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October 31, 2007

Happy Halloween from Bruce Clay!

It’s Halloween and everyone is getting dressed up! Look at all the pretty costumes the search engines and the search community are sporting today!

Google’s looking a bit haunted:

While Ask.com is sporting some spooky pumpkins (and a rocking Smart Answer, of course):

Yahoo decided to dress up a bit and host the annual Yahoo Halloween Event:

And not surprisingly, Live.com was too cool to come to the party and just looks eternally boring. How sad. We’re not even going to show you a screen shot. Why? Because they suck.

But it’s not just the engines playing today. Oh, no. The entire search community has joined in the crazy, including our friends at Search Engine Roundtable:

And one of the leading members of Red Sox Nation (and my new friend), Eric Lander. Don't you want to eat the little baby toes?

But who’s the most excited about Halloween, you ask? Well, it’s our Bruce! Doesn’t he look smashing as a wizard? We think so too.

You can see all the Bruce Clay team members happily showing off their costumes by visiting our Flickr page. And if you hurry, you can catch a photo of Susan before she makes me take it down. Run! [Are you kidding, I almost look thin in that picture. It's staying up forever.--Susan] - Seriously, you hit some crazy good lighting right there. I didn’t even recognize you.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/31/07 at 1:57 PM | Comments (3)
See more entries in Fun Stuff

October 30, 2007

Bruce Clay, Inc’s 2007-2008 Conference Calendar

Thing have a way of getting busier as the end of the year approaches, and it looks like this year will be no different. There’s a lot of great search marketing events coming up and we’ve been getting a few emails asking which events we’ll be covering and which ones we’ll pass on in an effort to maintain some sort of healthy social life. We thought we’d let you know where we will be for the rest of 2007 and where we plan to be in 2008.

November 2007: Bruce will be heading to New York for Ad:Tech on Nov. 6-8 to moderate the SEO Workshop session with speakers Sandoor Marik, Bill Macaitis and Tim Mayer. We won’t be liveblogging this one, however, as I’ll be in Las Vegas Nov. 7-9 blogging the BlogWorld & New Media Expo event. Make sure to check out the blog for those updates. Forget about all the great blogging and social media information we’ll have to share, it’s my first time in Vegas and Bruce is sending me alone. This could get dangerous! Huzzah!

December 2007: As much as I love Chicago in December, we won’t be covering SES Chicago this time around. We will, however, be posting all of our coverage for the sessions offered that we’ve covered in SES past. We’ll be giving that to you a few weeks prior to the event to help readers decide which sessions they want to attend themselves, and which they’d just rather read The Lisa’s awesome recaps for. It’s all part of our plan to make your lives just a little bit easier.

Why aren’t we covering SES Chicago? Because we’ll be at Pubcon Las Vegas, of course! You’ll be able to catch Bruce speaking on the SEO 101 - The Timeless and Classic Hits panel, there will be savvy Bruce Clay, Inc. SEO Analysts on the floor, and you’ll get double session coverage from both myself and the evil Susan Esparza*.

[*Yes, we are going to let her out of the office again. Yes, I remember what happened last time. And no, I’m not sure that it’s a good idea.]

Looking ahead, here’s where we plan to be in 2008. It’s likely we may add some stuff to this as the year progresses, especially if Danny’s SMX shows keep multiplying like bunnies.

February

• Feb. 19-21: SES London
• Feb. 26-28: SMX West

March

• Mar. 17-20: SES NY

April

• Apr. 15-17: Ad:Tech San Francisco

May

• May 6-9: eMetrics Summit San Francisco

June

• Jun. 3-4: SMX Advanced

July

• July 18-20: BlogHer ’08 in San Francisco

August

• Aug. 18-21: SES San Jose

December

• SES Chicago
• PubCon Las Vegas

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/30/07 at 5:17 PM | Comments (2)
See more entries in SEM Events

Forrester Webinar: Using Social Media in the Workplace

We hear a lot about using social media to increase brand awareness and engagement with customers, but we don’t often hear about how social media could be used within a company to achieve some of those same goals. That’s why when I heard that Forrester would be holding a webinar this morning to talk about incorporating social media techniques internally, I thought it was worth checking out. Especially since the webinar featured speakers Charlene Li, Rob Koplowitze and Anil Dash. I mean, seriously, who better to hear share their experiences and offer up best practices, right?

