I've always wanted a pen pal. I was introduced to the concept around second grade or so, and I loved it. We would send letters back and forth to someone from another school, but the forced conversation was impossible to enjoy. What I wanted was a real penpal, someone I could exchange handwritten thoughts with. I wanted the experience of eagerly awaiting by the mailbox for the next installment of "Letters from [location]."
Well, now one of my good friends, who's currently living in Abu Dhabi, has unwittingly allowed me to subject him to my stream-of-consciousness via prose. And who knows through where that stream has meandered? I almost feel like I should've been kinder and warned him of the letters that he'll be receiving.
I am very excited at the prospect of receiving snail mail, though. I still think the handwritten letter is the most personal form of communication. Even face-to-face conversations don't compare to the written words on a page. So much more time and effort goes into crafting the traditional letter. Every sentence is given more consideration than the typical spoken or typed ones, mostly because there's no going back after it's down on paper. Sure, if you're writing in pencil, you can try to erase it. But even after erasing, the graphite will leave a ghost of the old message. And it's even harder to make your words disappear when writing in pen. You can either cross the error out and leave a hideous mark on the page or you can mask it with whiteout but leave behind a crude sign basically advertising the fact that you made a mistake.
It'll be good. It's time I took some time to myself and composed something meaningful. I don't do much art anymore, and aside from the occasional blog post, I feel like I don't have as many opportunities to express myself. And any news from Abu Dhabi is good news :)
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
This is where I talk about work
It's hard to believe that I've already reached the 6 month anniversary at work. Time really goes by fast when there are mountains of things to do. But what is it that I do?
I have no clue who's reading this, but I'm going to bet that those who are don't fully comprehend what Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is. That's not me being elitist; that's me admitting that I work in a really niche field. But it's a really niche field that fully appeals to my love for marketing, advertising, and numbers.
There are many types of advertising. Commercials you see on TV, ones you hear on the radio, pop up ads, etc. I work with the most glamorous of them all... the ads that appear when you search for something on a search engine. Go ahead. Type something generic into Google. Say.. "dogs". Someone created those text ads you see across the top of the results and along the right hand side. I didn't create those, but I do something of the same ilk. I think of keywords that people might use to search for our product. All keywords are sold on an auction system. For example, having an ad show up for "dog" would be more expensive than using "little black labrador" because more people search for "dog" and will therefore see your ad more often. So once I have a list of keywords I want to use, I figure out how much I want to pay for each of them
Yet paying for keyword space is not even half of what I do. If it were as easy as throwing money at search engines, everybody would be doing it, and the richest companies would have the best positions all of the time. But the search engines are smarter than that. Yes, one way of getting your ad to show up is by spending the most money. However, your ad also needs to appeal to people using search engines. On a very basic level, appeal is calculated by the percentage of clicks on your ad for every time someone sees the ad (also called 'click-through rate'). That means that the most exciting part of the game is to try to find ways to get people to click on your ad more often than they click on your competitors' ads.
That's what I spend a good majority of my time doing. I'm constantly working with numbers to see what factors can be manipulated in order to get more people to click on our ads. Sometimes, changing just a single word in the ad gets it more clicks. It's often fascinating watching numbers show the immediate effects of your changes and the long-term effects of the economy playing a part in what people are searching for.
Can I say this is what I'll be doing forever? I don't know. Do I love what I'm doing? Absolutely. I learn more and more every day with some of the smartest SEM professionals that I know. And I definitely look forward to learning more.
I have no clue who's reading this, but I'm going to bet that those who are don't fully comprehend what Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is. That's not me being elitist; that's me admitting that I work in a really niche field. But it's a really niche field that fully appeals to my love for marketing, advertising, and numbers.
There are many types of advertising. Commercials you see on TV, ones you hear on the radio, pop up ads, etc. I work with the most glamorous of them all... the ads that appear when you search for something on a search engine. Go ahead. Type something generic into Google. Say.. "dogs". Someone created those text ads you see across the top of the results and along the right hand side. I didn't create those, but I do something of the same ilk. I think of keywords that people might use to search for our product. All keywords are sold on an auction system. For example, having an ad show up for "dog" would be more expensive than using "little black labrador" because more people search for "dog" and will therefore see your ad more often. So once I have a list of keywords I want to use, I figure out how much I want to pay for each of them
Yet paying for keyword space is not even half of what I do. If it were as easy as throwing money at search engines, everybody would be doing it, and the richest companies would have the best positions all of the time. But the search engines are smarter than that. Yes, one way of getting your ad to show up is by spending the most money. However, your ad also needs to appeal to people using search engines. On a very basic level, appeal is calculated by the percentage of clicks on your ad for every time someone sees the ad (also called 'click-through rate'). That means that the most exciting part of the game is to try to find ways to get people to click on your ad more often than they click on your competitors' ads.
That's what I spend a good majority of my time doing. I'm constantly working with numbers to see what factors can be manipulated in order to get more people to click on our ads. Sometimes, changing just a single word in the ad gets it more clicks. It's often fascinating watching numbers show the immediate effects of your changes and the long-term effects of the economy playing a part in what people are searching for.
Can I say this is what I'll be doing forever? I don't know. Do I love what I'm doing? Absolutely. I learn more and more every day with some of the smartest SEM professionals that I know. And I definitely look forward to learning more.
