“Welcome to another installment of SEO in the Outback. Today, we’re hunting a particularly elusive species of creature, situs al naturalis. They’re born with highly optimized content and navigation – these things seem to be in their DNA structure. Others in the websitus genus have to work hard to gain these attributes. These beasts are so rare they can normally only be found in carefully cultivated wildlife preserves…”

How Google tours the Outback...

You know that “Related Article” section many sites have? Well, while visiting Search Engine Land and reading Danny’s viewpoint on the Penguin Update  (I would have chosen the title “Google Ices Web Spam with Mafia Penguin Connection” but that’s just me) I happened to look over their related article section. It was almost a shock to see the titles listed there.

Oh, sure. We know Google’s been busy this year already. –And, yes, we keep up on the changes. However, in this industry, you just sort of absorb the changes and roll on: like California stops for marketers.  Once you’ve seen the changes and figured out how to (or if you need to) counteract them, you incorporate that knowledge and then move on to the next crisis {algo change | client | ranking dive}.

With that in mind, maybe you’ll understand why it startled me to see all the changes listed in one spot like that (and I’m sure they missed a few). Especially since I remember each one being touted as “rewarding high-quality sites”, “getting rid of spam”, and “making search better”.

So… is it working? Or did these updates (and the pre-rollout announcement of them) just scare some webmasters into cleaning up their sites? And, what exactly would they be cleaning up?

The All Natural Optimized, Ad-Free, User-friendly Website

So let’s break it down. What HAS Google been doing with their {beloved |hated | tolerated} search engine? According to them, they’re focusing on tighter, better searches. For the website owner, that means:

Quality content

But I LOOK harmless enough...

Panda had business owners struggling, no doubt. “What do you mean, they want quality?” Although Google’s Amit Singhal thoughtfully posted the Google blog “More guidance on building high quality sites,” it was abysmally lacking in essential “guide” like tendencies. It isn’t until you get to their Webmaster Guidelines that you start to get an idea of what the search engine sees as high quality.

As an aside:  Understand this. Whether you agree with a set of best practices or not is a moot point. You need to be aware of them, nonetheless, because the search engine is coded to see these best practices as indicative of quality. It’d be like us seeing “14K” on a yellow bracelet; all of a sudden, that bracelet takes on a shine that says “quality”.

Anyway… quality content isn’t thin. It doesn’t have a ton of keywords not-so-artfully buried in sentences. It has headers. And sections. And paragraphs and bullet points. (It probably doesn’t have fractured sentences, or lots of “ands”, but che serà, serà)

Quality vs… not quality is like:

• The difference between a Chrysler 300 and a Rolls Royce Phantom
• The difference between diamonds and cubic zirconia
• The difference between butter and spread

Fewer ads above the fold

If you have ads on your website, you need to take a good look with a reality-focused eyeball. Go ahead; load your site up and take a look-see. Is a banner ad the first thing you see? Okay, no problem… let your eyes slowly scoot down the screen – but don’t scroll. Percentage-wise, how many ads do you think you have versus content?

3 signs that your ad use outweighs your content:

1. If you say, “What content?”
2. Between affiliate links and ad links, all your text is underlined.
3. You use AdChoice for your article images.

Natural Optimization

Now this… this is the part that floors me. No matter how it’s phrased, Google is saying “your site needs to be optimized (i.e. perfected for relevancy),” which is basically what it says in the Google Guidelines. However, it also says, through the (paraphrased) words of Matt Cutts, “Your site can’t be optimized or it will be penalized.” Of course, as Cutts said when the Penguin update came out, “That’s not what we meant at all,” even though they’re still talking about an “over-optimization penalty”.

What does this double-speak mean? It means, to me at least, that the search engines are looking for natural optimization. In other words, relevance that happens out in the wild.

-And yet, if you look at the animal kingdom, some wild animals started out in shelters: cultivated, nurtured and groomed for their future life as a wild creature. Things that make you go hmmm…

Website Quality Assurance – Emphasis on “Quality”

People fuss over the strangest things. For example, they’ll {moan | complain | whine} when their site traffic drops 1%, but completely ignore that their conversion rate went up 3%. They’ll complain about 300 Twitter followers and totally miss the fact that Twitter brings a whopping 9,000 visits a month to the table. In other words, the {numbers | metrics} they use are skewed. What they use to decide growth is messed up.

Now, you’re not going to get a highly optimized, user-friendly, ad free website all by accident. Perfection is created. Therefore, you create one, while doing so in such a way as to make it appear as if “it juz happened, yo.”

Since Google’s guidance post seemed less than guiding, we’ve created a guidance post of our own. The emphasis is “quality, not quantity”.

• When was the last time you visited your site? (Correct answer: frequently – this week, etc.) Visiting your site should be a regular occurrence. You never know when something that was working perfectly yesterday is now toast today.
• Using LinkSlueth or other crawler, check your pages for link errors (404s, 500s,etc.) or redirect loops (301 to 301 to 301).
• Test redirections any time they’re set up, to make sure they’re working properly.
• When you put up new pages or replace old ones, make sure they’re visible to the public with no errors.
• Make sure each page/post on your site has a proper title, description, and headline.
• Make sure each page/post has unique, informative content.
• Use proper, semantic-style writing (headlines, section headings, paragraphs, bullet points, etc.). These give ample opportunity for visitors and search engines to decide the topic of the page and if it’s relevant to their search query.
• Connect the dots from search engine snippets to the content on the page and the images used with the content.

Remember that a good website is much like a book. A book may have several sections, but they’re all about the same topic (whatever that topic is). Your website is nothing more than a book – and a book with less than 150 pages, at that (for most of you). When you strip optimization down to its bare bones, it’s simply a way of making sure you stay on topic for a particular search query.

The Ending

A successful website isn’t about how much traffic you get. It’s about how many customers you keep. It’s not about quantity, but about quality; the quality of your visitors makes a difference on whether they buy or not. Doesn’t it make sense, then, that what matters to { your visitors | search engines } is your ability to provide them with quality?

I recently had the opportunity to go to an Italian Meet Up in San Francisco, something I’ve wanted to do for some time. I always have liked meeting people face-to-face and meet ups allow you to grasp how involved the public is when it comes to online social.

–BUT-

Stop What You Are Doing

After the meet up, when I got back to the office, I realized I should have stood up on the table and said, “Stop. Stop everything. Stop what you’re doing. Work with no one – don’t even use your own stuff. Go hide under a rock; don’t come out until you figure out what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Don’t get on Facebook, Twitter – and please, please don’t get on G+ and spam everyone to death.”

I didn’t do it. I resisted the insane urge to throw professionalism in the toilet on the off chance that someone might listen. –And yet, this is something I’ve wanted to scream at every single person who’s come looking for the silver bullet. Please consider:

1. Silver bullets only work on werewolves – not customers.
2. In the original Aladdin, the genie that came out of the magic lamp tried to kill Aladdin and take his girl. If you don’t know this and you’re thinking about rubbing some old lamps in pawnshops, I suggest you read Arabian Nights.
3. If a magic formula, winning combination, etc. had ever been created, it’d cost more money than anybody but billionaires could afford… which may be why Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Christy Walton fall into a category of less than 2,000 people in the entire world (i.e. the hypothesis that the magic formula is real and it costs a serious bundle).

The good news: There really is an “it”, a “thing”, a “special something”.

The bad news: You won’t find it in any social network, forum, blog, video or pin board.

Define “Friend” Please…

I don’t know about you, but when I was younger, a “friend” was someone you met and got to know. They went from “that person I met”, to acquaintance, to friend. As far as I know, that definition hasn’t changed much.

Take Facebook for example. What is it, really? It started out as a novel idea, where real friends connected with each other across colleges. They knew each other or their parents knew each other – there was a connection of some kind. It was a real connection: the true connection.

Now, you have fans, friends, followers… so what if you have over 1,000 “friends”. Do you know them? I’m willing to bet you don’t know much about mostof them, let alone all 1,293. –And I’m still of the mindset that a friend isn’t really a friend until you’ve done things like… oh… shaken their hand, had coffee and cracked a joke or two only you would know about.

True Connection

For the most part, this means the people you’re following (and those following you) aren’t your friends – although they do hold the potential of friend…ship…ness.

The “Special Something” (s)

You get on Facebook, Twitter, G+ and who knows what other network because you were told it was important for your business. You can’t understand why it’s not working. You aren’t getting traffic and you’re gaining followers at a very slow snail’s pace. These are not the results you were promised.

Well… here’s a secret, or two, or three.

#1:  You’re building a community.

You’re building a living, breathing group of people you can talk to, listen to, laugh with and share with. You don’t abuse them. You don’t spam them. You don’t shove games down their throats or ads into their brains or flood their feed with meme links. This doesn’t get you anywhere but locked, blocked and ignored.

Life really hasn’t changed so much that social isn’t still… social. Oh, sure, the process is a bit different. Many of the relationships you’ll cultivate will be built through content, video and 140 characters, and you’ll probably never meet. However, it’s still social. As in socializing and social butterfly.

It’s a fine line to walk, but you have to dance along the line of “professional schmoozling”.

#2: Your community has to know you’re interested in them.

You can fake interest, but it will be noticed for what it is. Rather than fake it, really feel it. Now, you might be thinking, “How, pray tell, am I supposed to feel interest in someone I’ve never met and only say ‘hi’ to on Twitter?”

Build Your Community

Easy, and I’ll tell you why. The people on the other end of the screen are your:

• Brand cheerleaders
• Brand associates
• Brand advocates
• Product/service buyers
• The reason you’re still in business

They talk about you; they brag or complain about you. They share information about you in one way or another. In other words, you’re interested because they are the lifeblood of your company. If you remember that, you might just become a whole lot more curious about how they feel and what they think.

#3. You have to communicate with your community.

How do you make friends? By communicating in some way – either by listening, by talking, or both. Through social, the medium is different, but you’re still leaning over the fence, discussing life with your neighbors. With the Internet, the world is much, much smaller.

Here, you communicate through content development. Your blog is the fence; each blog post is the conversation. Share, communicate, and turn your buyers, readers and cheerleaders into friends!

#4. You have to have a plan.

Stop creating chaos. Stop diving through every hoop out there. What is your goal, and how will you achieve it? How will you know if you’re getting somewhere?

The plan you build for your social activities is your weapon; it’s an axe (wielded with a delicate, deft touch, of course). It’s not just a special thing; it’s the ultimate special thing.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, you won’t find the silver bullet in social network, because it’s not the social network. It’s what you do with the network and how you use it.

Your plan is the secret sauce to success because it’s what sets you apart from every other Joe, Frank and Henry jumping on the bandwagon. It is (or should be) unique to your company needs and goals.

Online marketing is more than “selling a web presence”. It combines several disciplines, including optimization (search engine and conversion), copywriting, strategic content development and much, more. No matter what type of campaign you embark on, you have to keep the power of brand in mind.

Actually – you have to keep the power and the story of brand in the very front of your mind.

Fresh Ideas

Brand Character

Have you heard that saying, “Character is what you do when no one is watching”? Well, brand is sort of like that, but it’s more like, “Brand is what you do when you think no one is watching, but in reality everyone is, and your bottom line is going to take a hit for that really bad PR move you just made.”

Now, maybe you’re thinking, “I didn’t make a bad PR move. My public relations are just fine.” Well, that’s what McDonald’s thought… and Toyota… and Woody Harrelson.

The fact is that, no matter how bright and shiny you think your brand is, its character may be more tarnished than you expect. Unfortunately, the only way many companies find out the depth of distaste is publicly, once it’s too late to back out.

While you really can’t please everyone all the time, there is something you can do to “put a little spit and polish” on your brand character’s halo.

Develop the ultimate brand message guide.

First, this exercise isn’t as simple as writing out a sentence, or even a paragraph. Throughout the life of your business and online marketing efforts, you’ll be developing content, creating social campaigns, building links, drafting meta descriptions, page titles and so on. Depending on your industry, you may publish case studies, white papers or ebooks. You might create infographics, videos and podcasts.

What's Your Flavor?

In other words, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to deliver a positive brand message, or destroy the one you have. With this in mind, your guide will be in depth documentation on your brand. You’re creating a document that will be the ultimate resource for your entire team of marketing professionals to follow.

This document should contain things like:

• The ways your company/brand should be referenced in all outgoing material (i.e. BrandMessage, Brand Message, brandmessage, BM).
• Guidelines for images.
• Guidelines for videos.
• Guidelines for written content.
• Guidelines for website development.
• Guidelines for social activity.
• Contact information for the company’s Editor in Chief. This should be the person’s main job – to look over every piece of content that goes out.

Create a master content development guideline.

A Friendly Maze

A master content development guideline doesn’t cover “what’s being posted where”, because that information changes depending on technology, available sites and company growth. A master guideline answers issues such as:

• Chain of command in the content development department
• Process of content creation for each type of content
• Pre-post checklist for blog post scheduling
• Editorial calendar
• Author bios, verified and approved by chain of command
• Minimum and maximum word count
• Clearly defined descriptions of the company’s activities
• Calendar for updating, recycling, repurposing content

Create a master brand guideline.

Your brand includes things such as logos, colors and tag lines. You can’t afford for these things to get skewed by an overeager intern. How do you combat this? By developing a master brand guideline. This document contains:

• All approved sizes of the company logo, including black/white and color versions.
• All approved colors, along with hexadecimal values.
• Company and CEO bios, verified and approved by chain of command
• Trademark information (if any)

Changing With Your Company

Consistency is key

Now, your company may not have services. Your company may have products, and thousands of them. How does that work to keep your brand’s power growing? How do you add/change the documentation we’ve outlined to support that growth?

Well, you know your company best and, as we’ve said countless times before in regards to optimization, “There’s no cookie cutter solution.” The same applies to all aspects of marketing. Therefore, you have to be willing to put in the thought it takes to tweak the guidelines so they fit your business.

For example, if you have thousands of products, a master guideline on how these products should be displayed would be helpful:

• What backgrounds are to be used with the product images?
• How big should the images be?
• Do you put your company name in the corner, just your logo, or nothing?
• Are the product images on the left, or the right of the page?
• What’s the allowable word count for product descriptions?

Social media activities are another example. If your business is highly active on Twitter, a good master guideline would be what formats are allowed for links, or the approved hashtags. As a hint, having a specific set of hashtags (#) to be used makes social tracking much, easier!

Unlike the documentation you’re about to create, this article is a brief guideline, just to give you a starting point. The key is to make whichever documentation you create as in depth and useful to your marketing team as possible. Providing a unified front in all your online marketing efforts is the best way to keep your brand power going strong!

A lot of people want to know the ROI of social media. It takes a lot of time and energy for social; a wispy, ethereal answer of returns for that investment just isn’t satisfying. Unfortunately, the ROI of social media is much like the ROI of anything else. How much… depends.

“What’s the ROI of Your Mother?”

A Wispy, Ethereal Answer...

Ah, what a lovely sentiment, spoken by Vayner Media’s Gary Vaynerchuk (and, incidentally, inspiring this humorous infograph from Flowtown, “What IS the ROI of Your Mom?“). Unfortunately, a recent conversation points out how misunderstood this statement often is:

Any marketer worth their salt who reads this statement should be aghast. Show me the ROI of a press release? Gary Vaynerchuk would be shocked to see his statement put in the same context as “show me the ROI of a press release.” As if none of these things can be measured. As if marketing data has no actual value and it’s all just pissing in the wind.

The first reply…

And the second one…

The ROI of Something All Depends on How You Use It

I’d like to pull out some statements from that last response and shamelessly use them for the rest of this article:

“The question is wrong.”

The Question is Wrong

If you can’t measure or quantify the ROI of your social media efforts, you’re asking the wrong questions. In Marketing Online, What’s That ROI Formula Again?, we gave an example of the right kind of question to ask. In short, specificity makes a difference on whether social media ROI can be measured.

“… you must be specific; generic inference to activities just won’t do. For example, ‘I’m going to use social media to achieve this’ can’t be correctly measured, while ‘I’m going to post a Twitter exclusive coupon campaign, 4 times a day for a quarter, to increase sales’ is very specific.”

In other words, the right question in this instance would be, “What’s the ROI for posting an exclusive Twitter campaign to increase sales?”

Where the question of social media ROI turns wrong is that it’s a blanket question. You wouldn’t ask, “What’s the ROI of running a business” would you? No, you’d break that question down into specific areas.

“Even a stapler has an ROI, which depends on how you use it.”

For example, if you buy a heavy-duty stapler for $20 and it does double duty as a hammer (don’t tell me you’ve never done that), you’re not only stapling papers, but you’re also saving at least $10 on the hammer. That’s increased ROI on the stapler, that is.

Silly example, but I think you get my point, and the point of the commenter. The ROI depends on what the platform is and what you’re doing on it. Otherwise, you’re throwing noodles at the wall to see if they’ll stick.

“The ROI of a press release… is measurable as well…”

A 2008 TopRank article gave three great examples of press release ROI. It’s an old article, but the information is still relevant – and so is the explanation of social media ROI your clients and/or boss will want to hear.

You Can Measure the ROI

Building Examples of Social Media ROI

You CAN measure the ROI of your social media activities. You CAN show your clients or boss examples. It’s more than possible. You just have to know how to do it.

12 Case Studies Prove ROI of Social Media Promotions

Not all of these examples should be used to describe ROI, especially if you have an audience that needs dollar signs. For example, the Jamba Juice case study ends with “The coupon campaign drove tens of thousands to Jamba Juice stores.” Of course, it’s Return on Investment of a sort, but it doesn’t show the bottom dollar. Neither does the KRAFT example (#5), unless the entire purpose of the campaign was to increase Twitter followers. Increased Twitter followers does not, necessarily, translate to increased sales.

The case study for Hautelook (#3) is well worth a serious look, however. Although it doesn’t share an exact dollar amount, the final sentence says it all:

“Not only did Hautelook generate thousands of new fans they also generated tens of thousands of sales in just one day and a return on investment of more than 5x and over 20% of purchasers were first time Hautelook customers.” (emphasis mine)

How Social Media Helped Cisco Shave $100,000+ Off a Product Launch

The title alone should be enough to excite any executive. The money quote, however, is buried in the content of the article:

“’It was classified as one of the top five launches in company history,’ said LaSandra Brill, senior manager, global social media. (emphasis mine)”

Case Study: Social Media Customers Are More Valuable Customers

Don’t miss this one. Here’s the money excerpt:

“What CareOne found was that the personal connection for consumers (having some sort of social media contact with the company) led to a longer buying cycle (24-28 days versus as low as 30-minutes for those without a social media relationship with the company), but an incredible jump in successful conversions through the sign-up process and ultimately the point of purchase.

How much of a conversion? Social media connections filled out the consultation (lead-generation) form at a 179% higher rate than the typical customer. Sales? They were 217% more likely to make their first payment. For one particular problem area (people who partially fill out the sign-up form then quit), social media prospects went back and completed the form at a 680% higher clip than non-social media leads. They made their first payment at an astonishing 732% better rate.”

Now that’s reallead generation.

Reach Your ROI

Social Measurement and Returns

As you can see from the various examples, the last commenter was right. The ROI of social media all depends on how you use it. It depends on what your goals are – and those goals don’t always directly translate into sales.

The next time you talk to a client or your boss says, “What’s the ROI,” take a deep breath. Remember that there really is a Return on Investment, it really can be measured, and you have the examples to back it up. – And for love of professionalism, please don’t say, “What’s the ROI of your mother?”

Early in the morning on March 6, 2012, the news poured into the online world from MSNBC.com’s Red Tape section. Government agencies and colleges demand applicants’ Facebook passwords, the headline reads. It seems that SOPA and PIPA aren’t enough; it seems the social arena is one area the government, colleges and employers just can’t leave alone.

Is Your Privacy At Risk?

For years, we’ve warned individuals to guard their social accounts closely. “Employers are including social networks as part of the employer screening process,” we’ve cautioned. “Be very careful what you put on there. Be very careful what you allow your children to put on there. Explain to your kids the necessity of managing their social networks for the future job market.”

We’ve also given wider warnings that add up to, “If you don’t want something exposed to a broad online audience, don’t put it online. Online privacy is ethereal; it doesn’t really exist.”

Of course, our advice has always been based on the idea that employers could only see what you allowed to be seen by the world (unless your friends shared it with a wider audience). In other words, a locked down account won’t tell potential employers much. They could search until the sun goes down, and still only find what you allow public.

According to the MSNBC article, active social monitoring by government employers, college officials and businesses in the public sector has stepped up a huge notch. It’s no longer enough to be able to view your public conversations. They want to be in on your private conversations, too.

Privacy, Please.

MSNBC reports that job seekers for Maryland Department of Corrections have been required to log in and let an employer watch over their shoulders as they clicked through what had previously been considered private. Oh sure, it’s voluntary (hint, hint, nudge, nudge).

As shocking as this seems, the flagrant violation of privacy has been worse. As early as 2008, 22% of 31,000 surveyed employers said they used social networks for candidate evaluation, while 9% planned to use them.

Privacy

In 2009, the Wall Street Journal blogged about the city of Bozeman, Montana, which, for three years, had required municipal job applicants to turn over their social account login details. According to the WSJ blog, the city’s job applicant release form asked for “any and all current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, etc.”

It wasn’t until a local news station reported on the requirement and outrage ensued that Bozeman put the policy on hold. However, the city stated that, while they may no longer require login information, they may still require individuals to “friend” a city official, so what was posted could still be seen.

In a California case around the same time, a college student wrote an ode about her home town and posted in on MySpace. The California Appellate Court ruled that, because the ode was posted on MySpace, the subsequent reposting of the ode to the local newspaper by a high school teacher wasn’t an invasion of privacy.

In 2010, Maryland’s Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services began the same practice of asking for the voluntary divulging of social media log in information. Again, the practice was voluntary. According to the department, whether the applicant agreed or not wasn’t taken into account at all.

Uh huh. Can you see it? “We want you to hand over your log in information so we can dig through your personal information, but, you know, we won’t hold it against you if you say no.” Sure.

When the ACLU found out, they sent the Maryland DOC a nicely worded letter, which stated, among other things, that the DOC’s “demand for login information is equivalent to demands that they produce all of their private correspondence and photographs for review, or permit the government to listen in on their personal telephone calls, as a condition of employment.” It was only then that the DOC suspended the practice, pending administrative review.

What’s Good for the Goose is Good for the Gander? Colleges Snag Control.

Goose or Gander?

This might be understandable for a government job – maybe. After all, the higher up the food chain you go in government positions, the more problems can arise if you’re secretly a gang member, spy, or have a past as a terrorist. When applying for government jobs, there’s somewhat of an understanding that you’re exposing your lives to the agency you’re to which you’re applying.

However, while government jobs may be one thing, what about colleges? According to a February 2011 article on Time.com, a survey reported that 82% of admissions officers used Facebook to recruit. Not a big deal, right? It’s just recruiting.

However, a more recent survey, as reported by SFGate.com, points to a bigger issue. About a quarter of scholarship providers who responded to the survey said they use online sources, including Facebook, to screen college scholarship finalists.

This takes us all back to the MSNBC.com article, which shares a tidbit of the University of North Carolina’s recently updated handbook:

“‘Each team must identify at least one coach or administrator who is responsible for having access to and regularly monitoring the content of team members’ social networking sites and postings,’ it reads. ‘The athletics department also reserves the right to have other staff members monitor athletes’ posts.’”

Isn’t this going a bit far? Isn’t this, just like a request for passwords, an invasion of privacy? Believe it or not, it can reasonably be argued that it isn’t.

No Real Right to Privacy

No Real Right To Privacy

That’s right. The invasion of privacy is seldom actually addressed in the U.S. Constitution. The First, Third, Fourth, Fifth , Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments, most often cited as “right of privacy“, only account for certain privates rights. They aren’t, as many people assume, a blanket set:

• 1^st Amendment (Privacy of Beliefs): The right to privacy of beliefs, including religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom to petition the government
• 3^rd Amendment (Privacy of Home): No soldier can force a home owner to allow them to live there, whether in peace or in war, unless it’s done in a manner prescribed by law
• 4^th Amendment (Privacy of Person and Possessions): The right to be secure in your person, house, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures
• 5^th Amendment (Privilege Against Self Incrimination): The right to remain silent and not incriminate yourself
• 9^th Amendment (Broad statement of rights): The enumeration of certain rights shouldn’t be construed as denying or disparaging other rights
• 14^th Amendment (Liberty Clause): No state can deprive a person of life, liberty or property without due process

The closest amendment to deal with the Facebook issue is the 4^th Amendment, but it still has a fair amount of maneuvering room. For example, are your Facebook posts considered papers or effects? Can requiring a college student to “friend” a college counselor be construed as unreasonable search and seizure? –And, while your Facebook posts may very well keep you from a scholarship or employment, can they be considered incriminating evidence?

Social Media on the Horizon

All of this raises serious questions, the number one being: “Should a serious college or job applicant drop out of the social arena all together?” As well, the news hit the wires less than six months after Jobvite released a November 2011 survey and infograph (The State of Social Recruiting in 2011). The survey states that 89% of U.S. companies will use social recruiting, while 82% of job seekers use social networks.

The real answer may be, “yes” and “no”. In other words:

• Yes – use social networks and build an online reputation
• No – if you wouldn’t want your grandma or mother to see what you’re posting, don’t post it

Quite simply, the recent developments in social media monitoring by the government, employers and colleges demands you start taking your social account use seriously. If you thought Google pulling all their privacy policies together into one was bad step in the wrong direction, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

When social first started, it was just a place to socialize online. Then businesses with one-track, money-oriented minds began to see an easy opening into consumers’ thoughts. Says the marketer to the CEO, “Suppose we can use this whole social thing? What if we could ‘befriend’ our customers? This is a direct line to them: a place where we’d have no problem creating brand advocates and cheerleaders!” Nod, nod, goes the CEO…

A New Way

It sounded good on paper. Corporations can talk to the “little people” on a platform the consumer trusts, and the consumer will just buy, buy, buy. Unfortunately, it didn’t work like that, it doesn’t work like that, and many a business has failed to catch on.

The Warm and Fuzzy Corporation

When you look at those towering building of steel and glass, it’s hard to think “warm and fuzzy”. Those things look cold. The corporate mentality, for the most part, seems to be an inner reflection of that outside chilliness. It’s not going to work in social.

Who wants to be friends with a hard, cold person? In a world of memes, businesses bombarding with flashing image ads, screaming salespeople on T.V. and huge billboards all selling wares or services, is it any wonder consumers are tired of the business mentality? Is it any wonder that it’s become harder to create brand advocates rather than easier?

So what type of personality is easier to develop positive feelings towards? Those that are upbeat, friendly, open – the ones you can see a smile on their face through the 140 Twitter characters. The ones that make you feel good about yourself and bring a smile to your face as well.

How does a corporation do all that if the mentality is steel and glass? Well – you have to wrap all that cold, hard metal in something soft and fuzzy. You have to turn your corporation into a huggable teddy bear.

-And the only way to do that and make it believable is by using your story.

The Three Bears Didn’t Have a Chance

They Didn't Stand A Chance

You know, no matter what the stories say about the three bears and Goldilocks, the bears got a bum rap.

This brat kid shows up while they’re on a nice, leisurely stroll through the woods. She commits a B&E (breaking and entering) and tears up the furniture. Upon going into the kitchen, she tastes the food they had left to cool, spits the too hot/too cold food out (probably on the table or floor), and eats food that would have strengthened their baby. She turns their house into a squatter’s retreat and passes out in their son’s bed after getting germs all over the bigger, softer ones.

In the original story, the bears came home, found her and ate her. People didn’t like the fact that the poor, cute, helpless little girl was eaten by those vicious brutes (the bears), so later versions left the bears as helpless victims.

The point? Any story can be written to display someone in the best (or worst) light – including Goldilocks. You have to be careful about the story you tell in the public, social setting of the Internet.

If it’s not true, you’ll get caught and the truth will eventually become known. Your story can be hijacked and changed by critics and/or competitors. However, if you choose not to write your story, you can end up with someone writing it for you – and not necessarily in the best light.

Cases in point:

• The McDonald’s social fiasco was a huge FUBAR. They tried to pass off that McD’s was awesomely loved, when it turns out that it was just a made-over fairy tale.
• Chapstick, normally hidden in terms of the media, also found out how careful you have to be with your story and how you tell it. Their social media failure was to build a story that didn’t agree with their target market, and then ignore the market when it complained.
• In 2010, Nestle responded with sarcasm and threats when Greenpeace took over their Facebook page and told a story Nestle wasn’t happy to read.

Social Content for the Personable Business

Alright, so we’ve proven the point; once you get online, you’ll end up with a story whether you want one or not. Therefore, it’s best to be the first one kicking that story out, right? Right. So – let’s look at turning your glass and steel monolith into a warm, fuzzy (and non-carnivore) teddy bear.

Beyond Digital recently released the results of study in the form of an interesting infographic, The Science of Sharing: An Inside Look at the Social Consumer. In short, “social consumers” are growing, and they don’t shop the same way as the traditional buyer. For example, 53% of the 1,500 interviewed, used Facebook to interact with a brand. 42% wrote a blog about a product, and 33% wrote a review.

Although the interview pool is relatively small, those are high percentages. Consumers are not only interacting online, but they’re also recommending through highly visible word of mouth channels. What’s more interesting, however, is what most influences the social consumer, and the fact that specific influences are higher for some markets than others.

Facebook, the study says, has the most influence for baby brands while, unsurprisingly, YouTube has the most influence for music. However, for industries overall, search results, brand websites and rating/review sites top the list as most influential.

Focus With Precision

The lesson then, for businesses, is to find out where your target audience is most influenced, and prepare content with this in mind:

Company Website
Tone: trustworthy, knowledgeable, authoritative, professional
From beginning to end, your site has to be the base – the foundation – of your warm, fuzzy teddy bear story. While creating your site’s content, don’t forget the AIDA method, but also, don’t forget that you’re a non-violent bear. As you get into more conversational areas on your site, it’s time to start turning over and showing your company’s human side.

Company Blog
Tone: friendly, authoritative, community-driven, professional/personal
Of course, be all professional on your site if that’s the way you feel you have to be to properly represent your company. However, part of the purpose of a blog is to connect with people – to start laying a trail of breadcrumbs towards your main selling area.

Guest Posts
Tone: helpful, authoritative, professional/personal, information-driven
Most people think guest posts are there to drive traffic. They aren’t – not really. Guest posts are there to drive authority. When you’re starting online, one of the few ways to build authority through all the noise (competitors, spammers, etc) is to piggy back off of other authorities.

Social Sites
Tone: helpful, friendly, in-the-know, personal
The tone changes dramatically once you get into the social arena. Here, you’re building relationships, and you just happen to be knowledgeable about this topic or that. In other words, building the relationship becomes top priority, rather than selling your services.

Finally, you have to make sure you connect the dots. You connect each part to the next; the Internet is, after all, called the World Wide Web. As your visitors and followers begin to move across every point of contact, via your company website, blog, guest posts, social sites and so on, they’ll start to build a visual picture of your company. They’ll learn your story, and begin to feel like they’re connecting with the business as an individual.

Sometimes we forget that not everyone is buried in online marketing like we are. In fact, most people aren’t… it boggles the mind. Did you know most people aren’t professional SEOs? Makes sense; if they were, we wouldn’t have jobs, but it’s that whole “circle of I” syndrome we keep talking about.

Buried in Marketing

Anyway, we recently received a reader question from a beginner in social marketing. For those of you who are inundated with the stuff, we’d love to see your additions in the comments.

Reader Steve wrote:

I’m new to marketing online and the social stuff seems overwhelming. I’ve read videos are a good way to go for marketing, and after I saw your video Managing & Monitoring Your Social Networks, I was wondering if you might have some insight and tips you could pass my way. Is YouTube really a good place to look at, and, if so, how do I get into videos? Any help you could give would be great.

That’s a great question Steve. We hope this answer helps.

Using YouTube As a Marketing Platform – Should You? Shouldn’t You?

There’s certainly value in using established strategies for online marketing – a fully optimized website, landing pages, PPC ads, and whatnot. However, marketing online is much like marketing in the physical world – it doesn’t do any good if you’re marketing to empty seats. You have to go where your target market is.

- And where can the target markets be found for most industries? On a number of social platforms.

Let’s face it – we’re in a social world. We want to communicate with each other, with businesses big and small, with friends, strangers and the world at large. Big brands and small businesses alike benefit from utilizing the social arena, as long as they’re wise in their efforts.

As we’ve said before in many posts, using social as a marketing tactic only works if you have the right social platform. The same goes for YouTube. Because of YouTube’s popularity, it’s possible to draw your audience to the videos you upload, but you have to plan your strategy out first. For example, before you ever post your first video, it’s a smart idea to draw an outline of your expected goals for using YouTube, as well as how you plan to get there:

• What will your videos be about? What specific topics will you cover?
• How will your videos help people to:
• Build a personal connection with you
• Fix their point of pain
• Learn, have a better life/job/business/family, or otherwise enjoy watching
• How do you plan to draw traffic to your YouTube account?
• Will you provide links from your site and/or blog?
• Will you be sharing your videos in your blog?

YouTube is far and above the most popular online video website today.  Harnessing its potential alone could boost your existing internet marketing strategies enough to greatly increase your bottom line. Use it carefully.

With that said, let’s cover four basics of video marketing:

1. Creating Professional Videos

Your videos can be you simply talking about the benefits and actions that pertain to your business.  Perhaps you could pick an interesting topic that leads people to become interested in what you do.  If you’re creating a video that has you talking, however, you’ll need a few things:

• A room with a nice look (your office will do)
• Proper lighting (a dark video will get less views)
• Quiet acoustics (to avoid abundant echo)
• HD quality web cam (these are quite affordable)
• Good quality microphone (also affordable)

If you’re not capable of doing so, ask a friend or colleague to help you set up, or hire someone to make videos on your behalf.  Remember that the content in your videos is more important than their quality – but quality matters, too, so do your best.  Compare your video against others in your industry to make sure it is bright enough and has clear sound before posting.

If you’re creating how-to videos and walkthroughs like the one mentioned in this article, you’ll need:

• Quality screen recording AND editing software (we used Screen Flow, for Mac). The ability to edit is important, obviously, but many screen casting products don’t offer this ability.
• Quiet acoustics
• Good quality microphone

Other tips for video creation:

• Add text pages into the video with attractive backgrounds for a nice touch, adding a little bit of “slideshow” feel
• Use annotations sparingly, if at all – if your voice and the few text pages won’t get the point across, neither will additional annotations
• Include links to your site and other videos in descriptions
• Include only relevant terms in your tags – don’t spam YouTube with non-relevant information
• Create video replies to other parties’ videos

Note: It might take several tries to get one video right. Don’t get discouraged. The first video we put out on YouTube took over 15 times before we got one we were (mostly… we’re perfectionists) happy with.

2. Create and Design Your Company’s YouTube Channel

Make sure your channel has a good background and picture. By clicking on “My Channel” and then “Edit Channel” (in the upper right corner), you can change how your page looks.

Connecting the dots:

Consider your YouTube channel to be an extension of your website. Where is your logo? Add the links to your site. Fill out the “About Me” section. Try to carry through with business colors throughout for continuity. Finally, make sure you include your other social networks (if any), so people can continue the conversation outside of YouTube if they wish.

3. Brainstorming on Ideas for Content

Talk to your staff and business partners about what might get attention on YouTube.  Also, look at the videos that get the most views and make sure your videos have content that can compete with those.

Here are 4 ideas that will help generate a buzz:

• “How To”: Explain to your audience how to do something.  You need not give away the farm; just share some basics about your industry.

• Humor: Anything that gets a laugh gets attention and may potentially “go viral.”

• Reviews:  Review other sites or technologies, or even speak about news events and give your opinion.

• Unique Content: Come up with something unique or an original angle on an existing trend.

 4. Be Active

To generate activity, you must first be active.  That is the only way to get more views and start a buzz about your YouTube channel.

• Comment on other related videos
• Message subscribers and friends of your page – keep the lines of communication open
• Be polite, and avoid shameless self-promotion
• Reply to messages and comments as often as possible
• Use your other social connections wisely to share uploaded videos – use unique comments (i.e. don’t use the same words with every social post)

Be Prepared and Be Patient – Video Marketing Isn’t Instantaneous

Learning Patience

Unless you hit the jackpot of video marketing, you aren’t going to become an Internet sensation over night. Be prepared to invest a lot of time until you get your viewership numbers up, and be patient with how long it takes.

Before you get upset and decide YouTube isn’t for you, look back at the videos you’ve done in the past and the number of views, likes, dislikes, etc. you’ve received. If some have far better results than others, try to do more that are similar. Finally, remember that building your business so you could worry about things like social marketing took time, too.

Steve, we hope this blog post helps answer some of your questions. –And again, if you’re a YouTube veteran, we encourage you to post your tips and links to in depth articles you’ve written or read, in case Steve and other readers would like to know more. If we get enough, we’ll update this post with a list of further reading.

Until next time, happy marketing!

I’m not sure what’s happened since 2012 started, but social networking use has exploded. I see it in Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Scoop.it and, yes, Google+. I don’t care what the news media is saying; regardless of how much Google skew’s their numbers, I can tell you as a user of all the above platforms that social media is huge.

Social Network Explosion

I now have over 2,800 Google followers. Twitter has exploded to 8K+ and Facebook, even though it’s never been our strongest platform, has over 500. The reason I’m telling you this is because it’s become apparent that a lot of new people are joining us in social.

As a business that offers an array of SEO services, our main objective is to listen, watch, learn and communicate. When a client comes to us and says, “Our social accounts aren’t doing very well,” we can, with accuracy, provide them with competent information.

You Talking To Me?

Here’s the problem. Although we look at our company as a full service SEO company, or even professional SEO specialists (in other words, something to do with SEO), we’ve been referred to as one of the ORM global specialists (remember how we talk about perception?). This lowers the amount of anonymity we might otherwise have.

So… although I’ve seen such an explosion of crap across social networks that I’m tempted to be publicly rude sometimes, I can’t. What I can do, instead, is write a guide:

The 12 Commandments of Twitter

Okay, so maybe the title is a little bit heavy, but I hope this just adds more weight to how important I think the following tips are.

1. If you want people to follow you on Twitter, you have to join the conversation.

You can’t just post your stuff all day long. If you do post things of your own making, make sure you mix it up with retweets, conversation and being yourself. Don’t be a self-proclaiming tweeter!

2. Fill out your profile with a picture and description.

Look – I’m not saying I have to see your face, but at the very least, please, not those freakin’ eggs. Give me a dog to look at, I’ll be happy with that, but I’m tired of looking at bird eggs. For the description, it doesn’t have to be an intense bio. It could just be something that speaks of who you are, like “loves black coffee, small puppies and Twilight”. I’m not looking for tons of info, but there has to be something that calls me to follow you. An egg, a user name and nothing else isn’t enough.

3. Unless you have a very, very good reason to, don’t set your stream to private.

This is like inviting people to a party and then telling them they aren’t welcome. Why would you do that? Some do it because they think it makes them “cool”, but it doesn’t impress anyone. Not only that, but I won’t follow you if I can’t easily RT your stuff, or read your feed prior to clicking “follow”. If you’re trying to promote yourself or business on Twitter, setting your stream to private won’t work.

4. Incorporate Twitter into your blog.

I don’t mean have your Twitter feed posted; I mean, include a Twitter share button. Add a link to your Twitter account that people can use to follow you if they want. I can’t tell you how many articles or posts I’ve seen people write about social networks, yet they don’t have a share button on their site. Seriously? And I’m supposed to believe you because… why… you’re such a shining example?

Look

Take the time to connect the dots across your website, marketing and social media efforts. It will pay off.

5. Be careful when you retweet compliments.

If someone sends you a compliment and it makes you feel warm and fuzzy, that’s great. That doesn’t mean the compliment will make those who follow you warm and fuzzy. If you aren’t careful, it can look cheesy, desperate and tawdry. Can you imagine if you gave a friend a compliment, they taped it, and played it every time someone looked in their direction?

We’ll find out how great you are. Instead, respond to the compliment with a “thank you” or variations thereof. If we’re interested, we can see what you’re responding to. If you absolutely can’t resist and MUST make sure others saw it, then at least include your thank you in the RT. “Thank you so much! @complimenter –’compliment’”

6. When you use #FF and #FollowFriday try to do it manually.

I can’t tell you how irritating it is to see that FFHelper picks the names for you. How can an automation – a machine or program – decide who you enjoy following?  It shows no forethought and a severe lack of connection. Worse yet, you’ve made it apparent to everyone. Even if you only give 5 #FF a week, those are important. You took the time to actually say in 140 words why that person is important to follow.

7. Do not start an argument on line.

Not only does it have a bad reflection on you, but also anyone you’re associated with – including your company. If you must make a point, take it into private (also known as a DM or Direct Message). If they’re not following you and you can’t let it go, quickly and succinctly state your case and then move on. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked away from my desk in order to avoid tearing into a creep.

8. Don’t use the automated DM.

“Hello. Glad you followed me. Check out my Facebook, website and 50 other sites I’m involved in. Since you followed me here, I know you’ll want to follow me there, there, there and there.”

Um, no, dink. Believe it or not, most people (including myself) aren’t over-eager socialites. I followed you on Twitter because I wanted to follow you on Twitter, not because I wanted to be attacked with a list of your social networks. If I want to find you on other places, I’ll look for you in other places. But now, since you sent me this automated DM, I don’t want to follow you anywhere.

It’s intrusive. It’s like taking down someone’s phone number at a cocktail party. Once you get home, you have an email, snail mail letter and the person standing at your door talking about, “and here’s my address, my business, my business card, my license number, the phone number I had when I was a kid…”

Drama Queen...

Oy. Have some control.

9. Gracefully thank others for an RT.

If someone retweets your  link, of course you should thank them, but be graceful about it. If you have the pleasure of several RT’s, there’s nothing wrong with pairing those people up for a single “thank you” tweet. This establishes that people that your post was great, and it will allow the people who RT’d you the chance to follow each other. What a great way of helping people connect!

10. You don’t have to follow every Tom, Dick and Mary.

I know you’ve heard this before, and there’s a reason for that. -Because it’s true. Connections are not made by numbers, but by conversations. Communities aren’t built by the numbers, but by the people in the community. Always look at the person following you before you decide to follow them back. You never know – they may not be someone you really want to associate yourself with.

-And I can’t tell you how many times I’ll look and find out that they haven’t posted anything in months. I’m not sure what those people are even doing on Twitter.

11. Don’t schedule your tweets all at the same time.

If you’re scheduling, make sure you find yourself the perfect social networking platform for you; Hootsuite, RockMelt, TweetDeck, I don’t care, but something. Having all your tweets pushed across my feed at the same time is so irritating!

Look, I understand you have something to say, sweetheart. It’s okay… but 13 posts all at the same time? Spread that stuff throughout the day and, please, change the content up! Get creative. Post your tweets at different times. It can even be the same link a few times, but at least make each one original. Your Twitter posts have a shelf life of about 3 hours, depending on how many RT’s you get. Keep that in mind when you’re automating tweets.

12. Use your hash tags.

Hash tags are those words with # before them, like #FollowFriday. Like any other tags, they describe what a post is about. They’re very useful, especially when the title gives no clue. For example, although most of our titles clearly spell out what the topic of a post is, You Think You Can, But You Just Can’t, Nemo says absolutely nothing. Therefore, I might add hash tags such as #rant, #Google+, and #socialmedia.

Twitter Rules

Don’t just use hash tags on your own links, either. If you’re sharing a link from someone else, include the tags you think are relevant to the post (if they don’t include some of their own). In this way, you’re helping yourself and helping those writers you think provide content worth sharing. A word of caution don’t go #tag crazy either, that’s really irritating.

Thou Shalt Not Break the 12 Commandments of Twitter

Unlike the tablets Moses brought down, these things aren’t set in stone – but that doesn’t mean they should be ignored, either. I strongly suggest, if you’re just starting out, that you at least try to put them in practice before going off on your own. Use them as a guideline, and you just might see your community explode.

I’ve been boiling all morning long – and what does someone who blogs do, but kick out a rant? All morning, I’ve been researching marketing agencies, digging into sites, news articles and various sources to find out about them. –And that’s the whole damn point. Why, if you’re advertising yourself as any type of internet marketing agency, should I have to go digging?

Connect The Dots

Maybe it’s Gabriella’s influence. “Connect the dots, Jahnelle,” she keeps saying. “You always have to connect the dots.” However, I also think my expectations of someone claiming to be an internet marketer come from the years’ of experience in connecting those dots, and understanding why that connection is important.

Case in point:

I visited a site for an agency. They market themselves as a “digital agency” on the “cutting edge” of technology. You know what I found? A blog – with this cute little calendar that shows the number of posts per month. Two here, three there, a couple there… Whatever – so maybe they aren’t as strict about regularly posting as we are.

Then, I read their latest post. Even though it’s a month outdated, I think, “I like the way this company thinks.”

Now, if you follow the SEO Article Archive, you probably already know Gabriella is the more social of us. Me, I use it because that’s where you connect with people on line. –And damn it if that isn’t another point. It’s where you connect!

So, I’m interested in this company, and I look for their social links. Contact us? Nothing social, just an address and a phone number.

They have a Facebook and a LinkedIn profile button on the sidebar. I’m not too fond of Facebook for anything other than the dubious pleasure of saying the occasional “hello” to friends that no longer live in my area, so I click on LinkedIn. It takes me to their company page, which shows me a list of employees (most without pictures).

Those employee links, in turn, take me to the individuals’ pages, where I can then, and only then, see that at least two have Twitter accounts. To connect with these people through LinkedIn, I have to send an email stating that I’ve worked with them or known them in some way. I’m faced with a decision of how to class these people I don’t know and just want to see what they’re saying – rather than the one-click “follow” of Twitter. Talk about a waste of “being social”.

To be blunt, it ticked me off to the point that I tossed my headset down and stalked outside for a breath of fresh air.

Social isn’t everything, just like SEO isn’t everything; it isn’t the end all, be all of marketing mediums. I know this. Twitter isn’t everything; there are plenty of platforms out there. –But you call yourself an internet marketer!

Maybe it wouldn’t have upset me if I hadn’t just poured through over 10 sites of so-called digital, internet, social, etc. marketing firms with dead blogs, dead social accounts and dead ends.

Connect the Friggin Dots, Already!

I’m trying very hard to keep my language fit for public consumption. I really am, but how are we supposed to teach our clients to connect the dots if we aren’t at least making more than a half-hearted attempt to lead by example?

Connect the dots

That stupid “What We’re Saying” section in the sidebar? I don’t care what you’re saying, if you were saying it five months ago! We live and work in a fast-paced, constantly changing world. What you said five months ago may be completely wrong today!

“Thanks for the fantastic holiday event!” by marketingtwitteruser was posted December 19^th of last year…. What, was it so fantastic that you had to take two months off to recover?

It just absolutely blows my mind. If you’re an Internet marketer of any type (i.e. you market your client’s brand, business, and online presence to the public) there should be some proof that you know what you’re doing on your own site. There should be some sign that you are actually trying, instead of doing what a lot of business owners do and throwing noodles at the wall to see if they’ll stick.

 Business owners have an excuse. It’s not their job. Their job is to use their past experiences and know-how to grow their business. You don’t have an excuse. It’s your job. This is what you do to make a living, and as far as I’m concerned, you are the weakest link. Good bye.

Deep Breath and a Note to Business Owners

Please, don’t visit these types of Internet marketing sites and think, “Well, if they aren’t doing it…” Connecting the dots online is important; much like connecting the dots in the physical world. For example, if you have a logo, that logo will be visible on your business cards. It will also be visible on your business letterheads and your store front.

Online dot connection works the same way. It’s called consistency:

• Your logo should be on your website, connecting your physical storefront with your online presence
• Your logo should be able to be converted in a favicon, to be used on the site
• If you have a coder or developer on hand, you can have a widget created for other sites to use
• Your company name should be consistent across all platforms, websites, articles and so on – anything you put it on, it needs to be the same
• Your business phone number should be easy to find throughout the site
• If your company is participating in social media:
  • All social accounts with the business name should have the business logo
  • All social accounts for individual team members should have their pictures
  • Your Twitter accounts, depending on how big your business is, should be a mix of company and team member names:
    • Your main company account (example: @level343), which resembles your actual company name
    • Your team members’ accounts (examples: @SEOCopy and @jrpittman), which is how followers get to know your company personally
    • Your department accounts (examples: @companysales @companyservice, @company Q&A, etc.), which (in a large corporation) give customers direct access to the necessary department
• Your Facebook page should include links to your website, your company email, and other social accounts
• Every social account should have some kind of congruity with your business site
• Provide ways on your site in the contact area for people to connect with the various social accounts
• If you decide to start a blog:
  • Set a minimum amount of blogs posts per month and stick to it
  • Set a regular schedule of days you’ll post (example: we post every Monday and Thursday) and stick to it
  • Allow people to share across social networks – and don’t just limit it to the networks you’re on; that’s selective thinking, and it won’t serve you well
  • Provide ways on the blog for visitors to connect with your company’s social accounts
  • Link your site to your blog and your blog to your site – provide two-way traffic flow
  • If you decide to do content curation or guest blogging, like we do on Scoop.it, Tumblr, and Paper.li:
    • Schedule your posts on these content curation sites or guest posting sites to be on days that you aren’t posting on your blog
    • Put your name out there every day in some way or another – give the search engines a reason to crawl your site

At some point in time once the Internet started, we got this idea that everything had to be in a box. Don’t link out – that’s bad. Don’t let people share outside of your social circles – that’s bad. Don’t let the blog and the business mix, because, wouldn’t you know it, that’s bad, too.

It's a Fine Day To Walk The Walk

Times are changing, my friends. History is a cycle, and we’re cycling back to open borders – only this time, the open borders are the ones we allow online.

Walk the Walk

Look. I have no idea whether these marketers are any good at what they do. However, if they aren’t doing what they tell their readers to do, or what they plan for their clients, they don’t believe it. Why would you ignore something that you know works to grow a business?

There are many online marketers, SEOs, copywriters and so on that walk the walk. They do what they say you should do – because they honestly believe it works. Any time you decide to follow a marketing company through their blogs or their social accounts, keep your eyes open. If they don’t practice what they preach, at least to a reasonable degree, they’re just blowing smoke to look good. What they say may make perfect sense, but they don’t believe it.