Right.

Let’s listen in.

Anil Dash starts things off by offering up some introductions and explaining what we’re going to be hearing this morning. Er, afternoon, depending on what time zone you’re in.

Up first will be Charlene Li.

Social Computing Comes to the Enterprise

Charlene starts off by talking about when and how to use social media, specifically blogging. She identifies some possible goals you may have for your company and how social media and blogging can help you to achieve them.

Listening -- Gather feedback via comments (example: DirectDDell), test new product ideas, and provide thought leadership on a topic.
Talking – Discuss industry or company best practices (Microsoft’s Jobsblog).
Energizing – Energize your biggest fans, WOM referrals (Boeing Flight Test Journal)
Supporting -- Peer-to-peer support (HP’s LaserJet blog).
Embracing – Members become contributors (Fastlane/GM Insiders).

Touching on the idea of using blogging to energize brand evangelists, Charlene talks about how Boeing brought enthusiasts into their testing process. She says that the idea isn’t to convince travelers that they should buy a Boeing plane; it’s about using your company blog as a marketing tool to explain to travelers what it means to be on a Boeing plane. That marketing will then translate into a follow up campaign targeted at the people who do buy planes. [Like rich people? – Lisa]

General Motors used social media to embrace community members. When they previewed their new Camaro on the Fastlane blog, they posted a video of one of the designers driving and giving users a look at what it’s like to be behind the wheel. Not surprisingly, users then commented and created a dialog with the people at GM about what features or downloads they would be interested in seeing. GM was then able to incorporate these things into the new design.
Social media isn’t just about talking to users; it’s also about listening and having a conversation. Something else GM did was to invite the best commenters to become “GM Insiders”, giving them access to designers and marketing programs. It was a great example of embracing social media.

How to implement Web 2.0 in an era of governance, risk, compliance and privacy

Rob Koplowitz is up and immediately states that he has to be the voice of caution in this discussion. Bummer.

Social media products are proving themselves. What businesses should now do is encourage people to bring these technologies into the enterprise for use internally. However, this needs to be done with an eye geared towards things that are less sexy. Things like governance, risk, compliance and privacy. Enterprises should embrace social computing, but they need to do it on their terms.

Rob recommends designing enterprise applications for people, but to build for change. The question everyone wants answered is how do you take any process and make it faster? He says we’ve over-invested in structure and underinvested in ad hoc messy, chaotic human activities. Today’s economy is less driven by efficiency and more driven by design. Business should support folks and intertwine social media applications in a way that make people more efficient. You have to build for change.

Proceed prudently. The tools are easy available and available under varying models, including ad funded, SaaS models, appliances, etc. New technology is not immune to governance, risk, compliancy, privacy or security concerns. You have to respect the rules and consumer and employee privacy.

Social computing complements the Information Workplace. It brings portals together, allows for collaboration, increases office productivity and better content. Bringing in external sources supports all of these things.

Rob identifies the benefits that come along with providing users with sanctioned tools:

• Removed the vast majority of issues.
• Drives security, privacy, compliance
• Creates a context for better/safer information management
• More manageable than email, file servers, etc

Magnifies the value of the investment

• Better search
• Consistence user experience
• Create better communities

It’s a reasonable investment.

Rob leaves webinar attendees with several key takeaways, including

• Get a grasp on what’s going on in your enterprise
• Corporations are getting value from social media
• Users are getting social without guidance.
• Process and content need to be managed.
• Provide users with sanctioned tools.

How to measure ROI

Charlene identifies the three factors you need to weigh to determine the ROI associated with blogging:

Benefits: Identify key benefits. Use existing metrics and assign values.
Cost: Figuring in costs -- start up costs, recurring costs, etc/
Risk: Filter the benefits and costs through Risk. Identify uncertainty and calculate probability of something really bad happening. Think through every possible scenario.

That information will give you the ROI of blogging and the total impact on your business. Obviously, the key benefits of blogging will differ based on your company’s objectives and its ability to put things in place.

Case Studies

Anil Dash joins the conversation and offers up a few case studies.