Monday, October 13, 2008
A Snippet of my Life
I noticed that I haven't written for a while. I would like to come up with a good excuse, but I don't have any. So instead, let's forge forward and stop dwelling on the past about what I did or did not accomplish. Come with me as I take you on a tour of my weekend.
I spent a good part of this weekend outdoors, which, after huddling indoors for the last couple of weeks, was a greatly invigorating experience. Even though I didn't do anything particularly exciting outside, studying in the park at a picnic table under the sun is much more appealing than being indoors. I also got some outdoor exercising in. Exercising outside is much better than going to the gym where everything's so stationary. I like having the scenery change around me as I move about.
Walking was a big part of my outdoors activity this weekend, but I also brought out the bike. I really like biking (I'm not sporty enough to call what I do 'cycling'), but it's difficult to bike when every road around you is on a constant incline. Going downhill is a blast, but at some point you know you have to head back up the 45 degree hill. But I took out the bike and was just wandering around my neighborhood for 2+ hours. The bike and I did make it back up the hill, but I only managed to ride up halfway before giving up and pushing the bike forward. My getting off and pushing the bike uphill was only the second time in the whole 2+ hour journey that my ass left the bike seat. The first time was when I fell off the bike.
It's not often that you see a grown adult who has years of bike riding experience under her belt crash into the curb and tumble onto someone's front lawn. I wish I could say I fell because the bike grazed a large rock or something equally unavoidable, but running into the curb was due entirely to my own actions. I'm not even sure how it happened. One moment I was happily riding along with both hands on the handlebars at the time (I had already gone through the Flobots "I can ride my bike with no handlebars" earlier), and the next moment I rode directly into a curb and toppled off my bike. My only saving grace was that it was a very clean topple. It was one swift movement off the bike, onto the ground, and back on my feet again. There was no wobbling. There was no lying on the grass clutching my knee. It was just crash, tumble, jump, and back up. If I were a cat, I would've walked away smoothly at that moment as if I had meant to crash my bike all along. I should've become a professional terrible gymnast because at least I can look cool while completely messing up.
I didn't want to be outside once the sun had gone down, so I planned other activities for myself once night hit. I've been home alone all weekend, and what better way to celebrate the night alone than by watching Fargo and American Psycho? I'm not sure why I decided it would be a good idea to watch movies about murderers while I'm home alone, but after watching Fargo, I was on a small adrenaline kick that I didn't want to end. So I pulled out the American Psycho and continued the bloodbath on my screen. It was great. I hadn't seen either of those two movies before, so the quantity of platelets and plasma on my tv was quite unexpected but very satisfying. I wonder if my overall enjoyment of those two movies while I was sitting in the dark clutching a stuffed animal says anything about my mental health.
This was one of the more enjoyable weekends I've had in a while. Sometimes it takes a weekend alone to recharge the social batteries and prepare myself to face the world again.
I spent a good part of this weekend outdoors, which, after huddling indoors for the last couple of weeks, was a greatly invigorating experience. Even though I didn't do anything particularly exciting outside, studying in the park at a picnic table under the sun is much more appealing than being indoors. I also got some outdoor exercising in. Exercising outside is much better than going to the gym where everything's so stationary. I like having the scenery change around me as I move about.
Walking was a big part of my outdoors activity this weekend, but I also brought out the bike. I really like biking (I'm not sporty enough to call what I do 'cycling'), but it's difficult to bike when every road around you is on a constant incline. Going downhill is a blast, but at some point you know you have to head back up the 45 degree hill. But I took out the bike and was just wandering around my neighborhood for 2+ hours. The bike and I did make it back up the hill, but I only managed to ride up halfway before giving up and pushing the bike forward. My getting off and pushing the bike uphill was only the second time in the whole 2+ hour journey that my ass left the bike seat. The first time was when I fell off the bike.
It's not often that you see a grown adult who has years of bike riding experience under her belt crash into the curb and tumble onto someone's front lawn. I wish I could say I fell because the bike grazed a large rock or something equally unavoidable, but running into the curb was due entirely to my own actions. I'm not even sure how it happened. One moment I was happily riding along with both hands on the handlebars at the time (I had already gone through the Flobots "I can ride my bike with no handlebars" earlier), and the next moment I rode directly into a curb and toppled off my bike. My only saving grace was that it was a very clean topple. It was one swift movement off the bike, onto the ground, and back on my feet again. There was no wobbling. There was no lying on the grass clutching my knee. It was just crash, tumble, jump, and back up. If I were a cat, I would've walked away smoothly at that moment as if I had meant to crash my bike all along. I should've become a professional terrible gymnast because at least I can look cool while completely messing up.
I didn't want to be outside once the sun had gone down, so I planned other activities for myself once night hit. I've been home alone all weekend, and what better way to celebrate the night alone than by watching Fargo and American Psycho? I'm not sure why I decided it would be a good idea to watch movies about murderers while I'm home alone, but after watching Fargo, I was on a small adrenaline kick that I didn't want to end. So I pulled out the American Psycho and continued the bloodbath on my screen. It was great. I hadn't seen either of those two movies before, so the quantity of platelets and plasma on my tv was quite unexpected but very satisfying. I wonder if my overall enjoyment of those two movies while I was sitting in the dark clutching a stuffed animal says anything about my mental health.
This was one of the more enjoyable weekends I've had in a while. Sometimes it takes a weekend alone to recharge the social batteries and prepare myself to face the world again.
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