You’ve all see the predictions about 2012, I’m sure. 12 Troubling Predictions for Internet Marketers in 2012 is a good example, along with 275 Internet Marketing Predictions for 2012. We don’t really offer predictions, but one we at Level343 can provide with a high degree of accuracy is this: we’re going to give back to the community.

3Plus International

Sometimes, talking about giving back to the community is a nice thing. It makes you feel good. –And sometimes, you get a chance to do more than just talk; sometimes you get a chance to actually do – whether it’s volunteering your time at the YMCA or participating in an outreach program for youth around the neighborhood. For Level343, in 2012, we get a chance to do more.

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some amazing, strong-minded, wicked-smart women online. With our limited time, Jahnelle and I sometimes do pro bono work for mothers, friends – little groups here and there. We’ve taken on clients and (almost) done the work for free because we believed strongly in what they were offering. The experiences have been a pleasure – and I’m sure I’m speaking for all of us -; if given the chance to do it all again, we would.

Why? Well, one, it made us feel good to be able to give back. Two, and most importantly, we learned a lot creating and doing these “side” projects.

Coaching vs. Mentoring – The Finite vs. the Infinite

I was recently approached by Dr. Anne Perschel, co-founder of 3Plus International. Among many things, Anne has served as  Vice-President of the New England Society of Applied Psychology. In a discussion about what 3Plus does, she taught me a valuable lesson. There is a difference between coaching and mentoring.

Coaching vs Mentoring

You see, I had always thought of myself as a mentor, but there was no real difference between “coach” and “mentor. The words were interchangeable. However, while both provide important career guidance, the ways that guidance happens is vastly different.

Mentoring – The Infinite Guide

You can unknowingly and unwillingly mentor an individual – did you know that? For example, as a speaker, you may not know that the woman sitting in the second row of every conference you speak at is hanging on every word. When the conference is over and she goes back to work, she’s going to do her best to apply everything you said.

She trusts you and values your opinion; she reads your blog posts, articles and e-books. She occasionally asks you questions in 145 characters or less. When she comes to you, you listen and provide your feedback. She didn’t ask; you didn’t offer to be her mentor. You didn’t know she had picked you… because mentoring can (although it’s most often a mutual relationship) be a one sided relationship. A person can follow you and soak up any knowledge you’re willing to share without you ever being aware of it.

Infinite Length

A mentor doesn’t offer unsolicited suggestion and advice. Answering the question “do you have any ideas about…” is much different than saying “I have some ideas about…”

Another important distinction is that mentoring can be of infinite length. For example, if you’re knowingly mentoring an individual, she might call you up after three years and say, “Hey, I’m in this situation

and here’s what I think about it. Any thoughts?”

A mentor is:

• A giver of information
• A resource when advice or guidance is needed
• Not necessarily aware that they’re mentoring
• Most likely not the boss of the mentee
• Someone who helps the mentee achieve goals, make decisions or facilitate problem solving
• Often a life-long (or, at least, career-long) guide

Coaching – The Finite Teacher

You can’t, on the other hand, be an unknowing coach. Being a coach requires your intention, attention and leadership. The idea behind coaching is to develop the person’s skills for the current and/or future roles, but usually not for the duration of their career.  Coaching is focused on competence, whereas mentoring is focused on the whole person.

For example, your company hires someone to provide customer service support. As the manager of the customer service division, it may be your job to coach the new hire in how the company handles customer issues. Once that person learns how to perform the job position, the coaching relationship comes to an end. In this way, coaching is finite.

Somehow, I’d become a coach to many. It wasn’t unknowing because I knew I was helping; it was a matter of not understanding the role I had undertaken. I was a teacher, helping people learn how to perform their job better.

A coach is:

• A teacher of information
• A resource of direction at all times
• A willing, knowing participant
• A momentary teacher, for the period of time it takes the person to learn the job
• Someone who teaches how to improve current skills and performance

3Plus International: Sponsors of Change Through Women-to-Women Mentoring

Dorothy Dalton

Anne came to me because of our involvement in Top SEO Women, Honoring Women Wednesday and other activities that support women in business. She invited us into the 3Plus program to become mentors

for women who need guidance (but not, necessarily coaching) as they work to achieve their career goals.

Of course I said yes, but as it turns out, there aren’t a lot of women in the tech industry that are interested in mentoring. Anne and her co-founder, Dorothy Dalton, are working to change that.

Dorothy, an international talent management strategist recently featured in Forbes, runs coaching programs to meet the needs of women facing career challenges in the workplace.  On her internationally recognized blog, Future Perfect: Career Transition Strategies, she shares years of experience in corporate HR, European sales and marketing, global executive search and coaching with her readers.

Anne, also recently featured in Forbes and CIO Insight, has over 15 years’ experience as a leadership and organizational psychologist. Her business, Germane Consulting, coaches companies in strategic culture change for better business success (a 2006 Business Week article “Death of a Pushy Salesman”, outlined some of the process). As

well, she helps companies address obstacles that stand in the way of women being promoted to managers and top-level executives.

Both of these women are highly accomplished graduates. Dorothy is an Economics graduate. Anne has a Masters of Science degree in Human and Organizational Development, as well as a Doctorate in Psychology. Besides 3Plus International, they run their own businesses, are guest speakers and published authors. In short,

Ann Perschel

they’ve achieved a level of success that anyone would be happy to reach.

They have a joint goal, now. Anne talks about the Rule of 3 in 3…Plus:

“I’m in my first year of graduate school. The professor is leading a discussion on the correlation between medical/psychiatric diagnosis, race and ethnicity. There are two black students in the class. Neither speaks. I am puzzled and disappointed. After class I ask the professor about this dynamic, and hear for the first time what will later become the Rule of 3. Referencing social science research she states, “Until three members of the non-dominant group are present, they typically will not speak up, and if they do they will often not be heard.” Something rings true and I tuck this tidbit away as a possible Rule of Life.”

Later, she goes on to explain the goal of 3Plus International is “… raising a glass and the ceiling above us to ensure 3 women at top leadership teams in each and every company we touch – the early adopters. The rest will follow.”

Early Adopters – Walking the Walk

Walk The Walk

Those of you who follow us here and on our social networks know that we work to help other women achieve their professional goals. Happily, 3Plus International is another way to get involved, and we’re looking forward to working with Anne, Dorothy and the 3Plus group as mentors in 2012.

As women in the tech industry, to other women in the tech industry, we invite you to do the same by joining 3Plus International’s initiative. You can find out more about the mentoring program by reading the 3Plus Mission.

A confession: I don’t know much about branding. Oh, sure – I know words, but branding? That’s Gabriella’s bailiwick.

I know more now than I did six or seven years ago, but that’s because she’s been my mentor for several years (and you can’t have a client-centered conversation with Gabriella without branding coming in to it). So, when Level343 posts blogs about branding, that information comes either from Gabriella or information I’ve gleaned from her through the years.

If you’re a regular reader, you’ve come across several articles here about brand building and social media. We talk a lot about social media and using it as a way to “build the story of your brand”. Whenever Gabriella talks about it, I’ve always just nodded my head, thinking I sort of got it, but figuring I never really would.

Today, I’m feverishly typing up this post for your consumption because I’m excited. I finally got it. And in case you haven’t, I want to share this concept with you, so you, trying to follow advice and build your brand story, can get a better grip on what it means.

The Story of a Company…

At the time of this writing, I’ve just finished researching for an article. The topic (not the client) is Volkswagen ads. If you ever have some free time in the middle of your busy company building day, I highly suggest reading about the history of Volkswagen and its advertising campaigns. It’s fascinating, to say the least.

In 1959, Volkswagen had just started growing in the U.S. They contracted with an advertising agency to create ads focused on building brand advocates. Because, you see, brand advocates will do for a company what an ad never can – add a positive reputation. They talk about a brand, share it, tweet it, like it… they become the cheerleaders for a brand. And unless that brand does something really bad, they’ll always be the brand’s cheerleaders.

Now, I learned a few things about Volkswagen that I didn’t know (not being a big car enthusiast – if you are, you might already know these things). Check this out, and tell me if it isn’t wild…

It was designed by Ferdinand Porsche, an Austrian, for Adolf Hitler, a German dictator. During World War II, the manufacturing plant was turned into a forced labor camp for Germany. After the war, the British took it over, who then tried to pass it off to several places that turned it down flat, including Ford, Fiat and the French government. Americans didn’t want it, because it was too small and wasn’t “hip”. That is, until the mid 1950s, when college kids decided it was a good trendsetter.

After reading the history of the company (admittedly, the facts weren’t summed up in quite so few words) up until they started using ads, I turned to the ads themselves. The advertising agency had to reinvent the Volkswagen for the U.S. market, because we still had a lot of hard feelings after the war. And they did. They took a German made car and turned it into a U.S. quality brand.

How? With stories. The really fascinating thing about the Volkswagen ads is the stories they create.

The first ad alone, “Think Small”, is a study in building a brand story. Each succeeding ad only builds on the entire story, like “33 years later, he got the bug”. Increasing technology has only made them better, while still continuing the story, as seen in the Super Bowl commercial, “The Force”.

The Thunderbolt of Wisdom Strikes: Every Brand Has a Story

This stuff was fascinating to me (witness the fact that I’ve used that word several times already in this post). What was more fascinating was my reaction.

Up until this point, my only run in with the VW was Herby the Love Bug. I knew squat and cared less. Right after I finished researching, I was discussing all this new found information with a friend and it hit me: I liked the Volkswagen! Not only did I like the stories the ads told, but I felt warm and fuzzy towards the car and company!

I stopped in mid-sentence, because the thunderbolt of wisdom slammed into my head. “Oh!” I even said it out loud. “So that’s what she meant by brand story!” I get it! I really get it!

Here’s the deal:

Every brand has a story. Every brand, company and hobby business. The thing is there is someone out there who can relate to your story! The owner of a mom and pop store is out there right now, reading this article and thinking, “Yeah, but who’d be interested in ours?”

Listen. I doubt that there’s a single adult person out there who hasn’t visited a mom and pop store at least once in their lifetime. As well, I bet a lot of people know someone who runs one. Some would rather frequent a small, family-run store than a big brand store. So why aren’t you talking about it?

You just spent a half hour leaning against your countertop while you talked to Betty Lou about her son’s athlete’s foot and the best remedies. This is your life. To you, you may just be having a friendly conversation. To Betty Lou, you just provided fantastic customer service! So why aren’t you talking about it?

You run that parts store down on Main Street. Steve came in because he thought he needed a new alternator. While you’re helping him find the part to match his car, you two start talking about the problems. You think it’s probably something else, just by the way he describes it. After a 15 minute look at the engine in the parking lot, you show Steve that it’s not the alternator; it’s actually a frayed electrical system (which, by the way, is cheaper and easier to replace).

This isn’t in your job description. You run a parts store, not a mechanics shop. Yet, you like cars and enjoy helping people. To you, it was a fun, satisfying 15 minutes. To Steve, it was money saved, extraordinary customer service and the start of a good business to customer relationship. So why aren’t you talking about it?

Your Brand Story Doesn’t Have to Be Unique

That’s the real beauty of building a brand story, and the real lesson behind VW. The Volkswagen ad agency didn’t boost the brand by having a unique story. They boosted the brand by having a story people can relate to. If it’s unique, they can’t relate, can they?

With all this social media use – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. – you have the perfect platform for sharing your brand story. If you aren’t, then what are you doing? What on earth are you even using social media for?

By telling your story in the fashion of the example above, you’re actually sharing the story of a customer. Yet, the subtle undertone is about your quality service. You don’t have to be blatant about it; people will get the point without the pushy advertising.

If you’re not already putting your story out there, I urge you to really consider it. Your story is special by the very fact that it’s common. It’s something that reaches out to people who have been either in your position or your customer’s, or knows someone who has.

Look: the only way you’ll ever make friends is by letting them get to know you. The same goes for your company. Build that warm, fuzzy, friendly relationship with your market by giving them the story behind the brand!

So, did everyone have a good brouhaha good time for New Year’s? Are you ready to delve into 2012’s planning, marketing and magic? I don’t know about you, but around the office here, we’re ready to do more with less. We’ve taken a step back – but not a backwards step. – And if that isn’t enough double speak, I don’t know what is.

2012 Happy New Year

It’s 2012 – Are You Ready?

This is our 4th post of 2012. As far as the Mayans are concerned, this is the end. In the technology world, some people are predicting (rightly so) the year of the Mobile. Others have embraced QR codes as the second coming. Times are changing, my friends.

We even *gasp* went so far as to DARE not send out a blog post for one day (whether it will affect our readership or not remains to be seen). However, after a busy year, it was time to refuel the energy levels and decide how, what stories, which lessons and so on make sense for 2012.

Transitioning into the New Year

If you have a small company or a Fortune 500 and have yet to grasp that social has to be a part of your compass, brand, energy, purpose and (yes) daily language, you’ve been sleeping under a rock. We deal in a world of language and communication. Like it or not, text and keywords are how you, we, the world, formulate important concepts.

Yet, those concepts change, simply because life changes. We then have to formulate new words, new key terms and new text to define those changes.

For this particular blog post, we’re going to look back over the years at our most popular posts and what they’ve offered our readers. What concepts have changed? Experience leads to innovation and change of thought; do we think differently at the end of the year than we did at the beginning?

Are Social Media Tools Relevant to SEO?

Written in 2009, we covered a topic that was cropping up all over the place: social media and SEO. The end conclusion of the article was, “While social media in and of itself isn’t that helpful with SEO, the resulting links are.”

We’ve seen incredible results from a mixed campaign of SEO and social. Social seems to act as a magnifier of marketing efforts, due to the inherent viral nature of sharing. After the past two years in search, algo changes, G+ in Google, Facebook in Bing and so on, the picture is becoming much clearer.

In short, SEO and social media need to have seamless integration. It’s no longer about “the resulting links”. Individuals without websites are showing up in the results pages because of a Google Plus or Facebook profile. Some business owners have made one network or the other their home base, as it were.

Seamless Integration

The takeaway for you: If you’re using social media and have a website presence, make sure you connect the dots. The lines are fading between social media and SEO; having those connections ensures that you don’t lose out on your marketing efforts.

Merging Keyword Strategies and Effective Copywriting

No matter how you slice it, you need keywords, and this article does a fairly good job of explaining that. However, a lot of things have changed since we started the SEO Article Archive – patents, signals, Panda, copyright issues, citations… Because of this, the understanding of how keywords work needs to be clearer. (Read: Semantics and Relevance: Even Keywords Need Support Sometimes)

Key words and phrases work much like marketing words do in advertising. The next ad you listen to on the radio, pay attention to how many times they say certain words, and which words they repeat. The repetition of these words send signals to your brain, much like using keywords sends signals to the search engines.

The takeaway for you: We’ve written several articles since this time about how to effectively merge keywords into your site, copy and campaigns. Again, they connect the dots between your topic and those searching. Make sure that the terms you’re using are actually relevant to what you’re trying to convey and accomplish with your site.

Morphing Facebook

When we wrote this, Facebook had made an attempt to take over Twitter’s traffic (say that three times fast). They’d changed a lot in order to do this. Obviously, it failed. Odd, then, that they’re doing the same thing now that G+ is out.

How much have they changed over the past few years? We can’t even count the ways: ticker on the side, FB timeline, sharing abilities, lists… it goes on (and on, and on).

They’re the number one social platform. They have a larger user base than most countries have people. People use them for business and personal, fun and work. Why can’t they be happy with that? Ah, c’est la vie. Facebook will always be Facebook…

Always Another Platform

The takeaway for you: There’s always going to be another social platform; there’s always going to be the next best thing and the next shiny tool. Unless you have many clones, there’s no way you can keep up with all of them. Don’t try; pick the ones you can build a community on, and stick with them… unless they turn into MySpace (in which case, run).

You’ve already established your community and your story… why would you stop and start all over again.  Don’t be a foolish; learn how to listen and grow your audience.

“Big Brother” Google Step’s on SEOs

Before you ask, no – we don’t feel any different. We’ve seen example after example over the past few years that show us how Google feels about our profession. So what’s another year without fear in the SEO community?

Google isn’t all cherries and ice cream. There are enough lawsuits targeting them around the world that they should be enough to give you a taste of reality.

The latest includes things like moving search to https. Oh, sure, they call it a privacy issue; yet, we know they’re still tracking the key terms. They’re just being selective about to whom they’re giving that data to: i.e. the advertisers. As well, they’re testing PPC now, giving people the ability to fill out a “request a call” form from the SERPS. In other words, they’re trying to make it so no one ever leaves the search results pages.

The takeaway for you:Google is in business for Google. Before you put every cent, and every effort, into marketing with Google, remember that. Also, remember that they have control over your account; if you do something against their terms (whether you do it knowingly or not), they can shut your account down. Be very careful to observe the rules.

Google Is Always Watching You

How to Write an SEO Article

This is a good old stand by and, although we’ve written several updated and in depth versions, it’s still one of those good “foundational” articles. Having said that, however, it’s written from the article submission frame of mind… and that, friends, professional SEO specialists, and readers, has changed drastically.

For one, many article submission sites were hit by the Panda update, which pointed to a dearth of quality content. As well, many have lost their appeal to the visitor, lessening the impact that article submission once had.

Today, we look more towards content marketing (in truth, it’s a lot like article submission… but… not). With content marketing, your articles are written with an actual site and that site’s audience in mind (for example, guest posting for our blog). Rather than submit the same article to umpteen different directories, like many have done in the past, content marketing is a single, well written – nay, crafted – piece of art that you hang up in another person’s gallery.

The takeaway for you: Content marketing is more involved than article marketing, but can also bring better returns in terms of traffic, authority, publicity and, yes, ranking. Pay close attention to the sites you visit in your industry. If they offer guest article spots, give your site a marketing and publicity boost; offer a crafted piece of art!

Cutting It Short, Because Time is of the Essence

We were going to cover our top 10 posts of all time. We stopped at five because 1) we’re long winded and we’ve hit our self-imposed maximum word count and 2) because your time is of the essence.

We can’t do with you what we normally do with clients. With clients, we sit down and talk about their project – and then we shut up and listen. Since we can’t do that, we share with you what we do, and give you a starting point. Therefore, it’s time for your homework assignment – and since you’re busy running a company, you’re going to need all the time you can grab to complete it.

Create Your Masterpiece

Look at your top posts, landing pages and guest blogs and compare them with the “you” you are today. Were you able to tell your story? Can people say three things about you just by following you and reading? Have you branded yourself?

What are some of the things you can take away from them? What are some of the lessons you can share with your readers? What has changed since those top posts were written? This is good practice for you, in terms of paying attention to the content you’re putting out; you’ll be surprised at the amount of information and ideas that occur to you.

Our 2012 predictions, by the way, since everyone who’s anyone is giving them…

The world is not going to end. SOPA will have forced some underground groups to get a nice network. The housing market will still suck, and the 1% will still ignore reality. We, however, will keep steadfast and continue to shoot with both barrels while taking names along the way!!

Have you noticed how social networks are becoming more about building memories? You make friends, share events, get congratulated for happy events and condolences for sad ones. You can share pictures, videos… in fact, social accounts are like the digital scrapbooks of our lives (for individual accounts) and businesses (for corporate accounts).

Now, I’m immersed in social, SEO, marketing and branding. Rarely do I have time to enjoy and experience social media like the average user does. When a social site makes changes, I automatically look at those changes to see if they can be used for business purposes.

Because of the above, I didn’t really think about it much when Facebook turned on their Timeline in September of last year. It was just par for the course – just another way of displaying what you share. I did what I always do – how can I use it for business, what to do with the new layout and space, etc.

-And then, my personal connections started actually using Timeline. As these things often do, their use rolled into my view. I got curious and started delving into my own timeline. What I found was positive and negative, painful and wonderful.

My Facebook Timeline

If you’ve followed our social accounts and read this blog, you’re probably aware that I didn’t grow up as a U.S. citizen. I’m an Italian citizen, with Italian parents. The ironic part is that I wasn’t raised in Italy; I was raised in the Middle East. While this may seem out of the way to people in the U.S., but if you look, at Europe in proximity to the Middle East, it’s almost like driving from Iowa to New York – maybe even shorter, now that I think about it.

Can you find me?

My mother was a budding starlet back in the 60’s. She was promised fame and fortune if she moved to Lebanon. Needless to say, she did move, and ended up marrying one of the most prominent political figures of that country’s history (my mother’s life would be a book in and of itself).

To dramatically shorten a really long story, our way of life had an adverse affect on my sense of stability, safety and family. As an only child, I learned how to play by myself and with my imaginary friends. –Yet, before the war in Lebanon, there were so many kids from various nationalities, you couldn’t help but be immersed in a plethora of cultures. Smart wonderful people from every walk of life, culture, and nationality.

I fell in love there, kissed my first boy and smoked my first cigarette. I didn’t move to this country until later. Our lives weren’t tons better once we moved here, but there was a sense of strength, of pride… and, of course, the streets weren’t paved with gold compared to where I’d grown up. Opportunity was all around this great, big land, but the memories and connections I made in Beirut will live in my heart forever.

Post War Lebanon

All these memories came flooding back by looking at the Facebook timeline. It made me wonder how much of my past I could build with this one network. Maybe I’m lucky, or maybe not. Not all the memories are pleasant, but I have major red flags with historical facts and whatnot, so I can actually draw a pretty accurate timeline if I chose to.

During my youth, Lebanon was riddled with civil unrest. Yet, I hold treasures and moments when I look through pictures. During the 16-year-war that started in the mid-70s, more than 100,000 were killed, and the same handicapped by injuries. About 900,000 were displaced from their homes. In the meantime, I lost track of so many of those I’d known…

Looking through the timeline on a Sunday afternoon, my mind wandered. How many of you can look at a certain picture, food or smell something, and you’re back in a particular moment? That minute, what I felt of upon seeing the year 1972 was fear mixed with joy.

Once I looked over things, considering whether to fill in moments with images and so on, I had time to really think about Facebook’s timeline. Was it a good thing? A bad thing? Just a thing?

Pros and Cons – Is Facebook’s Timeline Such a Good Thing?

How will you share your story?

For me, not everything in my past is something I want to broadcast to the public – and I don’t think I’m alone in that. I realized, while writing this, that most of the cons are personal based, while most of the pros are business based.

For example, one of the first cons that popped in my mind is that someone can share a picture of you to their network, tag you in it, and have it show up on your timeline. In other words, that photo of you tying more than a few on at the last company Christmas party could end up very public.

When you post something now, you have to be extra careful and decide with everything how public you want it to be. Because anything you share with your network has the possibility of being shared by them to their network and so on. While this is great for business, it’s not so great for personal.

Another con that comes to mind ties in with your communications on other sites. By clicking that innocent-looking “Add to Timeline” button on a site, you’re agreeing to let your network know everything you’re doing on that site. In a world where privacy is a huge factor, is this something you really want to do?

Another: the ease of use for the Timeline really calls to you. It’s inviting, and it pulls you to want to fill in the timeline. Before you answer the call, think long and hard about what you want to fill in – others will be able to see, comment, share and so on. As with anything you put online, a good rule of thumb is to never share anything, no matter how privately, that you would have a problem with having plastered across the Net.

On a business level, there really doesn’t seem to be many cons for the new Facebook layout. The timeline allows you to build an in depth “about us” wall, and the picture panel is a definite plus for branding your business.

In fact, the only real con I can see is that none of this new functionality is available to brand pages – only user accounts. Darned if that doesn’t make us brand users green with envy. So, if you have a personal account, but you’re using it to talk about your business, you get the best of both worlds.

As a business user, filling in the timeline could be a great addition; again, I would caution you to choose carefully what you do and don’t share. The wide picture panel can be used to make an outstanding impression on your followers. In short, the changes have been very good for those who use their personal Facebook accounts as business additions.

Stories At Work

You Have a Story to Tell

I wouldn’t be surprised to see some brands creating some type of personal account, or, at the very least, developing some apps, to get a timeline-type look. Facebook Timeline is an excellent way to share your brand/business story.

-And isn’t that really what social is all about?

Every business – every brand – has a story to tell. Of course, you decide how transparent your story will be, and you do that by being very careful what goes out on your timeline. Every connection from your past can come back to either boost your reputation or haunt you forever.

No one knows how much of this will matter in a few years, technology changing as quickly as it does. No one knows how many of your connections you’ll still have later, because the Internet is such a fluid medium. What we do know is that we live in exciting times; you, your business and your brand are parts of those times.

As you delve into Facebook’s Timeline, remember that we all have a story to tell, including me – including you. Tell it well!

For the first time since Level343 opened its doors in 1998, we’re closing for the holidays! There won’t be a blog Thursday, but don’t worry. We’ll be back with fresh content, updates and general mayhem, Monday, January 2, 2012. In the meantime, we’ve started a quarterly enewsletter (first installment went out early this morning). We invite you to view the email in your browser and click on the subscribe link.

Quick update:

Last week, we posted about Gabriella’s run in with the con man operating under New Orleans Computer Repair (AKA New Orleans Apple Repair and French Quarter Repair Services). So far, the post received over 600 views, over 200 social shares and been picked up by news aggregators. People throughout the U.S. have reported the post showing on the front page, between the 2 and 8th positions for new orleans computer repair, new orleans apple repair, french quarter repair services and other relative terms.

If you share the post on your site or across social networks, please remember to include hashtags with one of these terms, and to link the post in content using the title. We want to keep it going in the SERPs. We don’t want this guy to be able to continue what he’s doing – let’s hurt him where it counts – his pocket book!

If you’ve been a victim of a con artist, here are a few things you can do:

• Report them to the local police
• Report them to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the BBB of your area
• Visit 5 Complaint Sites for Pissed Consumers, and report to the listed sites
• Visit Top 10 Complain Sites and report to the listed sites
• Search for review sites where they’re listed and post your reviews
• share your poor experience on social networks

Coming Up for 2012

Although we’re closed for the blog and client work, we’re working hard behind the scenes to bring even better services, experiences and content to 2012. First and foremost, next Monday will bring our long-awaited post declaring the winners of the Top 2012 Women in SEO, as voted by you, the people (we heart democracy), and the new logo for these wonderful, brainy women.

Other plans throughout the year include:

• An updated blog format – we are currently working on a redesign for the blog, to provide a smoother, more pleasant viewing experience
• Streamlining our feed – we will be working on a better way to deliver our RSS feed to our subscribers
• Quarterly newsletter – started today, and we’ll have a subscription sign up form here on the blog
• Level343 blog widgetized – we’ll working on a website widget, for bloggers who would like to share our content with your readers
• Hiring writers – we are currently open to more writers to join the Level343 Team. Please read our guidelines before contacting us.
• Guest bloggers – recently, we opened the Article Archive to guest bloggers. However, as we’re particular about the type of content that goes out on our blog, please read our guidelines for guest blogging before contacting us.
• Content, content, content!

We’re extremely excited about the upcoming year, and we look forward to connecting and engaging for many more years to come. Stay tuned for more from the Level343 Team!

For you, Mr. New Orleans Computer Repair Guy, also known as French Quarter Repair Services and iPhone or iPod Repairman:

You returned my Mac Airbook in worse condition than it was before. That’s bad business. You charged me more than the agreed upon amount and wouldn’t return my possessions until I paid for it. That’s extortion. You call yourself a certified technician; in my estimation, you’re nothing more than a scam artist. Then you advertise SEO on your site. Mister now you’ve really messed up.

Photo credit: Frank Benson

For our readers: You might say, after reading this article, “Wow, Gabriella, isn’t this a little vindictive?” To which I respond, “Yes, and no.” I dislike scam artists. It pisses me off when someone screws people out of their hard-earned money. It pisses me off even more when these people have my industry plastered on their site. Then, it becomes one more piece of coal to fire, fueling stories about bad optimizers. You can be sure this guy treats his SEO customers just as well as his computer repair customers.

I’m going to do my very best to make sure this one, at least, has an online reputation that reflects his lack of professionalism and honesty. –And my best is very good. Call it a lesson in reputation management.

French Quarter Repair Services? I Don’t Think So…

You’d reasonably think that someone like me, working online with computers, dealing with people all day long and buried in search, could figure out how to get their computer fixed. Right? That’s what I figured, anyway, but I was wrong.

Yes I'm happy :)

So, when I loaned it to my partner, who accidentally dropped coffee on the keyboard (a whole other point of irritation), we quickly searched for a certified Mac technician in New Orleans. My AirBook needed emergency care, and I was going to make sure it went to the best computer doctor around. There aren’t many of them; I think we found two.

My partner spoke to the man we chose, who quoted $100 for a diagnostic “and we’ll service it right away”. Not a problem. She drove the hour to New Orleans. While there, she asked to verify if he was an Apple certified technician, and was told that he was. This is important, because Apple says the Macs need to be taken care of by certified technicians.

She dropped it off, paid the $100 and then waited for the shop to call back. This is how the process is supposed to go, right? I mean… reasonable expectations being what they are?

Mr. New Orleans Computer Repair Guy Calls Back…

We’re told the $980 AirBook I bought will take $450 for a new motherboard and an additional $250 for labor. There’s no way, little cuteness be damned, that I’m going to spend almost as much for repair as it cost to buy it fresh out of the box. We told him “no, thank you,” and that one of us would pick it up Monday.

Everything happened like a normal business transaction should. In my mind, this means he just puts the computer back the way it was, closes it up and calls it a day. However, when my partner showed up to pick up the computer, the owner of the shop is out, and the salesman tells her he can’t release the computer to her until the shop owner gets back. Odd – we were told we could pick it up any time.

It Was Love At First Sight

He also told her he spoke with the owner, who said the computer was still opened, had special diagnostics equipment in it, and he needed to get the stuff out. She calls me and informs me she has to hang out in New Orleans until the shopkeeper comes back in the afternoon; she didn’t want to drive an extra two hours for a second trip.

“Tell the guy we want our computer back, and don’t want to wait for the owner,” I told her. After all, again, we were told we could pick it up any time.

There I was, listening to the conversation through the phone lines, and hearing it escalate into an argument. My partner threatened to call the police if the owner did not, at the very least, get on the phone with her to address why she had to wait during business hours. And here’s where it got really…messed… up…

What?

The salesman came from the back of the shop, with my Airbook still open, an hour later. He told her the owner was back (who she had yet to see), but she needed to pay an additional $50 in order to get the computer. When asked how he could charge more than Apple, he said, “I can charge a hundred thousand million dollars, if I want.” On hindsight, I’m glad I wasn’t there. Someone would have ended up calling 911 to report a whole series of violent crimes being committed.

Why were we being charged an additional $50? Apparently, there’s a policy stating that you owe a $50 fee (on top of the initial $100, mind you) if you decide not to use their services. There has to be that policy, because the salesman said there was, and that it was stated on their tech support page. It isn’t.

Seriously?

When I got my computer back, I have to tell you, it was a sad sight. My poor Airbook looked completely beaten. It still had big drops of coffee on the inside (so there’s no way he cleaned like he said), and there was a brand new dent on the corner.

The Reviews – Too Little, Too Late

A lesson, here; always check the online reviews. I know that – hell, I push having people review your products. I didn’t think about it. If I had, I’d most likely have my computer back, it’d be clean, and … oh yeah… working. Reviews for French Quarter Computer Services New Orleans on Yelp are plain nasty. One reviewer says, “This place changes names when their reviews get too bad. They have 7 BBB complaints and didn’t even bother to respond to 1 of them.  If it’s anywhere near the 1900 block of St. Claude DO NOT GO!!”

Evidently not cleaned

Digging even further finds the iPod Repair Man site, which claims to be a subsidiary of… drum roll please… New Orleans Computer Repair. ACD Computers in Covington? Yes, that’s him, too. I’m not absolutely positive, but Apple Repair New Orleans also appears to be the same guy, if you go by the footer links in this tech forum profile.

The fact that this guy advertises data recovery services makes me shudder…

Online Reputation Management – Lesson #1

This has been wiped with alcohol?

You know… this is what I do for a living. We help clients with their reputations, their online presence, website, branding, and optimization. With this article, I wavered on whether to expose him publicly on our company blog, because I don’t want people to get the idea that we’re anything other than professional.

However, while I must profess a tad bit of malicious glee, I’m also greatly concerned about this individual’s business practices. Why? Because:

• he “runs” at least four companies
• he advertises his services as covering at least six cities
• he advertises several different services under separate operational names (iPod Repair Man, ACD Computers, Apple Repair New Orleans, Devious Designs)
• New Orleans Computer Repair AKA French Quarter Computer Services is listed under at least three different addresses in various local directories
• he knows enough to at least “try” to bury bad reviews and could one day be successful

WTF did you use?

I’m going to call the BBB and add yet another negative mark against his “F” rating, but I know that’s not going to do much good. What does help – what will help, is social media.

I’m posting this article on our site, with our site’s authority pushing it. I’m going to share it across my social accounts. I’m going to ask everyone I know to retweet, Like, Share and otherwise forward to a friend. I’m going to do my best to get this page pushed so far up in the SERPs that it outranks his own site. I want people to see this page before they ever get to his site; just in case they forget to check for reviews.

Mr. New Orleans Computer Repair Guy, rule #1 of reputation management is: Don’t screw your customers over. They can get online and talk about it.

We read a lot of stories that talk about how companies are joining social media by the droves, but are they really? I mean, what are they doing? If all they’re doing is opening social accounts and sitting on their professional graveyards, is this really joining social media? I think not.

iPhone ROI... Really?

A recent YouTube video, Social Media ROI Hypocrisy, makes an excellent point. Many companies will spend thousands of dollars supplying their employees with iPhones, iPads, Blackberries and other smartphones, without once asking what the ROI is. Yet, let a marketer mention social media, and “What’s the return on investment, here?” is the question companies have to know.

Only 14% of Companies Get It

A recent InSites Consulting survey of 400 senior marketing managers delivered some interesting, and somewhat frustrating results:

• 68% of companies have a Facebook page
• 56% have a Twitter account
• 47% have a LinkedIn account
• Only 14% actually have integrated social media
• 20% aren’t doing anything at all

So, out of all the Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and LinkedIn accounts that companies have, only 14% combined are actually integrated into the companies’ various campaigns. Meh.

You know what the biggest barrier is to full social media integration? Return. On. Investment. InSites calls it “financial added values”, but it’s still ROI, no matter how fancy you dress it up.

Wake Up And Smell the Social

Having a company social account alone isn’t enough. Especially if you’re going to claim that “you got no ROI from social”. Social media marketing is like exercise; you don’t see results unless you actually do something.

Wake Up And Smell The Social

So, if integrated social marketing isn’t hopping on the most popular social sites and creating an account, what is it? First, let’s make sure you’re ready:

How to know if you’re ready for social media marketing

• If you feel like you’re being forced to integrate, you aren’t ready;
• If you’re still uncomfortable about the ROI, you aren’t ready;
• If you don’t know the reasons for integrating, you aren’t ready;
• If you don’t understand what you’re going to do once you get there, you aren’t ready for social media marketing.

If you have all those issues out of the way, let’s get started.

What Is Integrated Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is a lot of things, and they all take work, as I think I’ve already been clear about in the first portion of this article. –But, what are those “things”?

Creating a strategy

Would you build a house without having blue prints? No. –And you shouldn’t use social for business without having a plan, either. However, you have to remember that social media isn’t a standalone marketing method. With this in mind, how are you going to incorporate it into your currently successful methods?

For example, if you use television advertising, this is an excellent opportunity to share your company with the world as a business that cares about the consumer. Most companies that succeed with social use it as a consumer platform, to connect, troubleshoot and otherwise communicate with their target market.

Once you’ve made the decision to set up your accounts, but before you actually do, have a well-outlined strategy of how you’re going to use social media. Your strategy should include the (realistic) goals you want to achieve. Split those goals into phases, such as “set up”, “communication” and “reputation management” – which brings us to the next point…

Seriously people...

Tracking your reputation

Unlike many other forms of internet marketing, social really opens your company up to feedback. Hopefully, it’s positive feedback, but you can’t please everyone all the time, as the old saying goes. You need to know how you’re going to watch, listen and learn what people are saying about you. For example:

• Google Alerts
• Trackur
• Icerocket
• Hootsuite
• Yahoo Pipes

After all, if tracking social media as a way to gather public sentiment is good enough for the government, it should be good enough for you.

Choosing your public voice

If everybody in the company hops on your social account, followers will become confused. Having one or two dedicated individuals running your social gives your company a personality, which is what you’re aiming for anyway. Who wants to speak to a building, when you can speak to a person? However, you want to choose your people wisely; a strong voice can make all the difference in the success of your social media marketing. Even if you have a large company, you at least want to have a social media “manifesto” outlining how your voice(s) are expected to communicate with the public so there are no surprises waiting in the wings.

Setting up your reputation management strategy

Hope for the best; most companies never see the dirty side of social media. Yet, prepare for negative comments. For smaller companies, this may mean you and your employee talking it over. For larger companies, make sure your marketing department is talking to the PR people, who are talking to the sales people, who are talking to… you get the idea. A chain of command has to be in place. How will your company respond if a customer bad-mouths you, or someone tells you to kiss off? How will you deal with hostility? Getting your reputation management strategy ready before a crisis strikes is the first step to avoiding – and managing – one.

Share your social accounts

Many… oh so many… businesses set up their accounts and then hide them in the basement. You don’t have to be embarrassed. When you set these accounts up, wear the badges proudly. Give your website visitors easy access to your company via these social sites. Put those easily-recognizable, linked icons on your site and on your blog where they’re visible!

Use Only A Few

Customize your accounts where possible

Twitter lets you customize your background. So do YouTube and Facebook. For that matter, although it’s limited, so does LinkedIn. These accounts are your online “face”; put some makeup on them! Add your logo, colors, information…  claim them as your own. Put a big ole’ “we are here” stamp on them!

Interact

Okay, so I left this one for last when it should be first. Let’s be clear, here. It does no good to go through all the setting up, strategizing and personalizing if you’re not going to listen and interact with people. Don’t use the excuse of “no one is talking to me”. It gets old. Get out there, already!

There are literally millions of people online, interacting on these social platforms. How many of them are you going to leave to your competitors, simply because they didn’t talk to you first? Find people of like interests. Share good information, even if it’s not your own. Do something without thinking “what’s the ROI” first.

I strongly encourage you to read The Marketing Nut’s 125 Ways to Integrate Social Media to Zoom Your Business. It’s a long list of possibilities any company can easily do to get their social going. Fulfilling even half this list will give you a strong start.

Change Your Thinking

You have to start thinking differently. You have to take the time to stop and study your market. Here’s a hint; social is growing. Only once you step outside the box of thought that says “ROI now” will you gain inspiration and growth. You can’t not go there simply because of fear of the unknown. Eventually, you have to ACT – or be lost behind the companies that do.

When I was a kid, I dreamed about flying through the air with the greatest of ease to rescue puppies, kittens and grannies. I ran around the house in pink fuzzy pajamas and a blanket tied around my neck, on a mission to save the world.  I was Super Girl, Wonder Woman and the GI Joes combined! Evil doers beware!

Super Hero. Mom

You remember how happy everyone was when the super hero saved the day? They clapped, waved their hands in the air, gushed their thank yous … and you thought, “Wow, that’d be so cool!” I always thought they were the cream of the crop, the crème de la crème, which excludes ordinary people, of course.

Funny thing is, when I grew up I found out that everyone can be a super hero. Even me. Even you.

The Case of the Website Bandit

Me, I’m a mom. I get up in the morning like every other parent and send my little loves off to school. Yet, once the home is empty, I slip into my super hero gear and fly off to save the world. Granted, it’s a small world, but the effects are the same.

Because, you see, I was able to join the Level343 Team. It’s like the Justice League for business! Everyday, we get to save companies from falling into oblivion. We get to help lift them up and make them shine brighter than they ever have before. We’re not just helping companies, though; we’re helping the people who make up those companies – the hard-working business owners and employees who are struggling to keep going. – And that’s awesome.

Got Hacked?

We beat down problems with the powers of our mind through creative brain storming with clients. Occasionally we work with other super heroes when the dark forces of competition are particularly strong and viral, like those shows where Batman and Superman team up. We even help some of our clients be heroes themselves when the case has something to do with reputation management.

Every once in a while it’s something big, like The Case of the Website Banditwhen a client’s website got hacked. Some foul fiend had fiendishly (of course) hidden diabolical links in the client’s site. With ruthless determination, we investigated the cause of erroneous outgoing links, leaving no stone unturned. We uncovered the culprit files and, although the fiend got away, we saved the site. The client was happy, the Team was happy – happy endings, high fives and cocktails all around.

Now, maybe you think this is all a lot of make-believe from a grown woman who needs to gain a little maturity. Or, maybe you’re already getting the idea…

Brand-Empowered Super Heroes: Customer Service That Excels

While doing research on how well brands are embracing social media, I came to a startling realization. When these brands address concerns for their customers, that’s just fancy marketing talk. What they’re really doing is saving the day – they’re coming to the rescue of the people who trust them.

These “brand-empowered” super hero stories are all over the Web:

In 2007, an American Airlines gate attendant became the heroine for an award-winning economist by saving his seat until the last second, allowing him to make his flight. A week later, a United Airlines employee went out of his way to make sure the economist had a seat on an earlier flight when the original one was delayed by several hours (read Outrageously Good Customer Service at Freakonomics).

In February 2010, an executive chef at the Ritz-Carltion, Bali did a good deed for a family whose son suffered from food allergies. When it was found that their specialized eggs and milk had gone south, he called his mother-in-law, who bought the products in Singapore and flew to Bali with them. The mother-in-law became a heroine.

The same year, an employee at Trader Joe’s became a family’s hero when a winter storm blew in and an 89-year-old grandfather was stuck in his house because of the snow. Trader Joe’s not only delivered a load of groceries to the man’s home, but also gave the food to him for free.

In August 2011, Morton’s Steak House exceeded the call of duty for a man who had too much flying and too many engagements he had to be at to have time to eat. He was really hungry after a busy day, knows he’s going to miss supper, too, and sends out a joking tweet to Morton’s corporate, “Can you meet me at the Newark airport with a porterhouse when I land in two hours? K, thanks.” An employee from Morton’s drove 23.5 miles to the airport with supper. The man, a well-known PR and social media leader was blown away. Morton’s saved the day.

There are oh-so-many more examples available – all you have to do is search for “examples of customer service”. You’ll find things like An Extraordinary Customer Service Experience and What’s Your Best Customer Service Story?

How Can You Be a Super Hero?

In 3 Easy Steps...

You can be a super hero, too. Oh, maybe not like Superman or Captain America, but a super hero none-the-less. How? Well, let’s look at what the heroes, fiction and reality, have in common:

• They watch what’s happening. The Justice League had the Watchtower with the Monitor Womb, where they observed all the going ons of planet Earth. So does Morton’s, only they use social media. You have this power. Monitor your brand, your product names and company name on social sites. If you sell other people’s products, that’s okay. You can go that extra mile and respond to someone who’s having a problem, even if they didn’t buy the product from your particular store. You can start with something like, “Hey, I sell that product, too – I’ve found that if you…”
• They actively listen and look for the alarm. Batman had the Bat Signal. You, on the other hand, have the Internet. Actively look for negative comments that you can respond to. When you have the time, search for your brand citations. Any time you find a negative comment, where a customer/client is unhappy, get on your super hero gear! Being a hero doesn’t have to be about saving the world; for us ordinary mortals, it’s about saving the day one person at a time.
• They go out of their way to help. Superman, the Man of Steel, didn’t just fly around saving the world. He helped kittens out of trees, blew holes in mountains for passageways and saved grannies from having to walk across the street. No job was too big, or too small for his personal attention. The same can be said for the employees of American and United Airlines, Trader Joe’s and many others.

For the man racing to meet flights, what the employees did was no small thing. For the elderly gentleman who couldn’t leave his home, what Trader Joe’s did was fantastic. For the family at the Ritz-Carlton, the chef and his mother-in-law did something unexpected, caring and awesome. These businesses became heroes to their customers, and their customers became fans for life.

This kind of super human action is not beyond you. It may take a few hours of a day. It may take a few dollars out of your pocket. It may take some phone calls, a short walk or a long drive. Yet, for the relatively few hours you spend saving the day for your customer, you gain a lifetime fan. If that’s not enough motivation and you need something that ties into your business, you also gain a lifetime customer and a whole bunch of better PR than you’ll ever get from paying somebody to write it.

The point….

TRUE CUSTOMER SERVICE…

…is not about saving your brand or company’s behind. True customer service is about the people who trust you enough to invest their time and money into your brand. It’s about treating people like people – treating them like the backbone of your business that they are. It’s about being a super hero whenever the opportunity arises.

True customer service – great customer service – is about saving the day, one person, one problem, at a time.

Social marketing used to be just that thing you did; like politicians, business owners would scout the neighborhood, introduce their services, shake hands and kiss babies. You’d talk to people and get to know them; you’d share stories and maybe a cup of coffee.

What's Your Social Footprint?

It was traditional marketing, gorilla marketing, TV advertising, political campaigning, etc. It was getting your name out there or getting known. You made acquaintances, in other words. You were actively involved in marketing your business through your social circles.

Fast forward. Today, all of the above is called social networking and social marketing (depending on who’s talking – some would put a whole bunch more words into defining social marketing, like campaign creation, measuring data, R&D and so on). The difference is that your neighborhood, thanks to the Internet, has billions of people in it. You have a wider reach, and there’s a lot more hands to shake.

- But, you still have to be actively involved. 

Can You Hear Me Now?

Is there a right way to use social media? Far be it from me to say “yes” to that question. There are WAY too many variables – the “proper” usage depends on your brand, your target market, how much time you have… as with SEO, there’s no cookie cutter program here.

There are, however, certain approaches that span the industries, such as interaction. You have to interact for social marketing to work at all. You have to be involved. Once you’re involved, you start to care about how it all works out. Some watch numbers religiously, get upset when they’re unfollowed and see their Klout number as a personal reflection of their self-worth.

When you reach that point (almost everybody does), it’s often followed with a light bulb blinking in your head. It’s a personal Eureka moment, where you take a step back and ask yourself, “At the end of the day, why am I even bothering with social media?”

Too much information

Normally, you’re using it to connect with your customers and build your reputation, right? So you pour out all this good stuff and you wonder… are people really listening? Is this making any difference? Am I wasting my time?

Let’s address these things one at a time:

Is your good stuff their good stuff?

I’m often surprised by the things people in my social circles are reacting to. Through Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and Scoop.it, I’ve sent out some amazing links I’ve found that really made me think or react in some way. As a very small example, The Tech Stuff You Use Everyday is Dirtier Than You Think is a great infographic – and it makes you want to wash every gadget you own with bleach. Reactions? Zero.

When I went digging, I found that the most reactions come from links about content marketing, social media and Google (Google is always big).

The point: Just because you think your content is good (and it very well may be), doesn’t mean it’s what your followers want to read. Look at your Hootsuite analytics, check your Google analytics – if you don’t have those, you can even look at the numbers of retweets on your site. Wherever you have to find the data, figure out what kind of links your followers are excited about!

Tool you can use: Social Mention is a good monitoring tool, but it has an added sentiment analyzer. Do people get excited about your content and links? Find out!

Are people really listening?

Is Anyone Listening?

Even I wonder occasionally, if I’m not posting things out into nothingness. Yet, just about the time I’ve decided that no one is listening, somebody pops up to remind me that they are. I get a DM or a comment on Facebook. A post on Scoop.it is re-scooped fifteen or twenty times. Our site gets 1,000 visits in a day. These things seem like flukes, but when they begin to happen often, it becomes a trend.

The point: Yes, people are listening. Even if you only have 10 followers and only 20 people visiting your blog a month, people are listening. If they’re listening, they’re “feelin’ you”, and they know other people that will get your message, too. Don’t give up.

Tool you can use: Social Pointer does a good job of helping you listen to what people are saying if they’re saying anything. A big plus for Social Pointer is that it also mentions citations, which means you don’t have to have a link going to your site for the program to pick it up. It’s still in beta, but you can already monitor brand, keyword and competitors across several platforms. It’s also free, so get to monitoring!

Is this making any difference?

Yes, yes, and yes. If you’re putting out links people want to read – and some of them are to your site -, it’s making a difference. It’s making a difference to those who follow you and to those who come to your blog to read your own links. It’s making a difference in how your brand is perceived online. It’s making a difference to your level of publicity, your perceived trust – even your standing in the SERPs (more on this later).

The point: We’re at a time and place in world history where one person really canmake a difference. Maybe you aren’t going to change the world; maybe you aren’t going to go down in history as “the person who…” Yet, every person you do reach (and, eventually, there will be many) will be affected in some way by your words of wisdom (or stupidity), informational links (or funny ones), and calm professionalism (or raving despotism).

I Dare You

How they are affected builds their perception of your brand as a brand to trust… or not.

Tool you can use: If you think people should be talking about you by now, BlogPulse is a good monitoring platform. You can search for a brand term and check to see if a specific URL is being talked about. Digging around can bring surprising results and point you towards interested followers you may have overlooked.

Is this a waste of time?

If it’s making a difference (see above section), it’s not a waste of time. Shaddup and go social already!

Don't Disconnect!

WAIT – What’s Your Story?

We have a client we’re excited about. They’re really well known and been around for over 100 years. Yet, as we were brainstorming about a content development strategy, we realized – they have no history. Odd, that something’s been around that long with no history attached to it.

This isn’t just a lack of history we’re talking about, though – it’s lack of story. There’s no story behind this client, which has greatly affected how they’re perceived. Sure, people talk about them, but it’s always in passing reference rather than with excitement. For this client, we get to be like Steve Jobs, who didn’t create Apple, but created the excitement for the people using Apple. We get to help people become excited about a product they’ve been using for years.

You have to do the same with your company, product and brand. Ultimately, where’s the magic? Where does “social networking” turn into “business”? If you remove all barriers and open your horizons, there is nothing you can’t accomplish. The magic is you; it’s the brand; it’s the story; it’s how you use the story.

For example, an artist promised to sketch the first 3,000 followers on his Twitter account. Not only was it a cool idea, but he now has over 5,000 followers, and is working on his second thousand (read about this and see four more examples of engaging social media).

