I recently asked for a Google Wave invite through my Twitter account, and had a surprising number of people send them my way. Thanks to all who responded.

But I have to admit to being disappointed. While I haven’t spent that much time in Wave, from what I’ve seen so far, I’m less than impressed.

Firstly I’m baffled. I really don’t understand how it works. I can stream content from a NAS device to my TV, I can edit basic HTML by hand, and I know my way round the Windows Registry far better than most. But I can’t quite work out how to use Google Wave.

Secondly it’s supposed to be about collaboration. It should be simple to share documents, using Google Docs, but it isn’t. In fact I had to search Google for a hack to do so.

Thirdly, there’s no real control. If I invite someone to my wave, there’s no way of removing their access, no matter how the discussion may proceed. So you need to share with caution. Not exactly conducive to open dialogue.

And finally, it’s really, really buggy. I know it’s in Beta, but there appears to be more bugs than features.

The basis of Google Wave seems to be that email hasn’t changed much in the past twenty years. At risk of sounding older than I want to be, I think the old system worked just fine.

Hidden within your AdWords account, there is a little known section called the Site and Category Exclusion tool.

Within this section you can exclude specific sites or categories of sites from displaying your ads on the content network.

Adding site exclusions has been around for some time, and they can be added from within the AdWords Editor as well as the AdWords web interface fairly easily.

Category exclusions aren’t new, however the ability to add them is hidden away deep within the new AdWords interface.

Here is how you can find them:

1. Click on the Opportunities tab.
2. Click on the more tools link on the left hand side of the Opportunities page.
3. On the Tools page, you will find a section called Site and Category Exclusion.

Once in this section, you need to pick the content network campaign and then choose the types of page categories you would like to exclude. You can finally get rid of all those pages that look the same and perform poorly in one sweeping action.

There is only one catch. Right now it seems like there is a bug in the system. Some categories with no clicks are reporting conversions in some of our client’s accounts. Google support are looking into this issue and hopefully it will be fixed sooner rather than later.

It does appear that Google are working on a new way to deal with the category exclusions, however I am not so happy with the new method. It is also hidden away in the new AdWords interface.

Here is how you can find it:

1. Choose one of your campaigns which targets the content network.
2. Click on the network tab.
3. Scroll down to the section for exclusions.
4. Within that section there are two columns: Ad group level and Campaign level.
5. Under the Campaign level section, you can click on the button for Add exclusions and you will see a drop-down which will have an item for excluding categories.

The problem with this new approach is that it contains no conversion data. So if the category for “Crime, police & emergency” or “Juvenile, gross & bizarre content” are driving a lot of clicks, you will not know if you should or shouldn’t exclude them since there is absolutely no conversion data. It is very odd that they did not include that information.

Everyone (and I mean everyone) claims that their products or services are high quality. After all, who would claim otherwise?

The problem is that over-usage of the Q word has rendered it transparent and meaningless.

But we know that not all goods are quality. And if you’re a person or company who makes or sells genuinely high-quality items, you have a problem.

You want to tell the people looking at your goods that they are high-quality, crafted from the finest raw materials and hand-made with painstaking care and attention to detail. Yet if you slap a big “HIGH QUALITY” sticker on the item it cheapens it. And if you mention the high quality, you’re utilising one of the most over-used adjectives in the English language today.

Labelling something as high quality doesn’t work, but communicating the quality will.

If you’re selling wood carved figures, and your website demonstrates that you only use hand-picked Agarwood or Eaglewood, and that each carving is hand made only using hand-tools, a process taking approximately 90-100 hours per carving, you’ll communicate quality.

In these times of advanced technology, we’ve gone full circle. Machine-made is no longer quality, but hand-picked, hand-crafted and hand-made are.

Communicate quality – don’t say it.

The Confederation of British Industry have released a fascinating news release, speculating that the recession may be the catalyst for a new era in business.

“The business environment of the next decade will be significantly different to what might have been expected just two years ago. The financial crisis
and the recession that has followed have altered operating conditions by imposing new challenges and exacerbating existing ones. Businesses will respond across the organisation, moving to a more flexible, collaborative and leaner model.”

The report identifies four areas where fresh approaches will develop:

- alternatives to debt-driven growth

- critical scrutiny of relationships with partners and even competitors

- sustainability and ethics to become more integrated into the business model

- a more flexible workforce will evolve; assisted by developments in technology and training.

If correct, this may genuinely be the start of a new approach to business that goes far beyond the UK borders. A new approach that may involve lower short-term returns but greater stability.

Time will tell if we’ve truly learnt our lesson from this recession.