A lot of the tools we know from the external Web are becoming internal tools. He offers up a few examples

He says that social networking, sites like Facebook, MySpace, are the external equivalent of Intranet User Social Profiles where people create profiles in order to learn from their peers.

User Generated Content sites like Flickr and YouTube are similar to Social Asset Management systems where employees can share things without the hassle of email.

Social bookmarking and voting sites like Digg and Delcious are no different than internal rating and ranking tools. Using blogs as broadcasting medium externally is the same as using them for collaboration internally. Web 2.0 is Enterprise 2.0

Enterprise 2.0 means building layers of functionality that sits upon your core platform and allow for new compatibilities. He uses TWA as an example.

TWA realized that the process of sharing what they had learned during a project was very arduous. They were ending up FedEx-ing books and DVDs back and forth to share information. This process was time consuming, costly, and gave users no way to respond.

TWA wanted something better and in 4 months, their Moveable Type deployment had launched 27 different channels, consisting of over 5,000 published pages. The information collected now supports comments and annotation.

He talks about retail store Uni Qlo (sort of like the Gap in Japan) that had 700 stores worldwide, with a high amount of turnover. Employees frequently leaving meant that knowledge was frequently being lost. Email conversations about best practices and successes weren’t accessible by new staff. Movable Type was deployed around the world, with each location able to document what works. Even part time employees could access the blog using mobile phones. It created a system where information could be saved and accessed as needed.

Anil recommends setting up a new blog for every conversation. You decide who has access to it and who can modify things. People use and access information in different ways. Make it easy for them.

Question & Answer (questions and answers are slightly paraphrased.)

What about the time cost associated with blogging?

Charlene: Calculating the cost involved with blogging is no difference than calculating what it costs to have someone spending half an hour talking to the press or talking to employees. You have ask yourself, what else can this person be doing? This is one of the key things. You have to deploy these things in a way that serves a clear business objective.

Rob: Blogging for Forrester, gives analysts the ability to get their voice out in a way that takes a lot less time. It is more efficient way to get content out to people.

Anil: Blogging offers a very tactical way of taking conversation that you would have had in email and instead publishing it. Now, rather than answering the same email 10 times, employees can search for it and find it on their own.

How is social computing going to be easier to manage?

Rob: One of things I want to manage in my organization is that email is used in a way that is proper and manageable. That’s hard to do. If I instead take that information and put it in a blog post, then I have made that information highly visible and transparent.

What do you mean by “disposable technology”?

Rob: Rather than going out and evaluating an application that requires approval by all the departments and may take months to get signed off on, social media allows companies to use low cost technology that they can try out quickly and dispose of if it doesn’t work.

Anil: These social media tools are much more forgiving for experimenting and iterations. There’s a low cost of failure and high reward. That’s a model not common for most IT departments.

Once you start a blog, how do you get people to participate in it and promote it?

Answer: Ask yourself, what’s working right now. What are people using? Many organizations are set up with an intranet portal page that never changes. Put an RSS feed on that page and allow employees to get news that way. Or piggyback on the continuous company newsletters that get sent around and put a link to your blog in the footer. This will keep the blog in their top of mind. If employees are more comfortable in email, let them get blog updates via email until they get used to using an RSS feed. The key thing is to let them access it how they’re accustomed to working. It’s really a matter of thinking about the behaviors users already have and working with them.

When do you use a Wiki and when do you use a blog? Is MovableType Wiki or blog software

Anil: Movable Type is blogging software, although it does allow you to create standalone pages. The biggest distinction between blogs and wikis is that wikis are geared towards definitive stuff, not for things you want people to respond to or creating a dialogue about. Unlike blogs, wikis are also bad at giving people credit for their ideas. Ultimately they’re about everyone reaching a consensus.

On the other hand, a blog gives people ownership and allows for two way dialogue where everyone owns their own ideas. They’re good for capturing the evolution and iteration of something. It gives you a timeline of how ideas change and grow.

How much of the IT budget should I put aside to start Enterprise 2.0?

Rob – There’s a number of different technologies you’ll want to use. Blogging is just part of it. If you’re a 55 person organization you should be starting with someone very well known that costs about $20-$40 a month per user.

What criteria was General Motors using to identify the best commenters?