Coca Cola Content is another example. The video describes how “the Coca Cola will evolve its approach to the creative agenda on its key brands”. It’s a good video to watch for anyone still wondering if additional content is the way to go.

Both of these are examples of using a story. For Gregg Burney, the story is an artist building relationships through social media and art. For Coca Cola, it’s the story of how a well-known brand grows through creative content use.

The point: a faceless brand is just that – a faceless brand. There’s nothing to touch, taste, feel, sense or connect to. Having a story of some kind – your reason for being there that incorporates the meaning behind your brand – allows people to connect, engage and have a part in that story.

Tell Your Story

Active Involvement, Active Storytelling… Active Social

As it turns out, today’s social marketing is just like yester-year’s; you get back what you put in. To have an active social network, you have to be active. You have to learn how to get people excited in your story and your brand. Instead of bragging about your products and/or services, share what people want to read about – pay attention and listen.

We’ve said it before, and maybe since we have a huge brand like Coca Cola backing us up, it’ll hold more weight. You have to have a plan. You have to have a campaign. You have to know what it is you want and how you’re getting there. You ARE the story – and in the end, it’s not always about the story you tell, but about how you tell the story.

At Level343, we have some people who grew up without the Internet. We have some who were kids when the Web was first introduced. We even have some who have never been without. No matter the time it came into our lives, however, the Internet has always seemed like a wonderland of information. We’re a small, diverse group, but we all have a yearning to expand our knowledge, meet new people, and grow in our personal views.

How do you use the Internet?

What about you? Do you get online and read the news to find out what’s happening in the world? Do you search for information to gain more of an understanding about subjects? Do you like to meet new people and explore other mind sets? We use the Internet on a daily basis to expand our horizons and grow as a business and as individuals. Do you?

If so, please read on – because the amount of information you view is a lot smaller – and less broad – than you think… and it may get smaller.

The Circle of “I” – What You Are is What You Read

In May of this year, Eli Pariser spoke at TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) and brought a very salient point to the attention of thousands. Thousands, when millions use the Internet. The point?

We, by the very links we click on and queries we search for, cause a self-imposed censorship on our personalized results.

-And personalized doesn’t mean just logged in results. It means results. Period. Eli mentions that Google uses 57 signals to personalize your results. Most, if not all, do not rely on you being logged in to the search engine. A recent Stone Temple interview of Jack Menzel, Product Management Director for Google Search, further reinforces how much our results have changed. There is no standard search result anymore.

The interviewer, Eric Enge, ask, “Do you need to be logged in to get personalized results?”

To which Menzel replies, “Being logged in is the best way to get personalized results. We do a certain amount of personalization for people who are not logged in.”

Circle of "I" On The Web

Later, Enge asks, “Does appending &pws=0 to the end of a search result URL still turn off personalization as it used to?”

Menzel: “Yes it does work. It turns off “personalization”. However it isn’t really useful because people assume that it then will show them what everyone else sees. That simply isn’t the case. There are a whole lot of contextual factors that make everyone’s results most relevant to them. This takes most of the wind out the sails of these types of analysis.”

Eli, in the 9 minute TED video, Beware online “filter bubbles”, uses an excellent example of this “certain amount of personalization” using a search for Egypt. One friend searched for Egypt (no quotes, no modifiers) and received a list of the current unrest in the region. Another, using the same search, was provided nothing more than typical tourist information: Wikipedia, TourEgypt, Egypt Daily News, etc.

Your Daily, Filtered, Self-imposed, Censored Results

So, what does this mean? It means if you don’t do as Menzel suggests in the interview and set your web browser to block cookies, your search results are only as broad as you are. If, for example, you’re a liberal, your results will sooner or later filter out conservative views and vice versa. If you tour the world and frequently search for travel information, you may not see the issues that are happening in these countries.

Move On. Nothing Here for You.

Why? Because your daily searches tell the personalized results these things aren’t relevant to you. In other words, if you’re not actively working to expand your horizons by searching for a variety of opinions, information, and so on, there will be no expansion. You have to initiate it. You have to work for it. You have to insure that your searches cover a broad set of topics and points of view. Otherwise, the information served up from the Internet will offer you nothing but what you already have – your own small set of interests, ideas and points of view.

Some of you may think, “Awesome. I’m tired of seeing all this liberal/conservative crap coming across my screen. How great this’ll be; I don’t have to ignore it, because I won’t see it.” (We’re picking on political parties here, simply because they’re often some of the most gung-ho about the opposite sides). Yet, without being able to see the other side’s point of view, you might miss important things, like more active censorship…

Protect IP Act and SOPA – Government Censorship Made More Real

Opinionated, bull-headed women that we are, the women that comprise the Level343 team work hard not to let our personal political views color our online interactions. We seldom publicly complain about the things that irk us in the political arena, and generally keep our heads above the fray on the Article Archive. Yet, when it comes to things like the Protect IP Act and SOPA, it’s hard to keep our mouths closed. So, we won’t.

September 2010, the idea of a censor-free Internet came under attack with U.S. Senate Bill S.3804, or COICA (Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act). COICA failed to pass; the bill was reintroduced under a different name, with the same bullshit. In fact, there are now two, count them – two – bills in motion.

November 16^th, the Protect IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011; U.S. Senate Bill S. 968) came under Congressional hearing. At the same time, so did SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act, U.S. House Bill H.R. 3261). It must have taken them a long time to come up with those titles…

S.968 is “a bill to prevent online threats to economic creativity and theft of intellectual property, and for other purposes.” H.R. 3261 is an Act created “to promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes.”

Basically, these Acts are being pushed through the House and Senate to protect copyright infringement. Sounds good, right? Who wants their stuff kiped? Yet, under the big bold print is a whole bunch of fine print that falls in the “and for other purposes” section of the official summary…

If these Acts are passed, the U.S. Department of Justice will have the power to seek court orders that will:

Censorship = Silence

• Stop online ad networks from doing business with foreign sites accused of helping copyright infringement
• Stop online payment processors from doing business with foreign sites accused of helping copyright infringement
• Order search engines to stop providing links to these sites
• Order domain name registrars (you know, those you buy your domain from) to remove the sites
• Order Internet service providers to block the sites

SOPA allows people who hold copyrights the ability (through court orders, of course) to do the same, with the ability to target U.S. sites and services as well.

“Well,” you might think, “what’s so bad about that?” After all, we’re talking about sites that steal content, offer fake products, allow pirating and so on, right? Yes. But – we’re also talking about:

• Twitter, which offers completely uncensored user-generated content, including links to…
• YouTube, which often has videos of everyday people singing songs – which are copyrighted…
• Ebay, where people resell products they’ve legitimately paid for and no longer want
• Any website that offers any type of user generated content

User Generated Content Runs the Web

Let’s be blunt. This is censorship beyond burning heretical books. These Acts threaten crowd sourcing, open source initiatives, freedom of expression, social interaction and innovation. It enables companies in the entertainment industry (watch the video quick before it gets taken down), as well as others, to dictate what’s allowed on the Web and what isn’t. With this in mind, it isn’t surprising why the Screen Actors Guild, Directors Guild of America, American Federation of Musicians, Independent Film and Television Alliance, and the Motion Picture Association of America are all on the list of heavy SOPA supporters.

Yet, as understandable as it is that one might want to combat online piracy, unbridled censorship isn’t the only issue. PROTECT IP and SOPA also threaten cyber security:

Seriously?

“PROTECT IP would empower the Department of Justice, with a court order, to require operators of DNS servers to take steps to filter resolution of queries for certain names. Further, the bill directs the Attorney General to develop a textual notice to which users who attempt to navigate to these names will be redirected. Redirecting users to a resource that does not match what they requested, however, is incompatible with end-to-end implementations of DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC), a critical set of security updates. Implementing both end-to-end DNSSEC and PROTECT IP redirection orders simply would not work. Moreover, any filtering by nameservers, even without redirection, will pose security challenges, as there will be no mechanism to distinguish court-ordered lookup failure from temporary system failure, or even from failure caused by attackers or hostile networks.

“This secure authentication is critical for combating the distribution of malware and other problematic Internet behavior. Authentication flaws, including in the DNS, expose personal information, credit card data, e-mails, documents, stock data, and other sensitive information, and represent one of the primary techniques by which hackers break into and harm American assets.” (Whitepaper: Security and Other Technical Concerns Raised by the DNS Filtering Requirements in the PROTECT IP Bill)

This is not a small issue. This isn’t something that can, or should be, swept under the rug. Everyone will be affected if these bills are allowed to pass. Many of the sites you use on a regular basis, guaranteed, will be negatively affected in some way, shape or form.

If we look the other way, what will happen to the dreams of millions of people? What about the kids who want to be singers and use YouTube to publicize, or the people who want to be entrepreneurs and use EBay as a jumping off platform? What about the millions of people who want to learn how to improve their lives and do so through user generated content?

They’ll be buried under censorship and control. In short, dear readers, those dreams will disappear because the entertainment industry isn’t happy with the piddly billions of dollars they bring in on a yearly basis. How much money is our freedom really worth?

Exercise the freedom of the Internet and expand your horizons away from the circle of “I”. Research the SOPA and PROTECT IP bills; find out more about them. Find out what’s happening to YOUR Internet.

Further Reading:

• AmericanCensorship.org
• CNet – How SOPA would affect you: FAQ
• Read Write Web – Infographic: Effects of the Internet Blacklist (SOPA)
• Matt Cutts Blog – Progress against SOPA
• O’Reilly Radar – Congress considers anti-piracy bills that could cripple Internet industries
• Electronic Frontier Foundation – SOPA: Hollywood Finally Gets a Chance to Break the Internet
• Web Pro News – Tech Giants Back Off of SOPA Support

While performing some much needed inspiration reconnaissance, we came across the title of this article as a search term in our analytics. What an interesting thought – the idea that a business owner might want internet marketing without a website. How odd, and yet, how enticing an idea to explore!

Usually, people that come to us either have a website and want to market it, or need a website and want to market it. Either way, a website is involved. Whoever was searching our site for internet marketing for brick and mortar businesses gave us a whole meal of food for thought.

Today, we’re going to explore the possibilities, based on the current sites and technologies available to anyone. Follow along, if you will. You may find some ideas of use to you that can be adapted to fit your own business!

Are Websites a Thing of the Past? Er…

As soon as this thought crossed our minds, the obvious answer followed. No, websites are very much a necessary part of many businesses. However, there are some drawbacks to owning a professional website presence:

Cost of hosting: While you can use a free hosting service, and those services work well for hobby sites, they aren’t recommended for business entities. Therefore, the cost of hosting is a factor, and it can range from as little as $60 a year to as much as $200 and up (depending on your business’ online needs).

Cost of site development: If you aren’t using a content management system (CMS), the upkeep on a site can be extremely expensive through the year. A CMS takes initial development costs for the design, but usually doesn’t take a lot coding upkeep after that. Still, you’re paying for the cost of professional content development to make sure your site is ready for converting visitors.

Cost of maintenance: This could be time, money, or both. A website takes a lot of work to maintain, whether you do it yourself or hire someone to take care of that maintenance. If you hire someone, you better make sure you have a well thought-out budget set aside for this work.

Now that we’ve explored some of the drawbacks of a website (mainly because we website hussies have to pretend we don’t need one in order to step out of the box), let’s look at the possibilities!

Creating a “Website Free” Online Presence (Phew!)

We don’t need no stinkin’ website! But how are we going to market our brick and mortar without one? Well, like any good SEOs, we’re going to look at the search engines first. What are search engines offering the business owner?

Google Places for Business: As the number one search engine, it behooves business owners not to skip over the Big Daddy Google. Happily enough, the search engine provides an online business card just for your business.

Enter your name, address, and phone number (NAP), upload photos and videos (if you have a YouTube account), enter the hours you’re open, and business categories. You can also enter additional details, such as whether parking is available and what brands you carry, etc. Google Places for Business is very easy to set up, and quick.

Bing Business Portal (BETA): Yes, Google is big, but leaving out other search engines and putting all your eggs in the G basket would be a large mistake. It’s not as easy to get into the BBP as it is to set up a Google Place page; you’ll have to jump through some hoops. However, the results are worth it.

One of the things BBP offers that Google doesn’t is a mobile version of your business page, where you can offer your products and services with individual services and ratings. This offering includes a QR code. People take a snapshot of your QR code and have your business information instantly available in their phones.

Yahoo! Local: Yahoo! offers business listings much like Google, with a slightly different layout. With Yahoo!, however, you’ll have to upgrade your listing to “paid” if you want to add images.

With just these three places, you’ve already gone a long way towards building a “website free” online presence.

Unending Online Marketing Opportunities for the Savvy Business Owner

One of the great things about the Internet, in a business sense, is that there’s no end to the number of places you can input your business information and have it posted. Think of these places as “online business cards”. Most of them are easy to set up and get going. Such places might include:

 Internet Yellow Pages (IYP): There are tons of these, so go for the bigger ones. To find out which local engines are best for you, try search for service and/or product terms in your city. For example, kundalini yoga Kansas City brought up Yellow Pages, Citysearch and Yahoo Local. Dentists Kansas city, on the other hand, brought up Super Pages, Yelp and Yellow Pages. It might take you years to hit them all; doing a little bit of research ahead of time can save you lots of work!

Vertical Directories: AKA niche directories, verticals give you ample opportunity to display your business listing without needing a site. Thanks to current technologies and social networks, these directories are reaching out to more individuals in more ways.

The problem with vertical directories is that they’re a dime a dozen. As with IYPs, you could spend a lifetime submitting to all of the directories out there and still have some left. –And, more are coming every day. So, how do you find the right ones for you? A post on SearchEngineLand, How To Find the Right Local and Vertical Sites for Your Small Business, goes a long way toward explaining the process.

Classifieds: This may be an online world, but that doesn’t mean the classifieds are out. Don’t forget that there’s an online version for just about anything in a brick and mortar world.  Examples of online classifieds, just to get an idea, include Craigslist, Oodle, OnlineClassifieds and more. Be careful of the email you use to post your classifieds, however; a lot of places like these are an open invitation to scammers and spammers.

Moving Into Social

Of course, you can’t leave out social networking. We’ve written tons of articles in the past about using social media for your business. The difference is, you’re not pushing traffic to a website; you’re pushing traffic to your business pages and your brick and mortar place. Because of this, you’ll need to look at other sites we don’t always mention.

Moving Into Social

Check-in sites, are an excellent example of mingling business savvy with social media. Places like Foursquare, Bright Kite, Loopt, and Gowalla give you the ability to reach out to consumers. Those consumers can reach out to each other, as well as find, talk about, share and visit your business. These multi-phone platforms also allow you to share coupons and deals – and, you can specifically share them with users on these sites for extra incentive to come to your brick and mortar.

Yes, You CAN!

You CAN have an online presence without a website. You really can. In fact, there are enough business listings out there – legitimate, frequently visited ones – that you can do very well with them. The only problem with a non-website online presence is the lack of control. Unless you’re using paid listings, these places can yank your information at any time.

After thinking outside the box for a while, we’re glad to be back in it. We like our website and all it entails – from the amount of time it takes to keep it maintained to the interaction we’re able to have with our readers. If you own a brick and mortar business and don’t have the time or money to keep a site going, we hope the above helps get you started with online marketing. For us, however, we’ll take keep our website and continue building her into her own, warm, friendly, yet somehow bossy, personality!

Social media killer

You know that song Video Killed the Radio Star? Someone should have been making sequels. We could have had Facebook Kills the MySpace Star or YouTube Kills the Quicktime Movie Star. Or maybe just the Internet Kills All the Non-Internet Stars.

With Facebook becoming more ubiquitous by the moment and SEO becoming the go-to formula for long-term internet success, will they soon leave behind other forms of marketing and advertising?

What’s to become of print advertising, radio ads, email marketing software, commercials, journalism or even snail mail?

-And, why has the Internet taken over? Simple. Its widespread accessibility, ease, and entertainment factor make it a desirable destination for just about anything.

The Age of Internet Marketing

Just as technology changes, the way we use it changes as well. Websites used to be all businesses needed for recognition on the Internet, but now that’s not enough. The way we once used internet marketing is coming to an end.

Sales and marketing have changed over the years from selling just products to selling the ideas, lifestyles and image that come as a result of using their products. This monumental shift means that advertising on the internet became key for reaching a target audience and for putting forth the cutting edge image that puts customers in a buying mood. What monumental shifts can we expect in the coming years?

SEO versus SM

Though it may have started off slow, Internet Marketing has taken off. Facebook now garners more weekly traffic than Google. If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world behind just China and India.

With 800 million users now on Facebook, businesses are using and will continue to use social media to recruit. Eighty-percent of companies are already using social media to recruit new employees and of that percentage, 85% use LinkedIn.

The Rise of Social Media

Ubiquitous social media sites like Facebook or Twitter mean that businesses of all sizes promote themselves online for free and this trend will only continue in the future. Businesses no longer need a domain name, fancy website or full-time graphic designer. They can create a Facebook page or Twitter account and easily be found by anyone looking to engage with their brand.

Social media makes it easy to establish the online presence of your brand. On Facebook or Twitter, giant companies like Coca-Cola or Johnson & Johnson are on the same playing field as Fred’s Froyo Stand or Natalie’s Nail Salon. They have to generate followers, of course, but the basic bones are the same.

In the next 10 years, 40% of our current Fortune 500 companies won’t be around anymore, which is mind-boggling to think about. The future of business is difficult to predict, but as more arise and as it’s easy to get exposure, what’s the best way to stay on top?

With everyone fighting for digital relevance through social media and more archaic forms of Internet marketing, what’s to be done to beat your digital competitors? The answer: SEO.

The Rise of SEO

The Rise of SEO

Many companies like to think they don’t need SEO to be found. But, the history of changing Internet trends suggests otherwise. Businesses have been told over the last 15-20 years that they needed websites, blogs and social media sites. Many didn’t listen at first, but soon realized their blunders. This pattern is now becoming the case with SEO.

With the rate that search engines Google update their algorithms, the only way to stay ahead of the game with a digital presence on Facebook, Twitter, WordPress or anywhere else is through the use of SEO. If people can’t find you online, your business will not flourish.

The Verdict

So, what does all this mean? Will social media and SEO really trump other forms of media advertising? While there is no way to predict the future with absolute certainty, following the cues of history tell us that SEO is going to be the next big thing in Internet marketing. Soon, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and websites won’t be enough to help potential customers find you on the web. Like it or not, the future is now.

LIving in The South

Since I’ve been living in the South, I can’t help but fall in love with people like political strategist James Carville who announced, “It’s the economy, stupid”. He was explaining how a virtual unknown political candidate won against an opponent who had everything going for him. In his mind, people think—and vote—with their bank accounts.

While this may apply to the world of politics, it’s not necessarily true in business. Yes, people like to save money whenever possible. Nevertheless, if money were the only consideration for consumers, the big box stores would’ve completely wiped out local businesses years ago. Instead, small businesses continue to survive—and thrive—even in a struggling economy.

How is this possible? It’s relationships, stupid!

Develope the Relationship

Today’s consumer is concerned with more than just the cost of goods and services. They want to be more than just a number. People are tired of corporate greed and the impersonal nature of giant corporations that only seem to care about the bottom line. It’s time to stop thinking of marketing in terms of Return On Investment (ROI) and consider the importance of Return on Relationship (ROR).

For example, I’ve been using the same mechanic for years. He runs his own shop, and there are times when he charges me more than a chain would for the same service.

However, I continue to take my car to him because he knows me. He knows the make and model of my vehicle, where I work, and whatever pieces of my life I’ve shared with him—and so do his employees. Even more important is that they remember this information. The relationship I have with him creates a feeling of trust in me (an important quality for a mechanic) and keeps me returning. I want to know I give my hard-earned money to a company that values me as a person.

Interact With Your Customers

The ability to develop this kind of relationship is what you have going for you in your business. You can’t compete with the buying power and marketing budgets of big chains.You can—and should—know your customers on a personal level – a personal level that corporate bureaucracy doesn’t allow. No glitzy marketing campaign or deep discount can compare with this.

One way to develop these relationships is through social media. By interacting with your customers through message boards, blogs, and interfaces like Facebook and Twitter, you can get to know them on a personal level. They also get a chance to know you as a person—something that goes a long way toward building your brand recognition.

So how do you get out there and build relationships with virtual strangers? It’s not enough to set up an account to post promotions and updates. Social media is designed for interaction with other people. Get online and start communicating.

Build the Relationship

Here are a few tips:

Be real. All relationships must have a level of transparency. Business relationships are no different. For one thing, you are your brand, and sharing who you are is the best way to represent it. This doesn’t mean you have to share the most intimate details of your life with others. It just means that you need to be true to yourself and your core values.

Don’t post fake reviews or profiles. With just a little online research (and Internet users are a savvy group), anyone can find out the truth about you. Nothing will damage your brand more than dishonesty, and it’s very difficult to rebuild trust once it’s broken.

I noticed recently that a notable home exercise DVD company has come under fire for posting fake reviews about their products. The tip off for most consumers was the overwhelming number of glowing reviews about the products. No one will ever create a product that is loved by everyone, and this is especially true of exercise products whose results depend so much on the user. The damage done by these allegedly fake reviews could be disastrous, because now people don’t know if they can trust the company.

Read and respond. Social media platforms give you a great place to share new products and services or announce a promotion. However, if all you ever do is promote your company, your customers will start ignoring you.

Relationships require communication. A local restaurant used Facebook to announce a promotion for tickets to a recent sporting event. A friend of mine was curious about the event and asked a question about the event that had nothing to do with the restaurant’s promotion. The owner took a few minutes to answer the question. What stood out to me, though, was my friend’s reaction to the comment. She raved, “This is why I love this place. I feel like the owner knows me.”

You should have built into your social media strategy a plan for reading and responding to your customers’ comments. Even if you only have ten minutes a day, use that time to let your customers know you’re listening and care about them as people. If you don’t personally have time to respond, find a member of your team who can dedicate a few minutes each day to do so. Comment on their status updates, wish them a happy birthday, and respond to any comments they leave for you.

Listen

Listen. One of the great benefits of social media is the immediate access it gives you to what your customers are saying about your business. If you’re willing to hear the people, you have invaluable information that will help you create products and services targeted directly to the needs of your customers. Pay attention to what your customers are saying about you and make adjustments when you need to. Instead of anticipating the reaction of your clients, you can know directly what they think.

The Spanish clothing store, Zara, understands this. They’ve created a very successful business model that gives them the ability to pay attention to what customers like and don’t like about the clothes in their stores. Their model lets them target their products to what customers want to buy. In fact, they‘re even able to modify designs based on this customer feedback.

The result is a constantly changing product line their customers want to buy, and this leads to higher sales. You can apply this same concept to your own business by using customer feedback to modify your own products and services.

You got into business to connect with people through products and services they can use. Making a living at it is the added bonus. Social media gives you an unprecedented way to communicate with the people who believe in your enough to spend their money with you. Show people you care about them as people, and they’ll respond even more.

Collective Intelligence

Science fiction stories often talk about the “Collective” – or “intelligence”, if you will – where the mass of mankind’s knowledge is accessible through a telepathic thought. While much of science fiction is still just fiction, we’re a whole lot closer to the idea of the Collective then you might think. It’s already here, in the form of the Internet.

“Big deal,” you say? Ah… read on, oh lucky visitor!

Humanity’s Mass Mind

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players…
William Shakespeare

Consider how much knowledge is now at your fingertips! Marketing data, medical studies, scientific papers, blue prints: anything you want to know, anything you want to learn, can be found on the Web. Not only that, but the Internet has become a collection of peoples’ thoughts, opinions, studies and experience on any given subject. So much so, that it’s become a mass mind – a living, feeling, learning creation.

We all play a part…

The fascinating thing is that each of us plays a part in helping this creation grow. By writing and posting new content, we add to the collection our own thoughts, experience and knowledge. Even if the topic is the same, with few exceptions, each person’s content is unique, because our views on our personal experiences.

How amazing! How wonderful! How fantastic! With prolific online authors, you can search their names, and learn all about them. It’s almost like reading their minds – it’s all there for us to digest.

Collected Information Leads to Collective Intelligence

Mankind & Evolution

All this information pouring into the online collection has begun to serve a greater purpose than one individual learning new things. This collected information, humanity’s mass mind, is leading to new forms of Collective Intelligence (CI). In turn, Collective Intelligence is leading to mankind’s continued growth as a species – to learning new things that no one has ever known before!

What is collective intelligence?

The MIT Center for Collective Intelligence describes CI as “groups of individuals doing things collectively that seem intelligent.”  (emphasis ours)

Crowd-sourcing, collaboration, and the wisdom of crowds are all minimalist forms of collective intelligence. It’s seen in nature, in the hive mind of bees or in the way ants colonies work as a unified entity. The key word in the MIT definition is seem. For any collaboration to be a true example of collective intelligence, it has to lead to new levels of intelligence. In other words, something more than what was before.

Why are we bothering to discuss this?

That’s a darn good question. We have a darn good answer.

Collected information and collective intelligence are changing the way we live, act, react and interact. It matters for SEO, because optimizers need to learn how to capitalize on it. It matters for marketing, because social is a big part of collective; your target market’s wants, needs, thoughts and opinions are right there for you to gather, in big, bright, bold words. It matters for business because of all of the above and then some.

Look at the applications we’re building! We’re creating our home security systems online. We’re pulling an entire company’s data stream into one central location in the cloud. We’re gathering information from around the world in a matter of a few seconds.

The world is growing in leaps and bounds – the way we interact with computers and people (social, blogging, search, surveys, comments, programs, applications, research and development, marketing, etc.) has changed in such a way that we’re ALL a part of that growth.

Intelligent Emergent Behavior

5 Real World Examples of Collective Intelligence

Everything you put out there, everything thought, opinion or bit of knowledge, is a contribution towards the future of mankind. You never know what will spark of the next round of innovations and ideas.

Listen – do you really think the people behind every successful business, every great piece of technology and every standard scientific process knew their ideas would be successful, great or become a standard? How many of these things started with just a spark? It might not have even been the “inventor’s” own thought – it could have just as easily started with someone else’s comment…

The thousands of real world collective intelligence examples should be taken as inspiration. They are just the beginning of what’s possible. We’ve barely started, yet there are literally thousands of real world examples of collective intelligence in use:

Google

Google is an oft-used example, yet it’s important to specify the search engine itself, not the search engine’s output:

Google’s Output – The feedback that comes from any given query is subject to misinformation. Anyone can write about anything… and we do. Therefore, it’s important to point out that mass authoring isn’t synonymous with mass authority. Just because many people write about something doesn’t mean we learn from that writing.

Google- If you’ve ever seen the list of patents that went into creating Google, you’d quickly notice that the patents don’t always have the same creator’s name. You’ll see names like Mayur Datar and Ramanathan V. Guha, but you’ll also see Alexis Battle, Barbara Engelhardt and so on. Not all patents were created by Google employees for Google, and most patents were created by a team of inventors. What we end up with, then, is a search engine designed, built and added on to by hundreds of people. Unique in its overall abilities, it was the only one of its kind when first created: intelligent design developed through collective intelligence.

Google +

From the time that Google Plus hit the online world, it’s been an example of collective intelligence. They opened a bare bones project, not to the masses, but to a specific audience – the geeks and coding freaks of the Internet. They gave these individuals the ability to give automatic feedback on all areas of the system.

G+

Why? In order to turn out a strong, working product when it’s released for everyone to use. The company wants the best social platform out there, and who better to finish the creation process than the very people they’re targeting?

Open Source Projects

Anything “open source” can be considered a strong example of collective intelligence. Open source projects are developed by the people for the people; open source is a completely organic approach, if you will. In fact, some amazing products have come out of the Open Source Initiative. The list includes several well-known products, such as:

• The Apache server
• WordPress
• Drupal
• MySQL
• Mozilla Firefox
• Many, many more

BRAIN

BRAIN, Behaviorally Robust Aggregation of Information in Networks, created by Hewlett Packard, is a fascinating example of collective intelligence. According to the creators, “Existing processes tend to be either too data-driven, and therefore lacking the perspective of human insight, or too ad hoc, and therefore inconsistent with the data. “

BRAIN was developed to gain more accurate information for prediction markets using data side-by-side with team surveys. It’s worked for HP, and other companies, such as IBM and Ford, have implemented prediction markets as well.

KuiSchi

Knowledge Unifying Initiator for Science and Technology, or KuiSci, is “a meeting place for discussion among scientists and technologists, a place for presenting national and global scale problems, a forum for brainstorming, skill and expertise exchange among scientists to harness the collective solutions. KuiSci is a place for innovative work creation. “

History of Mankind

On to Bigger and Different Things

We’re in a technological space we’ve never been in before – not in the entire history of mankind. We’re able to collaborate globally in ways that have previously not been possible. Open source projects are changing medicine; social networking is changing how we learn in a classroom. –And, the power of the collective is changing how we do business.

That’s not so bad; change is the beginning of growth. Although no one knows how things will turn out in the future, we do know that it will probably be something totally unexpected – something different. Something no one has thought of before. As content developers, marketing managers, application developers, search engineers, SEO geeks and so on, it’s our responsibility to make sure we follow a mantra of respect, honesty and communication. Maybe “Respect, honesty and communication for the betterment of mankind” should be part of the 10 Online Commandments (wonder how well that would go over?).

Over the next several weeks, months and so on, we’ll be talking more about Collective Intelligence and how it applies specifically to marketing your online business, branding, users’ opinions, etc. In the meantime, put your thinking caps on; if you have any questions or comments, you know where to put them (in the comment box, people…)!

Staying on Track

You’re a savvy business owner. You know the value of social media as a tool for marketing your company and connecting with clients. You’ve created a social media strategy. You’ve explored the possible outlets and chosen the ones that best fit with your goals. You have followers. Now what?

This is the moment when all your hard work can pay off. It’s also the moment when the real work begins. Social media is all about communicating with your clients, building and maintaining relationships with them. It’s also an excellent tool for building your brand because it gives your clients a chance to connect with your company on a regular (nearly daily) basis.

These connections are important. After all, where would you be without the people who support your company? You need to interact with them, but you also need to be aware of how you’re being perceived in the online world. So, how do you manage and keep your brand on track in the overwhelming world of social media?

Pay attention to the buzz.

There was a time in the world of business when the only way you could see into the minds of your customers was to set up a suggestion box. You would then wait to discover what everyone had to say about your products and services.

Well, social media is like an instant suggestion box. Here’s a real world example:

Keep an Ear To The Ground

A friend of mine runs a catering business from her home. Recently she received a Google alert that her company name was mentioned on a client’s blog. She immediately checked out the site and discovered very mixed reviews of a party she catered. Most of the guests raved about the quality of the food. Just as many commented on a new chicken recipe she debuted there. The verdict was in—the recipe was a disaster. She knew right then that she needed to adjust the recipe or cut it from her menu.

Like my friend, you have to pay attention to what others are saying about you. Social media is a great place to keep up with how your brand is perceived. Set a Google alert for your company name, links to your site, or specific phrases from your content. When you get an alert, check it and respond.

Keep personal views out of the picture.

Your company Facebook page isn’t the place to share your thoughts about an upcoming election or social issue that is currently in the news (unless your company is closely related to politics or social causes). In fact, sharing your personal opinions about controversial topics on a business fan page can harm your company. Your clients are likely from diverse backgrounds; you run the risk of offending people and losing customers (and money) if they discover you have different beliefs than they do.

People identify very closely with their core beliefs, and they like to associate with others of similar belief. For example, people looking for a web designer need someone who will be able to identify with their brands and be able to communicate with them through the website.

Even if you’re an award-winning web designer with years of experience and an impeccable talent for design, you can lose clients if they find out your core beliefs differ from theirs. They may feel that if you don’t share the same beliefs, you won’t be able to identify with them and convey who they are through your work.

Save the op-ed pieces for your personal social media accounts. Don’t mix business and pleasure, especially online.

Stay positive.

Sharing is Caring

You’ve heard the saying that it’s easier to attract flies with honey than vinegar. The phrase may be old and tired, but the philosophy is still true. People gravitate toward what makes them feel better about themselves. Social media outlets are certainly not the place to badmouth your competition or journal about your daily woes. It doesn’t send the message that you’re worth your customers’ time and money.

At the end of the day, you want your customers to choose your company because what you have to offer is superior to the competitor’s offerings. If your goods and services are superior, they will discover that on their own. Experience is far more powerful than your words, so you don’t need to point this out. Keep your brand focused on the positive aspects of who you are and what you offer. Everything else will fall into its rightful place.

Consistency.

Chain restaurants are successful—not because they serve better quality food than their family-owned counterparts—but because they offer consistency. Whether coasting along an interstate in theU.S.or wandering a city square inMadrid, weary travelers know what to expect when they see the golden arches of McDonald’s. It’s not that the mass-produced hamburgers and fries are tastier than the local establishment next door. (In fact, one might argue that the local establishment likely has better food than the chain.) Instead, the customers like knowing exactly what to order and how it will taste.

This is branding at work. Branding is successful because of the consistency. Your customers know what to expect from you, and they like to know just what you will offer them. Social media gives you another format for developing and promoting your brand. Yet, there are many different platforms available, and each platform has its own audience with varying needs and interests.

Regardless of how you interact in social media, your visual image and message should be consistent. For example, Facebook fans like the ability to interact and share with each other through status updates, photo sharing, and tagging friends. This creates a more informal atmosphere than LinkedIn, where people post resumes and network with others on similar career paths. The language you use may change. On Facebook, you can use more casual language than you would on LinkedIn, but the message remains the same: I care about your successes in life and how I can help you achieve more.

With this in mind, use the same contact information and taglines wherever you post. You also want to use the same profile picture across all platforms, so your clients recognize your face or logo no matter where you are.

Be personable and engaging.

Neutrality

In a retail world seemingly dominated by the big box stores, local mom and pop establishments still manage to survive—and thrive. This doesn’t necessarily make sense to those of us who look at the bottom line equation of “lowest prices=highest sales”. Why are people willing to spend more money—especially in a struggling economy—for the same goods and services they can get elsewhere? It’s all about relationships.

When you shop at a local store, you’re more than just another face on the other side of the cash register. The local shopkeeper eventually recognizes you and, over time, you develop a relationship. You talk about your lives. You share pictures of your family. There’s a world of difference between being greeted with “Is plastic okay?” and “How was your daughter’s dance recital?”

You return because you share part of your life with that person. When was the last time you walked into a big box store and saw the manager rush off to the stockroom to retrieve a new flavor of coffee set aside just for you to try? My guess is that it hasn’t happened. The nature of mass production and sales doesn’t allow that same level of connection to develop.

Social media is a way to replicate this relationship building. You may not be able to actually see your clients and customers on a regular basis, but you are able to connect with them. Take whatever amount of time you have available to read status updates and comment. You don’t have to engage in lengthy conversations. Just a simple “congrats” or “glad to hear this” can go a long way toward letting your clients know you care and are interested in them as people.

One on One with Social

Your social media strategy should include the amount of time you have available to read and respond to your clients’ comments. Set aside a few minutes each morning and peruse your status feeds while enjoying a cup of coffee. While watching your favorite TV shows, hop on your computer or phone during commercial breaks to catch up with your clients. Show your customers that you’re interested in more than just taking their money, and you can gain a customer for life. Let them associate your brand with your interest in them as people.

Your Social Network

For many, social media – in all its forms – is a steady diet of information, entertainment and interaction. It is the ultimate snack bar for informavores, serving up tasty bit-sized nuggets to tempt, tantalize, follow and consume. Therefore, it’s blatantly obvious when a part of the snack bar closes.

I don’t know about you, but I hate it when that happens. Little frustrates me more than stumbling upon a social media gravesite: the dead remnants of a poorly thought out social campaign. You’ve seen it, too, I’m sure.

You find a Facebook page with outdated information, or a blog that hasn’t been updated in weeks (or months). How about that YouTube account, with nothing more than the fantastic videos you watched last year? Or the worst part – they have liked their own post… I cringe, but move on.

You see, I’m not just a social media marketer; I’m also a consumer. As a consumer, I want to  use it efficiently, and I want my favorite companies to use it in ways that help.

Yet, many business owners – both big and small – embark upon this adventure without understanding how to use the platforms. This is a dangerous mistake. Your time and money are at stake here; you need to use them wisely. If you expect to use social media to your advantage—and not end up part of an online cemetery, you have to start with a well thought out strategy.

The Social Cemetery of Dead Campaigns

How does it happen – the death of a campaign, that is? Have you ever wondered what happened to the people behind the accounts you come across? Or, like many, did you just shrug and go on? This is an important question, because their stories teach lessons that could keep you from making the same mistakes if you only pay attention.

The average story goes something like this:

A day in the life of Joe & Tom

Joe heard from his friend Tom that Twitter was a good platform to bring in business. “How does it work?” he asks.

“You just go out there and talk to people.”

So Joe grabs himself a Twitter account, then tries to do what Tom suggests. He pours himself into trying to find people to connect with and talk to. He obsesses over follower numbers, finds out about Klout and obsesses some more. He posts religiously, checking back often to see if he got some kind of response.

Four months later, Joe is frustrated. He’s had few reaction, has less than 50 followers and little ROI for the time put in. He calls Tom back. “It’s not working.”

“Huh… Try Facebook.”

Joe lets his Twitter account die a painful death and turns to Facebook. He tries harder than before to connect and talk to people. Again, no ROI.

“Have you heard about Quora?”

…..

Joe is a quick, simple example. For many, however, it isn’t far off the mark. So what did Joe do wrong? If you’re a regular reader, you should be able to say the first part with me… He didn’t have a plan. Therefore, Joe is doing the well-trodden walk of shame, shuffling his feet into Never Should Have Socialed Land… but not so fast. How about asking things like:

What do you want social media to do for you?

You wouldn’t plan a vacation by boarding the next available Air France or Delta, would you? Your time and money are too valuable to throw away without an idea of where you want to go and what you plan to do. Incorporating social media into your marketing program is no different.

Thinking Beyond...

What results do you want to see from social media? Think beyond just driving traffic to your site:

• Do you want to build your brand recognition? What/how are you going to build your brand? Write your steps out; understand what it takes to promote and market that aspect of your campaign.
• Are you hoping to interact with your customers and colleagues on a more personal level? What platforms are you doing this in? Do you have a time line set aside to accomplish this? Think this down to the most mundane action in order to grasp the time it will take.
• Would you like to promote your products and services? Here is where the fun begins: how, why, where, to whom? Do you know? Have you really assessed your market and your product? Are people talking? Do you have recommendations? These are all things that will connect the dots when outlined from the onset of your campaign
• Is your goal to expand and educate your customer base? How will you do that? Is it data base driven? Does your hosting provider even accommodate your needs? Are you using social networks? How many hours and what tools will you use to automate? Will you automate?

You have to know the answer to the “results” question first, and every decision you make thereafter must be based on how it will help you reach your goal(s). Define one or two goals, as well as a length of time to reach them*.

*Hint: most goals will take at least 6 months to achieve with any type of strong ROI.

Where are you starting from?

At this point I’m not sure how much we like Joe. You see, he didn’t take the time to mark where he was at in terms of traffic, conversions and so on. We’ve said it before; you have to have baseline metrics.You have to set down your starting point, your zero if you will, before starting any campaign, so you have a data-based way of tracking results. You can use several metrics to track your social success once you know what your goals are*.

You Have To Start Somewhere

The metrics you track depend on the goals you set. For example, if your goal is to increase positive brand recognition, you might track:

• The number of times someone asks you a question
• Engagement on your blog or site once you start posting on social platforms
• Do you have recommendations readily available online.
• Are you active in social networks or do you simply have 24 Twitter followers and under 200 Facebook fans?
• Referrals (rather than gaining customers through normal marketing channels). For example, maybe you have a widget you are giving away.
• The number of mentions – but here, you have to pay attention to what they’re actually saying. Figure a ratio between positive/negative/neutral mentions. Do you know what tools are available out there?

Hint: Setting goals gives you a baseline to see what is working for you and what is not.

What social platform will best meet your needs?

For most people, the term social media conjures thoughts of Facebook and Twitter. Yet, the reality is that social media is more broadly defined, and encompasses outlets like blogs, video sharing, wikis, and much more. Some of these outlets will work for you, and some of them won’t.

Jump in the water's fine...

For example, if your goal is to build your brand, consider where that might best be accomplished. Depending on your writing manpower or what you are willing to invest in regards to a content driven campaign, blogging is one of the strongest and long lasting methods for achieving a recognizable brand. Write your own content and opening the blog up to readers’ comments. This also lets you interact with potential clients and customers. Get up close and personal to what people are actually saying.

Yet, you also need to consider the time necessary for such an endeavor. As I mentioned, creating a content-centric campaign around blogging is not easy – unless you’re an unusually prolific writer – takes a considerable amount of time. Keep in mind, you do have the option to  hire a full time writer, but that’s dependant on how committed you are to your business. As well, you have to stick to whatever schedule you start. If you start posting twice a week, keep posting twice a week.

If your goal is to promote special features and discounts, you might use venues such as:

• Twitter, to announce current company promotions. Make sure you schedule several posts in a day, write them differently, and make sure you can track them through one of the many Twitter analytic tools.
• eNewsletter, to share the latest company news. Use a service that allows you analytic access.
• Facebook, to share special, month-long discounts. Visit your Insights to see what’s happening and which posts receive the most feedback.
• YouTube, to showcase exciting new product lines. Allow your users to post video responses; get maximum participation.

Take the time to explore the world of social media, and choose what makes the most sense for your company and your goals*.

* Hint: If your goal is to increase authority only, you need to check your ego at the door and have a secondary goal. Why? If you are truly an authority (simply because you are good at what you do and know your industry), your knowledge will show. It’s especially a given when you are humble about your craft and your business.  It will show in your blogs, in your answers to questions and in how you deal with people about your topic on a whole. “Building authority” should never be a loan goal.

What goal /result is most important to your business?

Smooth Sailing

I’m sure you’ll agree, one of the top reasons most businesses fail with social media is trying to do too much without a focus. When this happens, you cannot offer your best to the world, the public doesn’t respond, and social media is written off as a failure. You don’t have to be one of these people.

Go back to your goals and decide what is most important*. Then determine what you can realistically do on your own. If you only have an hour each day to devote to reading and responding to comments, then that’s all you can do. -And you should certainly use that hour if it is an important part of reaching your goals.

If you can’t do it yourself, consider outsourcing tasks to qualified people. More on that in another blog, but you can start doing some preliminary work on your own. Use tools when you can, such as Hootsuite analytics, to get a good start on your campaign.

At the same time, don’t waste your energy on anything that does not move you in the direction of reaching your goals.

* Hint: Many start with the goal of “bringing traffic”. Not only is this goal a generic one, but it is also a waste of time. By redefining it as “bringing quality traffic”, you provide yourself with a stronger set of base metrics, as well as steps to reach that goal.

Ask yourself, “What is quality traffic?” For you, quality traffic could be individuals who subscribe to your blog. Quality traffic could be those who convert to customers, individuals who visit more than one or two pages and so on. I would even suggestion you become an observer of your followers and find the connection that matters to them. The point is, if your goal is to bring traffic to your site, you have to further define what you want that traffic to do once they get there and incorporate it into your campaign.

What are your goals?

In conclusion, no matter what your goals may be, you have to promote and engage your audience. In the world of social media, these are often the same concepts. The approach may be different in the various platforms, but the more you interact with your audience, the more you promote your work. As you promote your work, you open the doors for more interaction with your audience. Be the one the go to when they have a question.

As you develop your social marketing strategy, remember flexibility is important. Don’t be afraid to make adjustments as you experiment with what works for you and what doesn’t. No campaign, whether it’s a marketing, social media, SEO or content development campaign, is written in stone. That’s the beauty of working online today. It’s evolutionary, don’t you think? Go ahead, don’t be shy, tell me all about it…

Ready. Set. Jump Into Metrics.

You’ve taken your website through the evaluation process. Maybe you found some things that need to be changed; maybe you were lucky and found that your site was already well prepared. Either way, you’ll eventually have to dig in to the metrics and make sure things are happening like they’re “supposed” to.

Maybe it’s too soon for some of you to roll up your sleeves and jump into metrics. However, monitoring things, at least once a quarter, is always something we recommend with any new business (or any old business, for that matter).

How good are your metrics? How good is your social media and SEO ROI? Do you know?

Tracking Direct Campaign Benefits

One of the biggest reasons to look at your metrics is because your campaigns can go off track without you knowing it. For that matter, if you implement a campaign without watching the results, you wouldn’t know if it ever did what it was supposed to.

With website statistics, you get a chance to find out if your campaigns are giving you direct benefits. For example, how many people came to your site, and where did they come from? Are you getting more visits from Twitter or from your Facebook page? How many referrals are you getting from other sites that are talking about your content?

Not only will you need to know the answers to these questions, but you’ll also need to be able to compare the information.

Why?
Social media and content campaigns are two big parts of many marketing efforts now. With this in mind, consider the number of social networks. As well, consider how many sites you could guest post on. Can you possibly use them all? No. Therefore, we always recommend trying a social network and a few content sites first, then watch the results for at least three months.

Comparing Metrics for Informed Decisions

For social networks, you compare the new one to the results from networks you’re currently using. Based on the information you receive, you can then decide whether it’s worth incorporating that network into your campaign. Metrics you might compare are:

• Traffic from the networks
• Bounce rate per network (make sure you have the 10 second GA rule in place before putting any weight at all on this metric)
• How many mentions, RT’s and conversations you had per network, per post

In this way, you can find out how much exposure you get. You can use products such as TweetReach, HootSuite or Kloutto track your reach and exposure on individual tweets. As well, Facebook Insights can give you metrics on the health of your FB page.

What Are Your Social Metrics?

What about content placement sites?
Well, mainly, you’re looking at the number of referrals. The other metrics you’d track depend on what you’d planned for a particular post. For example, if your article only has a link to your home page, you want to look at whether they went anywhere else on your site. If your article has a deep link, perhaps to an article, you’ll need to look at how much time they spent on the page, whether they went anywhere else and so on.

Points to Ponder
It’d be nice if the above were all you had to keep in mind. Just look at the data and compare numbers, right? Unfortunately, it’s a little more complicated than that. You also have to look at what the post was about, how it was written, how long it was and so on. You need to be able to keep track of how you send out the posts as well.

For example, are you asking questions before or after the link? “How do you feel about XYZ – weigh in! [link]” In other words, are you giving them a reason to click on Twitter? Do you give them something to respond to on Facebook?

When you guest post, do you push the post as well, or leave that up to the host site? In other words, how involved are you in your content?

The Metric Called “Relationships”

Once you have something to look at – once you have all your data in one spot – you can look at how the metrics relate to each other.

Conversions are a good example. If you have analytics set up correctly, you’ll have a goal funnel in place. With a goal funnel, you can see the whole process – from the time they reach your site to the time they (hopefully) convert and then leave.

In this way, you can see how many from Twitter vs. how many from Facebook (for example), actually went through the entire conversion process and out the other end. -And, this data can help you understand which sites, networks, etc, bring stronger results in terms of meeting your main goal.

Yet, with all this data and all this knowledge, decision making, et all, there are some things about building relationships that you can’t track using analytics metrics. For example, the data doesn’t tell you about Joe, who’s running in the same site circles as you. Joe likes your content; he recognizes your name and company every time he sees an article you posted, no matter where you posted it.

Here’s another good example:

We had a potential client contact us for a big contract – one of our first big contracts, at that. About three months in, during a conversation about social media, the client said, “Well, yeah, that’s where I found you guys.”

As it turns out, they’d been following our Level343 account for several months – just one of the thousands of followers and monthly visitors to our blog. When it came time to optimize their site, they immediately thought of us.

Trust... never break it.

Why?
Because, unbeknownst to us, we’d created a relationship with them. Of course, that was the plan all along, but you don’t know if you’ve succeeded until such a thing happens. For this person, we’d managed to do what everyone aims for with social media and content development: create a sense of trust, a sense of authority, and a feeling that they “know” us.

How Do You Track Social Relationships?

“Social” relationships don’t come just from social media. They don’t even have to be someone you’ve spoken to or interacted with. Social relationships are any relationships you’ve built throughout the business and marketing processes. For example, they can be someone:

• You met at a conference
• Who’s a regular of a site you guest post on (but may never have actually visited your site)
• Following you on a social network
• Who has visited your blog
• Who’s a friend of one of your vendors
• Who’s a friend of a client/former client
• Who was forwarded one of your newsletters

With all these possibilities, how can you possibly figure out where they came from? Simply put, you have to ask:

Trust is more than an emotion

• In your contact form, have a “how did you hear about us” question. Offer 3 – 5 options of places you’re actively marketing, such as a newsletter, on Twitter, on Facebook, through a friend, through a client, etc.
• If you don’t have a contact form, you can provide a brief survey that includes the question.
• If they call you on the phone, ask them.
• If they’re buying products, add the question to the buying form.

For that matter, you can offer them incentive to answer the question and/or continue the conversation on social networks and/or subscribe to your newsletter:

Example:
Are you following us on Twitter? Enter your Twitter ID for a chance to win [product name, discount, etc].

Example:
Subscribe to our newsletter to get exclusive offers and discounts!

Take it from us, tracking your traffic and conversions isn’t hard, but eventually you have to delve into the returned data to be able to do anything with it. Otherwise, you’re just throwing actions and energy into a bunch of “stuff” and hoping something works. This is what we call “counterproductive” campaigns.

Use the data. Use the metrics. Use the relationships and everything that comes along with them. Knowing where your traffic is coming from and what referrals convert the best will greatly enhance the return on your campaigns, as well as the return on your investments! 

Busy, Busy, Busy

I don’t know about you, but I’m busy, very busy. While I was away, as we all know, Google decided to throw their hat into the social circle with Google +. Don’t worry; I promise this isn’t about G Plus, but about your social.

I don’t care if it’s a Facebook killer or if it will wipe Twitter out of the game; I don’t have any stock invested in any of these companies. What I’m invested in is the future of my clients and my business, no matter which corporate entity ends up on top.

