the VW advert that describes the product as a lemon…

Selling the Beetle into America was never going to be an easy job, it was only 15 years since the end of WWII, and this ‘Volks Wagen’ was everything that American cars were not. It was small, it was fuel-efficient, it was economical, it had the engine in the boot, it was German, and yes, it was shaped a bit like a lemon!

But rather than trying to sell it as though it were any other car, and ignore the way people were talking about it DBB (the ad agency) worked with the hand they were dealt and (to mix my poker and judo metaphors for a second) used their opponents weight against them. The Beetle didn’t fit the mould, so they positioned it as the ideal car for people who didn’t fit the mould.

By highlighting the differences, re-framing the criticisms to reflect more positive aspects, and clever use of  self depreciating humour, the Beetle (and the VW Camper van along with it) became an icon of 60′s counter-culture.

It was the start of branding as we understand it today, the bringing together of product, company, and image, and the selling of a relationship, not a product.

DBB went on to use a similar tactic when they picked up the account for Avis. At the time, Herz was by far the biggest car rental company in America, and everyone knew it, so any attempts to claim that Avis was the biggest or the best were going to seem like wild exaggeration. So what did they come up with? The slogan that Avis still uses to this very day – “We try harder”.

So, what could you be using to promote your business or project that doesn’t fit what everyone else is doing? How can you wrong foot the competition and engage your customers by enticing them with a little bit more personality?

The Apprentice Series 7, Episode 2 – More By Luck Than Judgement

My good pals over at Prospect Networking loved my write-up of episode one so much they asked if they could publish episode 2 on their site.  You’ll find it, just a click away with lots of other useful business content.

The Apprentice Series 7, Episode 2 – More By Luck Than Judgement

(I’ll be re-publishing it here in a couple of weeks.)

How should I write for Google?

Google recently released a major update to their search algorithm, known as Panda. This focussed on prioritising quality websites and content, and downgrading content farms and other sites that have sprung up in order to game Google’s  search results. And on Friday they released some general guidelines about what they are looking for in a quality website.

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
• How much quality control is done on content?
• Does the article describe both sides of a story?
• Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
• Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

What strikes me about these guidelines is how human* they are. There are no easy shortcuts to creating a site that meets Google’s new criteria, but that’s ok. Because for most of us, our websites (and our blogs) are intended to have an intrinsic value, beyond the cash that the PPC or Ad Network adverts can bring in.

Google isn’t the only game in town of course, but it’s hard to imagine that working to these guidelines is going to be detrimental to other search methods**. Indeed the advice is equally applicable for creating good social content that people are willing to share with each other.

*I do worry that it’s only a matter of time before Google becomes sentient.

**I am not an SEO expert, if you want to talk to someone who is, you could do a lot worse than have a word with Nikki Pilkington.