Charlene: They cherry picked people who they thought were very insightful in areas they wanted to know more about. Some people create very small communities. It depends on who you pick and what you say to them.

How are people creating communities inside organizations?

Anil: There’s an obvious mapping of one blog for each department and that works very well. But we think the communication style that social media forms best with is ad hoc. He recommended having one blog per project, where people from different departments can come together until the project is done. A blog is a very natural thing and can be used to track project progress or collaborative tools where employees can share information and past experiences.

How do I get everyone in the company to read my blog? [Ha, good luck! Sorry. Bitter. – Lisa]

Anil: Most of the time that’s not even appropriate. Not everyone has to read your blog because once that information is posted on the intranet, people can find it when they search for it. If you write stuff that they can’t get anywhere else, people will find it and use it when needed.

People want to have a way to start a conversation. See what conversations started in response to content that was created.

The role of Twitter and micro-blogging within the enterprise.

Anil: Six Apart has a Twitter account. There’s a lot of benefit to lightweight notifications, messages that are short enough to go through text messages or IM. That’s something that I think is part of the core of blogging.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/30/07 at 5:04 PM | Comments (3)
See more entries in Social Media

October 29, 2007

Weekend Update

The Greatest Team in Baseball

It’s not like me to gloat (shut up) or to mention things that are perhaps only interesting to me (seriously, quiet), but I feel compelled to bring your attention to the greatest blog post ever written. This post is entitled Red Sox Dominate to Become 2007 World Champions and to quote the very wise Eric Lander, reads in part:

“I’d like to say it was close.
I’d like to say the Rockies played well.
I’d like to say it was an entertaining series. But, I’d be lying.”

Beautiful. That’s it. That’s all I’m going to say.

Why Are Facebook Employees Snooping?

The folks at Valleywag are all in huff, claiming that Facebook employees stalk user profiles “for kicks” in their spare time. They wonder just how much information Facebook employees have access to – Can they read your private messages? See your Facebook gifts? Read your wall? What?

My guess would be that, yes, they probably can. Just like, if they wanted to, Google could probably read all of your email, because, you know, it’s there. I know other people will freak out about this, but personally, I’m not going to worry about it. And when Google or Microsoft or Company X buys Facebook, I probably still won’t worry about it. I’m nobody. If the people at Facebook want to see that I gave Susan a unicorn last week or that I just poked Michael Gray, then that’s okay by me.

Personally, I think Fake Steve Jobs hit the nail on the head with this one:

“Some of us are still trying to get our heads around the idea that Valleywag is pretending to be outraged at the idea of someone snooping into the private affairs of other people. I mean, hello? Valleywag? The guys who follow Eric Schmidt around on dates? Man oh man.”

Heh.

Oh, and if you want to get really creeped out by Facebook and your lack of privacy, check out how they decide which News feed items to show you. I dare you.

Are 404 Errors Bad For Search Engine Optimization?

Tamar pointed us a thread over at Cre8asite Forums that asks Are 404 Error Bad For SEO? Well, they’re not good.

If you’re finding that Google Webmaster Tools is reporting a bunch of 404s or that visitors are complaining, it’s really time to do a link check on your site and figure out what’s going on. It could be that you haven’t properly redirected old pages to new ones, maybe you mistyped a URL when creating your links, or maybe the pages flat out don’t exist anymore. If you’re getting complaints from users, it could also be that they’re using old bookmarks to try and reach you. Whatever the reason is, you have to fix it, because yes, 404 errors are bad for search engine optimization. They frustrate users and can abandon search engine spiders and prevent important pages from being indexed.

It’s also a good time to check out your custom 404 page and see what you’re serving up to users and the spiders.

What’s that? You don’t have a custom 404 page? When then maybe it's time you go and read about how you can improve SEO with a custom 404 page. You’ll thank me later, both for the info and the random O.C. reference.

Google Says Maka-Maka

No, we’re not just talking crazy speak. According to TechCrunch, Maka-Maka (or makamaka) is the codename of Google’s new social network, which will allow Google to bring all of their delicious properties together under one big red bow. In an attempt to beat Facebook at this whole “openness” thing, Maka-Maka is also said to include two-way APIs for developers and an “activity stream” akin to Facebook’s News Feed.