Yet, many people are wrapped up in what’s going on with other things like Google Plus. The economy is another thing; quite simply, it’s tanking. Do I think there’ll be a revolution? No. I doubt the U.S. will shut down. Many dwell on these things and they lose focus…

You Can’t Lose Focus

Don't loose Focus

Today, however, you can’t afford to lose focus. You have to focus on your needs, your influence and your clients. You have to discover how to make things better in an ever-changing online world. Even you can make a difference, and that’s true whether you’re in SEO, branding or other area of online business.

Are You One of the Sheeple?

One of the things I want you to do today is to think about online influence. Who are your go-to people? Whom can you count on? Are you running after people you don’t know, or working to strengthen your current associations?

More importantly, are you one of the sheeple? Do you follow or use this platform or that because someone told you to? Or, instead, do you investigate before jumping into the game?

For example, if I listened to the majority on G Plus, I’d be jumping in with both feet and never looking back. My question is why do I have to choose one or the other? Why not both? Why can’t you just use the platforms you’re most comfortable on, or the ones you see the most action on, rather than follow what others say? Remember, you’re the only one that truly knows what you need.

What Makes a Brand?

What Makes a Brand

With social and most other things, it’s all about building a brand. – And what makes a brand is someone(s) who is willing to stick his or her neck out because it’s best for the success of the business and for their client.

For that business to grow, it has to be strong – more resilient. It has to endure the ups, downs and growing pains. All of this requires a high amount of commitment and consistency. For the clients it’s about building a long lasting partnership. I can guarantee if you treat your clients like partners they will be back when they have a bigger project, they will treat you with respect and they will send new clients your way.

May You Live In Interesting Times

Often, we – as online marketers – get caught up in social and marketing data. Our viewpoint is skewed, however. It’s hard to remember that not everyone knows about social platform this or social platform that. Not everyone is up-to-date on how to search the Internet and SEO practices. For that matter, not everyone uses a computer on a daily basis (shocking!).

What we do know, however, is that we are living in interesting times. There are tons of options and tons of opportunities; online marketers have to step away from the business side of things and view social from the eye of the consumer.

The consumer sees social as an important business strategy, but things like Google Plus can add to the feeling of networking burn out. Yes, everything is interesting and things are moving at break neck speed, but if all you do is run the rat race – react rather than act with a plan – you’ll end up one of the burnouts.

Be the One With the Plan

Connect the dots

It is essential to have a plan, and once you have that plan, it’s essential you have the steps written down that you need to take to achieve your goals. Almost like connecting the dots. For example, my formula for social networking goes something like this:

I have Google Alerts, Google Reader, Twitter and several RSS feeds of people I respect and follow. I don’t always use these posts, nor do I RT every post I see. God forbid I take the time to read each one; the day would be gone.

What I do is look at the title and quickly scan the post. Or I look at my mentions and see who gave me some love for the day. I will then take a look at their time line and find something that may be of interest to my readers. If it’s on topic or in the vein of what I’m discussing this week then BAM, it gets a RT. It’s a win win. You have some great posts to RT and share, and you’re establishing a nice network of like-minded people.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying start a RT circle, but you will eventually know when to hold them and when to fold them. Don’t be over eager and don’t be aloof. Almost like a Tango. You come in for a bit then you push out…flirting with content. Okay, maybe not, but you get the point right?

The trick is not to RT right away. Give yourself a few hours; post it for the afternoon. If it’s good, you can post it several times a day at different hours, with a different comment. By the time I’m done feeding and scheduling my Twitter account, I can get some real work done.

After a week, I will take what I RT’d the past week and post them on our FB page, re-opening the conversation. Then, I’ll place them on Tumblr, scheduled on the days we don’t have posts going out. As you can see I’m filling each day of the week with something from Level343. Spreading them out so I don’t bombard our readers with triple posts.

DO NOT post the same post during the same hour or on different networks. People don’t like it and feel violated.  lol Okay, maybe that’s over the top, but I know I personally want to contact the person and say STOP IT. All I’m saying is keep things fresh.

If you post it on Facebook don’t repost it on Twitter, at least not the same day. I figure with over 7K followers on one Twitter account and an additional 1400 + on our business account, I can afford to post something more than once on any given day. The chance of my readers seeing it twice in one day is rare, but it can happen.

Now, I know social networks take time, and I notice how our traffic suffers when I’m not around inputting this formula. Not everyone can create one, but I can assure you – if you want to save yourself hours of gazing at your monitor, start small. I don’t need to tell you that using Hootsuite has saved and cut my social networking time in half.

Create Your Business Future with the Help of Others

Create your network of people

Customer influence – the cheerleaders, the advocates, the unpaid marketers; embracing customer engagement through social is a fantastic way to shape your brand, business and products for the future.

This isn’t to say you embrace everyone. This doesn’t mean you follow everyone or answer every question that comes your way. You have to know what’s important. People are important, and how those people feel about what you’re promoting. Again, G+ is an excellent example; I don’t exactly have tons of trust in Google, which makes me less likely to jump on the G+ bandwagon. They need to work hard on their image and the trust wrapped up in their brand.

“Hanging out” on social isn’t enough. “Chatting” isn’t enough. Social media isn’t a cure-all for business issues; if it’s not done right, it’s just a Band-Aid.

In fact, social media and networking is just like the real world; you have to embrace the customer experience as a whole. You have to embody great service. You have to be able to empathize with the consumer, showing a high level of performance and value. In short, you have to be consistent with your delivery, and give them the best bang for their buck… even if that “buck” is just the time they spend following you.

ANOTHER SOCIAL NETWORK?? Come on!!!

It seems like every time a new social media network pops up, a fresh spate of articles are sure to follow. These cookie cutter articles tout all the many wondrous, fantastic reasons you should hop on, jump in and climb on the bandwagon. 

Well, we say “enough”! Social media has enough cheerleaders, pro-social arguments and lessons. It’s time somebody put their foot down, and brought up some points about why you don’t need social media.

It’s just another way to drive traffic.

Who needs direct traffic? All those people following Twitter and Facebook links… they’d just put wear and tear on your website. Plus, there’s article marketing, directory submissions and PPC to drive traffic to your site. Don’t be a sheep! You CAN get traffic without social media, networking or connecting!

You can’t handle the demand.

Can't keep up?

Who needs cheerleaders? This is an important point, because Twitter and Facebook have been proven to generate leads. What happens if you have a strong social media campaign? What if you get tons of leads? No… don’t worry about it. You have more work then you can handle! If you get on social networks, you may not be able to keep up with demand – and nobody wants that worry.

You can’t afford it.

Everybody talks about the “affordability” of social media, but success never comes cheap. Why, even if you have a social media marketing plan, it takes an hour maybe two every morning to implement. – And, if you want to use something like Hootsuite to track your social campaign, it’s a hefty $5.99 a month!

You don’t need feedback – your product and business is just fine, thank you.

No comment!

The last thing you need is to worry about how people view your products, services or business. So what if you can get instant feedback from social media networks? Who needs that headache? Nobody wants to hear about how their business, customer service, products or services can be improved. –And anyway, improvement is highly overrated. There’s something to be said for “old school”.

Your site is ranking on at least the third page of the SERPs.

Just because social marketing is an important signal to search engines doesn’t mean it has to be an important signal to you. You’re on the third page of the SERPs, at the very least, and, really, that number one spot isn’t that valuable. It only gains about 36% of the traffic for that search, right? Pfft – who needs it!

Relationships are for sissies.

When people talk about social, they talk about “building relationships”. Look, you own a business. You’re in the business of building that business, not making friends. As well, there’s all this “trust” stuff, which doesn’t make sense. Why have all those trusted signals, like the VeriSign logo, on your site if it wasn’t to build trust?

Don't need no stinking help

You don’t need more publicity.

Millions of people, nay, hundreds of millions of people, use social networks. That’s a lot of publicity you don’t need. You have a fantastic product, and word will get out on its own. Besides, how much can you say in 140 characters or less that you can’t say when someone asks you what you sell? Waste of time, really.

Conclusion

Ah… sarcasm. Ain’t it wonderful? For you regular readers, you know how much weight we put on social media and networking: a lot. Social media marketing is an inexpensive, relatively easy way to drive traffic to your site and gain leads.

You have lightening fast distribution, a large audience and a variety of networks to work with. On top of that, you also get a certain quality of traffic; readers are more likely to read all the way through (or a larger percent of the way through) an article given by someone they know. You can develop relationships, find cheerleaders, gain an edge on the ranking competition and much more.

The next time someone brings up social media networks and asks why they should use SMM, don’t forget the all-important rejoinder: Why not? Then, point them this way… we’ll get them started on the right path!

Getting off the grid

There’s nothing like getting off the grid for three weeks. Funny thing is, I didn’t miss it as much as I thought I would. Sure, I missed my morning routine: my home, Lucy and, of course, my social connections. That’s on a personal level, though.

I’ll admit I also missed working on projects, finding solutions and the focus of mind that comes when getting ready for the next conference call. We become such creatures of habit, don’t we? Especially, it seems, when working online.

While on hiatus, I was filled with great ideas and plans for the future of Level343. They were random thoughts of how I could do things better – all the while trying to disconnect from the grid. Some of these thoughts were along the lines of:

We’re growing.

I understand growth and success are the ultimate goals for anyone, no matter what dream, field, market or area. If you think these aren’t your goals, you’re fooling yourself. What I really discovered during my trip, however, is all the hard work and drive one pours into those goals always comes at a price.

That price can be something as confining as being chained to your work (in my case, with Level343 going on 6 years), or loss of sleep from working through the night, or less time with the family… the price you pay depends on your situation. The hard work isn’t the point, really, but the journey we’ve taken to get there. The good, the bad, and yes, some ugly, has made our team resilient and aware of our networks.

Are we “there” yet?

Far from it, but we’ve grown in leaps and bounds without really seeing or knowing it. If you work for yourself, you know there are always things to be done. It takes time management, including an understanding of what’s a priority and what isn’t. Even if you have a team of five to ten people, you still have to manage that team. What tools are you going to use? How are you going to schedule things? God forbid you’re deal with International clients like some crazy SEO companies do… oh yeah, like us!

It’s not easy working for yourself, although I’ve been doing so now for almost 20 years. I have no kids to worry about, but I do have personal priorities that need to be dealt with on a daily basis. There’ve been some good times, lean times, and times when I had to get a second job in order to keep food on the table. As a business owner, however, I know I wouldn’t have learned or built a strong business without those dead end and lean times.

Until I left for three weeks, I didn’t realize…

There’s still a wonderful world out there. Did you know there are people that get things done without a computer? They don’t live, breath, eat and shop on the Internet!

Have some fun

For example, while in Germany, I was expecting to see lots of mobile action going on, especially among the youth. So, imagine my surprise to see most of them out enjoying each other’s company. The cab drivers were completely connected, with GPS, mobile and some other hardware – all the bells and whistles – but other than that… Basically,Germany is hooked up, but not the way I thought it would be. That just goes to show you how much we think we know, just because we live and work on the Internet.

Everybody needs to unplug every once in awhile…

After this experience, I promote and encourage you to try unplugging for a week. Get completely off the grid. Take this break from the online world as a reason to look around at the world and the people in it. Smell the flowers. Watch the birds. Drink in the sunshine.

Getting out and looking at the world around you gives you a different perspective – to use all your senses: something you really can’t do when you’re stuck on the Internet. This is especially true if you work with international clients like we do. They want to know you’re the right company for them. What better way than to take them out to dinner and listen to their dreams and plans – without the interruption of other business?

Me, I was still trying to run a business 3,000 miles away. Was I successful? Honestly, I don’t think so. I felt a complete disconnect from my social circles, and the numbers now that I’m back are proof.

What could I have done better?

Well, a few things. I could have chosen to stay connected entirely (i.e. not left) and missed life, family and memories I will cherish forever. I could have completely disconnected, and taken a complete vacation without any involvement of work.

Enjoying Bologna

Instead, I chose to soak up the sun and people watch, listen to what the Italians were saying, enjoy the beauty of the Swiss Alps, and engageFrankfurtin what they do best – enjoy the outdoor cafes. In between times, when there was Internet, I got online and checked in, tried to make sure as much was running smoothly as possible, and that all was right with the business. I mean, sure it was a vacation, but as a die-hard businesswoman, I was still connecting the dots for Level343’s future.

Running social should be like the Mob runs… everything else…

While connecting the dots, I was doing so the only way I know how: meeting, talking and listening to people. When I found out we have a few mobsters in the Sannino clan I thought, “you know, that makes total sense… social, mob, mobsters…”

• It’s all networking, and networking is good business – Now, your computer taps you into the largest network in the world, but the Mafia was the first social network. You need something, so you reach out to this contact or that contact. They might hook you up with a friend of a friend, or know somebody in this country or that country; it’s all networking.

• Be straightforward – This isn’t a court of law; you don’t have to “tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. However, being discretionary isn’t the same as lying. Be precise and say things in clear, easy to understand ways (so, you know, Uncle Guido doesn’t come to your house for clarification).

• Don’t say something unless you can do it – Once trust is broken, it’s hard to get it back. In the Mob, breaking trust could get you killed; in business and networking, breaking trust can eventually equal destroying your business.

• Paying your debts and collecting on them are both important– Unpaid debts, whether they’re owed to you or you owe them, can bring serious consequences in the Mafia. “You owe Don Corleon $20,000, Lucas, and I’m here to collect…” (murder, mayhem and the obligatory torture ensues). The same goes for business. If you don’t pay your debts, you end up buried by it; if you don’t collect, you don’t make money and your business dies anyway.
  

  Have your people call my people...

• Choose your associates wisely – You don’t have to like or follow everyone. Return the favor if they come visiting your blog and see if they’re someone worth following. You know that time you spend doing things: looking through Google Alerts, RSS feeders, Twitter and all that? Take five minutes and read their blog. Interact – you never know when and what inspiration or work you will get from them. It’s almost like marrying your daughter off to a good and dear friend; that’s what nurturing relationships is all about.

Conclusion

It’s amazing what you learn when you take a few days or weeks off. Now I’m back home at my desk, enjoying and reading all the mentions I missed from new friends and old friends, or listening to the garbage truck picking up around our street. Some things never change on Monday mornings.

It’s up to you, if you want to feel the growth of yourself and your company, get away for awhile. Social will exist whether you’re on or not; it’s the connections you make that matter. Because I went off the grid, I can share a ton of new ideas!

Can you feel it?

After all the Google Plus hoopla (and a few posts of our own), it seemed only right, fair and equal to spend a little time on Facebook. Of course, it helps that we had a specific request for this article.  A  pro pos to this post, the request came from a Facebook fan – can’t beat that for on topic!

Before getting deep into lead generation facts here, I’d like to mention a fantastic Facebook page to inspire you and show you what’s possible. Facebook isn’t just about posting status updates; you can do that anywhere. In fact, some businesses use FB as their only place of online business.

The business page I’d like to direct your attention to is Livescribe’s. The Livescribe FB page is of particular interest here, because it shows exactly how much can be done in terms of lead generation. Go ahead, click around.

What Livescribe did right on Facebook…

Now, it helps the Livescribe is an interesting product. What could be more interesting than being able to write on a notebook and have it turned into a document? However, they did a lot of things right to turn their FB page into a lead generating machine.

1. Make it interesting.

I couldn't resist... :)

When you first come to the Livescribe page, you don’t see the Wall. You see, instead, three carefully targeted ads – yet, they don’t exactly look like ads. They look like information sections: perfect for the informavore. What they do is act like a “snack sized” bite of information. As well, each one has a specific call to action, and that CTA tells them what they’re going to do if they click.

2. Pre-qualify leads.

You might expect that clicking on one of these will send you to the website. It doesn’t. Each of the three links take you to another page – still on Facebook – to help you narrow down what you’re looking for. It isn’t until the third click that you’re taken to the site. In this way, the company begins lead pre-qualification; most visitors to the website who click through from Facebook will be truly interested in the product.

3. Give more.

Fanning on Facebook, which basically bookmarks the page for you, gives you access to features not available on the website. For example, Livescribe has a FB support group. As well, you have access to their YouTube channel from within their pages, rather than having to take that extra step. Actively moderated, you have access to a live person, responding to questions and comments.

Give More

4. A place to leave feedback.

One of the most positive things about G+ reactions has been the fact that they opened their product up to user feedback. Livescribe also does this, through the FB support forum, allowing individuals to submit ideas based on their experience, needs or wants. Due to the native FB features, other people can add that they’ve thought of it too, indicating one particular feature request is more wanted than another.

What you might be doing wrong on Facebook…

A while back, a blog came out on Outspoken Media entitled The #1 Reason Your Customers Hate You On Facebook. True to the name of the company, the article is straight up, nay, bluntly forward, about what the author considers the #1 reason FB isn’t working. To put it simply, the reason is lack of follow through or, in reality, lack of thought all together.

Facebook is a tool. That’s all it is. What you use that tool for, and how you use it, is what decides whether it’s a successful tool. For example, banging a hammer against something isn’t going to do much beside leave dents – but you put a nail under that hammer, a piece of wood and some plans, you might be in business.

Fixing your Facebook page for lead generation…

Now you’ve seen a company using Facebook like the tool it is, and you’ve read about what might be lacking… get to it!

Just kidding. Don’t hate me.

Here are a few tips (with example links) that can help you improve your fan page:

Make it harder to access – This completely goes against the grain of “ease of use” that we normally say, but stick with me here.

Lets' get picky

When people first started contacting us to guest blog, we turned them down. Not because they were bad writers, but because it wasn’t a direction we were looking at then. Having been closed off to guest writers for four years, when we opened up the blog to guest posters, we started receiving a lot of requests for guest spots.

The moral here is, when something seems inaccessible, the human condition is to want it more. The Creative Marketing and Acclaim page capitalizes on this concept, by starting with a game. Find the real “like” button to be taken to the official fan page.

Create a welcome page – Most business pages can be accessed at their walls. Quite simply, a wall can be bland, boring.. meh. Having your FB go to a specially created page, however, spices your FB area up. Where do you want them to go? What can they do after they click the Like button?

The Big Click Studios page, for example, does an excellent job of redirecting the user after the “Like”. Most people won’t be visiting your FB page every day. Big Click Studios prepares for that with links to the blog, a hint of what you’ll see by following them on Twitter, and – most importantly – that beautiful “Subscribe to our newsletter” section with a bit of random fact next to it. Finally, the FB page is it’s own shiny example of the quality of service they offer.

Give them the chance to share their contact details – Like Big Click Studios, the fan page of Tristan Richards (Internet Marketing Reggae Star, love that title) does just that.

Now, you don’t have to have a blatant sales page. You can do something as simple as Brand Sprout’s understated example, as immediate as Big Click’s, or as in your face as Tristan’s. You can even try something like Blue Sky Factory’s example. However, if you have a newsletter or other offers that require an email address, don’t leave this part out!

Offer something extra – Give them a worthwhile reason to become a fan. If you offer special sales, offer a few exclusively to FB fans. Maybe you have videos, pics or demos; you can offer them an early preview. In short, consider what you can give them that they won’t get elsewhere?

Lead them – Finally, don’t leave them dangling at Facebook with nothing to do. Lead them – guide them to do something interesting, whether it’s on FB with an app or on your site with a link. You have to show them some way to get to the buy/signup/conversion, whether it’s a tab, a link, an offer, or a product. – And, that offer has to be enticing enough that they are caught up in the process.

As a perfect example, I was surprised to find myself on Livescribe’s site. If I’d had the time, I’d have browsed it, and maybe bought something. Instead, I bookmarked it for later – a certified FB lead.

Further reading…

A little extra for you!

I know, you’re thinking that all this might take some serious programming and design skills. However, if you’re really interested in sprucing up your fan page, these links will get you started:

• Facebook Cheat Sheets, Sizes and Dimensions
• 4 Free Facebook Landing Page Creation Tools
• 20 Examples of Great Facebook Pages (HubSpot) 
• 25 Brilliant Examples of Facebook Brand Pages (eConsultancy)

Finally, read How Facebook Factors Into Lead Generation. Yes, you have to fill out a nosy “who are you” form to get it, but there’s a lot of good information in this PDF. For example, businesses with over 1,000 FB fans generate 12 times more leads.

Conclusion

Facebook is one of the highest lead generation and revenue generating platforms on the Internet. If you’re using it for business, it only makes sense that you use it right. No matter what you do, or what changes you make, just remember that it’s a tool. And a tool is only as good as the use it’s put to!

Sneeky Google Plus

So, Google comes up with this fancy “Plus” thing. Everybody rushed to take a look-see, only to be locked out as the big G slammed the doors on the masses to slow the flood to a trickle.

The first week was like a Black Friday rush on sales. For the first time, iPhone users frowned at their fancy gadgets and longed for an Android just so they could use the brand spankin’ new Google + app (Apple, by the way, allowed the iGoogle app to go through Tuesday). G+ invites were being sold on eBay for a paltry $25 – $100 (depending on the seller), guaranteed immediate delivery*.

*Most sales have dropped to a starting low, low price of $0.99.

In the First 24 Hours, Speculations, Facts and Fallacies Run Amuck

Psst.. Google Plus is a Facebook killer - Pass it on!

Over 18,000 pages showed up on the Internet in the first 24 hours that specifically spoke about Google’s new baby. Topics were varied:

The Wall Street Journal wrote a short piece about Google’s Facebook copycat, saying the company “appears to like crushing the dreams of soon-to-be-public tech companies.”

ReadWriteWeb offered up a piece after scoping out Google’s new social digs, calling Plus “really cool” and a “super ambitious effort”. The well-written initial Google Plus review by Marshall Kirkpatrick is a basic once-over. Interesting to this reader was the fact that he ended it with, “Can you imagine hundreds of millions of people leaving Facebook for this and sticking with it? That’s a very tall order.”

-And who wouldn’t expect Mashable to throw in their two cents? They did, with a piece called, “Google’s Latest Social Network – Google Launches Google + To Battle Facebook”. Again, it’s a great “once over”, with comments interspersed throughout from Vic Gundotra (G’s senior vice pres). Again, the most interesting thing is the mention of G+ as Google’s answer to Facebook.

In the Conclusion, author Ben Parr writes,

“No matter what Google says, Google+ is the company’s response to the rise of Facebook. The two companies are in heated competition for talent, page views and consumers. While Google controls the search market and has a strong presence on mobile with Android, it hasn’t been able to crack the social nut.“ [emphasis ours]

The Washington Post talks about it taking aim at Facebook. Gawker.com says G+ swears it’s more trustworthy (than FB, of course!), while Business Insider says it’s just like everything else and no big deal.

Google Plus Facebook, via Baby Banter

Now That Everyone Has Weighed In…

Everyone seems sure that Facebook’s death is Google’s goal in launching G +… or maybe it’s Twitter… or maybe Skype. It makes sense in a way, right? After all, social seems to be one of the few corporate pies Google consistently missed and had yet to get its proverbial fingers in, doesn’t it?

Well, now that everyone has weighed in with the “Facebook killer” theory, let me ask a question:

If G+ is only to kill Facebook, why make Google employees bonuses dependant on the success of this venture? Is it just about ad revenue percentages? eMarketer.com predicts FB ad revenues to reach 21.6%, while Google’s is expected to be at a paltry 12.6%. – But is this the only reason for Google Plus?

Google Plus One…

Google Plus One button

In an article discussing the ad revenue forecasts as well as the introduction of Google’s +1 button, Mashable’s Jolie O’Dell begins to open up a slightly different point of view. “Google’s +1 may pit the search giant against the social network in four key areas,” she writes. The top key area is “New User Acquisition”. Keep in mind – this is a full three months before Google Plus was announced:

“Making a Google Profile a requirement for those addictive little +1 buttons is a smart move on Google’s part. It may not match Facebook’s 500 million-strong membership when the feature rolls out to all users, but it has a good shot at vastly increasing levels of profile adoption.”

+1 rolls out and people (somewhat) just shrug and go on. Too similar to Facebook’s “Like” button, with nothing really attached to it. Oh – right, except that Google profile you have to have if you want to use the +1 button…

In a one-two punch, Google then lays out G+, which, incidentally, connects +1 buttons and Google profiles. Don’t forget that there are now more Google profiles than there had been, due to the +1 implementation. –And, for those that didn’t care enough about +1 to get a profile, there’s now G+, which also needs a profile to use.

…and a Slightly Different Point of View

At this point, more people have Google profiles, and more people are using their previously dusty profile, in order to participate on G+. Plus gathered 10 million users in 2 weeks, by the way, and is currently serving up more than 1 billion items per day.

Although this is a “never seen before” statistic, it isn’t the true success of Google Plus. So, what is? Feast your eyes on the following three comments plucked from the SERPs (on Google):

+Tom Anderson: “In the past, I’ve used Google Docs mainly because I wanted web access to files. I’ve never collaborated on it, and now I’m hooked on doing that. Google+ is making me use Google products that I formally only had a slight interest in. In the past week, I’ve started to toy with Blogger & Picasa. Why switch to Gmail, I used to think? Yahoo will do just fine. I’ve been using Gmail more and more.”

+Dominique Johnson: “This is pretty cool! I must say I have found myself using Google more & more since I got on my G+ platform.”

@orli : “Also I must say that Google Plus excites me because of the extensive options and its future connection to other Google services (Gmail, Calendar, Places, etc).”

Finally, let’s read a little of AllFacebook.com’s post, “The One Google Plus Feature Facebook Should Fear”. Author Nick O’Neil opens the post with, “I’ve found the one feature that could take away from Facebook where it’s most dominant: Time on the site.”

However, here’s the really important “take away” from Nick’s post:

“To be honest, my gut reaction after using Google Plus was initially, ‘Why on earth would anybody switch to this from Facebook?’

However, when I loaded up Google Finance as I do every morning, I suddenly realized that I was asking the wrong question. The reality is that users won’t have the option of not using Google Plus.

Google already has more users than Facebook, over one billion. They aren’t going to suddenly leave Facebook in droves, they’re just going to spend more time on all the sites in Google’s network. That big notifications box in the top right of all Google sites is the reason why.”

So What Is Google Really Aiming For?

Jus squeeeeze yer eyes

Humans are intrinsically lazy – as in, most of us will willing adapt if that adaptation is easy. With Google + and “ease of use” in mind, please follow this last thought trail:

From within G+ Hangouts, you can:

• have a private “face-to-face” business meeting
• watch videos together on YouTube (Google property)
• give a presentation and discuss
• co-produce a spreadsheet or document live (with Google Docs)

From within G+ Circles you can:

• Share sensitive documents to a private corporate “room”, or circle and lock down resharing (document control)

From within the G+ Mobile App, you can:

• Conduct meetings or continue private sharing (currently still only available on Android, a Google produced phone. It’s earmarked for Apple as well, which means snagging some of Apple’s market for Google’s products).

From within G+ Photos, you can:

• Create and share a presentation (using Picasa, a Google product)

In short, Google is swiftly integrating a large amount of its products into its new social networking productivity platform. It isn’t Facebook that needs to be watching its coat tails. It’s Microsoft. It’s Apple. It’s every productivity suite you’ve ever come across.

For those that need visual convincing (i.e. pictures), we came across this great presentation on, you guessed it, G+. By +Vincent Wong, It’s also a fantastic example of how a presentation can be created and shared.

The little black bar at the top of the screen takes you to your:

• Calendar
• News Reader
• Documents
• Spreadsheets
• Presentations
• PDFs
• Online photo albums
• YouTube
• Search

You can use it for shopping and quick checkout, for finding recipes, for finding sales and researching scholarly write ups. It’s a single click from your Blogger blog, or photo editing on Picnik. With Fusion Tables, you can create data maps and charts. In short, there’s a lot you can do with Google, and it’s all connected to G+.

Conclusion

Google Plus isn’t a Facebook, Twitter or other social network killer. Yes, they want to get into social, but as a means to bigger and better things. Google wants the cloud, and it wants to take you (and your friends, and your friends friends friends) with it.

– And you know what? By the time they’re done tinkering with G+ after all the feedback, you might not find that such a bad offer.

The social world has been on fire since June 28th. Google Plus posts, tweets and chats are pouring steadily into the social sphere at a steady pace, and show no signs of slowing down. You simply can’t keep up with all of them (we’ve tried).

Many of these posts are somewhat regurgitated content. They’re about how the particular author is using G+ (what the cool kids are calling Google Plus), what they’ve found, why they love it (or hate it), and so on. A few, on the other hand, are quite simply works of art.

Google + Review and Privacy Issues

Circle Packing!

AJ Kohn (creator of Blind Five Year Old, SEOmoz Search Ranking Panelist and so on), for example, wrote a lengthy Google+ Review. Rather than expound on how he’s using the world’s newest social platform, he pinpoints a few issues in the seemingly most enjoyed part – Circles. AJ writes:

“I’m not sure Circles works in practice, or at least not the way many though they would. The flexibility of Circles could be its achilles heel. I have watched people create a massive ordered list of Circles for every discrete set of people. Conversely, I’ve seen others just lump everyone into a big Circle. Those in the latter seem unsettled, thinking that they’re doing something wrong by not creating more Circles.”

One thing that really stuck with us at Level343 is his thoughts on Circles privacy. G+ has gone to a great deal of trouble to give you privacy at an insane level of control. Share with a single person or many, a specific circle or entirely public, and so on. Yet, your privacy only goes so far as the person you share with. If they find it humorous, thought provoking and so on, they are quite capable of sharing it with others. Privacy gone.

As well, as AJ shows, the handy dandy sharing model gives away some things about you that you may not have planned. In a test, he manages to hunt down over 1,000 Googlers that may, or may not, have been under the radar as a Google employee. This kind of information is quickly available just by “skimming” the content of others’ circles. Again, the idea of veil of privacy seems a little thinner than first perceived.

What’s Google’s Real Goal with G+?

Then you have the question that’s been pandered about, “Is Google Plus a Facebook killer?” Amongst the yeas and nays being posted, Marshall Kirkpatrick (Technology Journalist and lead writer for ReadWriteWeb), mentions another possibility on his personal blog.Marshall writes:

“Listening tonight to an interview with Plus designer Joseph Smarr on the IEEE Podcast, it became clear to me that for at least some of Plus’s leadership the goal is not to win social networking outright, or to kill any competitors, but to disrupt the social networking economy with a big enough, good enough and popular enough service that the walled gardens (Facebook in particular) are forced to open up interoperability enough that their users can communicate with the significant enough number of people in their lives that use a different social network.”

Not all the commentors agree, of course. Some argue that Google’s goals are based more on improved PageRank and AdWords click-ability. The comments themselves are a good read, along with the post. What’s Google’s real aim? Only Google knows; however, for anyone paying attention, it’s obvious Google isn’t just creating a new social platform.

From Google’s Mouth to Your Ears

Wired.com published “Inside Google + – How the Search Giant Plans to Go Social” less than five hours after the announcement on the Official Google Blog. In this long, in depth article, the corporation’s code name for Google+, or “Emerald Sea”, is released – one of the smallest details in an fantastic piece of written art.

Writer Steven Levey says the search giant higher-ups have put Google + on the permanent map. Even if it fails, it’s not going anywhere but back to the drawing board:

“No one expects an instant success. But even if this week’s launch evokes snark or yawns, Google will keep at it. Google+ is not a product like Buzz or Wave where the company’s leaders can chalk off a failure to laudable ambition and then move on. ‘We’re in this for the long run,’ says Ben-Yair. ‘This isn’t like an experiment. We’re betting on this, so if obstacles arise, we’ll adapt.’”

This was a great article and well worth reading for those interested in the minds behind Google’s latest venture into social. Again, there’s some definite thought-provoking gold in the comments as well as the post.

What Might Have Been Missed

With all the “news that is news” about G+ flooding the Net, however, a few other changes and details seem to have slipped by a large majority. For example:

• Social Search AKA RealTime Search, has gone AWOL from the SERPS
• Sadly, so has the Wonder Wheel
• Things have been added to the search interface as well, such as a filter for “reading level” and “sites with images” (completely different, by the way, than a Google Image search)
• And did anyone notice the little mic up in the search bar that let’s you search by voice?
• Not to mention the several completely updated Android apps, such as the Google Maps 5.7 update (including the Google + app)
• Or the “Recipes” search option

In short, if you want to keep up with Google and you have the head for it, it might be advisable to search through the 40,000 + patents available that relate to search engines. If that’s too much for you, SEO By the Sea breaks some of them down into slightly less technical bits of information.

Are We Jumping the Gun a Little?

Gun Failing

Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, as soon as Google+ came out, people (read SEOs and marketers) started “testing” to see what impact G+ might have on the SERPs. Others immediately began speculating on how G+ could be used for business purposes. Still others wondered how it tied in with +1… and so on.

Okay, so maybe trying to figure out how to apply a new social platform to business is just, well, business. –And yet, does it makes sense when that platform (even if it IS Google’s platform) is still in testing?

Feedback is still pouring in, to the extent that Google posted a “known issues” page. They’re obviously still fine-tuning, especially in areas such asSparks and Gmail/G+ integration. In short, it’s still a work in progress, and any “test” will most likely end up with the conclusion of “we need to do more tests”.

Quite simply, we have no idea what the final pièce de résistance will be. While you’re planning how to use “Hangouts” for business purposes, they could very well be changing it to the point that your plan is useless (just as an example, people). Give it some time – learn how to use it, or how your target market will use it, before spending oodles of time planning!

Conclusion

The times they are a changing. The old Google is, quite simply, gone – for two reasons. One, they seem to have a fresh new perspective on how to finally reach out to their market (everybody). Two, and most importantly, they’ve become active listeners. They ask questions about a specific area of G+ (for example) and then listen to the answers.

Is it a kindler, gentler Google? Naw – it’s still gigantic monolith of a corporation with an eye on the bottom line and a finger in every honey pot. However, it appears that the company is, at the very least, a smarter, wiser Google. Kisses, and hugs from Europe…

Numero Uno

A while back, we came across an article on Search News Central (SNC) by search geek David Harry, entitled Google Social Search; seriously, WTF people? In this article, Harry asks why social search seems to have been ignored by the SEO industry as a whole. Another article on SEOMoz, by Rand Fish, also discusses these changes. Both articles are worth reading – for the content AND the pretty pictures.

However, in the meantime, let’s talk a little bit about Google Social, in terms of optimization and search. In case you haven’t heard the news, there’s a lot going on…

Google’s Realtime Search

We’ve know about it, we’ve talked about it, and it’s been around for a while now. You can use Realtime search just as you would with Universal search. The big deal with Realtime is that you can weed out all the pages. In other words, it’s pure conversation; it has ultimate lurking potential for conversational topics. You can see:

• Who’s talking
• What they’re talking about
• Whom they’re talking to
• What they say about a brand or product
• Read their recommendations/complaints

In essence, search for a brand gives you real time, social voting results.

For SEOs, it sucks. You can’t tweak it much. Oh, sure, you can optimize the crap out of the titles and URLs being posted. You can carefully add in targeted hashtags for terms you want to show up for, but that’s all you can do – show up. You can’t stay ranked at the top (unless you want to look like a bot, maybe), because the results are ranked by when they happened.

Social Search

How many of you sign in to Google? How many of you pay attention to whether you’re signed in? For the majority of people NOT worrying about rankings, it’s just one of those things. If you don’t sign out or clear your cookies, you’re constantly signed into Google.

Your search results may not be the same when you’re signed in as when you’re logged out. Why? Because of social search.

See, all the positive ranking factors SEOs target are, by and large, considered votes for a site. Whether those votes are for relevance, quality or just plain link-worthy content, it’s all voting. As with any election, the one with the most votes wins.

However, some votes count more than others. In link building, for example, a link is considered a vote. Site A has 100 “votes” and 10 are from authoritative (.gov, .edu, .org, etc.) sites. Site B, on the other hand, has twice as many “votes”, but none from authoritative sites. In this case, Site A is more likely to rank above B, based on the additional authority.

Enter social search, then, where the vote that counts the most is a retweet by someone you know. This can, an often does, throw a normally invisible result onto the front page. Here, social search offers SEO two big, whopping problems:

Are you listening?

Problem #1

If you’re signed in and have a social circle, a lot of our hard work has the potential of being wasted on you. This is especially true if you follow thousands of people across several platforms. Social mentions can end up pushing down the top results for a search.

As well, Social search puts an image and information next to that image. Our eyes will e drawn, therefore, to that mentioned link first and the “real” top position second.

Problem #2

How do you measure this? We can’t see that “Joe came from personalized search based on Bob’s recommendation.” What we have is a visit from Google based on a keyword. Now, maybe we can get an idea using # of search impressions, but there are no guarantees. SEOs don’t like that. We like stuff we can track.

Take Away Points

What can you take away from this? What does this mean? What can you do?

• ALWAYS put the visitor first
• Make sure your site is properly optimized
• Aim for higher ranking (yes, it’s still worth while – at least 70% of people still run searches without being logged in to Google)
• Create quality, linkable content (you want to get people talking about it)
• Understand that social has gone full circle and you need to be involved
• Use relevant hashtags
• Be social

Since “social media” became a marketing method, we’ve strongly urged our readers to embrace it. We’ve talked several times about incorporating social media and SEO into a single, seamless campaign. We’ve also talked about choosing the right platforms for your audience.

Having said that, it’s important to note that your link can be shared by people on Quora, who may have gotten it from you on Twitter. This means you really can focus your SMM efforts on two or three platforms and “socialize the heck out of them”. If you do it right, and carefully build your network, it can become a true community.

Conclusion

Now, don’t read all this and get the idea that SEO is dead. Let’s not kick that dog again, m’kay? What you can see is that SEO and Social Media need to be united. That way, social entices logged in Google searchers, while SEO entices logged out searchers. It’s a win-win. Don’t ignore one for the other, and don’t play favorites.

It’s not Google’s game; it’s your business.

It's official I'm Hawt!!

It’s official – Gabriella has left the building. She’s off to Italy for three weeks, and she’s left me in charge. Mwahahaha – the awesome power! *mad giggle*

I’m excited, and I’ll tell you why. I get to test stuff while she’s gone!! Okay, so it’s only three weeks, and it won’t be able to be anything really crazy – I mean, I’m not going to put comments above posts or anything. Don’t be too surprised, though, if you see some changes. Today, it’s the Article Archive, tomorrow, the world (I feel like the mad scientist of websites)!

Allow me to direct your attention to the bottom of the posts, where I’m testing a new button. Well, it’s a new button for us. I want to switch our tweet button from the Official Twitter Button to the Topsy Tweet Button. Gabriella* wants to keep our current button. Therefore, I have to prove why Topsy’s button is better.

*because she doesn’t want to loose the hard work she’s put in the last quarter getting us a ridiculous amount of traffic and RT’s  from pimping on every street corner to promising Nutella jars to anyone and everyone. Furthermore, she let me switch from another version of the Twitter button and we lost a large percentage of the RT power we had… Sure, she’s easy, and always looking to be progressive – to keep up with the times -, but after loosing all RT buttons she lost faith. Faith in the RT values, faith in numbers and faith in these OVERNIGHT success buttons that come and go like the wind (she’s serious about her social, people).

Here’s my argument. Maybe you can help me make it more persuasive, huh?

Why the Official Tweet Button Sucks

We’ve used the Official Tweet button (called the OTB from here on out) since it first came out. First, we had problems with the code output… several instances of oh-so-not-sexy “AKPC_IDS +=” code. Okay, so that might have been, MIGHT have been, operator error. I’m willing to accept that and move on.

Then, the real problem showed up, when Gabriella came banging on my door, demanding for me to tell her what I did with her social numbers. To be fair, I had done something with the numbers on three articles a few days before. I changed the URLs, the tweet numbers plummeted to a big fat zero, and I forgot to tell her it would happen*.

*By the way, don’t ever just copy your blog title and publish it without checking the link first. Especially if you use extra characters like dashes, apostrophes or quotes. One, they transfer into fugly URLs. Two, you’re more likely to have broken links and 404 errors if someone copy/pastes the URL to use as a link back to the post. Lessons learned and all that…

Oops My Bad!

Anyway, when she showed up at my door, I assumed she meant the three articles. “You already told me that,” she said, “but what about…” Long story short, we’d lost numbers. Big numbers. They didn’t all go to zero, but we’d lost 50 here, 30 there, 10 there, and so on. Turns out the culprit was the OTB or, to be more exact, Twitter. It took me months and an interesting conversation to figure this out.

You see, Twitter occasionally purges its system of old, dusty tweets. The OTB bases its numbers off the Twitter database. So, when Twitter purges, so does OTB. If you’re using OTB, expect your numbers to drop occasionally.

On top of this, OTB’s count is based on a specific URL. That is, the URL that posts when you RT. So, unless the tweeter actually pushes the button on the page, or you push the OTB and they RT your exact tweet, you don’t get the count.

Finally, there’s no style. It’s just… blue. There are WordPress plugins that go along with this button (TweetButton, WP-TweetButton, and WP Tweet Button, to name a few), and they have varying degrees of extra functionality, but… they’re just blue. Twitter Fail Whale blue, at that.

I’m not a colorist; I don’t have anything against blue, but it just doesn’t go with the site, know what I mean? Blue is just not how we roll.

Why Topsy’s Tweet Button Doesn’t Suck

Okay I'm spoiled too...

Dig the section titles? Yeah, I’m creative like that. It’s called “taking liberties”.

Anyway, observe, if you will, the following…

→ Firstly, Topsy’s Tweet Button (TTB) didn’t give me any crap when I put the code in. I didn’t get any stray characters or weird meta descriptions. Bonus; I like that about a plugin.

→ Secondly, TTB’s count is based off Topsy’s database. -And guess what? Topsy doesn’t delete old tweets. For us, TTB shows a count for posts back at the beginning of 2009 (when we really started hopping into social), while OTB shows zip, nada, zilch.

→ Thirdly, you have the option of showing, along with the tweet count, where a particular post ranks in comparison to the others on your site, in terms of Twitter conversation. For example, Top SEO Women – Just the Tip of the Iceberg (July 2010) is the top tweeted post on the Article Archive (by the way, Google Analytics shows it’s our top post, period). I really like that cool little “Top [star] 100” (or 1,000, 5,000, etc) addition.

→ Fourthly, TTB allows you to pull in the tweets as trackbacks to the blog, or as part of the comments. I’m currently dinking with that, so if the bits disappear and rearrange, ignore it – and that’s an order. I don’t know about you, but it seems a handy feature to me; even when someone doesn’t comment on the blog, visitors can still see it’s active.

→ Fifthly, TTB isn’t selective about the link. As long as it leads back to the page, it can be a bit.ly, ow.ly, add.me – doesn’t matter; TTB will pick it up as a count. Therefore, seems to me the count is closer to the real deal than OTB’s.

→ Sixthly, you can filter out your own signal, so you see what others have tweeted. I mean, you already know what you tweeted, right? Why do you need that information to muck up your metrics?

There are a lot more reasons why I’d like to switch to Topsy, but the final big reason is style. Sure, if you want blue, you can have blue. BUT, you can also have brick red, hot pink, wisteria, jade. Thirteen choices and flavors. On top of that, you can turn the “Top [star]” part off, if you prefer not to have it on there. You can just have a retweet button, put the numbers on either side or pop them up on top of the retweet in a big box.

Flexible, stylish, with options.

It’s flexible. It’s stylish. It has options.

I’d talk about the ability to add hashtags automatically, or add “by @twittername”, etc. but some of these options are offered by the OTB plugins as well. The things I mentioned above are native to the button itself.

Conclusion

I’m not sure if this is enough to back up my theory that TTB is a better button. I’m not sure if it will be enough to convince Gabriella to switch. There’s a reason she’s head of business development for Level343… she looks at the appearance of the company as much as she does the processes of the company; it’s her bailiwick.

Me… well, to tell you the truth… I’m a specie-ist.  I just don’t like the looks of that Twitter bird…

Here’s where I appeal to you, dear readers. Are you willing to help me convince Gabriella that TTB is better? By all means, pass it on to me! Or do you disagree? Maybe I’m the one that needs convincing. Share and share a like!

Are You Outstanding?

When the money’s pouring in and the economy is booming, almost everyone seems to flourish. The demand for products and services is high; there are more pieces of a bigger pie and more businesses can be involved. Of course, this isn’t so true when the economy “drags butt”, as so many eloquently put it.

“Well, duh,” you say, and start roaming around the page to see if there’s something here you don’t know. How about this – did you know there’s a way to succeed while other people/companies are dropping like flies?

You did? Oh. Well, do you know what that way is?

Problem: When the economy slows down, many small businesses are left holding an empty box. Consumers have too many choices, and we’re more meticulous in a slow economy than in a smoothly rolling one. We’re less likely to make impulsive decisions.

Solution: Interesting, not interrupted, marketing. A business that stands out from its competitors is a growing business – even in a slow economy.

Wait! Don’t roll your eyes – you’ll miss the slight of hand act!

Ask yourself:
Can I, with all the information and competition out there, really do something unique?

If not, the next question is:
Can I do something interesting?

Standing Out From the Rest

Standing out could mean a lot of things, and not always good things. You can stand out for poor customer service, for example, where you actually just stick out like a sore thumb.

Outstanding, however, means a lot more. It means being exceptional and the exception to the rule. It means excelling at being excellent. It means trying harder. Because you have to be doing a) something the competition isn’t doing or b) the same thing in a more interesting way. c) using the magic bullet (hard work).

How do you do that? Here are a few ideas:

Give ways to continue the conversation

That thank you page after the sale is SO important. What do you have on it? Is it just “Thanks, we took your money and we don’t need you anymore,” or is it exceptional? Does it allow customers a way to connect with you after the sale? For example:

• Remind them to bookmark the page with all your contact details
• Remind them that they can follow you on social networks

Excellent customer service

Do you respond quickly to customer service queries? How many ways do you provide for them to reach you if they have an issue or question? A few examples of what you might offer:

• sales@company.com
• support@company.com
• phone number for sales
• phone number for support
• @social account
• http:// link to monitored Q&A or FAQ site/page
• contact areas that report to a monitored email address

When we had a problem with AT&T, and then a technical issue with Empire Avenue, we took it to Twitter. Both responded promptly with ways to resolve those issues. This type of customer service – prompt, helpful, courteous – is outstanding. It sets, in the mind of the customer, a sense of trust and reliability towards the company.

Social monitoring and reputation management

To be able to provide that level of customer service, you have to know when people are complaining. Unfortunately, thanks to Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, as well as blogging opportunities galore, you’re probably not going to be able to hide your dirty laundry.

The best you can hope to do is monitor your online reputation and respond quickly. Not only does this give you the opportunity to turn an angry customer into a happy one, but it also shows potential customers that you care enough to “send the very best”.

So how do you monitor? A few ways include:

• Search Twitter using your @brand or #brand
• Watch your Twitter mentions
• Setting Google Alerts for specific brand words
• MonitorThis, which scans for terms across several types of search engines
• BlogPulse, which you can use to track conversations, find blogs based on a term, follow the conversation around a specific URL, etc.
• Use social search and specific hashtags (if applicable)

Go the extra mile

Take a look, it's not so bad...

One of the most effective things you can do to stand out from the rest is go that extra mile. “What does that mean?” you ask. Well, again, let’s give a few examples:

Write real reviews – take the time to review products, books, etc. that will be helpful to your target market. Share your insight into these products. Did you like it? Why or why not? What stood out most? This type of helpful information – unpaid, unbiased – can help you develop a trusting relationship with your customer base. It teaches them they can count on you to give an honest, in depth, unbiased opinion.

Create helpful videos – Do you sell a product that takes more than two steps to use? Even if you think something is obscenely easy to operate, there is at least one person out there, staring in confusion at a page of directions. There are tons of video creation products out there; if you have a little bit of time and initiative go that extra step and create a “how to use this product” video.

Build relationships – Easier said than done, you say? Pfft. Building relationships is easy; it’s keeping them that’s hard. Maybe it’d help to treat social media like a tactical exercise. Lure people in by following them on Facebook and Twitter. Buy them on Empire Avenue. Then, when they least expect it – as soon as they follow or buy you back -, attack them with engaging, witty repertoire! They’ll be so surprised, they’ll be sure to join your side.

Conclusion

Sometimes, you can’t beat out the competition in the SERPs. Sometimes you can’t beat the competition online at all. What you can do, however, is create a small niche – not a niche market, but a small niche of friends, satisfied clients, engaged readers and happy followers.

These people turn into your personal cheerleaders. They’re your small, yet effective marketing team. They say, “Ooh, have you checked with [insertyourcompanyhere]? Good products, awesome customer service… Maybe you can buzz them on Twitter with your question.” In fact, they say a lot of really nice, really helpful things – AND, they say these things to people who trust them. You can’t beat that kind of marketing.

In conclusion, don’t be afraid to go the extra mile. Don’t be afraid to give extraordinary customer service. In this economy or any other, the extra touches really make a difference.

What are you waiting for?

There are really only two types of people using social networking platforms: those that use them for fun, and those that use them for business. If you’re using social media for fun and to make new friends, well, this articles isn’t for you. Move along. I said MOVE ALONG!

This article is only for business owners, struggling to figure out “this whole social media thing”. This article is for those who wish it didn’t have to be such a drag; those who want to forget about the business part and just socialize, but can’t. In short, THIS article is for those who hate social media and wish it wasn’t so darn necessary.

Okay – have all the readers left who enjoy social media? Good – let’s go surfing. Strap your goggles on and tighten your creative cap.

Take A Walk Down Empire Avenue

If you’re a regular reader here, you know we test many social platforms. The one we’re testing now has a lot going for it. Best of all, it’s fun!

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Not another social networking platform!” But wait – because this one is just a little different.

It’s called Empire Avenue, and it’s relatively young (EA has only been around for about a year). The company doesn’t call itself a social media company, however. Duleepa Wijayawardhana, aka Dups, calls Empire Avenue a “social influence stock market”. You can learn more about the EA Team here, but be prepared… these aren’t your normal bios. For example, apparently, Dups can’t keep a secret and the COO, Robert Kallir, has to reign him in (so, Dups is probably the one to slyly pick at if you want some juicy info).

Having fun yet?

Now, for Facebook fans, Empire Avenue might remind you of “Friends for Sale”, where you buy and sell your friends. However, don’t have preconceived notions based on the similarities. Where EA differs, it really differs.

Concept:

Empire Avenue is a social networking game, where individuals can buy and sell shares, investing in people and brands. You can win award badges and even get virtual currency, called “Eaves”. Use the virtual currency for things like:

• More shares
• Sports cars
• Upgrades
• Hang gliders
• Mansions
• Yachts

Oh, come on! You want me to take a game seriously? I have real social sites to manage!