The shape of business – the next ten years

You’re probably already familiar with the story of the tortoise and the hare. A hare mocks a tortoise and challenges him to a race. The hare is over confident, and keeps resting, sleeping and checking his email. What happens? The tortoise wins the race.

The moral of the story is that slow and steady wins the race. It’s a good rule for many situations in life, and is the kiss of death for many businesses.

If, for example, your company develops software, slow and steady doesn’t win the race. It guarantees lost revenue, lost market share and lost opportunities.

No matter what you’re working on right now, I guarantee that you’re going to miss your deadline. And in the unlikely event that you do somehow make it, it’s still going to be too late.

Think of the biggest software companies in the world. The likes of Microsoft, Adobe and Symantec. All of their final releases are buggy as hell, but they’re out there. Warts, crashes and all.

And for all the criticism and scorn that’s rained upon them, people start buying and using their products as soon as they’re released.

Too many small companies apply incredibly high standards to their software. In principle that’s a good thing, but the reality amounts to lost income.

Make yourself accountable. Set yourself a release date and stick to it. If it works, even with issues, then fix them once your doors are open. In the software industry the race is between the dodo and the hare.

Pride and perfectionism hurt profit.

There are three groups of people. People who need what you sell, people who want what you sell, and people who don’t need or want it.

For the people who need it, as long as you communicate that your solution scratches their itch, they’ll buy it.

The people who merely want it are another story. They require more work, and you need to convince them that they have the itch.

Communicating the itch is achievable and profitable.

Have you ever seen what head lice look like?

Picture derived from Eran Finkle

These lovely little creatures are parasitic wingless insects. They live on people’s heads and feed on their blood.

That’s right; they bite and drink. That’s what causes the itch. And now you’re probably itching too.

A year or two ago, few people on the street would have recognised the word Tamiflu. Now there are companies all over the world frantically getting their hands on it – not to save lives but to make money.

And Oseltamivir?

It’s the same thing, but harder to pronounce and it doesn’t have the scary disease in the name.

If you Google both product names, you’ll see far less results for the lesser-known name of the identical product.

The media galvanised the demand for Tamiflu. And if you were selling this particular flu medicine, which name would you use?

Find the itch, tap into it and push the solution.

We’re all busy and we’re all overloaded. So get to the point.

What can you do for me? What solution do you sell?

I know what my company sells. We sell money at a lower price.

You pay me $1,000 and I generate $1,500 in sales.

I sell expertise that generates cash. I sell sales.

What do you have for me?

Perhaps you sell time – that’s great.

Perhaps you sell efficiency. Or professionalism.

What do I want? And do I know you sell it?

-=+

I can’t think of a single product or service that isn’t improved by easy.

Easy doesn’t mean simple, doesn’t mean basic and doesn’t mean less. It means that whatever you want to achieve can be accomplished with minimal effort.

Easy doesn’t threaten quality, power, efficiency, functionality or speed.

It’s one of the most effective four letter words that you can use to sell more.

Everybody wants easy.

How easy is it for me to understand what you sell? And how easy is it for me to buy once I’ve done so?

Embrace the opportunity of easy. Make easy your new year’s resolution.

You may have noticed a new AdWords feature within your campaign level settings which could be interesting.

Under the section for Networks, devices and extensions there is a new section for ad extensions. You can now show four additional sub-links from your domain within one single AdWords ad.

This might sound familiar to the results displayed by some sites organic search results. For example, if you search for Adobe (in the US), the first organic result is Adobe.com, which also contains a number of additional sub-links.

Here’s the new feature from within the campaign settings:

So far I have not seen widespread use of this new feature. In fact I’ve only seen one ad that is using it:

It does appear to draw more attention to the ad. Watch this space.

Rules, conventions and norms change with time. And finding modern norms to be tasteless or unacceptable epitomises getting older.

But how much room is there in business for swearing?

I recently returned from the European Software Conference, and at one point found myself talking to someone who had some interesting ideas. He struck me as intelligent, well-informed and articulate, and then he used the “f-word”. My estimation of him, his ideas and even his personality fell immediately.

Is this wrong? Is it possible that swearing is becoming the norm?

I spoke about this to two other people. One of them believed that a moderate level of swearing has become less offensive, and is nowadays used a means of emphasis. The other thought it unnecessary.

Five minutes of this person making a positive impression were instantly tainted by a two-syllable word. A word that served no real purpose other than highlighting their inability to express themselves.

Business is all about ideas and our ability to communicate them.

We wouldn’t consider swearing on our websites, so why would we do so in person?

But I am turning 40 next February. And modern “music” really is stretching the definition of the word.

So what the hell do I know?