TechCrunch suggest we may get our first briefing about Maka-Maka around Nov. 8-9, so stayed tuned for more details. Maka-Maka!

Fun Finds

Marty Weintraub explains why he doesn’t feel bad about being a Sphinn whore and I actually kind of find myself agreeing with him.

My BFF Tamar Weinberg outlines the Top 6 Ideas for Incredible Viral Content. Tamar is my social media queen.

This is just too, too magical, but the latest BlogWorld news is that Mark Cuban will be giving the closing keynote. Oh dear. This is going to be the most amazing experience of my life. Must bring small, throwable objects.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/29/07 at 3:27 PM | Comments (5)
See more entries in SEO, Search Engine Optimization

Blog Like a Person, Not Like a Cyborg

I don’t often agree with Robert Scoble, but when he wrote that blogs have become boring and lost their humanity, well, I found myself nodding along right there with him. And that made me sad.

Even though Susan thinks I come to work to daydream and make her life more difficult, this blogging thing is hard work. And it’s becoming increasingly difficult to stay motivated and dedicated as competition increases. It also doesn’t help that us bloggers often feel like we’re being talked over, that we feel like no one cares what we have to say, and that top bloggers often seem less concerned about growing their community and more interested in getting picked up by TechMeme. Sometimes, it makes the rest of us just want to phone it in too.

And though it may be easier, the “phoning it in” mentality really is detrimental to this industry. Perhaps what you do on your own blog shouldn’t affect the greater blogging community, but it does, because we’re all connected. When you mundanely blog, it zaps all of our excitement and our humanness.

I’ve noticed that I’m becoming increasingly sad as I go through my feed reader these days. My favorite bloggers are taking the TechMeme bait and writing about topics they don’t particular care about just so TechMeme will find the link and pick up their story. We’re all guilty of that from time to time, but it doesn’t exactly help foster conversation or make you more human to your readers. If anything, it kills the conversation and makes you sound like a robot. And while we’re all looking in the same direction and talking about how smart we are examining the stories seated over there on the right, we’re missing all the excitement that’s going on over on the left. It’s like that stuff never happened. We’re just a bunch of blogging cyborgs.

Do everyone a favor. If you’re going to call it in that day and not be you, just don’t blog.

You may have noticed (and I know you did because I got emails…) that we let last Thursday go by without a single blog entry. I know, it was shocking, but we all survived. There was no opinion and no insight. Hell, there weren’t even any cracks at Susan. Why?

Well, to be honest, I was a bit down on the industry and not feeling the blogging mojo. I could have picked a story off TechMeme and commented on it, but would that have benefited anyone? Would readers have gotten anything out of that? Would I have brought any realness to the blogosphere? Probably not. So, instead I focused on some of the other projects we have going on around here and took a day away from the blog. And on Friday (and after another Red Sox win), I was feeling a little bit better. And now that a weekend has passed and I was able to run around outside and pick pumpkins, I’m actually feeling light years better and a whole lot more inspired.

Sometimes you just need a day or a weekend to rededicate yourself to your blogging and to achieving the things you have set out for yourself. What do you do to recharge your blogging batteries when you’ve hit a dry spell? How do you re-claim your mojo? How do you keep bringing a level of humanness to blog and stop sounding like a robot repeating what it heard on TV the night before?

Here’s some stuff that has worked for me:

Read Old Blog Posts: And, unless you’re fairly new to the blogging game, I’m not talking about the stuff you wrote last month or even two months ago. I’m talking about the old stuff. Go back to the beginning of your blog and reread the topics you were writing about when you were full of passion and excitement. Remember what it felt like when you had so much to say that you did something insanely crazy and actually started a blog to share your insights with the world. Remember that spirit. Also, see how crappy those posts were and give yourself a pat on the back for improving as much as you have. You rock!