No – we want you to take your business’ social outreach program seriously. Here are a few BIG things Empire Avenue has going for it:

It makes networking fun. When something’s fun, more people get involved – and get more fully involved. Seriously, how many of you didn’t play on LinkedIn when they came out with the Water Cooler? That’s the fun we are talking about here – a connection like a bridge that can give you a better understanding of who and what your market is doing.

Through personal, city and interest level communities, you can connect with local people, people with shared interests and – tada – your target market. For example, if you sell organic home cleaning products, what could be better than a community named “Family and Kids”?

More social reach… You’re not going to find everybody who might want to connect with you a single network. Some, for example, are only on Facebook, while others are only on Twitter. Empire Avenue allows you to connect your LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube accounts. This gives you access to more social media users based on the platforms they’re using.

More exposure… When someone invests, one of the first things many well tell you is that they go check out the profile of the person who bought the stock. So, let’s say you buy 10 shares of (e)XYZ. The person running (e)XYZ will see that you bought stock and visit your profile. On your profile, they’ll be exposed to:

• A brief biography
• Your Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and Fan page accounts
• Your blog feed
• Your Twitter feed
• Your current share price
• Your current social influence (i.e. how active you are on social networks)

What Others Have to Say About Empire Avenue

Now, don’t take our word for it. First, visit Twitter. Search for EmpireAvenue and read some of the comments. A few talk about how they don’t understand what EA is or how to use it. Most, however, really get into the whole “social marketing, networking, stock investing game, thing”.

Then, you can read Why Top Brands Are Investing So Much Time in A Social Media Leaderboard. Read Katharine Robinson’s commentary in Empire Avenue – The Thinking Person’s Farmville, where she makes some good points. There’s also a good article about how Empire Avenue Helps Teach Social Media Engagement.

Do it... Buy!!

–And finally, just in case you’re the type of person who never does anything unless the big dogs do, here’s a sample of people on Empire Avenue:

• ☆ Gabriella Sannino (e)SEOCOPY
• ☆ Jahnelle Pittman (e)JRPITTMAN
• ☆ Liz Strauss (e)LIZS
• ☆ Shelly Kramer (e)SHELLYKRAMER
• ☆ Dean B (e)THEDUDEDEAN
• ☆ Chris Pirillo (e)Pirillo
• ☆ Darren Rowse (e)PROBLOGGER
• ☆ Erika Napoletano (e)RHWFTW
• ☆ Ann Smarty (e)SMARTY
• ☆ Anita Campbell (e)SBT

This list, of course, leaves out people like Jennifer, Kasey, Dedric, Nicole, Dawn, Reg and Gabe. They aren’t big swimmers in the pool of social media. Some don’t have a business, and are just checking out Empire Avenue because they heard it was fun.

The point is, these people count, too. Because social media isn’t really about business – not really, no matter what they tell you. Social media is about making strong connections. It’s about turning potential customers and clients into friends; it’s about creating strong relationships.

For Empire Avenue players, it’s about having fun and building a network while you’re at it.

Conclusion

Some people look at Empire Avenue and either shrug their shoulders or write negative commentary (the comments are interesting) about it. It’s hard for some people to see past the “game” idea. – But then, EA probably isn’t for everyone, anyway.

However, if you’re new to social media and trying to figure out how to use it – or, if you’re tired of same old, same old, give Empire Avenue a try. You might just find your share price – and your engagement level – skyrocketing!

Now that you’ve read this article, hurry up and buy some shares – and don’t forget to let us know your (e)name so we can invest!

What are you measuring?

Hootsuite analytics anyone? A sequel to Monitoring Your Daily Social Media Efforts, Social Media Measuring: The 4 Key Elements will take you through the ins and outs of Hootsuite analytics for Twitter and Facebook. Learn how to measure your approach, no matter what type of social media campaign you’re running.

Why is social media measuring important?

This may seem like a mindless question, but some honestly don’t understand what the big deal is. You tweet and post on Facebook, and it just works, right? Wrong. Like any campaign, you have to have a plan with goals, approach and strategies. –And, if you have goals, you need a way to track (or measure) how you’re doing. Of course, if you’re using social media simply to chat and meet people (in other words, not for business), you won’t need measuring tools. However, the minute you look at social media as a business tool, it’s time to pay attention.

Benchmarks provide a guideline. They also help you define your goal. For example, you’re getting ready to start a new social media campaign. Before you start that campaign, you might want to make a note of the numbers. A few examples might be:

• How many followers do you have?
• What’s your current reach?
• How many are actually responding at this time?

If these numbers haven’t grown by the end of the campaign, chances are your campaign wasn’t a success. How will you know, though, if you haven’t chosen your benchmarks? Whatever your ultimate goal is, you have to start with a strong set benchmarks. You also have to deal with data, no matter what reporting tool you use.

And finally, if you don’t have any idea how to start measuring, you have to watch Social Media Measuring: The 4 Key Elements. Get your campaigns moving in the right direction!

Time suck

Life is funny, isn’t it? You jump into blogging and worry about organic optimization because ABC SEO specialist said, “if you build it, they will come.” Ah, the undefined they. Well, in this case it’s they, as in, the search engines, the visitors, the conversions.

You jump into the huge time suck of engaging on Twitter and Facebook because XYZ social marketer said, “you have to give your customers some face time”. You jump on Quora, Amplify, Tumblr and 15 other things for the same reasons.

Do you feel like a Mexican jumping bean, yet?
Has any of it beefed up your business?
If not, why do you think it hasn’t?

Although no one has exactly the same reasons why a campaign hasn’t worked out as expected, usually it’s because they’ve forgotten something – some step – along the way. Look at our checklist and see if, just maybe, you’ve missed something.

1. Create a Plan of Action

Look – most of you didn’t start your business without a plan of action, right? Why, then, would you start any campaign without a plan of action? If you don’t have any actionable goals other than the idea that people will come, you can’t know if you’re meeting them.

So, whether you’re blogging, giving Facebook some face time or tweeting on Twitter, first figure out why you’re doing these things. Obviously, you want more traffic and conversions, but what are the goals in between?

For example, a goal to reach might be “increased engagement on Twitter” or “more comments per post”.

2. Define the Metrics to Track

The plan of action is always first, but then you have to decide how you’re going to track your efforts, and this means data in some form. Metrics, statistics, numbers – which are you going to watch? Are you going to pay attention to how many people are following you on Twitter? How about the amount of traffic per blog, or overall site traffic? What is your time line?

3. Choose Your Monitoring / Measuring Methods

Once you’ve outlined your plan and the data you’re going to track, you have to figure out how to monitor / measure the data. For example, you can monitor whether you’re increasing Twitter engagement by the number of retweets and mentions (Klout is good for this). You can use analytics from inside your blog for the kind of traffic you’re getting on each post, as another example. You can build a campaign around hash tags. There are plenty of ways to monitor and measure your efforts; you’re job is to figure out which one(s) you’ll use.

Choose your metrics

The important thing to know about monitoring /measuring methods is this – if you’re using programs, the statistics may not agree from program to program. There are several reasons for this, but it can drive you crazy going back and forth between programs reporting on the same metric. Which one do you believe?

So, choose, and then stick with that program. If you switch monitoring / measuring programs, then really switch. Comparing the data from similar programs can be confusing, frustrating and, sometimes, disheartening.

4. Listen

Maybe this should be number one. It’s easy to pour content, tweets, Facebook posts, etc. into the black hole of the Internet. It is not easy to do so in a manner people want to absorb and interact with.

No matter what your goals are, listening is important. You have to know what people are interested in reading and talking about for your industry. You have to listen when they talk about how cool so and so’s blog is. Because then, you have to track down so and so’s blog and figure out why your target audience thinks it’s cool.

You have to listen to your client or customer base. What questions do they have? Can they be answered in a blog? Are people finding your Twitter tips easy to follow? If you’re sending out daily Twitter tips and they’re never retweeted or commented on, they aren’t strong enough to cause responses. If they aren’t causing responses, they probably aren’t useful to most of your followers.

You can listen by asking questions. “What do you think about XYZ?” or “ABC Tip is: blah blah. What’s your experience?” or “Ask your question about… and I’ll answer it in a well thought out, highly engaging, completely humorous blog.”

Bonus: A side benefit of asking questions is that you teach people to come to you and look at you as an authority in your field.

5. Find your industry water cooler.

Not everybody in every industry hangs out on Twitter. Not everybody is a Facebook fan. Some people are more comfortable in forums; others spend hours pouring over Amplify or Quora.

The point is, instead of jumping on every bandwagon, be selective. If you hear about a new social media platform, don’t rush to sign up. Rush to research. “Is this the platform for me? Are people talking about the same things I’m talking about?”

If the answer is yes, try it out – just don’t pour a whole bunch of time and energy into the new platform. Give it a cautious test run.

If the answer is no, remember you have better things to do with your time than waste it on useless social media. Stick with your current water coolers and continue building your community.

Conclusion

Nothing in life worth having is free, and nothing you work to earn is worthless. When you start blogging, posting on Facebook, tweeting on Twitter, etc., you’re actually starting a community. Your hope (for the business individuals, anyway) is that you can create an atmosphere of trust and authority around your efforts. This does not come easy.

If you’re organic approach and efforts aren’t working, whether you’re blogging for SEO and traffic or tweeting for recognition, you need to stop. Shut up. Listen. The one thing you need to meet your goals might be said by the very next person that follows your Twitter, fans your Facebook or comments on your blog.

It’s your turn – if you had to pick one essential approach for blogging and social networking, what would it be? What lessons have you learned from your experiences? What would you do differently and why?

Yes, a video blog, and about one of my favorite subjects, too: monitoring your social media efforts. Creating videos is a new endeavor for us, but we did our best.

Why a video?

In the past, we’ve often recommended videos as a method of content development. “Universal search,” we’ve said, “isn’t something you can ignore.” If you have the resources to reach vertical searches like images and videos, why… Well, our philosophy isn’t “less is more”; our philosophy is “more is more”.

Our philosophy has also always been to practice what you preach. How else can we really know what we’re talking about? How else can we know the time and energy that goes into creating every bit of a content-centric campaign?

To that end, welcome to our first video blog!

And why about social media monitoring, of all things?

By now, you probably know I’m a huge advocate for social media in all forms. Communication is the new currency, in all its shapes and sizes.

Well, here at Level343, we’ve been throwing around the idea for a video for a while now. So, when I received a question about how I manage to keep all the social aspects of our business going, it sounded like a good jumping off point.

Monitoring Your Daily Social Media Efforts is our answer to the question. We hope you enjoy the video and please, feel free to add your comments, questions and pointers in the comments below. Your next question may very well be answered in our next video!

A day in the office

Recently, we posted Comment Spam vs. Comment Links: What’s the Difference? and received some great comments based on our readers’ opinions. Ironically, one commenter proved the point we were trying to make, about how links in comments can enhance a conversation without being spam.

Gail Gardner, social media marketing and Internet strategist of GrowMap.com, left an excellent comment (thanks, Gail, and welcome to the Level343 SEO Article Archive) on the article… and here is where this article begins.

Cutting Off the Conversation

“If the only reason for you being on an article is to post a comment and build links, you’re in danger of committing the SEO sin of comment spam. Tread carefully. However, if you’re at an article to read it, are moved to comment, have written or read a piece that you want to share with others, and so post the link with your comment, this is not spam. This is communicating, engaging and building a community.” – Quote from Comment Spam vs. Comment Links

Now, we hope Gail will forgive us, because we’re going to tear her comment apart to show our point…

This is a subject near and dear to my heart and I may have written more posts on it than most any other blogger around (that I know of anyway).

She may not be the most prolific writer about spam, but she’s definitely written quite a few articles on the topic. It’s important to note these articles aren’t “How I Hate Spam” or “All Spammers Must Die”, etc. They are well researched, in depth articles (see: Akismet Deletes Comments Bloggers NEVER SEE!) about the topic.

There is definitely NO CONSENSUS across the blogosphere on what comments are spam and which are not. I know that because I did a Twtpoll Spam or Not Spam post where you can read the results.

GrowMap Poll on Comment Spam

Really? Now that sounds interesting. It really does. However, because Gail is a conscientious poster, she left out the link. We had to hunt for it. Now, TwtPoll: SPAM or NOT SPAM – YOU Decide was a pretty small poll as these things go; 15 people responded. However, it still says a lot that 4 of them (27%!) said they’d consider a comment with a link as spam.

Would you believe some bloggers flag as spam any comment they don’t like while others will flag any comment that links to a business and some even flag as spammers any comment from anyone they don’t know. (THAT is why Akismet can NEVER work unless they implement a fundamental change in how it flags spam – see my recent post on Crowdsourcing for more details on that or the many, many posts I’ve done about Akismet deleting our comments and being rude to our commentators.)

This… this is frustrating. We’d love to see the many posts about Akismet that Gail has written, but there’s no link. This means, we again have to spend time hunting them down.

…see my recent post on Crowdsourcing…

The Power of Crowdsourcing by 99designs

Ummm… where? Does this mean we can find a post about crowdsourcing on GrowMap (It does, but we didn’t know that)? Can we find the information somewhere on one of the 43,000 search results for “crowdsourcing, Gail Gardner”? Where is this recent post?

I wrote a post about believing in the Google Fairy for those who buy the silly notion that if you do nothing to build links your blog or site will somehow still be found.

Again, we would have loved to see what Gail had to say on the subject. It might be something that might bring us around to another way of viewing things. It might be an article that inspires us to write a response. It could be several things, but we’ll never know, because searching for “believing in the Google Fairy” didn’t bring up her article (it did, however, bring up ours…).

Personally I love CommentLuv for the reasons I explain in my post about how it grows businesses and blogs and that post explains my suggestions on how bloggers and businesses can mutually benefit from developing relationships through commenting.

HEEEELP! Where are we now? What post? After finally finding the Google Fairy article, we read down and there’s nothing about CommentLuv. We’d love to see what reasons she has for liking the plugin. We’d like to read her suggestions about developing relationships. We’d love to have read just one of these articles she talks about… but we can’t.

She didn’t post any links.

Why?

She didn’t want to be thought of as a spammer.

With at least four links in her comment, most bloggers would drop her into the spam bin if Akismet didn’t get there first.

The lack of links, plain and simple, cut off the conversation.

Putting Our Money Where Our Mouth Is

Well, putting our blog where our mouth is, anyway. We love conversation, whether it happens here or on another blog. Over the past months, we’ve done a few things, like making sure the automatic nofollow was removed.

We THOUGHT we’d see a huge spike in spam. In watching our little spam basket, it’s amazing… things didn’t change for the worst. We have more traffic now than a year ago, and a lower spam to comment ratio.

Last week, we also added linking guidelines to the bottom of our posts and added CommentLuv for our readers. Lastly, we’re trying out the GrowMap Anti-Spambot Plugin, and have retired Akismet for the time being.

How you run your blog is your business, but we don’t want our readers to feel inhibited. We don’t want you to cut off a conversation because you didn’t want to be thought of (or blocked) as a spammer. If you have a related link you think our other readers would enjoy or find useful, please, share it with us.

We want to know more about you – do you have a favorite article you’ve written or read? Just this once, we’re opening up this comment to unrelated links. Let’s see what kind of conversation we can get going!

Design by Virginia Reyes

It’s March 31st, which means National Women’s History Month is coming to a close. What a perfect time to talk about our 2012 Top SEO Women awards 2010, 2011! First, though, an introduction…

Interesting Facts About Women Online

A while back, we came across some amazing statistics. As women, they made us feel all warm and fuzzy in side. As marketers, these statistics made us set up and pay attention. The foundation of these statistics is… (drum roll please) women rule the Internet.

Now, the last thing we want to do, especially on a post about the Top SEO Women of 2012, is wave the whole “race of the sexes” thing around. However, the statistics discussed in an article by Aileen Lee on Tech Crunch, Why Women Rule the Internet, are worth paying attention to.

Here’s an overview (you can read the whole article by clicking on the above link):

• The majority of social networking users are women
• Women spend 30% more time on these sites
• Women are responsible for 55% of mobile social network usage
• Gilt Groupe estimates women drive 74% of revenue to the company
• The U.S. Census says over 80% of consumer spending can be attributed to women
• When it comes to the consumer web of the likes of Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and Twitter, women are the majority of users

In fact, the sites listed above, as well as Opentable, Yelp, Docstoc, Flickr, Myspace, Ning, Bebo and others, women rule the space. In online marketing, social media marketing and SEO, women are slowly but surely taking over spaces traditionally “ruled” by men.

We now return to our regularly scheduled program…

Top SEO Women of 2012 – Nominees

Our nominations are open until April 30th, so you still have an entire month to nominate your favorite female SEO. We’d like to have a list of 20 – 25. So far, your nominees are:

1. Linda Sevier of Pagetender LLC
2. Raquel Franco from SEO femenino
3. Heather Lloyd of SEO Copywriting
4. Anne Handley at Marketing Profs
5. Melanie Nathan of Canadian SEO
6. Vanessa Fox of Nine by Blue
7. Lindsay Wassell at Keyphraseology
8. Ana Martins with SEO Debrigadeiro
9. Chiara Marsella Working out of Rome
10. Gabriela Mori  from São Paulo Brazil
11. Renata Tibiriçá from Brazil
12. Kathryn Katz from Florida
13. Maria Pia De Marzo with Web In Fermento
14. Leslie Carruthers at The Search Guru
15. Manuela Sanchez with Elink Builder in Brazil
16. Mindy Gofton of I-com.net
17. Jennifer Horowitz from Ecombuffet
18. Lisa Myers from Verve Search
19. Joanna Buttler from Search Engine Chocolate
20. Hannah Rampton from Browser Media
21. Julie Joyce from Fish Media
22. Julie Cheung from ManualLinkBuilding
23. Sadie Sherran from SEO Creative
24. Kaila Strong from Vertical Measure
25. Eren Mckay from Embracing Home
26. Joanna Lord from  SEOMoz
27. Patti Fousek of Creative Mind Search
28. Michelle Robbins of Third Door Media

NOMINATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED!
Please visit 2012 Top SEO Women Finalists for a complete list and to vote for your favorite!

0 - to - 100 in your social

After an intense week of social networking that ended with a conference, (Distilled in New Orleans) I think I finally have a better understanding of what I should be doing. It’s taken a long path to get me here; I thought I’d share it with you, our readers, in the hopes that you’ll gain some usefulness.

Sometimes, I think about hiring someone else to do my social networking – some social media guru who can turn each tweet into gold. According to the analytics, according to the numbers, I’m doing it wrong.

A WTF Moment…

For instance, when you’re unfollowed by over 300 people in a week, it’s a big hit to the ego. This happened, although I haven’t changed anything. I engage with my followers, share great links, and continue to add great people to my Twitter and Facebook lists.

Now, around Level343, everyone can attest social is a big topic for me. This is one reason we love to include various social networking blogs. Every so often, we even send them out as guest posts. I’ve been an avid troller of top Twitter analyzers, in fact.

Now, let me be really honest and quite opinionated; none of us get it. I don’t’ care if it’s a paid or free tool, not one of these things has been truly able to capture how well we’re doing with our social networks. How can I tell?

Signs of Movement, Authority and Influence…

• We often receive wonderful emails from our readers.
• We close new clients on a monthly basis.
• At conferences, people recognize me and talk about the impact we’ve had on their lives and work.
• In short, there’s been a lot of positive movement and recognition as authorities in certain areas of the online marketing industry.

And yet… and yet, I look at Klout, Twitalyzer, the top respected analytics (or at least the ones everyone says they use), and my accounts suck. Not only do they suck, but also they tell a tale of miserable failing.

To Hell With the Numbers

To hell with numbers

What I’ve noticed is the RT’s you get, how many new followers per week, how many FollowFridays you’re mentioned on – they don’t matter. I don’t care what the numbers show. Why?

The metrics by which they’re choosing to grade me are not of value to me.

Let’s take influence, as an example. What does it really mean for these programs? Not too much in the grand scheme of things. A better measure of influence for us seems to be things like:

• Amount of incoming traffic – Is it going up?
• Amount of visitors – Are there more return than new? If yes, good.
• Comments – Are readers commenting and engaging?
• Engagement – Are followers responding in conversation?
• Clients – Do we have any?
• Potential Clients – Are people contacting us for work?

See, we put out approximately 15 – 20 pieces of content a month. We get excellent returns for those pieces, especially when you consider how many writers work on our blog. Depending on where they’re posted, we get anywhere from 30 – 300 RTs, 40+ comments, lots of good link love and meet wonderful people who read and like them.

The Big Picture

This may not seem like a lot to some people, but we have to look at the big picture. The big picture is a 2000% growth or more in all areas of our site over the eight, nine months. It’s working with the type of clients we’re looking for – the ones who respect our opinions and expertise. It’s people coming to us for thoughts about XYZ or asking us how to do ABC.

This isn’t braggadocio; far from it. This is simply pointing out that, no matter what the Twitalyzers or Klouts or InfluenceXYZPrograms say, we’re doing something right. Could I buy followers off eBay? Could I manipulate or otherwise game these systems to artificially hike my scores? Could I fake these results? We all know the answer to these questions.

The Total Answer, Bright Light, Shining Lightbulb of Understanding

Thinking about all this, it hit me. I could fake those results and get the numbers I really want to see. Not only that, but nobody would know the difference! How can these signals continue to be as important as they’ve been knowing that?

So what’s the real answer, then, if it isn’t numbers?

Well, as much as we use social strategy as a way to get numbers, we need to change what we look at. We’re building a community, not just a way to funnel money to our site. If you really want to build a brand, as I wanted to do when I first started engaging through social media, you have to have a face.

People have to know who you are to be able to really like what you say.

Real influence is changing. For example, You’d think the New York Post is influential wouldn’t you? Yet, for every 45 articles they put out, they might get one link back (or one citation). Other places, you can post two articles to get a link. Some places, a single article can get tons of links, in the form of quotes, citations, or ongoing conversation about the article.

What’s Important to You?

What's important to you

As a CEO, brand strategist, etc, what’s important to you? Is it having high numbers? Do you want blind influence, or do you want people who actually engage with you, come to you for help, or merely to say hi? To me, this is more powerful than numbers can ever be.

So, it finally comes down to building a community instead of faking one. You can have a ton of fake storefronts to make something look like a huge town (metaphorically speaking), but a stiff wind can blow it over, right? Think about your favorite influence measurement tool – could it withstand a rough smack?

In other words, if you lost 300 people in one week, what would happen to your numbers? Would you freak out if your numbers dropped dramatically?

Conclusion

We need to find other ways to measure how we’re doing in social. How can you really measure if what you’re doing is working? Can you really trust these numbers – should you?

Let’s finish this article up with this: look for other ways to find out how you’re doing. Don’t forget about the people who follow, read, and learn to respect you. They aren’t just numbers. They’re your business cheerleaders.

What do you think? What signals should we really be using to measure our social standing?

How many times must we say it?

As SEO professionals, copywriters and all around mad-crazy marketing gals, we get to think about fancy things like, “How are we going to use this keyword without totally bollixing the whole marketing aspect?” That’s always a fun consideration.

Others might be, “How many times can we use this keyword without it looking spammy in that social media campaign?” and “Should we make this one word or two? Which gets better clicks?”

It’s great when the work you do can be turned into helpful articles for readers… :D

Any time a single word can be broken into two (i.e. keyword vs. key word), you have an opportunity for ranking. Any time you pay attention to the terms your clients/customers use to describe your product, there is an opportunity for ranking. In fact, there are a lot more ranking opportunities than you might think, rolling around in your site’s content.

Unfortunately, those ranking opportunities aren’t always good, grand and wonderful. Sometimes, they can be ranking pitfalls. If you need clarity, think of all the times you or someone else might have searched “company, scam”. Do you think those companies are happy they can be found under that search? Yeah – probably not.

While reading this article, keep the above in mind. You can accidentally rank for terms you don’t want associated with your company or product by introducing a few stray words into your content.

Bonus Tip: Quickly check the terms found in your content with Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools – Verify your site and become a Google Webmaster. Why? Because it gives you a quick overview of important data you can use for your SEO campaign. For the purposes of this article, it shows you the words Google thinks your site is about.

As you move forward with your campaigns – whether marketing, SEO, social media, or a mix -, make sure to check the results every once in awhile. This is especially important if you have a blog attached to your site, as we do.

Every once in awhile depends on what type of campaign you’re running. For example, if you only put out two or three new pieces of content a month, every once in a while is approximately 6 months. On the other hand, if you put out eight new pieces of content or more, you want to check monthly.

Whether monthly or semi-annually, it’s almost guaranteed you’ll find some words that’ll make you do a “how’d that get in there” double take. Like it’s, which is 9^th in our top 10. Go figure.

Now, let’s get to the main part of the article.

Did You Know: Traditional marketing uses key terms and phrases

Yes, yes it does. Think about the latest commercials you’ve watched on television. How many times does a specific phrase get used? A commercial about making your own baby food, for instance, might use “fresh, organic, baby food” four or five times before the 3-minute commercial is over.

How many times must we say it?

Raid is another example. In every commercial, their main term is repeated at least twice, verbally, and more in the images themselves.

Another example could be the HeadOn commercials.

In television commercials, radio ads, direct marketing flyers, guerilla marketing and more, you’ll find instances of key words and phrases. Some are in bold, some are in italics, some are just repeated, but they’re all key to the campaign.

Translating Traditional Marketing Methods to Modern, Online Methods

What’s that saying… twice is a mention, three times is a keyword, more is branding? Taking a lesson from traditional marketing, key words and phrases are simply the words you want your market to use in identifying your product or service.

For example, let’s say you sell all things red. In fact, red has become your identifying phrase. You sell red widgets and red shoes, red shirts, socks and gadgets. Because this is a business and your business website, red would become one of your key terms (due to brand). Widgets would also become one of your key terms, and red widgets, your key phrase.

With this in mind, you might:

1. Create a site page about red widgets.
2. Twitter a helpful tip about how red is a great color to get people excited about something. Use the hashtags #red #widgets.
3. Write a blog about how recent studies have proven that a spot of red on a website can up conversions by 3%, and offer your red widgets. Link this blog to the site page.
4. Send a tweet out about your new blog using hashtags #red #widgets. Include a short, to-the-point line about the study.
5. Share your blog on Facebook, with a 10% off red widget sale from your company.
6. Tweet about your 10% off red widget sale for those using hashtags #red #widgets.
7. Post a video on YouTube about the psychological affects of red and the recent studies. Use a keyword /marketing rich title and description:
   • Title – Red Widgets Increase Site Conversions by 3%, Study Shows
   • Description – New psychology study shows a red widget added to a site can draw attention and increase site conversions by 3%. Using eye-tracking studies on high-conversion pages…
8. Add this video to Facebook.
9. Post this video on your blog.
10. Send a tweet out about the video using hashtags #red #widgets #video.

You Might Be Thinking…

You might be thinking, “How can I possibly do all that and run my business?” Well, in reality, the steps are a little more condensed:

1. Create site pages about your products
2. Decide how many blogs you’re going to put out each month, write and schedule them.
3. Decide how may videos you need and create them to compliment your blog. Either a) upload them all at once or b) upload them according to a schedule.
4. Using HootSuite, TweetDeck or other program, schedule your tweets each morning (check in once in a while to see if someone is talking to you and respond back).
5. Set your social media accounts to draw from your blog feed

You might also be thinking, “But I don’t sell widgets and red isn’t my color.” That’s fine, that’s fine. This strategy has two things going for it. One, it’s merely an example – a beginning outline of how one might go about using key terms in a marketing, SEO and social media campaign.

The second thing is that this strategy can be used for pretty much any key term or phrase. For example, if you sell real estate in Seattle, Seattle would replace red, and real estate would replace widgets.

Finally, you might be thinking, “How do I know if all of this effort is paying off?” Smart question, and it’s answered by monitoring. You have to monitor your important metrics – like, how many people have liked your posts on Facebook, shared them from your site, sent them on Twitter, watched your video, etc.

For each line of marketing you use, make a notation about where you were before the campaign started. “In April, I had 15 followers in Twitter. I have not bought followers or any such thing and I now have 125 in May.” Whatever metrics you’re looking at, you’re looking for growth. The biggest metric to remember is your bottom line. Is it paying off?

Conclusion

Other things are involved in creating and implementing campaigns based on key terms, but the main thing is to stay on course while being flexible at the same time.

Successful SEO professionals, copywriters, business owners, marketers and webmasters are the ones who remember the goal, but are willing to change tactics to reach the goal. The above is just an outline, to show you what’s possible. Take it and run with it!

Is there any particular step you’ve found to be useful in your campaigns? Share it with our readers!

Don’t you just wish you could wave a magic wand and have influence, reputation and love with the click of a button? Wouldn’t that be fantastic? Eventually, I bet there’ll be an app for that. I’m going to call it “Insta-Klout” and charge thousands of dollars for using it – a day… just sayin.

And now for the real article…

Did you know “klout” is actually the phonetic spelling for “clout”? What’s really interesting are the two informal definitions given for “clout”. Observe:

• a blow with the hand or a hard object
• pull; strong influence; muscle

Let’s put that into social perspective, shall we? Using those definitions, a high social clout might indicate that:

• When you post something, your followers stand up and pay attention.
• You’ve become a strong influence for (although not necessarily in) your industry.
• When you endorse something, it stays endorsed.
• When you give a bad review, people listen.

If you use your powers for bad, you could be the “muscle”, smacking people around with your negativity. i.e. “I smacked ‘em with my Klout.”

Social Influence vs. Social Media Monitoring

Before we go any deeper, let’s clarify that Klout monitors social influence, not your social media efforts. It doesn’t tell you which tweet brought in 15 new followers, or which link on Facebook brought more fans, or whether XYZ link is hot. Other tools track things like this (bit.ly, for example). I think Klout decided not to be a copycat.

What Klout is supposed to show is your overall social influence. How many people are you really reaching? How many are really responding to you? Are you really engaging people, or is it all in your head? These questions, among others, are what Klout addresses.

Does Klout Have… Clout?

Nowadays, people talk about “Klout” as in, “My Klout went up by one point today. I’m at a whopping 24. Going for the big 25 now.”

Klout, launched in 2009, has been flooding the social highways lately. This is largely due to the recent $8.5 million funding round they closed with Kleiner Perkins (Taking Klout to the Next Level).

Some might be able to shrug off $8.5 M as no big deal. I can’t. It’s hard to imagine a nobody getting that kind of funding – and if they did, they’d quickly become a somebody. Now all they need to do is start funneling some of those funds into my account and retain me for consulting.

Okay, okay – all kidding aside:

Klout was a somebody quickly after product launch. I’m not sure they even had a nobody moment as a company. If they did, it was brief…

November 17, 2009 ~ With Klout Comes Influence: How To Find Influencers on Twitter

February 16, 2010 ~ HootSuite Announces New Features, Including Klout Integration. Is This (Almost) The Perfect Twitter Client?

April 28, 2010 ~ Social Media Analytics Provider Klout Raises $1.5M in Funding

June 1, 2010 ~ Klout Announces With Their New Site That The Revolution of Influence Has Begun

June 25^th, 2010 ~ Measure your social networking Klout (CNN Money)

It’s easy for some to look at the links above and think, “Well, they just have a good PR company.” They’ve paid for reviews, sent out press releases – all the things that can give a company a good, yet undeserved reputation.

That is, until a little article is posted in a tiny online publication called Advertising Age:

“Palms’ chief marketing officer, Jason Gastwirth, is currently building out “The Klout Klub,” which “will allow high-ranking influencers to experience Palms’ impressive set of amenities in hopes that these influencers will want to communicate their positive experience to their followers.” The Palms is already pulling in data from Klout and referring to it as part of their reservations process.” (Las Vegas’ Palms Hotel Starts Looking at Klout Scores to Decide Who Gets Past the Velvet Rope)

Okay, look. When the Palm’s Hotel uses your statistics to decide who gets what treatment, you – very officially – have “Klout”.

The Good, The Bad, The Fugly

Now that we’ve chatted and rehashed history, let’s get to the dirt. We need to address a few more things before the article can conclude.

Why is Klout such an important number? Well, somehow your Klout score has become the online version of your credit score. Employers may be adding Klout to the mix, for example – especially if you’ve applied for a social media job.

Clients may look at your Klout as a measure of how much you know about your services. They might use Klout to find out where you stand in your industry. Are you considered an expert, or merely an explorer? While you may not care whether your Klout score is a 1 or a 100, people who matter to your business and livelihood might.

Knowing all this, knowing how important this red and white number is, you’re going to want to dig into the program. Why? Because you’re going to want to know what you can do to help it along.

Helping Klout Along

What I’m going to do to help it along is stomp my foot and talk about what’s missing. Why? Because they won’t know what to change unless somebody says something.

Nothing against Klout, but, as I’m looking at my Twitter feed and Klout information, I can’t help but think there are a lot of things weighing on stupid little numbers. My favorite two examples:

• If 4,000 people are following you, you must be worth following. Not like that other guy, who only has 200 people following him.

• 20 people RT’d that link, so let me do it too. Never mind that they’re all friends and not even one actually read the craptastic article this person is tweeting about.

While Klout take some of this into consideration, they’re missing a whole heck of a lot.

They recently made some changes, and speaking for the accounts I manage, the changes don’t make sense. Granted, I don’t know what exactly they’re watching and monitoring to come up with their numbers, but…

When my main account that I’ve had for more than two years plummets by ten points and a new account I’ve had for less than 6 months moves up to 50, something’s screwy. I don’t care if I’m going to be graded by a number, but that number needs to reflect my real influence across all social media. And, seriously, I have to wonder exactly what you guys are measuring after coming across things like this:

If you can explain to me how this makes sense – and make me believe it…. well, I don’t think you can, so never mind any promises. A true reach of 343? Why? You know what kind of mentions this person has? “Thanks for following me!”

So they’re still tweaking things under the hood and adding bells and whistles. I get it, but I want a tool that tells me when I make a big splash. Let’s say one of my followers becomes a client. I want to be able to see the kind of interactions we had before this happened. When did they start following? Were they counted as part of my social reach?

I’d love it if Klout could actually monitor and measure how long it takes from the day a client and I start following each other to when we start working together. Granted, we’d both have to be willing to participate – but make those changes and see how quickly I fill in the blanks in my account.

Klout is pretty and all, but I want data. I want to see numbers. I want a viable, quantifiable way to measure my influence – above and beyond what I see now. Example: If you’re telling me I have 25 unique retweeters, I want to know who they are.

What is Klout missing the most? Once Klout has figured out what is important to us users then maybe we won’t be  standing in line waiting for the next generation of a better product. Instead, we’ll be standing in line with hand in pocket, ready to pay for filters and in depth data. I’d pay $10 a month for the ability to dig down into where my social influence is strongest. Give me this kind of information, and I’ll buy me some “Got Klout” Nike shoes, wearing them proudly at my next workshop – where I’ll be promoting Klout.

So what say you Klout?

The “Digital Revolution” is the title given to the greatest economic, social, political global movement the world has ever known. It’s changed the way we think; the way we socialize – the way we act.

You’ll get different “how it started” stories depending on who you talk to and when. I have a personal theory, however, that the Digital Revolution is simply a step in an ongoing Age of Enlightenment.

“Nothing is required for this enlightenment except freedom; and the freedom in question is the least harmful of all, namely, the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters.”  ~ Immanuel Kant – An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment (1784)

Achieving Enlightenment

Enlightenment is seldom the “Eureka” moment. Generally, enlightenment is more of that “duh” feeling you get with hindsight.

The Industrial Revolution, only another step on the road to enlightenment, opened the world’s eyes to technology and reason stepped in. What reason had to say, however, wasn’t awe-inspiring. It was… realistic. Reason, with burgeoning technology twisting its arm, said, “You know, we can make more money if we could figure out how to mass produce stuff.”

This is enlightenment – a fundamental truth that keeps on giving. Only now, in the Information Age – during the ongoing Digital Revolution – what we mass-produce is information.

The Freedom to Use Reason

Ultimately, digital culture, or the Digital Age, is personified by “the freedom to use reason”. Here in the 21st century, our biggest commodities are reason and information.

Cyberculture and its many facets have been growing since the late 80’s. Online entities have value and influence. We live in a world where “influence” isn’t based on what you know; on the contrary – influence is defined by things like “followers”, “fans” and “klout”.

This trend has increased exponentially since things like microblogging and Facebook have become household words. Nowadays, you have 4 year olds asking their parents to “Google” something. The world we now live in – our global culture – has evolved into a symbiotic cyborg-type relationship of society and technology.

Collaboration at a Distance

Digital culture is built on collaboration. “I copied, I changed, I conquered.” It is because of collaboration that so much has changed in our society. When Kennedy challenged the American people to be the first on Moon, American’s collaborated and met his challenge less than 12 years later.

Without IBM having taken the reins from Atari, computers would not be what they are today. Atari provided the base; IBM improved. The computers of today didn’t come from a single computer by a single company; in the end, they’ve been built on the successes and failures of many computer developers.

Thanks to technology such as email, social media, cell phones, voice and video conferencing, etc, the business world has reached levels unattainable in previous years. B2B communication is possible on separate sides of the world without ever leaving your office. In short, the business prospects are overwhelming.

Reason in the Face of Tyranny

All the things made possible by increases in technology have made life easier – an understatement, but one that is fundamentally true. However, there’s a side to digital culture that is seldom touched on. At least, not until recently.

Those who’ve grown up in the Digital Age have a unique outlook on the world. In general, they believe the actions of one person can make a difference. One person, one vote, one outcry – these things make a difference in an all-together too time-weary world.

It isn’t logical in a world with billions of people. It isn’t reasonable to think a single comment might change the world. It is possible, however – more possible than it’s ever been in the history of man – for such a thing to happen.

Back in 1991, IRC (Internet Relay Chat) was used to break through a media blackout during a Soviet coup attempt. The information might not have made a difference, but this is one of many examples.

More recently, Twitter was considered a fundamental part of the Iran protests in 2009. Protestors in Iran used Twitter to – again – break through an enforced media blackout. In minutes Twitter became the unofficial news source for those in Iran.

A story in Time says, “While the front pages of Iranian newspapers were full of blank space where censors had whited-out news stories, Twitter was delivering information from street level, in real time…”

Most recently, social media played a major part in revolts to dispose the Egyptian leader. In fact, digital culture (and, by fiat, social media) has become so powerful, places like CBS post, “Where Might Social Media Aid a Revolt Next?”

With Reason Comes Responsibility

The never-ending, always growing digital culture faces a huge responsibility. We now have the ability to start a revolution through the likes of Facebook, Digg, commenting, etc. We no longer look at the Internet as just a way to make more money. The latest mobile application in the virtual world isn’t the most important thing.

The Digital Age is about making changes in humanity. It’s about building connections, authority and credibility – street cred in 140 characters or less.  Where and how we move forward from here has yet to be fully discovered. What we do know, though, is this: you, the microblogging, tweeting, commenting author, yield the power to raise a whole nation…

SEO? What's SEO?

SEO as a part of a digital marketing strategy cannot be ignored by any marketing organization. SEO, though a subset of online marketing, has a completely different character of its own. People are more likely to click on an organic search result compared to a listing under Ads. The website owners are allocating increased budgets to digital marketing, and ranking for organic search is one of their primary goals.

Well planned and chalked out SEO campaigns require sizeable budgets and every business would surely ask for the return on the amount invested in the SEO campaign. Complete ROI from any SEO cannot be calculated with 100% accuracy, as any good SEO campaign gives you good web visibility in addition to the SERPs, establishes your online brand, helps you to establish an online reputation and have a global reach. The total benefit from all this cannot be converted in metrics.

But, you can get an adequate idea about the ROI by first and foremost deciding the primary objectives of the SEO campaign.

Do you want your SEO campaign to result in :

• Increase in direct sales?
• Generation of more leads?
• Driving more traffic?
• Building you an online brand ?

The answer to these questions will make things easier for the SEO as well as you. The SEO will know what he needs to focus on and you can also know which metrics to keep track of, in order to to measure the success of the SEO campaign.

A complete web centric SEO campaign, which focuses on achieving organic rankings by etching the right quality digital foot prints on the web for your website, will – in the long run – give all the above mentioned benefits. If the priorities are set then the whole campaign has a direction and can be geared , monitored and managed accordingly.

Options...

If the priority is to achieve an increase in direct sales or generate more leads then the SEO (along with working on the on‐page and off‐page optimization for ranking on the SERPS) has to also focus on the following issues :

• Are the landing pages well-designed for the targeted keywords ?
• Do the landing pages have the requisite info. so that the visitor can make a decision to buy?
• Does the website have easy online payment options?
• Does it have simple and small forms to fill to register?
• Are the leads generated being attended to and getting the necessary info from the staff when they call or email? This is important,  in case the visitor needs to confirm something before buying.
• Are all inquiries via phone or email, generated as a result of SEO, being recorded?
• How many of such leads converted into sales?

All this is possible when the SEO and the client can work with a mutual understanding; there will be a lot of data in this case, which the client company will have to give to the SEO to calculate the ROI and gauge the success of the SEO efforts.

If the priority is to drive more traffic and to establish an online brand then the focus should be on :

• social media integration
• A well managed and maintained blog. As regular posts on informative topics related to your industry can surely drive the targeted traffic and also with the help of social media you can promote the post and generate a good WOM.
• A high engagement level on Twitter and Facebook
• Sharing views on other blogs of your industry which put forward you viewpoint and establish your identity.
• Posting guest posts and thereby reaching out to other communities in your industry

Eventually, a genuine and well planned SEO campaign will undoubtedly give the website all the above mentioned benefits. However, setting priorities and an immediate objective helps in designing the path to follow so the SEO can focus on the priorities of the client.

As a woman with many hats, I’m always interested in new programs, platforms, sites and information. Therefore, anytime something new comes along, I go test the waters. I like to see what’s under the hood, start it up and take it for a test drive. I sit down with my team and discuss whether it’s something we might use in our future.

Lately, I’ve been testing a lot of social media platforms. Consequently, I get to engage in a lot of conversation. Ironically, one of the strongest ongoing conversations is about keeping the conversation going.

Now, social media has limited resources for conversing. Really – think about it. Twitter gives you a measly 140 characters to play with. Facebook gives you more, but has so many niche markets and noise, it’s easy to get buried. There’s always LinkedIn, but that’s another tough nut to crack – especially when you’re busy with Twitter and Facebook.

I can’t say we’re in complete control of our social media and channels yet; we have yet to really grasp Facebook by the horns. Our community has grown by 200% over the past month, but it’s taken a lot of time and hard work. I’m not going to ditch our two biggest social media platforms, but I’m still looking for the next worthwhile platform, and Quora is the newest on the “try out” list.

Where Inquiring Minds Run

The Wall Street Journal describes Quora as, “a question and answer site that encourages thoughtful – even long-winded – discussions.” They called it the place “where inquiring minds run”. Sounds like my kind of place.

It wasn’t the article that brought me in, though; it was an invitation. Like most invitations, it sat in my email for a week before I dusted it off and followed the link. It was the buzz, and I got curious. On Twitter, on Facebook, on blogs, more and more people were talking about this new Q & A site.

Facebookians Turned Quoraites

Back in January 2010, two former Facebook employees had a dream. Their dream was to have a place where people could share their questions, get answers and, in short, have in depth conversations. It was a beautiful dream, turned into reality.

The company line is that users can vote on answers, which pushes the answers up and down according to the number of positive/negative votes (think “bumps”). Therefore, the best answer goes to the head of the class.

The reality is a little bit different. Yes, users can vote on answers, but there’s no guarantee the answers are correct. They’re raised in rank based on popularity, not accuracy.

The Quora Experience

Not that this image is indicative of my Quora experience...

After reading and watching for about a week, I finally linked my Facebook and Twitter accounts. This is supposed to make it easier for me to get topics and meet people I might be interested in. It also makes sharing from platform to platform easier.

After much thought, deliberation and procrastination, I took the leap and asked my first question: “Social media influence – what do you use to measure your/anyone’s online influence? How important is it?” I had official begun my participation on Quora.

Nothing happened. Crickets chirped in some far off, deserted field. I had posted on December 19^th, so it could have been something to do with timing, but I thought it was a great question. I was on a quest to get answers from the group and looking for someone to respond.

Here, I had heard all these wonderful accolades that Quora was going to be the messiah in social networks. So what happened? Well, maybe I didn’t have a strategy behind my question. Or… or… maybe it wasn’t posted correctly.

I was excited about finally finding a place to build ongoing conversations, but I found the interface daunting. I couldn’t understand where, what or how I was going to communicate with people. Once I started really looking around, it seemed more like a flexing hall for people to post their answers.

I mean, Quora sounds simple, but you have to guess what you’re doing. Asking your first question isn’t as simple as ask and go – you have to ask the question in a certain way. You can’t, for example, address the answerer.

Another example is the voting. Instead of a “thumbs up” for a positive vote, it’s a tiny triangle pointing up. You can see if an answer has any votes by a number next to it, but what’s with the triangles? Who instinctively knows that an up triangle means a positive vote? Being in the business, I do but trust me when I tell you a lot of people don’t.

Within a few weeks, Quora emails started bombarding my inbox. Sure, I could have turned off the email alert, but I had to find it first. I thought things would finally calm down. Instead, I found myself biting my tongue on some of the answers I got back.

Quora – Not So Friendly After All

Please release me...

As an Italian, I invited a few of my Italian connects to Quora to see for themselves if they could benefit from it. Most understand English well, but they didn’t want to embarrass themselves by writing in broken English. Innocently enough, they wrote in Italian – and here’s where the story goes down hill and I get pissed off.

Not only did the “chosen ones” on Quora remove the topic, but they also bombarded everyone with comments about how the site is strictly an English site. Where is that? Oh, I forgot. You can’t find it, because it’s buried somewhere under another tiny triangle or something.

The people I invited didn’t go around Quora posting Italian responses to all and sundry. They posted answers to my questions – and I happen to be able to understand Italian. I think I should have a choice here on whether or not to except answers in another language – don’t you?

Well, not so fast, Popeye. When I said as much, I was bitch-slapped by a PHD and accused of having a tantrum. After finding the humor in the situation, I had to look at his profile. There it was – a 20-year-old something kid with a white judo outfit, studying for his PHD.

All in all, the whole fiasco was offensive. They removed all those questions – the entire conversations. Now, this is where I find it extremely intrusive. I know I’m not the best writer in the world, and I may sometimes push the envelope. To have one of my discussions removed completely – along with a good 20+ answers – seems over the top, but, that’s just my hot Italian opinion.

Although things have calmed down (mainly me), I’m still trying to decide if Quora is right for me. Like a lot of people, I’m more likely to read what other people wrote than ask my own questions or respond (unless asked a direct question, that is).

Conclusion

In my opinion, what’s missing is the human element – unless you count the many so-called “helpful” people editing my day-to-day conversations. Much like Wikipedia, Quora has administrators that can and will delete or alter your answers. By the way, SEO is capitalized, people… it’s an acronym.

Listen, I don’t want someone editing my daily conversations. I don’t want someone deciding what language I use; I want to be able to communicate in Italian, French, Arabic or any other language my community is using. – And no, I don’t see how it adversely affects the quality, sorry.

Look at Twitter, who adopted several languages once the world started knocking on the door. I’m proud to say I was part of that change. Yeah – I like Twitter just fine.

Am I going to stick around Quora? Don’t count on it… let them fit it out. Maybe I’ll stick to figuring out how to really use Facebook or LinkedIn and keep our Q & A there. Maybe I’ll spend some time focusing on our blogs and tightening them up for better engagement. Wherever I’m going next, though, it’s not Quora. In conclusion, I know there are lots of Quora fans and if you happen to be reading this I would love to hear what you have to say…

PS I found the conversation & wanted to share it here with you

If you do so, with Quora as it is, the tags such as ‘Facebook’ or ‘Twitter’ —that are followed by thousands of users each— will become unusable, leaving most users with as little social discovery as there is on Facebook and fractioning the site entirely.

You now have the choice to keep on with your tantrum, take the risk to offend far more users then you’d accommodate (and most likely be banned before that) or you can *wait for proper features* to accommodate your legitimate demand, but impractical schedule.

Dream girls

The Over Eager Socialite (def.) – The over eager socialite started with social media because they were told it would help their business. Things went downhill from there.

Now, they attach themselves to anyone. They follow anyone who hasn’t blocked them first. Upon following, these social media stalkers then proceed to track down every social media account the individual may have and connect with them.

To these individuals, social media becomes their diary. They share what they had for breakfast, lunch, dinner and bedtime snack. They talk about their broken relationships, their business relationships, clients gone wrong and friends gone bad. Their lives are open books for anyone to read.

Over eager socialites have several social media accounts. They don’t distinguish between platforms that people use and/or respond on, versus those with little traffic. If they post on Twitter, they send their tweet out across the multi-platforms and wait eagerly for someone to respond.

In fact, they spend so much time on social networks that they have little time for other activities. They’re called the Twitterholics, the Facebook Freaks, the Amplify Addicts, and have mood swings based on how many responses they get from a post…

Are You an Over Eager Socialite?

- And, in an online world where social media is pushed to the extreme, what’s so bad about that?

Well, let’s start by asking a question: why are you using social media? If social media is there to win friends, you can share pretty much anything you please. However, if you’re a member of the “social media for business” party, it’s time to rein it in.

#1: Pick your platform.

I don’t care what your momma told you. Sharing is only for the select few. In this case, the “select few” is anyone who might be interested in your business. The world doesn’t care that sheetrock can be bought in 3/8 inch, ½ inch and 5/8 inch thicknesses. It couldn’t care less about the difference between insulated and water resistant.

So who cares? Home remodelers care. Home builders, do it yourself fixer-uppers and general handypersons care. These people are the ones you should be sharing this information with. Why? Because, they’re the ones who will remember that you seem to be pretty knowledgeable in this stuff, and just might be the person to go to if they need to buy whatever it is you’re selling.

Your general, run-of-the-mill handy persons may not be (gasp!) on Facebook. They might not be on Twitter. In fact, most of them may very well be hanging around the water cooler at YouTube, just waiting for your fantastic video about sheetrock.

#2: Pick your people.

Whom are you talking to? Do you know them? Do you know what they do? For that matter, have you been sending out tweets to dead accounts? Have you been knocking on doors where nobody’s home?

Listen. You’re building a community – and since it’s your community, why wouldn’t you spend the time to make it grow into your own little online utopia? You don’t have to live next to empty houses (blank, dead accounts), deal with pushy, rude people (spammers) or anything of the sort.

You don’t have to invite everybody. Besides, people are more likely to want to join a club if they find out it’s selective.

Pull up ManageFlitter.com on your browser and sign in with your Twitter account. Find out who you’re following that’s really worth following. Especially with social media accounts, who you hang with counts, and the people you follow show up in your timeline. This means, if you happen to be following someone who posts a lot of racist, slanderous, crass stuff, it will reflect on you.

So pull up your following list. Look at the last time they tweeted. Has it been awhile? A few months? A year? Hey, look, sometimes things happen and people take a hiatus. However, if it’s been over two months, you just might think about dropping them off your list.

Look at their latest posts. Is it good information? If you’re not certain, look up their timeline on Twitter. If it’s all stuff about them, is it worth continuing to follow them? Is this somebody you want to promote by putting them in your timeline? If not, it’s time to play Ditch the Dodo.

#3: Pick your topics.

Okay, so the fantastic thing about touted about social media is that it turns a “business” into a “person”. Your customers get to engage with you on a personal level, right? Right. However – and this is a big but – your customers probably don’t want to know that you wear Hanes over Fruit of the Loom (unless this information is related to what you’re selling, of course).

Be original, Be yourself

They don’t want to know you’re currently drinking a latte at Starbucks or perusing the menu at Applebee’s. In short, there’s such a thing as too much information. Yes, you can be too personal. You’re a person, but you’re a person running a business. It’s a fine line; a fine line you have to walk to succeed.

Figure out where your line should be, and then draw it. And then don’t step over it. Not even a little. No, lines are not made to be crossed, and, for the most part, rules aren’t made to be broken. Talking political affiliations or religious beliefs can alienate potential clients. So can sharing your choice of underwear.

So go on, be a socialite. Reach out to people and build your community with social media and networking. Connect, engage, be yourself and rub shoulders – but be selective. Choose the shoulders you rub.

Hootsuite Internal Server Failure: by LaughingSquid

Many people spend time talking about what you say when you’re using social media. This isn’t one of those posts. This is a post about what you use for your social media.

Most of the ways to talk with people are right in front of you, in this little electronic box; we’ve all embraced social networks in one way or another. I’ve been chatting away with virtual strangers for years, whether in chat rooms, through instant messages and even with AOL. In fact, people have been communicating virtually with others now for more than two decades.

To be honest, I started writing this post as a rant about HootSuite. However, as a marketer, blogger and writer, it also gave me something to ponder – something I can really sink my teeth into and, hopefully, something useful to share with our readers.

The HootSuite Saga

You see, I’ve been promoting HootSuite’s services to everyone I meet. I’ve been a constant cheerleader; you can ask any of our clients, writers, designers, etc. I’d have tattooed “I heart HootSuite” on my arm if I could have.

Their cute logo had me from the start, but I’ve also been using it for over a year. I’m very comfortable with the dashboard and ease of use.

But, alas, one day I was scheduling some posts for my weekly to do list and decided to look up one of their features. It’s called Insight. To my surprise, it was fuzzy. I couldn’t see what I could see just a week ago – unless I paid for the feature.

What? Pay? Why am I paying for information they’ve been gathering from tweets and personal information I’ve voluntarily given them?

This is like Facebook. It’s worse than Facebook. I expect this sort of thing from the big FB; it’s become part of their brand. After all, they had the online, social world up in arms about privacy and showing your personal information for the entire world to see. It was as if Facebook took pictures of everyone’s underwear drawer and waved them about.

My goodness. There was a frenzy of articles flying around cyberspace. A large, mass exodus was planned… but I’m not writing about Facebook. Sorry, I digress.

What really burns me about the “Insight” feature is this is something I’ve been asking them about for about 6 months now. “Why is my Insight messed up?” or “Why isn’t it functioning like it’s supposed to?” Their response was always, “We’re working on this feature. We’ll let you know more real soon like.”

They let me know more, alright…

They let me know more by telling me to pay for it. That’s a huge #fail, Hootsuite. You could have said, “It’s a paid feature, but we’re working on it.” Be honest about it.

Now, just like anything else in life, you’re not going to be liked by everyone. For example, personally, I’m a little bit pissed at Hootsuite for yanking me around for six months. However, I’m the first one to say (after years of therapy) that if you don’t like something or have no control over it, stop bitching and find something else.

Voila. I left this nice, clean interface with it’s oh, so cool statistics options, multiple users in your dashboard, etc to find the best way to communicate with everyone.

Moving On to TweetDeck

As the next platform to try, I’ve settled on TweetDeck. So far, I’m not sure I like it. However, all the services work; that’s a plus. Now, if the services break and then they hit me up with an “upgrade to pro” button once they fix it… bye bye TweetDeck.

Cons

You can’t use ♥ ▸ ✔  ♫ ✈  with TweetDeck, and that sucks. Sometimes, these cute symbols just get a feeling across better than any text can. Granted, some may not be able to see them. I get that, but it’s part of who I am and part of my conversation. Yeah, sometimes I want to ♥ someone. It saves on writing it out, and with only 140 characters, you have to be smart.

The live feed is way too fast. I’ve been told you can slow it down, but I couldn’t find it. I went to the settings and removed the Twitter updates; it didn’t help. I was also told that I may be following too many people.

Ummm… Excuse me? I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re saying. What kind of option is that? “Hey, if Tweetdeck is running too fast, stop following people!” Brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that?

Oh, right – because I’m using Twitter to connect, engage and list. Yes, I scan through my feed, but I’ve gained some fantastic knowledge from the people I follow and I don’t want to give them up… and, apparently, that’s the problem.

Every time I saw something I wanted to read or click on, the feed was going so fast, I’d accidentally RT someone other than the intended person. Frustrating doesn’t even come close. I finally gave up and stopped trying to RT people. I’m sure my Klout score suffered in the process.

Pros

I do like being able to use Tweetdeck without needing your browser. Okay – that’s cool, especially considering that sometimes people have way too many things going on. I also like that you can see when someone RT’s your content or post on your mention feed.

The User Interface is nice and centrally located under each column. You can specify your follow feed into lists, which may or may not be a bad idea if you’re focusing on different target markets each week.

Is Tweetdeck better than HootSuite? Well, I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know if I have to move to another platform in a few weeks or months.

I’ll tell you what I’d really like, though. I’m on more social networks than I can count and legitimately participating (there’s a blog coming up about them, too). I’d like:

• A platform that can pull in my Twitter, Facebook, Amplify, Quora, Reddit, Digg, Delicious, Yahoo IM, Skype, LinkedIn, etc. accounts into one place.
• A cool interface that allows me to set the update rate for each network so it doesn’t move too fast or slow.
• A notification list that lets me know when someone talks to me (no matter the network), with an icon and link that takes me to a place where I can reply.
• A cute icon I’d be happy to tattoo on my arm.
• Transparency – if it’s going to be a paid feature, don’t say “we’re working on it”.

Is that too much to ask?

Joan Crawford responded to 3 million emails by hand. We just have to figure out how to speak to our mere thousands. Today’s technology gives you plenty of options, of course; HootSuite and TweetDeck are just two of them. However, if you’re going to automate rather than go to each network, make sure you grab the right platform for you.

Top SEO Women 2011

2011 is here, and I know many of you have been trying to get your budgets, online presence and campaigns off the ground. I’d love to tell you it’s easy, but I’d be lying to you. Rather than pour a whole bunch of information out today, I decided I’d add to our list of Top SEO Women instead.

Articles throughout 2010 have been written about women and how they contribute to our community. Our post on Top SEO Women for 2010, for example, got a lot of hits and is still being linked to today.

As you peruse this list, I encourage you to take the time and search these women out. Connect with them. Not only are they beautiful people, but they are also movers, shakers and just plain intelligent.

One of the best articles out there that has touched on women online is Kikolni’s (aka Kristi Hines) Kikolani – 125 Fearless Women Bloggers. Within this list are entrepreneurs, experts, CEOs and published authors, among others. It’s an article well worth reading.

Another place to find a list of fantastic women bloggers is the SOB A-Z Directory. For years, Liz Strauss has had awards for Successful Outstanding Blogger (SOB), and handed them out to many men and women.

Although these two places have excellent links to inspirational writers, I’d like to focus on women just in the SEO community. I hope that we can continue to add some amazing women in our industry – women you can come to know and respect.

Who Are They?

Lyena Solomon Also known as @lyena on Twitter, she’s a wonderful woman I’ve personally met. I was blown away by how such a petite woman had so much dynamite information, especially when it comes to Google Analytics and PPC. She is also bilingual, with a strong command of Russian and English – she speaks both fluently I might add.

Kim Krause Berg Also known as @kim_cre8pc on Twitter, you’ll find Kim’s footprints in several blogs, forums and social feed. Organic SEO, information architecture, usability, search engine marketing practices – the woman knows more about search and usability than one person has any right to remember.

Melissa Fach Also known as @SEOAware on Twitter, Melissa is the owner of SEO Aware, LLC. I’ve been following her wonderful, information Twitter feed regarding SEO. She has a no nonsense approach and is always there for a good laugh or an even greater link.

Michèle Ménard Also known as @michele_menard on Twitter, I’ve noticed she’s one of the few women in Italy keeping up with what’s going on in search. She’s a bilingual Italian/French online communications specialist, as well as a Web 2.0, SEO & social media expert.

Nichola Stott Also known as @NicholaStott on Twitter, this young woman was introduced to me in the SEO Dojo, a place where the real SEO’s hang out. Making her global mark in SEO and social media as the owner of The Media Flow, she’s also a speaker/blogger for State of Search, Search Engine Watch and SEO Chicks.

Jill Whalen Also known as @jillwhalen on Twitter. I’ve been reading her posts everywhere, and as one of our comments on the last post stated, we didn’t include her. We’re amending the oversight this year. Jill has been in search since search engine optimization began in the early 1990s. She’s CEO of High Rankings, the company she founded in 1995.

Rebekah May Rebekah is a fellow SEO warrior from the SEO Dojo and is also known as @rebekah_am. She’s an entrepreneur, SEO and marketing consultant. As well, she founded Whole-SEO, which helps small businesses leverage the power of the Internet to increase their exposure.

Debra Mastaler Debra is a regular on the Dojo and goes by @debramastaler on Twitter. She’s one of those people I like to think of as the backbone of all SEO efforts. She’s known as the link-building powerhouse. Debra creates strategies and tactics focused on increasing link popularity and brand exposure through creative link marketing.

Aleyda Solis Also known as @aleyda on Twitter, this young lady is a smart, informative online marketing enthusiast, and someone I enjoy chatting with from time to time. She lives in Madrid and works at @QDQ_com – SEO, Web Analytics and SEM Responsible.

The list from 2010 and today are just a few of the women out there in the world of search. Many work behind the scenes and aren’t known online. You may know someone like this, working next to you every day – the unsung feminine heroine who always gets the job done on time, without fail: the intelligent woman whose brain you pick whenever you have a question about search.

If you do, we’d like to hear about her. If you know someone we haven’t mentioned, tell us whom you think should be added to the list! I look forward to hearing from all of you and again, thanks for all your input.

Shocking... really

Copywriting and content development are often used interchangeably, as if they mean the same thing. Gasping in horror while I write this- however, although they’re both part of a package, they deal with separate issues. Granted, if you are not in the industry then you may very well not know the difference. So pull up a chair and let me break it down for you.

Copywriting vs. Content Development

The biggest difference between content development and copywriting is the level at which they’re used in a strategy.

Content development deals with the strategy of a set of documents:

• Blog series
• Newsletter series
• Article series

With content development, you decide what information you’re going to share for a particular document set. In addition, you decide how that information will come, and how it will be linked together if the documents will be posted on several sites.

Copywriting deals with the tone and strategy of a single document:

• One blog
• One newsletter
• One article

With copywriting, you decide how you’ll write each document of the set. What tone will you use? How will you lay out the information (i.e. with subheadings, bullets, etc).

Gathering Essential Knowledge

What content development and copywriting have in common is the need to gather two essential pieces knowledge:

Understanding of the business…

The content developer and copywriter both have to understand the business they’re working for. If you’re developing strategies for your own business, this may sound easy. It isn’t. You may find yourself having to think a lot more deeply about your business than you ever have before:

• What are your company beliefs? Not your beliefs, per se, but beliefs you want your company to stand for.
• What is the background of your company? Where did it come from? What has it done to be considered an authority in the business (this could be the company or you, if you’re the face of your company)?
• What products/services do you offer?
• What image do you want to portray? What do you want your brand to stand for?

All of this is important. What image and feeling your company invokes becomes your brand.

Understanding of the consumer…

You also have to understand your consumer. This is your target market, whether you deal with B2B or B2C. Again, once you start to really dig into the information, you may find out a lot more about your audience than you knew:

• What are your consumer’s long-term goals?
• What reason do they have for buying your product/services?
• What problems will your product/services solve?
• What pain can your company address?

Both of these essential pieces of knowledge go into developing strong copywriting skills, as well as strong content development strategies.

Developing Strong Copy Strategies on Both Levels

Whether you’re the copywriter or the content developer, you need to follow these six points for an excellent strategy:

1. Listen to the consumer – Gather information from the horse’s mouth. Read blog comments about similar products. Read forum and social media postings. Take polls and use other forms of engagement to get a real understanding of how the consumer sees products/services like yours.
2. Stay focused on the consumer – Sure, sure, talk about yourself. However, when you do, talk about how you can help them. They don’t need to know how wonderful you are. They’ll find out how wonderful you are when they use your services or products.
3. Ask the right questions – which lead to great things like helpful answers, better information to complete the buying process and a successful sale.
4. Build strong buyer/seller relationships
5. Keep relationships active and growing
6. Maintain two-way conversations

Your Motivation

Sometimes, as a business owner, you need to have some huge motivation to put a lot of time and effort into something. Every bit of time and money is precious. Here’s your motivation:

1. It costs more to attract and sell a new customer than it does to retain one you already have
2. More money is spent on various marketing techniques if content strategy/copywriting is weak

Strong content development and copywriting strategies help define your company and brand as the company/brand to trust. Every strategy should have an underlying goal of developing trust in your products/services and brand.

Build a recognized, trust brand. Build a strong foundation. With strong strategies, you essentially create a foundation of loyal, growing, buying customers.

PubCon Las Vegas 2010

Arriving in Vegas early Monday morning for Pubcon 2010 was thrilling in many ways. The largest thrill was this being my first conference in the SEO/SEM world. As well, I hadn’t been to Vegas since the early 70’s; I knew I was going to see a city that had grown exponentially.

High couture fashion stayed in the hotel closet; most were running around in Bermuda shorts and Bon Jovi T-Shirts – not something I wanted to compete with. The lights, glimmer and nightlife didn’t impress me; maybe because I’ve been around the world a time or five. As much as I would have loved to catch a Las Vegas show like Kau or Rod Stewart at Caesers Palace, the only thing I managed to catch was a bug from one of the participants. I now have a horrible head cold, and the cold nights in Vegas didn’t help.

I paid a daily fee for WiFi – an insult, considering the WiFi wasn’t; I had to plug into an Ethernet cable. The customer service sucked and I’ll never stay at a Harrah’s casino again – ever. In fact, after I write this I’m going to give them a strongly worded review on Yelp.

Speaking of social media sites like Yelp, that’s one thing made clear at Pubcon. Social matters. Whatever business you’re in, if you’re not planning to integrate social media into your business strategy, start planning to be left behind. It’s not a matter of trying all social media sites to see what work for you, however; it’s a matter of building a strategy with the right sites and making those work for you.

Running around for three days, trying to fit in all the sessions I wanted to see, wasn’t easy. Maybe, like social media sites, it’s a matter of picking and choosing your platforms (or, in this case, sessions). Some of the sessions I wanted to see were slotted for the same period, which I have to say was extremely unfair. Shame on you Pubcon. #thatisall

After it was all said and done, I’d have to rate Pubcon as a 10 on a scale of 1-10. The speakers were wonderful and the content discussed was great; however, the high rating is due to the networking aspect and the ability to meet many fantastic industry people. That in itself was worth the price and so much more.

Pubcon 2010 Recap

On a bright and crisp Tuesday morning in Vegas, the kick off Keynote speaker was David Pogue, a New York Times author and columnist. For 10 years, David has been posting great technology info for the NYT. He’s also a CBS News correspondent (Emmy-winning correspondent, at that!) and the creator of the Missing Manual computer book series. It was great to see him again; he’s witty, always has the latest on technology and is a true Macintosh advocate.

Getting into the meat of the conference, however, I have to admit that listening to the likes of Tim Ash and Ted Ulle was an SEO/SEM geek’s dream come true. Tim is the President and CEO of SiteTuners, author of Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions, and a 20 year Internet veteran (among a slew of other things).

Ted is a Senior Search Analyst and search marketing pioneer. He’s also an advisory board member and administrator for Webmaster World and a senior editor for Search Engine Marketing Journal. These two speakers alone made Pubcon worth it.

I’ll try to give you as much information as I can in this post, but keep in mind it’s not an easy task; there was tons of information handed out. Tim led the discussion in “The Best Tactics in Landing Page Optimization”. Some of the highlights discussed were:

First impressions matter

As we’ve said before, it’s easy to make a good or bad impression. Once that impression’s made, however, it’s hard to change. In short, a bad impression could kill a conversion.

Borrow trust from trusted brands

For example, if your company is registered with the Better Business Bureau, use the seal they offer. If you’re an ecommerce merchant affiliated with the BuyerTrust program, have an SSL (secure socket layer) certificate or other buyer protection, show it off.

Don’t clutter your pages

Clutter isn’t something you’d associate with business; clutter is what happens when you’re at home. Keep your website looking professional and streamlined; instead of shoving things on the page, think things through.

Borrow authority and credibility from others

Do you have connections? How about superstar connections? Sometimes it really does come down to whom, not what, you know. Don’t be afraid to use your connections to “borrow” some of their authority and credibility (otherwise known as name-dropping).

Make visitors feel safe

How does it make you feel when you have to sign in to a site to comment on a post? Some just shrug it off, but the more information you ask for, the more vulnerable your visitor is going to feel. If you have to have a sign in, keep it simple. If you don’t have to have a sign in, give your visitors free reign throughout your site.

Make seals out of your images

Do you have a service or product your clients would be happy to promote? Turn your logo or other images into seals; make a design out of them. Anyone who wants to can take these seals and put them on their site, making for great, free advertising.

Some of the highlights from Ted’s discussion about Information Architecture (IA):

IA is driven by market, not theory

You can’t build a strong website based on theory. If you’ve built your navigation / site structure, and even once used the words “I bet”, “I guess” or “probably, rethink what you’ve done. Study your market first.

A website isn’t an app

With an application, the user has time to figure out how to make it work. Your website, however, can’t be traversed through guesswork. It needs an immediate, intuitive navigational structure. If even you get lost on your site, rest assured your visitors will.

Don’t hide important info

Categories are often based on the company mindset, not the user mindset. Unfortunately, categories often end up hiding information that might be important to the user behind hover and dropdown menus. Keep the important stuff upfront and easily accessible.

Forget the 3-click rule

“Three clicks deep is as far as any visitor will go”. This is often called the “3-click” rule. However, the truth is people will go up to 15 clicks – as long as you give them a scent of the information they’re looking for. If you do it right, they won’t mind looking that far.

Too many choices

Several comparisons, surveys and studies have pointed out that we’re hardwired to the number seven. More choices than this can make it hard for a visitor to make a decision; they simply decide to go somewhere else. Keep your menu to no more than 6 or 7 choices.

Too much about you

If you meet someone at a party and all they want to do is talk about themselves, what do you do? You run… quickly. Your visitors will, too. Where possible, talk about them; reach out to them and let them know you understand their needs.

Of course, these are just a few of the points discussed at Pubcon, but I choose them from the masters. Take these pointers and start applying them to your site and strategy!

The World according to Google

“Search engine update” can mean an infrastructure overhaul, indexing changes, user interface changes – even minor tweaks. Some updates don’t affect rankings at all, while other updates call for mad scrambling before rankings plummet.

Google Instant, however, is a whole other animal, and it made “instant” waves in the SEM and SEO world. Currently, there are over 4.2 million pages available to learn about, talk about, bitch about or laugh about this interesting little change in how the Big Daddy Search Engine of them all has “changed lives”. Although we’ve never done a mashup, it seemed like a good time to start.

Is Google Evolving Too Quickly? Peter Young asks this question, pointing out that Google may be pushing one too many changes on the user. I didn’t realize it until I read the article, but Google has pushed out 9 rather big changes over the past three months. Interesting read for those who wonder if the SE is overdoing it.

In My Knee Jerk Reactions to Google Instant, Christina Keffer of LunaMetrics has some interesting thoughts about whether the longtail or short tail key terms will be affected. The article is a good exploration of potential changes in how SEOs set up campaigns. The comments are worth reading as well.

Whether or not Google Instant kills long tail traffic is still a matter up for debate, testing and data analysis, but David Iwanow has an interesting post over at Search Engine People: Google Instant AdWords Trouble. If David is correct in his thinking (and he goes pretty in depth, so he may very well be), companies using AdWords for long tail terms are going to have to rethink their strategies.

An article over at SEOChat nicely covers the issues. Google Instant Changes the SEO Game sums it up pretty well with, “In short, nothing has changed – but everything has changed.” Terri Wells does a good job of covering all the basics without taking an actual stand. Why is “no stand” a good thing? Because nobody actually knows how search will be affected – yet.

Dave Davies has an excellent article on Web Pro News, named simply Google Instant and SEO. However, there’s nothing simple about it. Quite simply, this is an in depth discussion, well thought out, and covers the searcher, Google and SEO perspective. A must read.

And a few others on the side…

For everything that Google does, there are those for and against. The two I like the most, although there are thousands out there for both sides:

Google Instant an Instant Headache for SEO Jockeys and Parents, provided by Techno Buffalo – Definitely against, but then, the author (Leslie Posten) is a daily researcher on the Internet.

In An Instant, Google Reminds Us That It Is Still Awesome, provided by Business Insider SAI – Definitely for, this article is a glowing “review” of how one user received Google Instant. It’s important for optimizers to remember that both sides exist, so we can better optimize for each.

Lastly…

Because I’ve always loved mashups (at least on subjects I’m interested in), and because it feels like a continuation of this post, I felt the need to add Google Instant Instantly Makes Waves Around the Web. aimClear provides 62 recently published posts out of the millions, covering user field guides, tutorials, commentary on and affects of Google’s newest update.

Enjoy!

Related articles by Zemanta

• New White Paper Analyzes Impact of Google Instant on SEM and SEO (thesearchagents.com)
• How Do You Feel About Google Instant? [Google] (gizmodo.com)
• 40 Google Instant SEO, SEM & Analytics Resources (seoptimise.com)

When I started Honoring Women Wed on Twitter, I didn’t realize I was starting a grass roots movement. I just wanted to honor some of the great women I’ve met through social media. When I realized it was spreading, I had to think about it – does Twitter really need more noise added to the feed?

Sisters everywhere

Well, when people started catching on and others asked what it was about to see if they wanted to catch, I realized that, yes – Twitter could use another bit of noise.

#Honoring Women Wed started March 2010… at least, that’s what Google’s new real time search says:

Women Enjoying #HWW

It’s kind of cool to see how many more women have participated since then. You can move your mouse over the chart Google shows you and see how the trend started. What makes me grin from ear to ear is how many more women – and, yes, men too – are actually finding value in it. It may not be tangible value, but it’s a great way of adding to the depth of your connections.

Grass root movement

When I first started #Honoring Women Wed, I wanted to see if I could do something “special” that no one else was doing. Although it would have been nice for it to catch on, I knew in my heart that it didn’t matter; it was something I enjoyed doing. Just like the Tops SEO women post. I got so much flack for that & did I care? No… HWW was simply my way of saying thanks and engaging the women I’d spoken to throughout the week.

Sisterhood has no barriers

Being social is odd to some people . Maybe it’s the way they were raised; I don’t know, but as an only child, I really had no desire to be social. I was perfectly content playing with all my imaginary friends or no one, I was never bored. As an adult I slowly realized that being social is an invigorating, magical, experience that comes natural to some. Have you noticed how some women are reserved until you know them better? On the Internet what I have noticed about women is they are more social. Our virtual presence has no shape or color, it becomes about engagement, and friendships. All reservations, melt away.

Would I dare call this a grass root movement? Maybe not but what’s happening cannot be ignored. That’s the power of social media – solidarity. Think about it, you are adding complete strangers, following/promoting leaders on social networks. Why? Have they added to your day? Here’s a secret,  It can be anything for anyone  there is no right or wrong answer.

I’m a huge social butterfly – at least in my own mind and online. I knew 140 characters would never be enough to say thanks for being a great mentor, listener, communicator, follower… It’s amazing how much you can really learn from 140 characters. As a matter of fact its comments like this Francsesca_Me “#Honoring WW is a brilliant idea you had. I love it! Only an overachiever like you could create it! Thanks, from the heart. :*” That gives me the biggest kick.

Are these women my best friends? No, I’m not delusional, but I do enjoy the special friendships I’m forging with a few of them. We’ve even started a small group of women that help each other out. You may even ask is it a waste of time? Or who has the time? I assure you, it takes nothing away from my daily routine. #Honoring Women Wed is not for everyone, I get it. That’s okay, who would want to participate in things that takes nothing but a moment of thought, a small grin, a little wave, a quick hug to all those that help, share, laugh or cry with you.

Sisterhood has no barriers

If you are already online why not add value to not only yourself but to the women you admire, respect and want to recommend to other women along the way. Maybe it’s my way of being a feminist and hampering all the negative press I keep reading about how women are not “technologically” inclined. Like Why We Don’t Need More Women In Tech… Yet . Excuse me but Wtf does that mean? Just because I don’t know code or write C++ does that mean I am not into technology?  Or just because I don’t work for some fortune 100-500 companies make me Un-technologically committed? Not a chance. I love technology; women everywhere are embracing it in their own way. Mothers, teachers, sisters and daughters are sharing and engaging with each other and yes, I have added my special little something that women and Google cannot ignore.

Total Douche

It’s not everyday I actually get to write about something I want to discuss. Most of my writing consists of work – whether for clients or my business, it’s still work. Every once in a while, though, you have moments in between the 9 to 5 when you’re compelled, no, forced to purge and rant. You want to scream in horror, to shout from every mountaintop. Why not to you, dear readers? Grab a beer or a glass of wine and settle in.

Now, I’ve been told (and believe for the most part), that you should never post anything negative about someone. It’s bad for business; it’s unprofessional. It could be professional suicide. Therefore, I’m going to turn what may sound like a negative rant into something we can all learn from – especially moi.

Fame does weird things to people, whether they’re politicians, rock stars, movie stars or Internet stars. I don’t know this personally (I’m not famous), but I can share what it’s like from the perspective of one who knows a famous person. I can only imagine how the change happens when you wake up one morning and your life is completely different. I’ve seen it happen time and again, even in my lil’ old life.

Let me tell you about someone I know. When I first met her she was just a normal person, funny as all get out, important to her friends and family, and has become so famous I dare not mention her name. This was over 30 years ago. She was a dear friend; I supported her any time I could. I’m so proud of her and I think she deserves all the success she’s received. She’s a true super star…. But I cannot seem to re-connect with her.

In her defense (Super Star) and mine, (Not a Super Star) I left the country and lost touch. When I came back, however, I wasn’t able to connect with her. I sent letters the first couple of years, recently tried emails and I think I tried once on Twitter. After trying to contact her, I finally understand we’ll probably never talk again… And that’s okay but she gets being in social media. If nothing else, you can imagine how many people I’d have to get through to see her again. I regress.

Now, let’s take this to where it belongs: Twitter. Twitter, the golden child, the most amazing social networking site ever created in the 21^st century, is well on its way to becoming a household name. Think about it; the future of micro-blogging, texting sexting, tweeting ad nauseam is all about making rock stars out of you and me.

I was to discuss the Twitter Marketing gurus online: how my love, admiration and respect falls a degree lower with almost every post I read. You know the ones; they’re well respected, followed by many (including me), RT’d by thousands. Who knows, you may have moments like this, too.

Now, in order to “make it”, everyone know you either

a) get an awesome viral video to shoot into the Twittersphere or

b) you build your following with smart strategies that work for your niche. Either way, the posts should be mainly focused on your followers. Even the gurus say this!

However, for the past six months or more, I’ve noticed a definite change in the strategies of some of my favorite Twitter rock stars. Either they’re so self consumed they don’t care, or they think they’re still connected and they aren’t. I don’t know them personally, so I’m not sure which.

Self-proclaimed boasting – “me me me.. mememe” – is coming out of some of my most favorite people to follow. It sounds like they’re warming up for a vocal concert. To be honest, some have become pompous asswipes. What a shame; I liked these people. It’s almost sickening to watch them self promote day in and day out. “Enough about me, what do you think about me?” All they’re really doing is… well, jerking themselves off for the world to see.

Self-proclaiming tweeters, catch a clue. I can understand getting touched by the Twitter gods into rethinking the way you position yourself. However, if you were an ass before you got on Twitter, guess what – you’re still an ass. Twitter doesn’t make you different from what you were.

What it does is give you the ability to connect in 140 characters. When you first came on, you actually spoke to people, not because you had a deal with them or were promoting your product, but because you actually cared. Now you’re a big star and guess what? The person you really are shows and it ain’t purty.

Maybe you can set up one day a week to stay connected. If you must use automated responses, at least send something like, “I’d love to answer your question, but I’m only available on Tuesday. Please join me here [link].” Then, on Tuesday, you could spend a couple of hours taking to your fans via webinar or something. As, a matter of fact this “famous” x-friend I know does something very similar but it’s on TV. She connects with her fans.

What I’ve seen coming from your feed has been horrible. You sound like a freaking spam bot. Every time I think you might have put out a great link to follow, I find out you’re associated with the person and want me to spend money. Shame on you, self-proclaiming tweeters. Without your followers, you’re nothing.

Respond to emails, will you? Oh, here’s a thought: respond to tweets! Do something besides “memememe”.

Here’s my promise to the world. If I ever become famous, I promise to answer my emails. I promise not to have someone else use my Twitter account. I promise only to promote things I truly believe in, and I promise not to disconnect… what are your promises?

Photo credit: Cristian Andrei Matei

Everyone I know who works online is involved in making money online through passive income. “Passive” – it sounds easy; to some it’s second nature. You have to know how affiliate marketing works, do some research on the products you’re going to promote and, of course, be willing to spend a few dollars, but it can be done. Lots of great people out there do very well for themselves.

I have yet to jump on that bandwagon. To be honest, I’m not willing to spend money on something I’m unfamiliar with and can’t control. Fact is I’m too busy. However, I decided to test how well social media would be for passive income.

Welcome to making money through social networks. Now, I’ll admit that I haven’t made tons of money, but I’ve made more this way than through ad sense or other affiliation on our blogs. Thus you will notice we no longer have advertisements on our blog. I found it intrusive and I didn’t make a dime. People that come to see the blog don’t come to buy, and I know that. Eventually, we’re going to add an affiliate page and promote things we truly believe in, but in the meantime, I’ve been playing around with a few sponsored Twitter applications.

Sponsored Tweets has been one of my favorites, if for no other reason than I have actually made money from the twits I send out. Their program works something like this:

“Your Twitter account must be at least 60 days old, have at least 50 followers and 100 status updates to be visible in searches to advertisers. However, advertisers can still explicitly make you offers.”

The beauty of this place (passive income) is every once in a while they’ll send me an email, informing me that an advertiser wants me to post a sponsored tweet. I can say yes or no. Then, of course, I have to write this ad in less then 140 characters with a hash tag #ad, or the word “sponsored” at the end of the post. The other option is they give me a 140 characters I either accept or deny.

It seems fairly simple, right? Well, it is. I’ve been averaging $4.04 per tweet, with a residual on the CPC. It varies from a high $0.52 per click to as low as $0.10 cents per click. This is with my reach and potential; you may have different payouts with more or less followers.

I have a respectable 5000+ followers.  Imagine if you wanted to make money from Twitter now you can buy followers or at least pay to double your following list…  to promote the sponsored tweets, but I’ve never been good at selling anything I didn’t believe in. Nor am I going to buy followers, no matter how much money I can make.

Yeah, I know you’re thinking that everyone has a price. Well, I don’t; I’m not rich, but I live comfortably. I’d never compromise my ethics for money. I pride myself in keeping my word as my honor. Maybe it’s an Italian thing, I don’t know… but I digress.

Throughout the years, as I worked with some of the biggest agencies in San Francisco, I was good enough at sales that I was tagged as the lady that could sell a dog off a meat truck. I’m still good at sales, but selling sponsored tweets to my followers feels like useless spam.

Well, until I discovered Sponsored Tweets. They make it clear that you’re working with a company that values both the advertisers and their users. They use things like mandatory disclosures, transparency, freedom of choice, etc. Twitter stars can get some nice cash for sponsored tweets, and it’s all up front.

Try me out

The second program is Mylikes. They work pretty much the same as Sponsored Tweets, but you can pick and choose whom you want to promote. It definitely works by recommendations. The business model is based on you being the expert when it comes to your followers. Advertisers leave it up to you to engage with your followers. The transparency issue is resolved by giving you a profile page where your likes are displayed for everyone to see.

Once you sign up, you see a page with a list of sponsors, from the name of the company to the payment they offer per click. If you take the time to look through them, you can find something you like, use, or want to promote. They have an interesting pricing structure. They base their payment on an influence score they give you, including click through rates.

I’ll admit, they’ve sent me sponsors I chose not to participate with or promote, but that was my choice. I’m not going to send out promotions on products or companies I don’t believe in or are useless for my audience.

Now, ask yourself, is this a way to make money on Twitter? The answer is yes, but how much is completely up to you. I don’t spend much time doing the research or pursuing advertisers, but it’s nice when I get an email asking me to sponsor a product or service I haven’t seen. I can try it and then pass it along to my followers. As much as it might seem like spamming, I’ve come to realize that it isn’t. I make sure not to flood Twitter, posting them only once or twice a week, and I make sure the products or services could be useful to my followers.

Online reputation By: Miklos Teknos

“Any press is good press”, right? Not necessarily. Bad press – negative publicity – is becoming a prevalent problem for online companies. Anybody can write something about your company, from anywhere, about anything. They don’t have to have a name; “Anonymous” is a very popular identity for posting on forums, sites and blogs.

Is Bad Press a Problem for you?

It may be time for reverse SEO. With the Internet and social media, bad press can turn into a public relations nightmare. How do you control the damage?

A while back, I had a run-in with a potential client. He didn’t like my prices and, although we had no contract, he somehow felt he’d been gypped. He chose a well-known complaint site and posted a complaint against me for “how poorly I treated clients”. For a month, anytime someone searched for my name, one of the first things they saw was the complaint. Now, granted, some of my actual clients came to bat for me, but the damage was done.

In this case, reputation management was easy – sort of. I contacted the complaint site, showed them the correspondence and they took the complaint down. However, it took another month for the complaint to disappear from the SERPs; it was listed, but when you clicked on the link it redirected to the home page of the complaint site.

For those two months, there’s no telling how many potential clients I may have lost from that one untrue complaint.

Controlling Negative Publicity

Reverse SEO pushes the bad press from the front page of the SERPs, lowering its exposure to the general populace and cutting down on the potential impact to your business. It might take everything from creating social media profiles to optimized press releases to high-quality link building, but suppressing negative publicity can be done.

It’s very seldom that a company manages to go through the business cycle of life untouched and pristine. It happens to everyone, whether the claims are legitimate or not: resentful employees, competitors, etc. can quickly destroy your online reputation. Because these complaints are easy to make anonymously, they’re hard to control, and harder to take care of in a private setting.

So tell me readers have you been in a similar situation? Maybe you can share with us how you handled it or what you would suggest… If you have a suspicion that negative publicity may be coming, don’t hesitate to take on reverse SEO. A little bit of preparation goes a long way!

Inspiration happens at the oddest times…

It’s no secret I’m a Twitaholic; I’m not ashamed of it and I like it that way. It’s also no secret that the latest buzz can always be found in the ongoing stream of Twitter chatter. So, imagine my “non-surprise” when this comes across my screen.

“50 Women Bloggers You Should Be Reading” – oooh! In my excitement, I started reading down, grinning at names I recognized. It wasn’t until I read the post a second time, however, that I realized none of the women are in SEO. Oh sure, there’s social media, marketing and branding – even marketing to women -, but no mention of SEO. Are women not as interested in SEO as men? Are there so few women in SEO?

I’m not burning bras, people, but I do have to be curious. You know – search engine optimization has been around for just a tad bit longer than social media, people.

I Googled “Women in SEO” The #1 Google was SEO Fanguy with “You gotta love the women of SEO” as a tag line. Of course, I had to read; it sounded interesting. As I’m reading, this comes across the screen: “Could she truly be a sexy woman of SEO? That woman would definitely have to be smart, because she married the man of SEO and she knows SEO.” I can still feel the tea coming through my nose the first time I read this sentence.

Look, I’m not burning flags or waving red ones, I’m just surprised that women don’t seem to be recognized in the SEO community. For some reason, not very much is being said. Anytime a list is made of top women in the industry it’s usually social media, marketing and PR firms. Women in SEO…?

How about Judith Lewis (aka deCabbit) – Well known speaker on SEO and social media, SEO journalist, and regular writer for Technology Weekly. She started out training to be a lawyer with a specialized honours degree in Psychology – she became an SEO consultant instead; that should tell you something. Oh and she digs chocolate.

Dana Lookadoo, is another great example. She’s launched two web development firms, founded Pixel Position (SEO agency), and has now launched Yo! Yo! SEO, a company providing in-house SEO consulting and training. SEO isn’t easy, but if you catch up with Lookadoo and read her blog: Formula for Reaching the Top – Pain is Growth, you’ll see she’s definitely up for the hard climbs.

Have you heard of Ann Smarty, by any chance? Ann runs SEO Smarty, contributes to Search Engine Journal and is the Director of Media at Search & Social (recently merged with 10E20 to become BlueGlass Interactive). The SEO Smarty blog is #7 for June 2010 in the top Wikio SEO blogs… only 6 points below Matt Cutts. Enough said.

Let’s not leave out Donna Fontenot. Dazzlin’ Donna is the original founder of SEO Scoop. Lest you think a woman by the name of “dazzlin” anything has a fuzzy brain, Donna has been a ColdFusion Web Developer in her past life. She’s also been a contributor at Search Engine People and moderator at the Search Engine Roundtable Forums. She’s currently a busy ebusiness coach/consultant, SEO and an active moderator at Cre8asite Forums, among other things. That’s just the tip of the iceberg…

Then there is Bonnie Burns. She has been immersed in SEO for over 10 years. Anytime I call her she is available to answer any questions I may have. It’s women like Bonnie that make SEO fun. Thanks for all that you do woman you rock!

Alysson Fergison is another great woman in SEO. Have you seen her Twitter profile? Let me quote “Snarky, progressive & profane. Some say I’m funny. Who am I to argue? I build WordPress sites & blogs and help small businesses with SEO, marketing & stuff.” I like professionals that enjoy what they do.

I’m running out of room, but I can’t leave out Angi Nikoleychuk, Christine Churchill, Meaghan Olsen and Anne Kennedy.

Are the SEO women listed above special because they’re women? Nope, not a bit. However, it must be said that these women are buried in SEO and at the top of the field. People, I like Alan Bleiweiss; he’s a great guy and knowledgeable. Dave Harry, AKA @theGypsy – the man knows more about search than Matt Cutts. Micah Baldwin Search engine marketing and startup business guru. I’m not sure, but he’s probably started more businesses than Donald Trump.

Now you have a long list of great people to gain SEO insight from. However, along with the top SEO men, you can now snag a little info from the top SEO women as well. I may even add to the list as time allows…

SEO tools...

Very seldom do we talk about the “extra” programs that can give your SEO a boost, preferring instead to talk about techniques. However, tons of “SEO boosters” have hit the market that makes search engine optimization a little bit easier and a little less time consuming. Let me strongly caution you, though; no program can really make the decisions for you. There has to be an active human ingredient – your mind – for key decision-making and ultimate SEO campaigns.

Having said that, here a just a few, both free and paid, to help you with your SEO efforts:

WordPress – WordPress.org allows you to download the WordPress blogging platform onto your site. Now, WordPress itself has some pretty nifty SEO pluses, such as the ability to notify the search engines when you post a new page or blog. However, where it really comes in handy is with plugins. A simple plugin (a bit of code inserted into your site) can turn the site into a hefty SEO and/or eCommerce machine. Even without the SEO component, though, it’s worth checking out as an easy way to build and keep track of your site content.
Cost: free

WebCEO– Web CEO offers a huge SEO package, but is especially strong when creating your baseline metrics and keeping track of your efforts. The baseline metrics is where your site is now, in terms of keyword ranking, linking building and competition. This information is vital to have at the beginning of any SEO campaign, so you know which efforts work and which don’t. With the click of a button, you can easily look at keywords and relevant suggestions, how well your link campaign is working, find link partners, check your rankings and more.
Cost: free to $389.00 and $45.00 every three months for updates.

Master Site Manager– Although we haven’t tried the service, we’ve heard some good things about Master Site Manager. A few of the more interesting tools included in the Master Site Manager suite is the NoFollow Finder. As you may already know, nofollow sites, while they may bring traffic, won’t bring ranking. Another interesting tool is being able to keep track of your keyword trending and search engine backlinks – all bonuses that make this service a definite “maybe” on the list of SEO tools we might add to our box.
Cost: $1 to try for 30 days, up to $97.00 per month.

Raven Tools – Now, we’ve heard good things about Raven Tools as well, and, like Master Site Manager, it has some definite pluses that make us wonder if it should join our toolbox. For instance, Raven Tools integrates with Google Analytics, which brings this information to your fingertips rather than having to dig through countless accounts (a common issue when you have multiple clients). As well, it has a design analyzer, gives the ability to post blogs to WordPress from the Raven platform, and tons more tools.
Cost: Free to try for 30 days, $19.00 to $249.00 per month.

Now, as pointed out, there are tons of other SEO software formats out there. We’re not recommending one or the other. However, do yourself the favor of trying out those that give the free trials. You may find a program that exactly fits your time saving needs for SEO, giving your efforts the boost they need for powerful site presence and awesome ranking.

Editor’s note: Due to the large amount of spammers this post series has attracted, we are closing comments. However, we’ve pulled all the posts together into one! You can now see the entire list of fantastic Twitter applications in our free ebook download: 100+ Twitter Applications for Fun, Business and Social Sharing

FriendFeed vs Twitter

Although tons of Twitter applications exist in the Twittersphere, we can’t possibly cover them all. As our five part Twitter apps series ends, we leave you with a mashup covering a few of the fun, visual and bizarre apps helping to keep Twitter… Twitter. Our first post Enjoy!

Most Popular Users
These applications let you see the ranking of the most popular and influential users on Twitter. I do have to say that it’s fun checking for people you know.

1. TwitRank – Isn’t a site I’m going to be a fan of any time soon. However, if you want to see who the top 150 Twitter users are (by follower count) then you’ll enjoy it. It also allows visitors to see who has the most updates and who is following the most people.
2. Twitterholic – Is an application I use monthly. While I don’t think I’ll ever compete with @aplusk, I am interested to see how I’m doing locally. It’s pretty straight forward, but beware – stats can only be checked once a day.
3. TwitterCounter – Is a widget, already on a lot of sites. I don’t have it on mine, just because I don’t know where I’d put it. If you want others to know how many followers you have, perfect. This also allows you to track the trend of followers you gain/lose. Pretty handy to keep tracks of stats of your Twitter account.
4. Twitter Grader – Is Hubspot’s way to grade your Twitter account. Not bad. Pretty accurate, and depending on Internet speed it can be quick. It also allows you to grade your friends. One thing I had trouble with was logging in. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get it to work. There might be a linkage problem between the floor and the keyboard, so that doesn’t mean it won’t work for you.
5. Social Implu – Lets you see your rank, check other rankings and, of course, like every single Twitter site, see the top 100 Twitter users The one thing I like about this application is the comparison of the power of your Twitter account with certain type of fowl.

Backgrounds
Everybody needs a little decoration now and then. Here are a few places to get free wallpapers to change the look of your account.

1. Twitpaper – If you have trouble discerning what this site is about (other than the title of this section) don’t get a Twitter account. The fact you stumbled across this site is a miracle in itself; don’t tempt fate. They have some great backgrounds for Twitter in case you don’t want to make your own. In addition to the backgrounds, they also have some nice buttons to add to your site to gain followers.
2. Tweety Got Back – When I first read the name of this site, I half expected to see something provocative appear on the screen. Instead, I was met by a featured artist with neatly combed hair and scruffy beard. I was pulled in to look at Tyson Crosbie’s work, some of the best on this list, in my opinion. This guy is one of many talented designers on this site. These backgrounds are as unique as the artists themselves. Hey Tyson, next, how about a layout where users can place their pics behind your beard?
3. TweetXilla – Has some pretty unique backgrounds. They not only offer a wide variety to choose from for free, but they also offer a service to make custom backgrounds (though I’m not sure I’d pay $95). The free ones aren’t too shabby. One plus that I really like is when new backgrounds are added they let you know right on the front page.
4. Twitter Backgrounds Gallery – Claims to have the largest showcase of unique Twitter backgrounds. They might, but half the ones on the first page I’ve seen on many Twitter accounts. That said, isn’t the point of picking a background to be unique? They do have an extensive gallery, but if you decide to pick a background from this site, I’d tweak it and make it your own.
5. Twitter Gallery – To be honest I have nothing to say about this site. I’m sick and tired of hearing about Justin Bieber; when I saw a background devoted to him, I left the site. Please feel free to venture back here and peruse at your own ocular risk.
6. FreeTwitterDesigner – Is very basic, and not too customizable. They do have some interesting designs to start with, however. If not for this list and writing up a review of this site, I’d forget about it.

Visual Mashup Tool
These original and interesting services make Twitter a visually pleasant experience. Some may not have any actual “tool” value, but they’re all neat in their own way.

1. TweetMasher – Is an interesting app that lets users search for words or hashtags mentioned in a tweet, and displays the results in a pretty cool manner. The filters are pretty advanced, and come on! The way it displays the results is just so tight.
2. Twinkler – Well, I tried using this app, but performing a search on this site caused an error to occur. Firefox was used, not IE, which would have caused my screen to explode. However, it might work for you.
3. Twittospheric – Looked like a neat app. I thought it might be nice to see results flying by – sort of like the banner was for Tiger at his first PGA tour event back after sleeping with the Perkins waitress. After waiting for five minutes for search results to appear though, I’m giving up.
4. Tori’s Eye – Does what Twittospheric was supposed to do. However, a few differences. One is that the site has origami birds; not bad, I kind of like it. The results are shown like a banner. Your cursor must rest on a bird to stop it and read the tweet. I’m not sure if I like that feature or not. What I really don’t like is when a search is being done the birds are still flying by. Therefore, when the search is over, you don’t know when the results have started.
5. Twitt3D – I got a headache when I tried using this site. One glance at the homepage and you’ll see why. I didn’t get a chance to look too deeply into this app. From what I could tell, once you sign in it lets you view Twitter accounts in a 3D graph, searched by moving the cursor at different points across it. Again, this may induce headaches.
6. Portwiture – Ever wondered what you were subconsciously tweeting? @AlanBleiweiss has issues, according to Portwiture. What are you really tweeting? What are your followers tweeting? Pretty funny, and a good site to waste away time on.
7. Twitter Friends – Network Browser – Not bad, I like the layout. It’s pretty simple, but hard to figure out what to do. With this in mind, I’m not to sure what to report on. I like being able to search by any Twitter handle, not having to sign in, and even the way the results appear, but what am I supposed to do when I ‘drag’ them?

Bizarre Applications
The unusual, bizarre and original has found Twitter in the form of these last applications. Can you use them? Maybe. Would you want to? Hmm… maybe.

1. Qwitter – Not to be mistaken with the other (wtf?)  Qwitter. This applications states it helps you stop smoking… an interesting application. I’d really like to read any testimonials of those who have quit smoking via Twitter. It shows how many have signed up to quit, but how many have actually quit? I really like the concept of utilizing Twitter to find those also trying to quit in order to form a support group. Kudos to this site for using social media as it is intended.
2. Bkkeper remembers the page of the book you’re reading, like a bookmark… Seriously? You have to be kidding me. This app is actually for people who forget what page of a book they are reading. Wow, I guess folding the page or getting an ACTUAL BOOKMARK is a thing of the past. Now, to remember what page I’m on I have to access this app to figure it out.
3. CurseBird keeps track of the most common expletives shared on Twitter. I’m sure most tweeps who read this will either go explore or bookmark this app. This site tracks the amount of times curse words are used and even updates real time as they are used. Great for a laugh, not so site friendly for work (or it may be).
4. Tweet What You Eat – To share what you eat. Similar to the Qwitter application for smoking, this app is designed for you to keep track of what you eat. This does offer some cool tools for those wanting to take it seriously. For instance, a calorie calculator and weight tracker (be honest).
5. Commuter Feed -  Provides traffic information. You have to wonder if this app is the reason for most of these accidents. Basically, this allows users to update traffic information from their location. “Hmm the roads seem to be clear, better tweet this” *WHAM* just rear-ended a bus. Five cars back, “Oh man an accident, better tweet this” *WHAM* re-ends the car in front of him so on and so forth. Never Tweet and drive, people.
6. Foamee reminds a person that you’re offering a coffee or a beer. Pretty neat app if you want to offer to buy someone a beer or coffee. However, this keeps a record of each time you do this, so unless you’re prepared to follow up, I’d use with caution. It might be best not to drunk tweet using this app.
7. Post Like a Pirate – Converts messages into the language of pirates. Are you a fan of Pirates of the Carribean? Do you long to be like Johnny Depp, wearing eye make-up with another eye painted on top of your eye? Then use this app to post like a pirate! Pretty cool concept. I like it!
8. Secrettweet lets you post your secrets anonymously. I think this site is good for confession, but a little ironic. Post your tweets secretly here for the public to see and let them respond back to it. Everything is kept anonymous, so I’m sure the site was named Secrettweet for aesthetics.
9. TweetWasters calculates the time spent to write messages on Twitter. Calculate the time I spend tweeting? Do I really want to know that? Do you? Well, I bet your boss would, I know mine does. Really great and simple to use. Ironically this is another way to waste time other than tweeting by checking out how much others have wasted time tweeting.
10. Flixup – What people say about movies just out of the movies. While this does require a user to sign in to vote, you can browse ratings freely. Essentially, Twitter users rate movies… well, via Twitter. Easy to understand; easy to use. For the record, if I did want to take the time to sign in with my Twitter account, I’d vote ‘Not Interested’ on the new Twilight movie. However, I have seen it (date night with my wife). I’ve said too much. I better go try to reclaim what masculinity I lost in this last review of Twitter Apps!

Josh and I really hope that you’ve enjoyed 100+ Twitter applications! Keep an eye out, because it’s the first of Level 343’s “Bookmark Specials”. As the year moves on, you’ll still get great information on SEO, social media and business marketing, but we’ll also be adding posts with tons of helpful links. If there’s something you’d like information on, such as an updated list of article directories, dofollow blogs or free press release sites, let us know and we’ll try to oblige.

Editor’s note: Due to the large amount of spammers this post series has attracted, we are closing comments. However, we’ve pulled all the posts together into one! You can now see the entire list of fantastic Twitter applications in our free ebook download: 100+ Twitter Applications for Fun, Business and Social Sharing

More Twitter

- And the list continues! Between Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3, we covered 121 Twitter applications for business, fun and social sharing. Today’s Part 4 continues the list with 21 more Twitter apps, from creating polls and translating messages to spying on other parts of the Twitterverse!

Polls

Create polls. Why? Why not? You can gather quick information such as the demographics of your followers or have a little fun with a question as simple as “what flavor of ice cream do you like?” Get started with these four Twitter polling applications.

1. StrawPoll – Who doesn’t love straw polls? On the spot, quick and informative. The sign up is pretty easy, not to mention when you get a poll up and going it has a chance to appear on the homepage of StrawPoll. My only complaint is that the color scheme changes completely. It really throws off the experience.
2. PollDaddy is similar to StrawPoll, but what I really like about this one is the fact you don’t have to register with the site in order to use it. Probably the quickest way to get a poll up and going on Twitter. This site really adheres to the K.I.S.S. theory.
3. Poll Your Followers really has simple down. This site is just as easy as PollDaddy to get a poll up and going. Scrolling down reveals the most recent created polls, in addition to which have been the most popular for the day.
4. TwtPoll has a few more bells and whistles than the other sites, and is geared towards businesses. Not to say regular users can’t try it out, I just don’t see garden-variety Twitter users paying for demographic information. The survey function is pretty neat, but again this is more for businesses seeking to get the most out of their Twitter account.

Translators

Easily translate messages in multiple languages. As mentioned in the descriptions below, there’s some concern about accuracy. If you need to translate something for business purposes, you might want to use something else; the translations aren’t guaranteed.

1. TweetTranslate – I honestly thought this site was going be pretty cool when I got to it. Then I scrolled down and saw a few…shall we say ‘spammy’ links in the footer? I get they might be paid space, but come on! If those don’t make you chuckle even a little, you aren’t a geek. Aside from that, the translation is pretty swift, but my question is, how accurate is it?
2. LiveTranslate isn’t bad; I like this layout better than TweetTranslate. This site also has more than 40 languages – 41 to be exact. Again, I question the accuracy. It seems to be using the same as Google Translation, which we all know is just so perfect.
3. Tweetrans has 51 translations, the most out of the four, and provides some good instructions on how to use it effectively. None of these sites even mention relevancy, which I think is a problem. I mean, if I were to send @SEOcopy a tweet in Italian I’d want it done correctly. Not done badly so she thinks I’m more of a twetard than she already does :-P
4. Twinslator – Ahh Twinslator. The most pathetic of the bunch. In teeny, tiny print at the bottom is says, ‘Powered by Google Translator’. ‘Nuff said. The only plus is that they admit they use the service. Am I knocking Google Translator? No, but there are better means to get an accurate translation. They may not be free, but you get what you pay for.

Maps and Geolocation

Now, there’s a really cool aspect about the following applications. They made me realize how small the world is after all. With these Twitter apps you can find input your location, look for local users, map it, Tweet it and call it a day!

1. Twittervision has a list of Twitter users plugged in around the world from what I can gather. Kind of cool; too bad they don’t have an information page they can share with new users (hint, hint). Of course, that’s probably why they’re in Beta.
2. Twittermap lets you lay back and enjoy the Twittersphere. Just press the “play” button to start. Alternatively, you can enter something in the search field and see tweets regarding the search, a nearby city, or find people in your area.
3. Geo.ly seems to be a useful tool if you’re connected. Share your own map. Organizing a party or event? Meeting at a bar or cafe? Do you have visitors coming to your home or office? Learn how to create and send them a map.
4. Twitter Spy seems to have a new addition, aptly named Twittermusic. I don’t know about you, but Twitter Spy sounds 007, stealth, which gives me a grin. Apparently, you can spy on your followers once you sign in or spy on the Twitter public timeline in real time. The bells and whistle seems to be a world map for the added visual. Look out James Bond!
5. Stweet is actually cool. It’s a mix of street and twitt, offering a real new way to discover geolocalised twitts from Twitter on a Google Street View panorama. Stweet is an artistic project dealing with the appropriation of geographical, photographic and real-time data from the Web.
6. GeoCodEarth is a flash site with very cool and neat visuals. It’s based on a GEORSS feed that will give you the globe and various social media feeds you can add. Unfortunately, their English is poor and I really could not make out how to use it… unless, of course, I wanted to sign in.
7. TrendsMap is a real-time mapping of Twitter trends across the world. See what the global, collective mass of humanity is discussing right now. The nice thing about this is all keywords are in a visual cloud.
8. TweetMondo is an application that allows you to find other Twitter users based on their geographical area. They gather this information from various sources from Twitter profiles mobile applications etc. Nice networking tool.
9. GeoChirp creators say, “GeoChirp can be a very useful tool for people who know what they are looking for and it can also be innovatively used for marketing.” Hmm… So, if you know what you’re looking for and where, GeoChirp comes in handy. If you have a product and a place to sell it, GeoChirp comes in handy. If you know that you just want to look around… ah, well… you can’t have everything. It does, however, come with a “no register, no login” bonus, so you can have “most” things.
10. Nearby Tweets is something I can see being used for marketing…Nearby Tweets is a geography-centric Twitter tool (localizing Twitter) for social networking, building customer relationships, and monitoring real-time buzz. Where do you start finding relevance in 12,000 tweets? There are 195 countries in the world and chances are you’re most interested in the tweets of only one city in only one of those countries—where you live.

Rss Feeds

Publish the RSS feed for a personal website or blog on Twitter. Now here is an amazing list of RSS feeds that can really connect you with social networks through your Twitter account. I had no idea these tools were around. Did you?

1. Dlvr.it: They have several options from distributing content to your social networks. You can measure your audience engagement and reach across your social networks. You can even grow and promote audience participation with real-tim (PuSH) updates, search-friendly posts and content targeting to specific social nets.
2. Twitterfeed seems to be growing, publishing over one million feeds. Makes you wonder what you’re missing. Twitterfeed is working on increasing how quick the posts hit the Twitter scene, so you can publish real time content every time.
3. Rss2Twitter claims to be the “simplest and fastest way to automatically publish any site that has RSS feeds to Twitter including blogs and news sites!” Maybe… but I was too busy creating this list to try it out. Let me know how it works!

Whew! 142 Twitter applications and one more installment on the way. Part 5 will cover a slew of applications, from the cool to the decidedly strange. Of course, when it’s all said and done we’ll have to add another one covering all the reader-suggested entries.

I would like to thank Joshua Titsworth for helping me muddle through these applications. You can follow him on Twitter since he is  an avid twitterer as well as blogger. He is passionate about all things Internet related and loves learning about new tools and methods. When missing online Josh can be found hunting shanked golf balls across public courses across Kansas and Arkansas.

Editor’s note: Due to the large amount of spammers this post series has attracted, we are closing comments. However, we’ve pulled all the posts together into one! You can now see the entire list of fantastic Twitter applications in our free ebook download: 100+ Twitter Applications for Fun, Business and Social Sharing

Bakerella

Part one of “100+ Twitter Applications…” covered fun, part two held some great search apps. With part three, I’m sharing a list of tools to monitor, analyze, manage and monetize your Twitter account and Twitter in general. Some are really helpful, some fell flat for me, but every one of them may be an application you can find a use for.

Monitor Trends, Stories and Links

Discover the latest trends and topics. Read interesting stories and track links shared by several users within Twitter.

1. Twitscoop keeps track of all things being tweeted and claims to keep track of all the hot trends. I say ‘claim’ because when I go to Twitter’s homepage to check what’s hot, this page is completely different.
2. Tweetmeme has been used by a lot of people, and probably by most who are reading this. I’m willing to bet that most people who use it only do so to RT. However, did you know that clicking the number will show who has tweeted the link? Pretty cool; the site also allows users to see which tweets are the most popular, as well as break the tweets down by category.
3. Thoora has an interesting way of measuring ‘popular’ stories. The stories appear to be ranked by either the number of times they’ve been tweeted or the number of times they’ve been mentioned in articles. If a story hasn’t been tweeted very much, but has been mentioned in several articles, it will appear in the top results. It’s a fascinating way of determining ‘what’s popular’. The categories are also broken down into business, controversy, entertainment, lifestyle, politics, sci/tech and, of course, sports.
4. Twitturly is straightforward; the more RTs a subject gets the higher it’s placed. This site ranks News, Pics and Videos. In addition, it tracks profiles of those who tweet. However, I found this function to be lackluster. I searched and found my own profile, but it didn’t offer much information other than a link to view my profile.
5. DailyRt claims to have the most popular tweets, and like Twitturly, ranks them by the amount of RTs.  It also has an option to search for links, pics and videos that have been tweeted.
6. What the Trend appears to rank the most used hash tags and allows users to define what the tags mean. To be honest I’m not sure how to explain this site. There’s a FAQ section, but even it’s a little vague. If I had to call it something, I’d call it the Wikipedia of Twitter.
7. TwittLink has almost the exact same layout as DailyRt. So the question now becomes, which came first? Nothing significantly different between the two in my opinion other than the fact twittlink has a few more categories to browse.
8. Twitterfall has a very intelligent layout and is slightly intimidating. I say intimidating because when I go to an application about Twitter I want something I can look at and use right away. With this, I see an awful lot of reading before I can use it. Doesn’t mean it’s a bad app – quite the opposite actually. You can search for tweets geographically, follow groups of people, view your timeline and set up a custom search.
9. Twopular has a pachyderm with two Twitter birds tattooed in his ear but, other than that, it has an interesting layout. This site lets users track tweets by popularity, by hours, days, weeks, months and even since Twitter started. Honestly, though, I have a feeling that it is tracking popularity from the time Twopular went up. Still, it’s neat concept to be able to track the most popular tweets of all time.
10. TweetTabs has a pop-up. I’m usually not a big fan of pop-ups, but the one on this site is pretty inviting by offering a quick tip on how to get started and how to use the site. I like that a lot. Next, users can open multiple tabs to watch varying trends as the tweets roll in, and almost looks like my tweetdeck. Something users can relate to and understand how to operate. Simple, straight forward, and user-friendly.
11. TweetBurner is a neat way to track tweets, but it also shortens them. Not a bad set-up, but I’m not a huge fan of having all languages appear at the same time. I think it would be better if they would split them up via country. I do like the top 10 URLs; reason being they are ranked by the most clicked versus most RTs.

Advertising

Forms of advertising to start earning on a Twitter account.

1. TwittAd has a self-explanatory paragraph on the front page: “…a Social Media Affinity Network that connects Advertisers and Twitter users. By using Twittad, Twitter users can monetize their profiles & Advertisers can reach ALL of Twitter; the Website, 3rd Party Applications and Mobile Devices!”
2. Magpie is a little more intricate than TwittAd. I do like the fact they have some disclosure policies and are a member of WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association). They really seem to provide as much information as possible to sway users/potential advertisers.
3. Pay Me Tweets is a very clever set up. There’s a straightforward message: each page you click next reveals more information and takes you a step closer to signing up. With this in mind, these folks really know how to attract users.
4. RevTwt claims to be the largest advertising network on Twitter. Who knows, it might be. It’s easy to see they are after three things: people to advertise, twitter accounts to register, and to gain followers. For more info just click a link.
5. SponsoredTweets is somewhat familiar to me, but I’ve never used them. They seem to have quite a bit of celebrities on board, but I’d like to hear from an actual celebrity that uses them. Before I refreshed the page, @tamar was listed, so maybe she’ll have some insight on how they operate.

Keyword Comparison

Tools to compare multiple keywords on Twitter – and, of course, I like this list. It comes in handy with SEO keyword research!

1. TweetVolume is pretty straightforward. Add a few keywords/phrases in the boxes, click ‘ok go!’ and you’re set. This allows you to view results from anytime, past day, past week or even the past year. Another neat feature is that once a search is performed the user can email the results. Pretty hand when comparing popular terms against each other.
2. Monitter: very interesting. This tool allows a user to look for terms in tweets and allows them to track the popularity geographically. However, as with Twitcaps, it loads the tweets as they happen very quickly. This can be frustrating.
3. Trendistic allows users to track the popularity of terms on Twitter. I just became a big fan of this tool (well, Facebook will only let me “Like” it L). It also has a function to embed a chart in a website dynamically. That way, as the trends change, it will be visible and updated as it happens wherever it’s embedded. Very cool!
4. Tweetfu takes a similar approach to Google Fight. Only, rather than comparing how many tweets at once, it compares them over a period of time. Simple, and can be just as much fun as comparing your name to a friend on Google Fight.
5. Twibuzz is another simple app that tracks terms in tweets. The only hang up is when a term is submitted it takes a while for the results to generate. If it generates a report, I’d be more than happy to share the results…Still waiting…

Contact Management

Finding new friends is hard to do. After all, Twitter is growing bigger every day, and has over 300 million users. Which ones would you benefit from following? Which ones would make a great social contact? Which ones are in your industry? Find them all with the following tools:

1. FollowerWonk: one word for this app. Wow. It allows users to search bios for keywords, but the really neat feature? A tab allows three Twitter accounts to be compared. This shows differences/similarities in followers, tweeting, longevity of account and more. Really impressive.
2. MrTweet. I didn’t even login to this site. Why? First and foremost, they disrespect the Twitter Bird by placing a freaking owl on their page. Even if they had taken the time to color this specimen Twitter blue, I would have tried their service. They seem to have some nice options, but disrespecting Twitter? Not cool.
3. Twiends is another site I didn’t bother digging into very deeply. Why not this one? Their featured user that happened to be up when I got to the page was an account titled, ‘cashflowstock’. The account bio read: “Cheap stocks that will make your cashflow explode! We are not a licensed Financial Adviser. All statements are our own opinion. Contact cashflowstock@yahoo.com.” Hmm, can anyone say spammy? If this is a featured user, I’d rather not meet the others.
4. TwitSuggestions is yet another site I didn’t delve into. I have a great reason for this one. All the links on this site are showing a 500 error. Not surprising, actually. There’s a note in the footer asking visitors to donate for support. I wonder how much they actually got before mom kicked them out of the basement?
5. Find2Follow, I like as soon as the page came up: no sign in. This analyzes your account (or any Twitter account you submit in the search bar) and provides a list of ‘like’ accounts you aren’t following. The first search does take a while to finish, but they mention that in the text beside their logo. Honesty: another great thing about this site.
6. Who Should I Follow? works in similar fashion to Find2Follow. Only, rather than suggesting you enter your own name, it just asks for a Twitter name to be submitted. It then brings up a list of results, but you can filter the results further by looking for more popular/less popular and geographically. Pretty handy if you want to find someone who is not popular in the least bit living next door to you.
7. Follow Finder – an official friend finder powered by Google? So does this mean Google is competing against itself (Buzz)? I really wonder if it’s official. Regardless, this operates the same way the previous two apps do. I do like the fact each ‘suggestion’ shows the most recent tweet of each account. Kind of a ‘try-it-before-you-buy-it’.

Delete Inactive Users

You have tons of followers and are following tons of people. After you get about one hundred of each, it’s hard to tell when an account goes inactive. These tools make it easy to clean the dross from the good.

1. Just Unfollow: Are you obsessed with only following people who follow you? Do you not wish to improve your own tweets so those that don’t follow might follow? Do you like being required to sign in to apps that agitate the need to remove those who don’t find you interesting? If you answered yes to any of these questions this app is for you!
2. Qwitter is an app I actually used when I first got on Twitter. However, I stopped using it shortly there after. Reason? I never got an email or notification; trust me, tweeps stopped following me during this time. Do I care if followers stop following me? Not really, but it would be nice to see what tweet caused them to stop following. That, I would find informative.
3. TheUnfollowed is an odd site. Basically it tells you how many times you’ve been unfollowed. So far the top users unfollowed are @mashable and @guykawasaki. Not bad, but it will only start tracking your own stats once you sign in to the app and allow it access. It will not tell you how many have stopped unfollowing you since your Twitter account started.
4. Tweepi is in beta; they say so beside the logo in the top left corner. This site offers four tools:

• Geeky Follow – Finds similar people to follow
• Flush – Please read comments from Just Unfollow
• Reciprocate – Follows people back that follow you
• Cleanup – Has the potential for make you out to be a hypocrite if you remove people that you followed using Reciprocate. However, this only means that the person you found with Geeky Follow will remove you with Flush.

Account Statistics

Analyze personal accounts and information with the help of statistics and graphs. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been hooked since I first discovered graphs and charts for social media. I really like seeing what days I’m hot and what days my information falls flat. Keep up with your community and analyze what you’re doing with hard data. One great way to use these tools is to find out what post or Tweet got the most traction.

1. TwitGraph is an interesting application. It breaks things down in a visual chart from Tweets by day to top 5@’s, your word count (great for keywords) to your popular links.
2. TweetStats is a neat tool that I actually use every so often. It does give me some cool suggestions of who to follow, which is nice considering I don’t follow everyone. The application will graph your Twitter stats, including your tweets per hour, per month your timeline and your reply statistics.
3. TwitterAnalyzer provides nice slick graphs that can show you how popular your tweets are. Your Twitter reach, subject and hash tags are just a few of the nifty things it the graphs show.
4. TwInfluence isn’t a visually appealing application, but charts can be a bit boring for some. That’s not to say they don’t have some cool features, however. TwInfluence is a simple tool for measuring the combined influence of twitterers and their followers, with a few social network statistics thrown in as bonus.
5. Twitter Score evaluates your Twitter popularity. Is it useful for you to know this? Could be, and at least you don’t have to sign in.

So far, we’ve listed 121 Twitter apps you can use to maximize your Twitter account, social media efforts and social reputation, as well as a few more just for fun. Stay tuned, because we have a few more installments left. The next one will cover an amazing – and odd – assortment of applications, from the fun and helpful to the just plan strange.

I would like to thank Joshua Titsworth for helping me muddle through these applications. You can follow him on Twitter since he is  an avid twitterer as well as blogger. He is passionate about all things Internet related and loves learning about new tools and methods. When missing online Josh can be found hunting shanked golf balls across public courses across Kansas and Arkansas.

Editor’s note: Due to the large amount of spammers this post series has attracted, we are closing comments. However, we’ve pulled all the posts together into one! You can now see the entire list of fantastic Twitter applications in our free ebook download: 100+ Twitter Applications for Fun, Business and Social Sharing

Twitter Addiction

In part one of “100+ Twitter Applications for Fun, Business and Social Sharing” I covered 51 anti-spam, social sharing, games and group Twitter applications. Here in part two, you’ll find 31 applications for search. With everyone talking about real-time search, using these tools will help you find out what everyone really is discussing on Twitter, in real time. Let’s begin!

Search Images and Videos

People upload videos and images all the time. Posted links are quickly buried in the billions of tweets sent out a day, however; those videos and images can disappear in less than a half hour. Here are some tools to help you find them quickly.

1. TwiPho is the image search for Twitter. If a photo is uploaded to Twitter, it will be placed here. The site seems to be indexing photos based on words in the tweet in addition to the file name. The site is in beta, but it’s cool to look at the photos twits are tweeting.
2. TwitCaps is an image/video search for Twitter that is very frustrating. The moment I got to this page, I hated it. As soon as an image is uploaded to Twitter, it shows up on this site – and when I mean as soon as, I mean right then. It appears to anyway. The photos were popping on the screen so fast I could barely focus on one before it moved aside. Again, very frustrating. Upon a second look, I did manage to find a button to slow down the upload, but the button is hard to locate and the stream of images flowing in is very distracting when attempting to locate said button. Still, it may be worth a look.
3. PicFog has what TwitCaps needs: a pop-up that warns the user on how the images can stream in and offers the user an “off” option. It’s much more user friendly. Another big plus is that it displays cautions that photos streaming live may not be safe for work. Then again, you don’t use Twitter when you’re at work do you? ;)
4. Twicsy is a cross between TwiPho and Twitcaps. It displays ‘trending topics’ for pics on Twitter and breaks them up into categories. It doesn’t provide any warning if the images are safe for work, however. It seems cluttered, and honestly I find their definition of ‘trending topics’ questionable when compared to Twitter’s homepage. In this case, TwiPho is more accurate.
5. Twitmatic focuses on uploaded videos. A little warning would’ve been nice when I clicked on View Videos. I was thrown to a file titled ‘Jean Bulges’ which began a YouTube video with an upbeat tempo and a slideshow of guys wearing tight jeans with… well, read the file name again. Other than that, browsing the videos was pretty simple.

Directories

Find people, companies and products on Twitter with the help of specialized directories. Searching for a specific product but can’t find it? Do you want to know what people are saying about you, your brand or your company? Maybe you just want a list of Tweeters that specialize in this service or that. With this list, you’ll never have a problem finding anything on Twitter again.

1. WeFollow is a place where users can add themselves in hopes of gaining some followers and connecting with those in the same category.
2. Twellow is the Yellowbook of Twitter! It allows users to search for businesses, local tweeters, and add themselves to the growing database. The layout itself is pretty basic and similar to that of most directory sites.
3. TwitR claims to be the #1 Twitter directory. Like Twellow, it offers users a chance to add themselves and search for categories. One cool aspect is it lists the top Twitter accounts by followers in each category or ‘tag’. From a quick search, it’s easy to see there are a few Twitter accounts not registered that would clearly be at the top of these lists. It’s definitely another source to increase your social presence.
4. Just Tweet It is slightly confusing at first; the layout is very similar to that of the Huffington Post, minus the large images and automatic ads. This site offers not only a Twitter account directory, but also a Twitter tool directory. They also have some links to interesting Twitter blogs. This site obviously offers more than just a standard directory.
5. My Twitter Directory is probably the most comprehensive searchable directory on this list. ‘My Twitter Directory’ offers a lot to browse and language translation. Clean professional layout, very inviting. Oh, did I mention you can add yourself to this one? ‘Cuz you can.
6. TwitWho seems to be an attempt at becoming the DMOZ of Twitter directories. A human-edited site, it accurately places accounts in appropriate categories rather than letting users choose them. One good thing about directories like this is the massive cutback of spam accounts that may be found. Simple, easy to navigate and even allows users a chance to become a moderator to help.
7. Twibs, not to be confused with Twibes, is a Twitter directory geared on adding and exhibiting business accounts on Twitter. This can be pretty effective to see which accounts are more active, and what the account activity is like.
8. GeoFollow allows users to search for accounts geographically. Users can add their account for free, or purchase a ‘featured’ listing and get first placement when someone searches in your area. However, if there are only three people signed up in your city, why pay?

Search Engines

Search for information, news and topics in Twitter. Now this is more like it. Here are some useful tools everyone can enjoy, a great list of tools for tracking, watching your activity and watching your popularity.

1. Twitseek is a search engine for any word or person you want to keep track of. I submitted my user name and it pulled all my Tweets for the day.
2. Twingly is a blog search engine featuring a spam-free, faceted, social search for the global blogosphere. Without any marketing, Twingly.com currently serves 25M+ search results per month, most through their API.
3. WhosTalkin? is clean, self-explanatory and pulls up some amazing information. WhosTalkin.com is a social media search tool that allows users to search for conversations surrounding the topics that they care about most, no matter what that topic is.
4. Tweefind is another great search tool with a filter feature. It seems to pull everything out on the Web in real time.
5. Social Mention is like Google Alerts, but for social media. Pick your topic, brand, company, person, etc. and get free daily email alerts. Hint: it’s a good application for easy reputation management; you can quickly respond to any negative or positive press.
6. Twazzup operates a leading real-time news platform, filtering the news from billions of Internet pages, blogs, links and more.
7. OneRiot crawls the links people share on Twitter, Digg and other social sharing services, and then quickly indexes the content on those pages. The result is the freshest, most socially relevant content from across the real time Web.
8. Tweetmi is very cool. I’ve never used it, but the beauty of researching application is watching them work. Not only does Tweetmi give you all the real time information you post, but it also gives you how many times your posts have been RT’d. This app has been added to my Twitter toolbox.
9. Twuet is a cool tool for sure. You can add a Twitter search box to your site with features like popular trends and hash tags.
10. Twoogle is interesting, to say the least. You can search Twitter and Google at the same time.
11. CrowdEye is for those obsessed with real time, social and search, just like its creators. Simply put, it helps you keep your thumb on the pulse of what “the crowd” is thinking about any situation or topic. CrowdEye is an excellent source for blogging inspiration.
12. Bing Twitter gives you the hottest topics on Twitter, fed by Bing.
13. Collecta works differently then existing search methods. Here is a short video that explains about it.
14. Scoopler’s mission is to make it easy to know what’s happening right now. It’s a real-time search engine that gives you access to new information on the Web faster than ever before. Try it and see for yourself.
15. Topsy is a new kind of search engine, with a new way of looking at the Internet. Topsy doesn’t think the Internet is a collection of documents or even a web of documents. It sees the Internet as a stream of conversations.
16. Tweetzi is an easy-to-use Twitter search tool that provides an optimized search interface into the real-time world of Twitter. Use it to find and tease out useful information from the millions of tweets that make up the ‘Twittersphere’.
17. ItPints is another new real time Web search engine. You can search on the most popular Web 2.0 sites and see what everyone is publishing in real time.
18. Sency works to bring the most relevant information back for your search term. It includes a spam filter to block irrelevant links, and you can read their search tips to get a better idea of what types of searches work best with Sency.

With the above Twitter search tools, you don’t have to wonder what people are talking about, what they think, or even what they think about you. These applications make it easy to find out anything you want to know, including who posted blogs listing Twitter applications (yup, we’ll be on there).

I hope you enjoy the list and, as always, if you have a Twitter application you’d like to see added, let us know! The list can only get bigger, more fantastic and more helpful for the “Twittersphere”.

I would like to thank Joshua Titsworth for helping me muddle through these applications. You can follow him on Twitter since he is  an avid twitterer as well as blogger. He is passionate about all things Internet related and loves learning about new tools and methods. When missing online Josh can be found hunting shanked golf balls across public courses across Kansas and Arkansas.

Editor’s note: Due to the large amount of spammers this post series has attracted, we are closing comments. However, we’ve pulled all the posts together into one! You can now see the entire list of fantastic Twitter applications in our free ebook download: 100+ Twitter Applications for Fun, Business and Social Sharing

Application Mania

While perusing my Twitter feed the other day, I came across a post with over 160 Twitter applications. It was written in Italian and posted by @CartoneWeb; you can see the Italian version here. Some of them you’ll need to sign up for; others can connect directly with your Twitter account.

I just couldn’t bear to think that English-speaking followers would miss this great list, so I did what I always do and decided to share the buzz regardless of language barriers. I added a few extra tools and omitted the ones that were no longer working, of course, but it’s still a valuable list to review.

Over 1,000 applications exist for Twitter users. If you’re like me, you want to use any tool that makes your social media/micro-blogging/marketing efforts easier. Here are a “few” that might help you along the way, whether for business, fun or just because:

Anti-spam

Tired of being spammed? Below, you’ll find a few tools that give you better spam control.

1. TrueTwit is an application used to validate new followers so you don’t have to. The application allows you to stop wasting time with Twitter spammers.
2. Tweet Blocker is a free resource for Twitter users and application developers. Using highly advanced filtering it catalogs and ranks the top spammers on Twitter, allowing you to quickly and easily check them against your list.
3. TwitChuck is loaded with great anti-spam features and lets you remove Twitter spammers from your list.

Sharing Tools

There are a variety of sharing tools available through third-party Twitter applications. I’ve broken them into categories for easy reference:

Music

I like to think of myself as a DJ, so I’m always happy to find a way to share my favorite music. The only downside is sometimes the music you want to share is no longer available.

1. Blip.fm is the music application I use. Not only can you share your favorite music with your followers, but you can also follow some amazing DJs. That’s the cool part; we all become DJs.
2. Twt.fm is simple to use. Log in via Twitter, type in the artist or track, and click the preview button…Voila listen and share.
3. Listento.fm lets you search their media database for the latest music or video to share.
4. Song.ly gives a short link to a page for your followers. The page allows them to play the song right in the browser, without downloading it first.
5. Twiturm is the easiest way to socialize your music. Created for the artist, Twiturm enables users to post their mp3s to several social networks, including Twitter and Facebook.
6. Twittermusic is a beta web application, mixing Play.me and Twitter APIs. You can play your favorite songs after you tweet them and share your tastes among the Twitter community.
7. Swg.fm is a 4-step application: insert your Twitter user name, name of the artist, add the song and then send the tweet.
8. Mp3Twit is a 3-step application: log in with your account, find the mp3 you want to share with your people and, voila, share the link and songs with your followers.

Drawing

I don’t have time to doodle, but I know a lot of graphic designers like these tools. Even if you are not a designer, sometimes drawing something and sending it out can be worth a thousand words.

1. DrawTweet lets you share creations with a slick, simple UI, aimed at making drawing a social experience. You can express yourself and then instantly notify your Twitter friends.
2. Twitpen is a fast, free way to hand-draw a picture and share it with the world (and optionally send it to twitpic and Twitter).
3. Penola is another cool, easy application to use for anything from color fillers to just doodling.
4. TwitDraw definitely promotes graffiti, which I like. You need Flash plug-in to use this, but you can get as creative as your fingers and mind let you.

File Sharing

The list below will give you plenty of social networking action. Depending on how you use your Twitter account, quite a few in the list will help you with your daily efforts.

1. TwittLoad gives you free file hosting for Twitter. You can update your status and share files with your friends and followers.
2. TweetShare “helps you get the most out of Twitter. Ready for a better Twitter experience? Start a discussion…” There you have it.
3. FileSocial is the easiest way to share files on Twitter. You can upload any kind of file, from pictures to videos, PDFs or Power point… Whatever you want!
4. FileTwt brings file sharing to Twitter. With FileTwt you can now easily upload and tweet about your files for free. One of the best Twitter tools out there!
5. TwitDoc lets you upload your file, shorten the URL, and post a tweet all in one easy step. No sign up needed. Use your existing Twitter account or download their free Adobe AIR desktop client, which enables you to drag and drop your files into your tweets.
6. TweetCube allows you to share files on Twitter. Simple as that. Blast out your images, videos, music and more with just a couple of clicks. Your files are automatically posted on Twitter.
7. Twits lets you share things like pictures, documents, videos and audio clips. You receive a set of links to publish to Twitter, blogs, Facebook, MySpace, email, message boards and IM.

Photo and Video Sharing

This list of applications let you search and discover new pictures and videos posted by users in Twitter. A nice break from all the content being passed around.

1. Twitpic is an application I’ve been personally using. You can post pictures to Titmice from your phone, their API, or through the site itself.
2. Frog simply lets you share images and videos on Twitter.
3. Img.ly is another photo-sharing device. They also have an affiliate program may be worth looking into if you’re interested in monetizing.
4. TweetPhoto shares photos that people are talking about in real time and includes new mobile applications.
5. Twitgoo is a quick, easy, reliable, and safe way to share images for Twitter. Upload your pictures from Twitgoo or from hundreds of applications directly to Twitter.
6. Pikchur is mobile-friendly and social. They have an API that is quick and easy to leverage, along with detailed stats.
7. TwittImg can be logged into with your Twitter account info. Login in and start sharing your photos.
8. TwitVid lets you easily share your videos from your phone, computer or webcam.
9. VidTweeter gives you the ability to instantly create a unique web page that includes the video you want share as well as your Twitter information. This is a simple way to stand-out and connect a bit more with your followers.
10. Mobypicture lets you directly share your photos, text, audio and videos with all your friends on your favorite social sites: FaceBook, Twitter, flickr, vimeo and others.
11. BubbleTweet is a very cool way to share a bit about yourself. If I weren’t so shy, I would use this thing, too. It’s also a terrific way to quickly “authenticate your true identity” with them and that’s simply a great way to build a stronger Twitter relationship.

Games and Leisure

Call me an old fuddy duddy, but I’ve never enjoyed playing games on my computer. I realize I’m not the norm, however, so (for the sake of being fair) here is a list of games for you to use and share

1. ChessTwit is called “the best place to play correspondence chess with your friends on Twitter” by its creators.
2. Friend Them All doesn’t have any explanation how to play the game. The characters are cute and it looks a bit violent. If that sounds like your kind of “thing”, you can sign in with Twitter and play to your heart’s content.
3. Die Fail Whale looks like a fun game for those that are into games with high hand-eye coordination. You shoot whales that pop up (much like bop-a-mole), with carnival music playing in the background.
4. Bet Your Followers lets you sign in with your Twitter account by clicking the big button. Twitter will ask if you want to connect your account to Bet Your Followers — click “Allow.” Then choose which followers you want to bet and start shaking it like a polaroid picture. Battle other Twitter friends — if you defeat them, you win followers. If you lose, you lose followers — seriously!
5. Trivia on Twitter consists of numerous trivia questions sent out via @trivia. You answer those questions by sending a tweet back via your Twitter account with the answer to that specific question.
6. Twitter Vampire gives you a chance to “bite those pathetic slaves you call friends”. Suck their blood, earn points and become a powerful Twitter vampire.
7. Tweet Test shows you exactly how much you know about your followers. Is it a game or a chance to find out more about your social network? You decide.
8. 140Mafia is the Mafia game for Twitter. If you love it on Facebook or MySpace, you just might get a kick out of the Twitter version. Start a mob family, recruit your friends, and rule Twitter!
9. Spymaster uses your Twitter or Facebook account to run your own spy ring with your friends. You can complete solo jobs to raise funding money or order assassinations. The more of your friends you have involved, the greater power you’ll wield over your adversaries.

Groups

Easily create groups of friends on Twitter to communicate and exchange views

Below are a few popular group applications. I am sure that, with niche marketing, it can help you find targeted groups. Why not try them? After all, you’re trying to build communities!

1. Tweetizen a simple web-based tool designed to help you filter the daily influx of tweets, and easily find the ones that are relevant to you.
2. Tweetworks makes it easy to find and participate in relevant conversations. Enjoy fully threaded conversations, join and create groups on any topic imaginable, and share media with single-click tagging
3. GroupTweet turns a standard Twitter account into a group communication hub where members can post updates to everyone in the group using direct messages. When the group account receives a direct message from a group member, GroupTweet converts it into a tweet that all followers can see.
4. Tweetparty is basically an application to group and message Twitter friends. Login using your Twitter account, put your friends in groups and message them all at once.
5. TwitMesh brings to you Twitter tools and fun at one place. Features like Twitter Groups, Twitter Invitations, Twitter IM and Twitter Search are available without wandering around on other sites. Use your existing Twitter login to use these tools absolutely free.

Many of these Twitter applications can be used for fun, some for business and others because they’re just handy to have. I hope you like this list; between this blog and the next four, we’ll be covering over 100 Twitter applications you can use for business, fun, search and more. If you use one you particularly like and don’t see, let us know. We’ll keep adding as long as you keep sending! Take a look at Part 2: Search the World of Tweets

I would like to thank Joshua Titsworth for helping me muddle through these applications. You can follow him on Twitter since he is  an avid twitterer as well as blogger. He is passionate about all things Internet related and loves learning about new tools and methods. When missing online Josh can be found hunting shanked golf balls across public courses across Kansas and Arkansas.

We all want paying traffic, right? “We” includes Level343. Today, I was inspired by a video that solidified what I’ve been doing for traffic, without knowing I was doing it. Within a few hours of watching the video, I closed a client. Now, granted, I have been talking with this person for a few weeks, building the relationship as it were, and then BANG! It happened. They became a client.

How did I do it? To the fly on the wall, it would look like all I did was spoke to the person on the phone and closed them because I said something they wanted to hear. Not at all.

A targeted approach is always more effective.

What I mean by this is simple. You have to give your readers quality, not necessarily quantity. We don’t post articles on our blogs or guest blogs to get back links, although those are nice. We post articles to inform, help or engage our readers. Period

Is it nice to make a sale because of one of the blogs? Yes.

Is it nice to get back links because of a blog? Yes.

Is it nice to gain more readers? Yes.

However, rather than write to target those goals, write to target your readers. The rest will come in time.

When you’re discussing things with your readers, make sure you give them information they can share with their friends, clients or lists. For example, adding a fan page on Facebook. That fan page has to be targeted at a niche audience instead of just being there for the sake of have a fan page.

The friends you invite should be interested in your niche. If you sell baby clothes, invite others who are interested in baby clothes. They buy them, are on lists of baby clothes fan pages, sell them or make them. Others will follow, brought by word of mouth.

Start interacting within the community. Okay, if you must, send out an occasional, “by the way, I sell this stuff”. However, the main focus of your fan page should be giving advice, answering questions, sharing information – you know, things that are helpful and FREE. It takes time, but it’s time well spent

Once you’re interacting and have become an integral part of the community, then you can talk to the fan page administrators. Ask them to make an announcement about your huge sale of baby clothes. Remember, however, to make yourself invaluable, not spammy. I guarantee that if you add yourself to 10 fan relevant fan pages, at least 3 will be willing to post your sale or new online store. This benefits them because they’re giving their readers a great resource, and benefits you because you get new fans and focused traffic to your website.

Focused traffic can come from anywhere.

Fan pages bring focused traffic because fans already know what your website is about and what you do. However, guest blogs can also bring focused traffic. The blog site gets great articles for free, but we get new, focused (i.e. interested) traffic.

Much like the fan page, we write guest blogs with the reader in mind. We give them solutions to their problem. We invite questions and comments. We give them invitations to connect and network as a quick resource to answer their needs. That’s how you build customer trust, build visitor loyalty and establish your credibility within your community.

When you have the right attitude and a desire to succeed, everything really does become possible. Without a focus, however – without a strategy-, you’re just floating in the wind.

Our goal is to get more targeted traffic in our niche market. Needless to say, we’re in an extremely competitive industry. What makes us different is that we don’t look so much at what our competition is doing. We look at our potential new clients. We write new, informative articles to target specific needs. We give away articles to other blogs with great information to help a wider readership. We stepped into our own community and are slowly building ourselves up as an authoritative resource. It takes a lot of work, but we all love what we do.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that the bigger your list of people, the more money you’ll make. A big list is mostly worthless without the relationship. The readers who come to our blog want the information we’re giving them. We know because of our tracking statistics. We know because we see how our readers are getting to the blog, why they’re coming and what they do once they get there.

It’s a beautiful thing.

Sepia Billo

“In a McGraw-Hill study of 600 companies from 1980 to 1985, those that didn’t cut their marketing budgets during the 1981-82 recessions had significantly higher sales after the recession ended. In fact, they had sales that were 256% higher than those that aggressively chopped marketing expenditures.”

As the economy takes more turns faster than a roller coaster, most small businesses are struggling to find the best ways to save money. The first inclination of many small business owners is to completely cut out their marketing efforts. Instead of saving money, cutting marketing expenditures costs companies valuable sales, exposure in the marketplace, and brand recognition with potential clients.

With so many marketing dollars already invested, LEAN measures make the most of small business expenditures without compromising the value of investment or the benefits of a strong small business marketing campaign. Consider the LEAN routes when looking for ways to cut exposure costs to potential sales and customers:

• Look for Co-Marketing Opportunities—Whether you are looking for exposure in a local or global market, connecting to other small businesses with products or services that are beneficial to your products and services can give you excellent co-marketing opportunities. By sending out special promotions to their customers and allowing them to contact your customer base, you are doubling your customer reach and exposure. Moreover, a larger advertising buy split between two companies brings less cost and higher ad placement.

• Examine Every Marketing Dollar—Every company has marketing expenditures that renew monthly or yearly. So many companies pay for advertising or marketing efforts on an ongoing schedule; they don’t stop to add up those expenditures and where they could save money by buying in volume. From hosting to marketing services, most companies offer package deals or yearly buys that will save small businesses money.

• Analyze the Marketing Fat—For every company, there is an incredible benefit in making a long list of marketing expenditures to account for every single penny spent in a year. By asking the question, “What is the ROI (return on investment)” for each item on the list, it is easy to prioritize what should stay in the budget and what is not carrying its marketing load. Furthermore, seek places where less expense can equal more opportunity. For example, replacing direct customer marketing with email marketing or electronic brochures delivered via a website will save thousands in print costs.

• Negotiate Your Marketing Mileage—In marketing, advertising, and printing, there are two specific principles that will save money for small businesses. The first, volume buys, requires the business to commit to a certain length of publication or number of ads in order to get a greatly reduced price. The second, run points, notes the different number of prints for market collateral to receive a volume discount on the purchase price.

Often, it takes a measured reaction during tough economic times for small businesses to survive a slow financial forecast. When a downturn occurs due to a recession, the important focus for small businesses is on ways to LEAN down their marketing expenditures while maximizing or maintaining their current level of marketing activity. Employing each of these tactics will give additional income to the marketing budget and enhance the understanding of current marketing spending.

About the Author

Diana Bourgeois is a veteran social media networker, blogger, and marketer specializing in helping companies transition from traditional to social media marketing to gain exposure a larger audience.  A noted Social Media Marketing Expert and Contributing Writer for popular websites like Examiner.com and Suite101.com, Ms. Bourgeois is currently the owner of international marketing company Magic Marketing USA

Does Your Brand Matter

I was driving into New Orleans the other day, thinking about brands. How can a small business compete with the bigger brands? You’re probably thinking your brand sucks or is awesome… Traffic was steady as I watched various billboards pass me by driving down I10 to a meeting. That’s when it hit me, what if your brand is nowhere close to what you want?

If you are like me you probably always wanted to do an independent study on all these famous brands. Some brands are so old and so well known that their importance is passed down from one generation to the other – almost like genes. Since the ideas ingrained during formative years are indelible, many people stick to using the information passed on to them when thinking of business brands without even being conscious of it. However, the increasing social networks phenomenon and new techniques of social branding have made it possible for smaller brands and newer brands to capture an effective market share.

The first step to social branding is effectively done by merging yourself into the various social networks. Remember, a brand is not just a logo; a brand is so much more than a picture. It can be emotional, it can be an experience – however you want to describe it or define it, you must find yours. One of my favorite authors said, “Brands are defined by the customer. They exist as a feeling that extends beyond the product itself.”(T. Scott Gross – Microbranding)

With social networks like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. being the rage of the times, creating a strong online presence will get an organization – or even a person – lots of friends and visitors to whom they can communicate and spread their information. Be it the latest new tool or a new service, to make a satisfactory online presence, the brand promoter should ideally stick to a few rules.

The content that is offered on the Internet for branding should not be of a soliciting nature, especially in the beginning. The first stage here is connecting and establishing relationships. For example, if you have a good video that could attract people you can upload it on YouTube, even if it is not directly connected with your brand. Contacting, connecting and engaging are all part of the first level of the social media “job”; all types of wholesome and entertaining content can be the first step to get started.

As our technologies get more advanced, I have noticed we are using advanced tools for communications, information sharing in order to reshape the very fabric of our marketplace concepts and relations. So how does a little business or a one-man show position themselves with the “established” brands? If you consider, positioning really has little to do with quality or price and everything to do with perception.

Emotional triggers are what sell - things that can emotionally connect you with the buyer. The entertaining aspect of connecting can then graduate into informing and advising to set the ball rolling in the path of branding. Instead of jumping into the fray of all social networks, you can start with just a few. Find out where your niche market is.

There really is no way around that. Not everyone wants your product and not everyone will like your brand. However, once you have established your groundwork in the social arena, you can steadily increase your presence to make sure that you’re being noted. As you establish a solid base in these social networks, it is important that you are absolutely transparent. Your name, profession, arenas of interest and things that you have to offer should become clear to the others.

Everything you are is branding. When many entrepreneurs start out, they might spend months trying to separate business from family or “work” from “life”. They then spend the rest of their life understanding that, as an entrepreneur or small business owner, you are your business, from the way you behave to the words you use, down to the business card you hand out. Whether you like it or not, it’s the culmination of all you are that makes the brand.

Consistency is important. Everything you do, show or promote becomes part of your “brand”. For instance, a business cannot afford to change their profile every month or so, so that there are two incarnations of the same business at different stages. For effective social branding, the profile projected should be the same across all the social networks you frequent. When someone has seen or used your product, they should be able to recognize you instantly.

Social branding is a low budget scenario. It may not be an easy process, and you will have to spend some time on it, but you will not need advertising staff that you may have to pay through the nose. Nor will you need airtime or newspaper space for which too you need to pay. Many social networks are free.

For example, at a site like Ning, users can create a personalized network that can be shared with any number of users with a common interest. It is free (if you can grin and bear it when ads pop up), but you’ll have to pay if you prefer to operate in ad-free, sanctified ambiance.

When doing social branding, it is important to live up to the promises and not try to survive on hype. Of course, this is a golden rule in the world of advertising, and not one that is a must only for branding through social networks. Nevertheless, it is one that people often tend to forget. In fact, living up to promises is one way in which smaller entrepreneurs can outwit business brands that sport glossy ads and prime time commercials.

Social branding is very helpful in promoting unknown brands in the case of niche marketing. In niche marketing, the marketer essentially concentrates on smaller pockets as the target market. These pockets will be places dominated by people of certain physical characteristics, race, age, language, nationality, or profession where most people will be in need of a certain product. Spreading brand information through social networks and thereby creating new business brands works well in such setups.

When we say social networks, we understand only online networks today. These are surely far more vibrant than local word of mouth networks, but in creating business brands, even face-to-face networks have their role to play. Remember Social media is not going away anytime soon, but it is evolving… what are you doing to make your brand matter?

Social Networking Goals

It’s well into 2010. By now, we are all aware of what SEO means and what it can do for your business. As a small business, especially if you have less than ten employees, you need to learn the terms, embrace social network sites and learn your market.

Just in case you’re not familiar with the term “organic SEO” we have a few articles written on the topic. In simple term it’s the process of driving traffic to a website through organic or natural means. This term is also used to differentiate it from marketing by paid inclusion PPC. The algorithms that search engines use to rank the sites change frequently; those who market their sites organically have to rely on research, analytics, collecting data, and making decisions based on the results, as well as trial and error methods.

With patience and a firm understanding of how search engines work, you can use different proven methods than give you results, in time. Organic SEO is not a marketing method guaranteed to produce immediate results. However, for a small business with a great product or service and a solid three to six month strategy, you’d be amazed what you can do with a small budget. When done with thoughtful planning, marketing analysis, surveys, and time, one can involve and integrate things like keyword research, web content development, link building, review and analysis.

With the invasion of the Internet world by social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, and the like, you have to start thinking in the bigger scheme of organic SEO. Now, with Google real time search, it has given the small business a whole new dimension. Through the micro-blogging of Twitter, video uploading of YouTube, data collection of LinkedIn, and discussion forums and photo sharing sites, opinion sharing and information sharing has widened into extents that were inconceivable a few years ago.

A small business owner may not be able to participate in all these networks all the time. Therefore, it’s best to create accounts in networks that are suited for a certain niche market. Use search tools like Google Alert and “study” their email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

See where the buzz is and engage that arena. For organic SEO purposes, securing such an identifying tag is important; with the number of people flocking to such sites, getting a unique identity is no easy job. If someone else gets the name with which you wanted to describe yourself, it may not be an easy situation. Whatever you do, don’t use numbers or gibberish. Unless, of course your company name is Level 343.

In a social media network, small business owners have to learn how to track the trajectory of the product by monitoring the buzz. This is where taking the steps or getting the help from various social networking tools can help your overall SEO. It’s a clear way to chart your success. For example if you are on Twitter then consider using tools like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Buzzom to do some of the work for you.

Twitter seems to be the golden child – the leader in social media networks these days. But ask yourself, is it the right tool to reach your market? For organic SEO purposes, I suggest twitting a well thought out campaign. I won’t get into how you should Twitter or the right way or wrong way; we already have several articles about Twitter. Nor am I suggesting that you plug your product and spam people.

Suffice it to say, using Twitter to micro-blog and engage your potential buyers is one of the greatest rewards when used properly. Keep in mind, the ultimate goal here for “anyone” on the Internet is to buy or sell. Once you gain entry, the topic can later be slowly dressed up to make it a business tweet.

One of the great products I mentioned earlier is Hoot suite. This tool is easy to integrate into your social networking strategy. Whether you are a one-man show or an organization with more than one contributor, Hoot Suite makes it easy to manage multiple users over various Twitter accounts. It gives you great visualizations for link statistics; graphs show summaries and individual tweet statistics. Once these people have been identified, a communication has to be kept up so that the connection will not be severed. That is how unpaid or organic SEO can work for you in social networks.

The other tool I mentioned is Buzzom. This is a great tool to clean out your follower list on Twitter. Start paying attention to who you follow in order to better understand your niche market. One can Flush (Unfollow who are not following you) Grow (Grow network, follow new people) and Reciprocate (Follow your followers back) all with one click of the button. The stats allow you to make intelligent decisions based on analytics. This tool is another great way to measure and track your performance to enrich your social presence. As a paid subscriber, you can use some of their more advanced tools, like scheduling multiple tweets.

I don’t want to sound redundant, but use these tools wisely. Do not to talk only about your product. There should be large helpings of current events, trends, celebrity news etc. Try to share the product information in a way that it appears incidental to the main topic. This way, prospective customers will engage with you and share valuable information without feeling that you’re forcing the product on them.

Using tools over a period of time is a good way to connect and bind a relationship and promote your organic SEO efforts. Once you are well entrenched you can use a site like BackTweets.com to check what is being said on Twitter and whether anyone has been talking about your business or any other small business of a similar type.

Another great easy tool to use is KPMRS. With one click of the button you can see how popular your business is in different feeds and accounts across several social networking sites, from Delicious, Technorati, Stumbleupon, Twitter etc. As a matter of fact they have several great tools to use on this site.

Here is a consideration for you – with real time search, Google, and all these other tools, you can actually create a three-month social networking chart. You can follow the various tools and gauge how your campaigns are doing. If you are selling an eBook or a product in the social arenas then you need to be prepared to merge your organic SEO efforts along with your social networking efforts. Seeing these results charted out is the best to test, adjust and merge your organic SEO and social marketing efforts.

It is more or less the same process at all social networking sites. It is a process of slow entrenchment. Some other sites that can be used to track the buzz are BoardTracker.com, This is a site geared for monitoring discussion boards, and Buzzoo.net is all about Internet buzz. It tracks several visible sites to find stories that are hot right now.

In conclusion, make sure you have a strong marketing plan and stick to it. Make it work for your small business. Use all the tools available out there, and even some of the ones discussed here, to join in the conversation and start building and tracking your network for future growth.

by Saul GM

In 2010, many of the “Big Boys” will be spending the same or less on their paid placements in the search engine results. Bad News for Google, Yahoo, AOL and Bing, but equally bad news for small business owners who have skipped out on paying for ads from the beginning.

Why is it bad news? Because the “big boys” (i.e big companies) are redoubling their social marketing efforts and pouring big bucks into SEO, potentially drowning out the less well funded competition. Don’t start breaking a sweat and hanging an html “Going Out of Business” sign on your website just yet, however. You can still get the social networking catch you need to keep yourself in business and not pay for it.

Search out the competition like a celebrity Paparazzo; be where they are and predict where they are going. Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and MySpace are the likely hangouts for your corporate Goliath competition. Like David and his little slingshot, start casting stones where your competition is not.

There are smaller social networking opportunities, which can be better than the larger ones for reaching your specific customer base. Instead of casting a wide net in the ocean of networking, focus your efforts on the small coves where schools of your customers are hanging out, ready to take your bait. Xanga, Meetup, Xing, Hi5 and others are wide-open options to stake your claim of their market.

When you do stake a claim to a plot on the larger social networks like FB and MySpace, be unique. Your competition can’t be everything to everyone at all times, and you have the opportunity to fill in the gaps. Be online more often than your competition, post more and more useful information to your blog, incorporate different media into your online profile; make your page an experience and not a reflection of your website!

Getting Dirty: the pseudo immorality of buying links

There are a couple of purists out there who take real moral issue with buying links.  Is the practice of buying links really “dirty” or are those who can’t afford to buy links or have some primal fear of the SERP gods’ wrath peppering the discussion with conjecture and possibilities that never seem to materialize for dirty linkers?

The point of linking is to score points with the search engines and climb up some imaginary rope to the top of the results page.  If you have a new website it may take a very long time to reach page one, and no amount of linking, purchased or otherwise, is going to get you there if your web page is an abomination. For arguments sake your website is perfect but you are still nowhere to be seen on the SERPs , do you break down and buy links or do you wait for some benevolent website owner with high rankings to throw you a rope ?

Don’t believe all the hype about getting blacklisted by the search engines for having a few dirty links, in reality dirty links are the least of their concern when evaluating your website.  Google’s own words on purchasing links  “Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such.” Buying a link is no more dirty than buying a button advertisement, the goal is one in the same, is it not?  You are paying for something in one place that you could get for free somewhere else, but if you really, really want THAT link and you’re willing to pay for it then by all means fork over the cash.

If your PR is perpetually low, and your scruples are fading fast and you’ve done everything the “right” way with no luck, dip your toe into the muddy waters of link buying. Beware, be spare, and be ready to trade that dirty link if and when an equally good link comes along to take its’ place.  Don’t feel the need either to atone for your SEO sins since it’s only the small business owner buying links that Google or the other search engines call “dirty”. Add a couple million dollars to your company’s net worth and the search engines would be calling you a corporation instead.

Ben Heine

A few weeks ago, we published a blog about some of Google’s newest applications; a few days ago, we published a blog on Google’s Personalized and Real Time Searches. Now, as optimizers, we often pay more attention to things that effect how we do SEO instead of what else is going on. However, we came across a video link that was a little amusing and a lot shocking.

Google World Domination is based around a prediction that Google will run the world by 2014. There’s even a countdown to “doomsday”. When you read the page and watch the video, it seems like a conspiracy theory. We wanted to see where it was going and started clicking links.

An article in Computer World, What Google Knows About You, gives amazing insight into just how much Google might be picking up from our Internet habits. A must read for anyone concerned with privacy, the first four paragraphs alone cover six commonly-used Google applications (Gmail, YouTube and Google Voice are just a few) that help in collecting personal information.

Just how much does Google own now? Search “Google products and applications”…

Now, Wikipedia isn’t known to be a perfect resource, but if the list of Google products is even half-right, they’ve been extremely busy. While we’ve been gleefully downloading new, free applications from Google that make our lives easier, we’ve been signing away our private information. Depending on the number of Google apps you have, you may be giving away the bank, your doctor, your schedule and your friends.

In the video on Google Domination, it talks about the degeneration of true news sources; thanks to the Internet, everyone can be a reporter – anyone, with any views. The news is left without such things as journalism ethics, truth, etc…

“The face of journalism is not just changing; it has changed…Now we have digital voice recorders, video cameras, and cell phones. We can research stories in seconds, thanks to Google and online archives.” Curator Magazine (Feb 2009)

“Twenty years ago CNN’s coverage of Tienanmen Square made its reputation. If in twenty more years it has become consensus that real-time, online, crowdsourced media is the best place to keep up with current events, this incident could be an important part of that history unfolding.” The New York Times (June 2009)

“Remember: that’s not what Twitter’s purpose is, to be a journalistic mainstay. It’s for information sharing, not confirmation; we need to recognize the bridge between the two.” – Could Twitter Save Real Journalism? (July 2009)

“Twitter is now emerging as the fastest place to get breaking news alerts. Even Facebook status updates are faster than print media. There’s simply no place for reporting in newspapers and magazines anymore. By the time they report on “news” it is already stale.” – High Talk (December 2009)

“Mangudadatu was warned that if he filed his certificate of candidacy, he would be killed. So he sent his wife and two sisters, along with female lawyers and 30 journalists. He believed his rival would not attack women. He believed journalists would be safe. He was wrong.

As we journalists were confirming exactly what happened that dreadful Monday, a citizen journalist – whom we call a patroller – emailed us three times, first at 3:47 pm, again at 3:58 pm and finally at 8:48 pm.” @amanpourcnn - The Future of Journalism (December 2009)

Maria A. Ressa, head of ABS CBN news and Current Affairs

This blending of real news and opinionated commentary is supposed to happen in 2014; if you visit Google Labs, where they talk about (all?) their current experiments, it’s easy to see that Google doesn’t care about any countdown. They’re starting four years early.

Welcome to Living Stories – the beginning of EPIC (watch the video!), where news is taken from news sites (by computers), edited for readability (by computers), and sent to your desktop for personalized news the way you want it. Yes, it’s a blending of Google, New York Times and the Washington Post, but the comparison between the video and Living Stories is eerie.

We aren’t the first to see something more than an “exciting” new way to read the news:

“So, put the ideas behind Wave and the ideas behind The Living Story together, and you get a glimpse of where we might be going. News as a continuous rolling event, incorporating many aspects and points of view, serving as a site for a moderated collaboration with sources and audiences.” The Content Makers

So, is Google World Domination really possible? Are we really headed that way? Well, there’s this thing – it’s called monopolization. It might help – it gave Microsoft and Bill Gates pause. Although we aren’t pushing conspiracy theories, the facts do point to a growing company with more pots to dip in than fingers. They also point out the need to pay attention to what you’re really getting when you download free applications; it may be more than you’re willing to give away. What are your thoughts?

Everyday around the world, more and more people are joining social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Technorati etc… My question is why?

It has been said that if you continue to do what you have always done, you are going to get what you’ve always been getting. In other words, you need to change business strategies and marketing campaigns to adapt with the times. Darwin once said that it is not the fittest of the species that survive but the ones that are most adaptive to change. Let’s take a tip from him and apply it to marketing through social media networks. Remember, change is sometimes good.

Here are ten reasons why companies should join social media and how they can make their campaigns a success

1. Change Your Networking Technique
The first thing companies should understand is their market. For example, what makes your customers loyal? Is it your service, your product, both? Second is to find out where your customers are. That can be achieved by a simple study placed on your website. Ask them to link to you on the various social networking sites by placing a Twitter, Facebook, Sphinn and/or Digg button or just asking them. This will give you a basis in better understanding who your current customers are and which ones are missing. This is a great starting point for making positive change happen.

Making the changes needed to your existing social networking techniques and adapting to your market will give you a better reach to a new market audience each and every month. Make it a point to set up one of the social networking links on your company site or if not, at least include a blog that is updated monthly with news and fresh content. Solicit questions from your repeat customers. And please remember, testing and re-testing various techniques is part of the process.

What's your business outreach?

2. Use Facebook For Your Business Out Reach
Use Facebook’s networking system to build a page that carries news of your company. Apart from this, you should also engage in various ‘Events’ and add them to your network. Spend a couple of hours a week understanding what works and what your customers want to know. Invite as many like-minded people to join your group as you can. Start locally… then move your reach as your customers become more global.

3. Utilizing Twitter To The Fullest
Twitter is the fastest growing business tool on the Internet. Look at the Mobile applications available through Twitter. It’s mind-boggling. You can use various tools to establish direct links with your potential customers and provide existing ones with instant updates on company products and policies. It’s no secret that, in time, using Twitter will generate traffic in droves to your web site.

4. Use LinkedIn For Maximum Marketing Advantage
LinkedIn is currently the hub of marketing and affiliate activity on the Internet. Everyone who is anyone will be there. To some it may seem intimidating, but it is very easy to use. You can create a large following that can be channeled into business contacts and a potential customer base.

One suggestion I would like to make is, don’t use LinkedIn to discuss only business activities. Make it a habit to expand your network by discussing things that are of interest to you. It could be green thinking, business conferences, new software or anything else, and don’t be shy to get involved in the Q&A section. Update your activity at least once a month.

Use Only A Few

5. Make The Most Of Applications And Widgets
Almost all social networking sites offer applications and widgets that can be incorporated into your blogs and web sites. These plugins can help promote a business, when used properly. Twitterfeed is one such application that can be used to channel new blog posts into your twitter account so you never have to log in to post to Twitter.

6. Use Only A Few Networks
Once you are comfortable working and using at least three different networks, then you can test out and try others. But don’t take on too many; it will become overwhelming. Personally, I think that if you spread yourself to thin, you won’t master any of them. Remember that change is key here, and with change comes the responsibility of figuring out your strategies. This will help focus and keep up with regular posting.

Seriously people...

7. Be Careful What You Post And What You Don’t
This is really a no brainer… Or is it? How many times have we heard some stupid stunt by an employee or employer? Keep your personal life out of social media. No one really cares but your close circle of friends; remember that the world is not as forgiving as you are, or as your family members might be.

Understand that you are using social media as a networking tool for your business promotions. The effectiveness will always reflect back on your participation. Never waste time posting personal deals on your social networking accounts. You should concentrate on exposing your business and build your brand recognition online. The best way to go about achieving this is to be yourself while staying professional.

8. Make The Most Of Forums
If you have a unique selling point, you should use some forums to highlight them. Comment on blog posts. If your comments are relevant and useful, this is a great way to build recognition and respect for what you have to say and for your company. Posting links to your blog on these forums is another great way to show your commitment to the topic or service you offer. Keep your links relevant to the topic at hand, and don’t be too opinionated. It shows bad form.

9. Keep An Eye Out For The Experts
Look out for seasoned professionals in your niche field. I am a huge believer that it’s not the “gurus”, or so called “gurus”, that should be followed but the ones that make sense. My tip: just because they have a huge following does not, necessarily, mean they know what they are talking about. NO, it just means they know how to market themselves. Watch them; see how they attract readers and followers in all the social networks. I can assure you: it’s all about confidence, knowledge and the will to make things happen.

Privacy Is Your Responsibility

10. Privacy
This is an important factor that most seem to forget. Make the best use of the privacy settings on your social network account. Set up your email filters, decide whom you want in your network (and whom you want to keep out) and make sure to block out people you do not want to connect to. Keep in mind that you should filter your invitations very carefully- carelessness can lead to a loss of a potential client or customer.

In conclusion, you must ensure that you have a set number of forums and networking sites that you are comfortable interacting with. You should also make it a habit to stay on top of the latest breaking news. Use Google Trends if you have to, or Google Alert, but know your market. Set aside an hour or so every day for your networking, blogging and forum posting. This will lead to a better future for you and your business.

Do you want to learn how social media can help your business? What if you could learn how to put it into action? Consider downloading our latest Ebook. Social Media for Today’s Business Model is the manual for business owners and entrepreneurs interested in this unique, viral form of marketing. Find out how social media can work for your business and how to put it into action. From Twitter to Facebook, Social Media covers five of the top social media platforms.

By: Kristina B's

So, you have your own blog now…you’ve been updating it regularly, but you’re still not generating the traffic or the responses you want. Why not?

Well, there can be a number of reasons why you are not getting the desired results from your blog. Let me assure you that we all have that problem, unless, of course, you are Mashable or Guy Kawasaki. Then people will read it just by virtue of the name. This article, however, isn’t for guys like them; it’s for the rest of the blogosphere trying to build a name.

Knowing what it takes to make your blog succeed is not that easy. Yet, have no fear; it’s not that difficult either. You have to find interesting ways of connecting with a target audience; helping it grow into a following that adds you as a brand name in the industry takes time – and a few smart SEO tricks.

Some of these we will discuss in this article – and hopefully, by the end of it, you’ll have enough ammunition to run the competition into the ground and turn pro! Okay maybe not, but these tips will help anyone who is struggling to find the holy grail of blogging stardom.

Depending on whether you maintain a business blog or a personal blog, you may want to design the website in a manner that keeps your target audience’s tastes in mind. You can do this by limiting the visual appeal to a few select shades and pictures. After all, the whole idea of the blog is to compel your visitors to actually read through what you write and not just get carried away by (or worse still, be confused with) the visuals. That is not to say you can’t have bells and whistles, au contraire; they just have to be placed as eye candy and not eyesores.

So, simplify your blog’s presentation utilizing the many free themes available. For example, WordPress has a lot of great free templates. Or, you can pay a blog designer to custom-design your blog to reflect your business. This makes your entries immediately identifiable; try highlighting certain text with good quality images and use these in a discretionary capacity to enrich text appeal. Visual candy can sometime bring readers in… I will tell you how to get free pictures in another article.

Visit professional bloggers’ pages to know the value of relevant information for a select audience and apply their strategies to your blog. There is nothing wrong with doing by example. If you are in the health care industry, make sure your topics are relevant to your niche market. Make sure the pictures or ads used on your blog are all applicable.

Try using different feeds to update your blogs if you cannot write daily or weekly. Or better yet, hire a copywriter that can blog when you have something useful for your visitors but don’t have the time to write it. Look, there is no way getting around this… you have to participate in order to create long-term traffic.

Another suggestion is to invite other bloggers to guest post. There is nothing wrong with sharing your blog with like-minded writers; I say the more the merrier. Sometimes you have something to say but someone else has already written about it. Ask them if they would mind writing a post for your blog. Add a post to their blog, share, engage; you’ll see it will all come to fruition with the right stuff.

Additionally, mention useful resources in your topics. Some people will advocate the use of Link Bait… I am still on the fence about that strategy. I don’t want my time wasted because the writer had a clever idea for the headline. Readers feel they are getting more value if your title is true to the content, therefore adding to their online experience and increasing its value. It can be something as simple as giving a step-by-step demo or loading a short, fun video message. People love bookmarking things that are useful to them; it can be a list of updated medical clinics in your area, or maybe it can be the latest news on a vaccine. Make it relevant and worthy of your market.

In order to get a jump ahead of your competition in the blogging world, remember to include keywords (no stuffing, just the relevant ones a few times throughout the post). Why not use your knowledge of a certain topic with the buzz keyword used in that particular industry? You have to get your readers to come back. What a better way than to get new readers to participate in the conversation?

Keep your blog post titles catchy and try to include a major keyword to enrich the SEO appeal for bots. With new readers comes new opinions, and new opinions keep conversations going.

Additionally, if you are blogging in English and you want to reach a wider audience, it is advisable to post your presence to newsgroups and simultaneously, try and integrate one of the many free translation tools that enable those not very fluent in the language to also follow your posts. This is another way to increase your blog readership and generate a wider audience.

I am not a big advocate of using translation tools, since they do miss quite a bit of nuances and sometimes do more harm than good. If you can, it’s always best to get them translated in different languages and offer them to your international readers to post on their blogs. It’s amazing at how far your reach can go by just translating one article in a different language

Finally, keep a log of the site traffic. Take some time to read your comments by responding to your readers. Reciprocate a comment on their blogs to encourage their return visit. Nothing wrong with responding to your readers and offering them more links to read… actually I encourage it. At the same time, become a member of related forums where you can post your views, advice and tips. This will ultimately generate back-links to your blog, driving more traffic and pushing you above your competitors – with friendly conversation doubling up as an effective traffic generator tool!

Hello, dear readers! Welcome to the new dawn, the new day, the new millennium of do follow! Okay, okay, so the “do follow” attribute isn’t new… but it’s a change for us. Since it’s inception, the Article Archive has been a “no follow” or “external no follow”. We’ve been messing around with the idea of a change, but came up against the wall of DISQUS.

Darling DISQUS is a neat little commenting system. It’s great – you sign in to comment and people can read your profile, etc, etc, etc. This is, supposedly, an easy way of keeping track and managing your comments (easy way compared to the regular ole’ WordPress Admin comment system). We finally started looking for plugins to strip the “no follow” attribute from the comments.

After several trials and errors, we noticed that none of the plugins seemed to work. Meanwhile, all of our comments are being stored on the DISQUS system – which, it seems, sets the comments to “external no follow” whether you want them to or not. Unfortunately, the only way to take that irritating little attribute off is to uninstall DISQUS. Just as unfortunately, we lost some of our comments when we did uninstall the plugin.

The good news is that we finally found a beauty of a plugin: Denis de Bernardy’s  Do Follow. Now any links you put in your comments will be followed, like we feel they should be.

A little bit of the thinking behind changing to “do follow”:

1. We like link love.
2. We figure others like link love.
3. We’re building an informational blog, and links are a great way to share information.
4. People would be more willing to drop those informational links into our comments if they’re going to get a little link juice for it.

-And, like all great mathematicians, we added 2 + 2, came up with 6 and promptly changed to “do follow”.

There ARE rules, however (sorry, rebels):

1. Comments WILL be moderated before acceptance.
2. Comments MUST be relevant to the Article Archive topics or the current blog you’re commenting on.
3. Links will be followed before acceptance to check the end page. Spammy links will be deleted and the commenter will be black listed.
4. You WILL have fun, or we will MAKE you have fun.

Let the information sharing begin!

With television commercials validating the importance of online social media portals like Twitter and Facebook, the battle for domination in the social media marketing arena is leaving many feeling confused and dazed.  After all, as the language of the Tweet-osphere cuts communications to 140 characters or less, it also add a unique brand of instant marketing spoken only by the Tweeple of Twitter.

Realistically, there are as many reasons to invest in a good social media marketing campaign as there is website, but the top five reasons that you should be joining the social marketing and networking revolution include:

• Increased SEO and Rankings—Participating in online marketing efforts like Twitter, Digg, and Facebook add dimensions to your effort.  Moreover, when others in your online communities link to your posts or your blog content is Tweeted by members of your social media groups, you ranking increase with every single link.  Further, as search engines love new content, blogs are highly prized by search engines for fresh material.

• Exposure Equals Traffic on Steroids—Marketing is all about going where the people meet to share information about your products or services.  In this case, more people meet online in social media groups each week than pass through the New York subway system.  Imagine gaining exposure to every one of those people.  With social media marketing, that goal is obtainable with less cost than a billboard or an advertisement.  At this point, an important side note is to make sure you measure social media time as part of your ROI cost because time still equals money…even on the internet!

• Voice of the Customer Connection—Many business owners pass up the opportunity to find out what their customers (or potential customers) think about their products.  Through contests or online surveys, you can poll your market audience on subjects including pricing, features, or benefits of your products.

• Fluid Flexibility of Marketing Message—In traditional marketing, the expenditure of A/B Split testing is enough to stop most businesses from deploying several marketing efforts to see which one works best.   In fact, social media marketing is the best place to do A/B Split testing because your marketing message can be quickly changed to meet the reaction of your audience.  One of my favorite case studies about A/B testing is Geiko, from the Gecko to the Caveman to the stack on bills with all seeing eyes; Geiko is testing three different marketing campaigns for audience response.

It is easy to stand back and wait for the electronic dust to clear instead of stepping into the social media  fight; however, denying the existence and usefulness of social media marketing will put you in the same category as the person who thought the internet was just a “passing fade!”  With a minimal investment of time and attention to the creation of a good social marketing plan, you can boost your exposure, gain potential customers, and instill an efficiency in your marketing efforts that traditional marketing  cannot meet.

The first rule of any good marketing campaign is “go where the people gather!”  Although this marketing strategy is certainly not an epiphany, the onset of the new frontier of marketing encompassing social media and networking has added confusing complexity to the old game of marketing.  With new social media networks virtually popping up on every street corner, every business owner realizes that time equals money in the game of social media marketing.

For now, these are the top social media gathering spots for marketing and networking to bring traffic banging at the door:

• Facebook :  Long considered a great spot to meet-and-greet with the friends and family, connecting through Facebook can give instant updates on the happenings of everyone in your group.  Through reaching out to others in the circle of your circle, joining fan sites, and publicizing facebook links to promote fans, Facebook is an easy way to personalize interaction between members.
• Twitter :  If you are ready to enter the tweet-iverse, then Twitter is waiting for you!  Although there is a learning curve in the language of Twitter that takes some extra investment in time, once you know how to promote using 140 characters or less, the niceties of Twitter will fall into place.
• LinkedIn :  For the more professional crowd, LinkedIn provides a robust social media and network platform to connect people with like interests based on the concept of 3 degrees of separation.  By connecting to all of your connections and everyone you know, your networking reach explodes with the power to share your message, find potential partners, and gain valuable marketing insight.
• Biznik :  As a powerful business networking resource, the potential in Biznik is the modern version of shaking hands with people at a local networking event.  Regionally divided by large cities, Biznik allows you to connect with people who can help grow your business and gain customer exposure all within your local area.
• Blogger / WordPress / :  If you are especially interested in promoting your business online to a global market or audience, then blogging is an excellent source of exposure and SEO recognition.  When the content changes over a short duration of time, search engines are drawn to the postings via categories, tags, and keyword optimized titles with content.

Admittedly, the goal is to gain as much exposure as possible to your target audience while decreasing cost.  In marketing, the cost per lead produced by each marketing effort is measured in the ROI or return on investment.  With social media marketing and networking, ROI must be measured in time against the leads recouped for the time invested to be sure cost expenditures are analyzed correctly; therefore, finding the hotspots of social media marketing that will both deliver interested leads as well as gain exposure for your products is vital.

In my experience, the most important thing to remember about social media marketing and networking is two-fold.  First, don’t seem too anxious.  Be yourself.  Second, be prepared to invest time in creating and maintaining your social media activities.  These should not be too hard.  After all, these are the same rules as any other social environment…you are just reaching out to millions of people instead of hundreds!

Editors update: March, 13th, 2010

True story: About two weeks ago, I came across a website that listed top SEO companies – well-known SEO companies at that. The website had used a site validator to see how clean the top SEOs’ site codes were. I stared in shock and then started gloating.

Several of the top name SEO companies had more errors than you could shake a stick at – and these people are supposed to know how to optimize website code. Further down on the page were other big name websites, such as the BBC, with just as many errors.

Horror of Optimization Horrors

While sharing this information with my programmer and coding specialist, she made a strange comment. “You know, that’s something I haven’t thought of, running a site validation.” Well, I had the site redesigned shortly before she came on, by a professional designer. I just KNEW our site code would be clean and I could continue gloating.

The first page we ran the W3C Site Validator on had thirty-three errors. Thirty-three! My programmer informed me that, since she had planned on updating the site anyway, these errors could be quickly solved. I took a deep breath and we went on to the next page. Seven-eight errors!

On each consecutive page, error after error was found. I had taken so many deep breaths I felt like I was hyperventilating. She swore she’d clean it up and, after taking one more deep breath, I left it in her capable hands.

A thought occurred to me then, which is the foundation of this blog. “If SEO companies who are supposed to know clean code can have errors like this (and I include mine), what about webmasters that have to rely on outside help?” In other words, if you don’t know programming and you don’t have an in house programmer you can trust, how do you know YOUR site code is… well, up to code?

1. Run each page through the W3C Markup Validator. It will give you a list of errors and information on how to fix them. You’ll probably need a little programming background. If you don’t have any programming knowledge but you do have errors, you can hire a professional programmer to do the work and then run the Validator yourself to make sure they’ve done the job right. According to my programmer, it took her ten minutes to a half hour per page, depending on the number of errors. Factor that in when hiring.
2. Run your stylesheets (CSS) through the W3C CSS Validator. It will also give you a list of errors and how to fix them. Again, you may need a little bit of CSS coding background and, again, if you don’t have any, you’ll need a professional. According to my programmer, it took her ten minutes to clean up our CSS,  but there weren’t that many errors.
3. Use the W3C Link Checker. Not only does this check for broken links, but it also shows where you have redirects. In running our site, we had 400 redirect links when only two were intentional. How did this happen?

There’s a programmer’s shortcut: instead of using the whole URL to indicate where a page will pull its content from, they use a series of path codes that look like this:

/../../filename.extension

Unfortunately, this doesn’t sit well and the engines will use this path to redirect to the full URL. It’s messy and it takes longer, which slows down the time it takes to load your site.

The moral of the story:

A website’s code is just a part of search engine optimization. However, it’s a huge part of how your website performs for the user. If you’re not sure how clean your website is, take a few minutes to run it through W3C. You may be surprised how bad (or good) your code really is.

I wanted to add this wonderful post aptly named ” W3C Validation for SEO – Myth and Reality“ by Alan Bleiweiss

Another great articles about W3C that I recently read was “W3C Validation for SEO? Separating Facts From Fiction” at Springboard SEO

Every so often, under the guise of “keeping things fresh,” companies decide to commit marketing suicide by switching brands.  When examining the reality of why companies want to change their brand, it results in one of three answers:

• Not modern or sophisticated enough to draw the right audience
• Not representative of the products or services offered
• Not recognizable enough in the marketplace

In each case, the answer is not changing the brand.  In fact, quite the opposite; the real answer is dynamic branding.  Dynamic branding is the process in which companies build structures or layers of branding build around one recognizable brand.  Dynamic branding places one brand at the center of your product or services structure.  Then, like lines weaved into a spider’s web, the products or services are branded around the initial brand.

Although many companies struggle with the idea of dynamic branding, it is the most common successful form of branding on the market.  Consider these market case studies to illustrate the layout of a dynamic branding structure:

• Pepsi—in full ownership or partnership
  • Pepsi and Diet Pepsi (center of dynamic brand)
    • Mountain Dew, Sierra Mist, Aquafina, Mug Root beer, Lipton Ice Tea (partnership), Starbucks Iced Coffee (partnership), SoBe Life Water, Tropicana
  • Frito-Lay (also a PepsiCo Company)
    • Frito-Lay (center of dynamic brand)
      • Lay’s Potato Chips, Ruffles, Doritos, Tostitos, Fritos, Cheetos, Cracker Jack Popcorn
  • Progressive Insurance (dynamic brand)
    • Car and Trucks, Motorcycles, Home, Renters, Semis and Big Rigs, Extreme Sports Vehicles, Boats, RVs, Condos, Life, and Health

  In each case, there is a dynamic brand at the center of the web. The product / service construction reaches out to satisfy a niche market, address the needs of an identified audience, and provide recognition in the marketplace for their high level brand.  After all, if you pick up a bag of Cheetos, you will surely recognize the cheesy cheetah on the front.

  However, no matter which Frito-lay product you pick up at the chip aisle of your local grocery, you will find the Frito-Lay logo prominently displayed. It’s displayed on every bag, across market audiences ranging from children (Cracker Jack) to teens (Cheetos) and market segmentations such as dinner / snack food markets (Fritos, Lays, Ruffles, Doritos).

  Dynamic branding works on the theory that setting up a marketing foundation which distributes your brand on every product or service categorized by sub-levels according to market segmentation or audience.  By going back to the original discussion points, it is easy to see that a dynamic brand never addresses the audience or represents the products because it is not meant to handle those functions of marketing.  Those functions are handled at the lower level of product marketing.

  A dynamic brand is created to stand the test of time by sustaining recognition in the marketplace, in a high level manner, that does not change according to the products or services offered beneath the umbrella.  In truth, could Allstate have predicted the need for Identity Theft Protection when it started?  Probably not.  And, it did not need to because that is their dynamic brand.  Anything good or service they offer under that brand can fluctuate according to the will of the market.

In part one of “SEO Simplified”, we talked about the differences between forced and organic SEO.  Never mind the differences, though – how does it work?  What makes it better than any other approach?

Firstly, it’s user-based, not search engine based.  This is the biggest difference, and what makes all the difference.  A user-based website should be built for:

• Convenience – How convenient is your website?  Do people have to hunt for links and information?
• Simplicity – Did you get all complicated while setting your site up?  Did you over design your shopping cart button, thinking it’d be neat?  If you used words like “new, exciting design” or “innovative”, you might want to run a focus group test.  It may not be as neat as you think it is.
• Information – Again, it all comes down to content.  Are you building an information center on your products or are you just selling them?  If a visitor has to search for the information on another site, they may very well leave yours and never come back.  A lack of information can cause the loss of hundreds, if not thousands (depending on your traffic) of customers.

Now, this doesn’t mean your website shouldn’t be properly optimized.  By all means, get your code cleaned up, your tags fixed and page titles written correctly.  Once your site is optimized, however, build up that content!

Growing With Organic SEO

Ultimately, if your optimizer does their job, you’ll be getting traffic.  That traffic will be reading the information on your site.  If that information is keyword dense (not rich, but thick with keywords), it will read something like this:

“Organic SEO is great.  Many wonder about Organic SEO, so here is the information.  Organic SEO is user based, not search engine based.  Organic SEO brings in what is referred to as “natural” traffic.”

Ugh.  Not only is it painful to read, it’s painful to write.  If you were looking for information, would you want to read crap like that?  The answer is a resounding, “No”.  Even if you’d never heard about optimization, you’d know there was something funky going on.  This is search engine based.

User-based content is just like what you’re reading here.  Although the keyphrase is “organic SEO”, you’ll only see it where the content supports it and where it’s relevant.  This is where the organic growth starts.  Here’s the growth tree:

1.  You have good, relevant, user-based content that informs, engages and/or entertains, either on the site pages or on the blog.

2.  You or your optimizer set up ways for that content to be spread around, either through email, any number of social bookmarking/media sites and rss feeds.

3.  As you post on your blog or add pages to your site, send them out to the bookmarking and media sites.  However, since nobody likes someone who only talks about themselves, find relevant, interesting information elsewhere and send out those, too.  A little love never hurt anyone.

4.  Those who read what you’ve sent out will also forward it to someone they know, assuming they like the content, which will bring more visitors.

5.  As time goes by, you will be able to watch a steady rise in visitors, people subscribing to your feed, etc.  This can happen in as little as a month, or as long as three months before you get more than ten or eleven visitors, so have patience!

6.  Webmasters will link to your content, because they think it’s relevant to their readers.  If it’s relevant to their readers, their link is relevant to your site.  This brings a positive “vote” for your page, which helps to raise your PageRank, as well as your ranking in the search engine results.

7.  At the same time, this is building a mindset in your visitors.  All the information you’re putting out is creating the impression of “expert”.  YOU are the person/business to go to for the information, which means that if they need expert help, you’re the person/business to use.

8.  Eventually, you may find that you no longer have to send out those blogs or pages.  Your visitors are bringing in traffic for you.

This is true organic SEO.  You will reach a point to where, as long as you keep putting out content, visitors will keep coming to read it and webmasters will continue to link to it.  If you have a sale, you mix your organic SEO with Pay-Per-Click and other ad-based programs for the duration of the sale.

A few tips to remember:

• Once you start putting out content, you can’t afford to stop for more than a few weeks.  You WILL start losing your regular visitors and you will have to start building your reader base up again.
• Don’t use your content as a platform to bash the competition.  It’s not pretty and visitors WILL get tired of reading about it.  Keep it nice!
• If you’re using a forum, knowledge base, article base or blog, host them on your site if possible.  Remember, search engines LOVE content, and show that love by raising your rank.  By hosting the main source of your site content on another hosting platform, you’re loosing a lot of potential ranking.  In addition, this can cause confusion for the visitors and takes them away from your main purpose – to bring them to your site and keep them there.

Part of an optimization specialist’s job is to pay attention to search trends.  Lately, I’ve noticed a rise in interest about organic SEO.  It seems the general public is catching on to the fact that there are two kinds: “forced” and “organic”.  What’s the difference?  What’s organic SEO all about?  Why can’t it just be optimization?  Here’s the skinny:

Forced SEO

“Forced SEO” isn’t the technical term; technically, it’s just “SEO”.  It’s cold, it’s calculating algorithms and it’s search engine based.  Forced optimization can get your site up to the top rankings in the search engines rather quickly, but the optimizer has to walk a fine line to do it.  Methodology includes:

• Paid links
• Link submission sites
• Keyword dense articles, blogs and web content
• Viral article submissions (5 articles, 50 sites)

There is nothing wrong with this type of optimization, as long as your optimizer knows what they’re doing.  It’s fairly easy to move over the edge from “white hat” to “black hat”, so careful consideration should be taken to decide a step-by-step approach for your site ranking.  As well, many links will expire after awhile and will need to be done all over again to keep your placement.

Organic SEO

Organic SEO is a kinder, gentler genie.  Many SEO professionals will explain organic optimization as “results from any search that you haven’t paid for”.  Others will give you a bit more of a technical response, “Algorithm driven results given to you by any search engine once you plug in specific keywords.”  Me, I’m biased.  I’ll tell you, “It’s the way to go.”  Methodology includes:

• Writing great, user-based content
• Offering guest blogging spots
• Paying attention to link exchange requests to get the most useful links for your readers and visitors
• Article submissions to select sites (5 articles, 1 site)
• Adding links to your site because they’re useful, rather than because they’ve linked to you.

Organic SEO may take a little longer than “forced” optimization.  However, the results are long lasting and build a steady traffic pattern.  As time goes by, with good, informative, engaging content you’ll start noticing linkbacks you didn’t request – other webmasters linking to you because they like what you have to offer their own visitors.  Eventually, if you and your optimizer do your jobs right, you won’t even have to worry about article submissions.  Visitors will come to you anyway.

In part 2 of “SEO Simplified”, we’ll cover how organic SEO works, not just what it does.

In the 1940s, a creative man in his early forties helped create the most devastating byproduct of human inventiveness.  When this invention was first tested, he said, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”  Although this man didn’t regret his part in the invention, he did worry – continually – about the affect on humanity and society.  His name, if you haven’t guessed, was J. Robert Oppenheimer, known as the father of the Atomic Bomb.

How does this relate to the topic?  Have patience, readers, and read on…

We spend a lot of time surfing the Net, reading blogs and articles, keeping up with the trends and what others have to say.  It’s part of our job, after all – staying “on top of things”.  Every once in a while, however, something comes along that we don’t want to stay on top of.  Something we downright want to squash.

Lately, I’ve come across a disturbing frame of mind in pieces of writing from people that use the Internet for a living, from individuals in areas of Internet Technology to those in Optimization and beyond.  Brace yourselves; it’s a doozy.

To be brief, here’s a list:

• The older you are, the less tech savvy you are.
• The older you are, the less you know.
• If you want to know if your website is user friendly, pick somebody old to look it over.
• If you don’t have a cell phone, don’t like to text and prefer to talk on the phone, you’re either:

1. a)     old
2. b)    out of the loop or
3. c)     both

Let me clarify that “old” seems to be 50 years old and up.

It’s all bull hockey, passed around by “young bloods” that seem to think the Internet didn’t exist until they found it.  To assume that someone isn’t tech savvy because of age is not only ridiculous, but incredibly idiotic.  Let us look at some examples, shall we?

Timothy Berners-Lee: Quick children – who is he?  For those that don’t know (and didn’t cheat by looking him up online), he’s attributed as the creator of the World Wide Web.  An English engineer, MIT professor and computer scientist, the man was writing the Hypertext Transfer Protocol language, or HTTP (sound familiar?), while those that are now 20 something were still in diapers.  And, my goodness – he’s ancient.  This year he turned 54.  You can read more on how this “old guy” and the WWW started out here:

Paul Gardner Allen: Recognize this name?  Maybe you’ll recognize another: Bill Gates.  As the co-founders of Microsoft, these two blazed a trail for the computers we use today, as well as a series of programs that have made our lives so much easier.  At age 56, Paul Allen is “pushing the envelope”.  Bill Gates isn’t that far behind him, at a venerable age of 53.

Carol Bartz: You may not recognize this name, but guaranteed, the people at Google do.  This woman has worked at companies such as 3M, Digital Equipment Corporation and Sun Microsystems.  She was the CEO of Autodesk, and served on the board of directors for several high-tech businesses, including Intel.  As of January 2009, Carol Bartz became the CEO of Yahoo.  At 61 years old, she’s still kickin’ butt and takin’ names in the “tech savvy” world.

Liz Strauss: She has been named to the Top 100 Social Media & Internet Marketing Bloggers Top 100 Most Influential Marketers of 2008, the 50 of the Most Powerful and Influential Women of Social Media, NxE’s Fifty Most Influential ‘Female’ Bloggers and her blog is listed on Alltop Social Media and Alltop Twitterati.

We Still Have Things to Teach

The main thing I want you young bloods out there to understand is that, by putting us in the category of “over the hill”, you’re denying that we have anything left to show, give or teach.  Look – if you’re a fresh-faced 20 year old, trying to tell me that you know everything there is to know about social media and marketing, I’m just going to laugh at you.  Have a little humility, people; you’re blowing off generations that have “been there, done that” long before you were a sparkle in your parents’ eyes.  Here are just a few things you can learn from us:

1. The phone is for talking, not typing.
2. Friends are people you hang out with, have conversations with and enjoy their company, not a featureless, faceless board that drops lines in 146 characters or less.
3. Clients appreciate respect; for that matter, most people in general appreciate respect.
4. There’s nothing wrong with shaking a hand and meeting people eye to eye.
5. Being rude, crass and disrespectful when you write doesn’t make you “unique”.  It doesn’t mean you’ve dared to “step out of the box”.  It means you’re being rude, crass and disrespectful.  To whit – an idiot.
6. It’s hard to respect someone’s opinion when it’s based on bull.  Do your research, and don’t take everything at face value.
7. When you “talk” (i.e. write) like you know everything, when you treat everyone like they’re inferior, you’re only showing how small you really are.
8. Life does not revolve around how many words you put out on the Internet, or how often you sit in front of your computer screen.
9. When you do use social media, keep your cursing and bodily functions down to a minimum.  As Rett said to Scarlett, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”
10. Last but not least, if some of us aren’t tech-savvy, it’s because we don’t choose to be.  NOT because we don’t “get it”

How does this all relate back to the Atom Bomb?  Just like Oppenheimer and the bomb, Timothy Berners-Lee worries about the impact of Internet on society.  So do many others.  In fact, scientists are actually looking into the break down of how society interacts due to social media outlets, connecting through email and programs like Yahoo Messenger and chat.  To sum it up, they don’t like the answers they’ve found.

By refusing to listen to the lessons given out by us, the “old” people, you’re turning your back on what makes us, humanity as a whole, the fantastic society we are.  You’re forgetting how to actually talk to another human being and interact in this great old world.  All the things you hate about society, all the rudeness you just “can’t believe”, all the respect that you “can’t get”, is being brought about (in part) by what you publish on the Web.

Don’t be afraid to live a little, children.  Step out of the box for real.  Talk to someone with your voice, not through text.  Most of all, realize that the older generations really have seen a lot, and still have a lot to teach.

The clarification of SEM vs SEO is pretty simple. Yet, for some reason and for many people, it is still very much needed. For example, just recently I read a top SEM guy equate the two. And there I was, thinking that he, of all people, should get it. But I guess not. I guess there is still uncertainty about what each one is and whether or not they are interchangeable terms.

So I would like to clarify. Maybe it really isn’t necessary, but here we go. Simply put: SEM and SEO are NOT the same thing. They are not interchangeable terms, able to be tossed about and equated without care. They are not “Spielberg” and “Great Movies”. Now, they might sort of look similar; they might even be connected in a way. But, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are not one in the same. The difference is very clear.

Granted, the difference isn’t like apples and oranges, where both are completely different things connected only under a certain subgroup. In fact, the comparison is more like apples vs. Fuji apples. SEM is the apple; and SEO is the Fuji apple. That is to say, in the broader category of SEM lies the subcategory and type of SEM known as SEO. Let me explain further.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is the broad category of tools that a company will utilize in order to bring more traffic to a website or more attention to a product. It increases the “magnitude” of a site, attracting as many searches as possible.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is more specifically the tool of increasing the search-ability of a website (or optimizing) so that it can more readily be found in all search engine listings, including organic and natural listings.

SEM includes SEO but is not limited to it. That is to say, there are more tools in the SEM belt than SEO. These include such things as Paid Inclusion, Traditional Ads, and Pay-Per-Click Advertising, all of which focus on a different marketing medium than traditional SEO. Unlike SEO, for example, they are faster tools, able to bring traffic to your website quickly. They get the message and increase your visibility immediately.

SEO, on the other hand, builds up the content of your website, making it readable, informative, and helpful. All of these make your site relevant and desirable, which, too, increases traffic, though slower than the other tools. Overtime, however, SEO has proven just as, if not much, much more, effective in bringing traffic to your site, leading ultimately to SEO’s popularity and importance.

The final word: SEO is the best tool in SEM’s belt. You cannot have effective, long-lasting SEM without quality SEO. Now, there are no questions about that.

Each year, many companies venture out into the business world without the most important piece of ammunition for their success:  market research.  While clouded by the dual belief that market research is needed for companies intending to earn business through cold calls or market research is too expensive for the average company, the failure to properly understand your market segmentation can lead to costly errors and loss of potential sales.  In many cases, companies proceed into deep level development of new products or services without knowing if the market will support their cost structure or pricing strategy.

Some of the best ways to conduct low-to-no cost market research to find out vital information about products and services are:

•    Online Groups and Networking—Often, professional gather in online groups and networking forums to gain contacts and exposure; however, an additional benefit to these aspects is that you can post a marketing question to the group and gain a variety of responses from people in every walk of life.  Because you pick the groups that you would most like to use as your market research group (or even create your own group for this purpose), you will be able to segment your responses.

•    VOC (Voice of the Customer)—Perhaps the most overlooked avenue for finding out about the market, most companies believe if their customers buy from them, then they must be happy with the product.  Nothing is farther from the truth.  Asking your customers about your product and services, potential benefits and pricing, or to rate satisfaction will give you valuable insight into how you can improve and what your competition is offering.

•    Contest and Surveys—Through social media marketing, email blasts, or coupons, give your customers the opportunity to rate and give feedback on important questions regarding the path of your company.  With a quick online survey, you can easily find out if feature XYZ is important to your customers when they think of paying $150 extra for your product.  If they say “no” and you realize that the addition will cost at least $150 to add to the feature list, then you have priceless information about the future development of your new product and the pricing structure as it relates to your customer perception of value.

In truth, good market research is like money in the bank, but it does not have to cost the proverbial arm and a leg!  Whether you are a new business or an established business with years of operation, market research gives you the ability to see the big picture of what your customers are seeking in product they purchase as well as predict where the market will go in the future.  Of course, there is one addition to market research…the X factor.  By research what is evolving in the market, you find out things about your products and services, competitors, and pricing that you never knew.  Cost:  Priceless!

I bet if I told you the headline of today’s news you not only could see it on television, but you could Google it.  Who would have thought you could say the word Google and automatically 98% of the world would know what you meant.

Nevertheless, here we are in the midst of a booming new business online frenzy… once again.  There is economic crisis, banks are folding like lawn chairs, houses are foreclosing daily, car giants are filing for bankruptcy and online social networks are growing at an alarming rate.

This is not earth shattering revelation I am giving up here, obviously, but what I want to share is a story about the Little Agency That Could.  A copywriting agency that has become a full service agency due to demand.  It has taken us some adjusting and re-adjusting but as a team of writers, we are confident with our results.  We have been getting steady work throughout the recession, but with that comes the good the bad and the ugly.

Inspiration happens at the oddest times in a writer’s life.  Some writers need to have complete silence in their working environment while others listen to music.  Then there are those of us who have the faint sound of the news in the background.  However, its days like these that give us a clear picture of why we are in business for ourselves.

As a writer that’s not a bad deal; as SEO copywriters that’s music to our ears.  What this means is more people are taking their business online and looking for great content.  The global market has finally caught up with re-inventing themselves.  Businesses that I have never heard of are contacting our agency looking for blogs, press releases, articles, web pages etc.  Some changes happened gradually as social media grew.  We have always been fans of blogs and bookmarking sites, but none really made me personally appreciate them until Twitter.  (that’s another article).

One of the major changes we have noticed is the quality of great clients versus the quantity of great clients.  Let me explain.

As part of the business development team at this agency, I’ve met some clients we have had to part with.  Actually, I shouldn’t call them clients, since they never made it that far.  They contact us with a specific project in mind.  After talking to them via email or phone, I’ve found that, more often than not, they have no idea what they are doing.  They have no direction or concept of what it takes to brand themselves and ultimately are wasting their time.  Spinning their wheels.  They know they need blogs, they need website copy and Oo, dear lord, they need SEO.

I spend time emailing, talking on the phone, sometimes I even offer a conference call when other writers or designers are involved.  That is all part of doing business, and for the Little Agency That Could, it does affect our bottom dollar.

Some of the clients try to squeeze you for every cent, from the ones that promise future work if you can give them a better rate to the ones that insult you by insinuating they expected fifteen articles for $40.  Sure, looking back, we have a great laugh and move on, but every so often you get the potential client that reveals their color from day one.  The ones that threaten to sue you over unfounded accusations.

Basically, my point is, regardless of what sort of business you are doing on the Internet, you need to know when to fold them and know when to walk away.

Writing or offering any service online is a delicate act that needs to have certain criteria.  Some call it the 80% 20% rule.  What that means is if you spend 80% of your time dealing with the client and only get a 20% return, then you know to walk away.  You shouldn’t have to spend more than 20% of your time dealing with the client.

Don’t get me wrong; we talk to our clients any time they want to discuss their project, but when all we do is talk and don’t get any work done due to their inability to have a plan then it’s apparent you are not dealing with a professional.  And in today’s market there are lots of people that really should not get into business; running or starting a business takes more than a great idea.  You have to have a vision, then a strong plan and, ultimately, you have to know how to deal with people.  My business partner said it clearly: “The vision for any online marketing business is so colorful, but the mission is always black and white.”  Can I get an Amen.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, Digg, Technorati – social media tools are swarming the net, becoming the main way to get in touch, keep in touch, socialize and monetize.

On places like Twitter, individuals and businesses alike have begun posting links to their blogs, sites and articles.  LinkedIn has a way to plug into your blog so once you post, it shows on your LinkedIn profile.  With Digg you can have a link back to an article on your site, or on an article directory, etc.  In other words, you can have a website, a blog and ten social media accounts, and have them all leading to each other.

The question arises, however: does all this do any good for search engine optimization?  And if it does, how much good does it do?

In reality, social media is just another part of marketing.  One of the reasons why so many businesses use the social media tools is because they realized very quickly that these tools give them the ability to talk to their customers.  In addition, these tools allow business individuals to reach likeminded professionals, make business contacts and any other kind of socializing you can imagine.

All this socializing does have some benefits for optimization, but perhaps not in the way you think it does.  Thousands of people post links on Twitter, for example, thinking that these posts will link back to their site, and raise PageRank and search engine results positioning.  However, Twitter specifically has a “no follow” for your links, which means that the search engine crawlers won’t follow the link back to your site; in other words, the links themselves have no optimization value.

Now, people are selling eBooks on how to gain followers and whatnot, pushing all the benefits and making the buyers think this book will grow their business, but how does social media work for site optimization, PageRank and SERPs?

1.    You post your links.
2.    People (not search engines) follow those links and read what you’ve written/posted.
3.    Of those people who liked your post/article/idea, some will talk about it and add a link to your site where the information is.
4.    The new links will generally have a “follow all” tag, telling the crawlers to follow them.
5.    Those inbound links will bring in organic traffic and add authority to your site, which, in turn, will raise your search engine result positioning and PageRank.

All in all, social media is like MLM (multi-level marketing):

You post ten links with no results on PageRank, placement or anything else; you may as well have thrown them into the wide unknown.  However, five people read your links and re-post (or link back) to those ten posts, and you now have fifty (free!) back links (not reciprocal!) leading to your site.  Five other people find those re-posts and re-post again – 250 back links, plus the original 50, adds up to a whopping 300 links leading back to your site.

All those links will normally be posted on sites relevant to your site, which gives your site authority, which raises your PageRank.  All that traffic and the resulting commentary can raise your positioning in the SERPS.

So – while social media in and of itself isn’t that helpful with SEO, the resulting links are.  How do you get people to repost, comment and write about your site, article, blog, etc?  That’s another blog entirely!