Write for Your Community, Not for Its Overlords: You started blogging to serve the community around your niche, not the A-listers. When you were a blogging n00b, you probably didn’t even know about TechMeme, nor were you obsessed with making today’s list of top blog entries or appeasing your industry gods. Why start worrying about those people now? I’m in no way devaluing things like TechMeme or those lists that go around touting who’s in and who’s out, but when you make appearing there the entire focus of your blog, it changes how you write and you end up missing out on a lot of the great stuff. It also increases your chances of sounding cold to your audience. You want them to see you and to fall in love with you. Ever notice how no one develops a crush on news reporters? It’s because they’re vapid robots with dead eyes. [Except Anderson Cooper. --Susan] -- I watch Anderson Cooper at the gym. It allows me to stare at the pretty without having to listen to him speak.

Act Like A Writer: You never know when you’re going to have an idea for a blog entry, who you’ll meet or when your muse visit, so act like a real writer and bring a notebook and pen wherever you go. This is one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned over the last year. Often the best entries happen when you’re away from your desk. When you’re having drinks and talking about work with friends, when you’re stuck inside Google Docs screaming that the formatting sucks, or when you’re on a long hike and you finally decipher the secret code to Google’s algorithm.

Brain Dump: If you’re the type of person who can write now and edit later, do it. I hear this is a great way to inspire creativity and let you sound like yourself. Personally, I’ve never been able to do it, no matter how many times Susan tries to force it on me when we’re 6 hours away from a newsletter deadline and I still don’t have an article topic. She tells me just to start writing and I tell her if she tells me that one more time she’s going to get my Ask.com pen straight through her chest. [Lisa, you may have noticed, is something of a violent perfectionist. --Susan] -- It’s what makes me stand out.

Take A Vacation: The best way to lose all excitement with your blog is to be stuck looking at it everyday. This is why people cheat on their partners, because after awhile they become boring. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying. It’s okay to cheat on your blog sometimes. Take a day off and do something else. Go hiking, take a day trip, knit a sweater, talk to the little people living in your house (they're called “children”). It’s important to turn the computer off every once in awhile and get the rest of your brain charged up.

Robert Scoble is right. The blogosphere has become a whole lot less human lately. We’re not writing for our readers or even ourselves. We’re writing to appease the gatekeepers of this industry and burning ourselves out in the process.

It’s time to take a step back. Re-familiarize yourself with your blog and re-find your blogging mojo. If you still can’t find it, go outside and give yourself a day. You’ll be back to normal soon.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/29/07 at 3:11 PM | Comments (10)
See more entries in Blogging

October 26, 2007

Friday Recap

Say it with me: The Red Sox will win the World Series, the Red Sox will win the World Series, the Red Sox will win the World Series.

Hell yeah, they will!

Despite the fact that the Red Sox, aka the most awesome team in baseball, are 2-0 in their series against the Rockies, Hitwise reports that the Colorado Rockies was the most searched for baseball team this week. Probably because people have never heard of them, likely because they suck.

Something that doesn’t suck? A free taco! Head on over to Taco Bell on Tuesday, Oct. 30 to go claim yours. You can thank Red Sox Jacoby Ellsbury for your stolen taco. Huzzah!

And for the last piece of Red Sox-related link goodness, Mike the Internet Guy is willing to trade his search engine optimization services for your tickets to the World Series. If you can, help a guy out. It will probably the only time his Colorado Rockies ever make it to the World Series. I’m on fire!

Seriously though, be careful out there on the Interwebs. Clogging the tubes isn’t the only way to break the Internet, let the pretty IT lady tell you the other.

In case you’re still trying to talk yourself off that PageRank-induced ledge, Caroline Middlebrook helps us get a little perspective by presenting the story in LOLCats. I can has cuddle?

If you’re not female and therefore don’t have to crash diet in order to fit into your Halloween costume next week, here’s a yummy looking Lego cake that you may enjoy making. It sure does look yummy.

How do you motivate yourself to exercise? Eat a Lego cake and then put on your Halloween costume a week early. Starvation is delicious.

Forget this Halloween stuff, 901am tells you how to get personalized, hand-addressed letters from Santa. Do you know what that means? It means it’s almost time for the wonderful winter holidays. And for fake snow at Disneyland! It’s nearly as joyous and heartwarming as the thought of the Red Sox winning the World Series.

The Guardian Unlimited reports that a man was sentenced to three years in jail after throwing a puppy off an apartment balcony, causing the dog to have to be put to sleep. Seems to me the man should have spent three years getting tossed off a balcony and onto his head. Whatever.

In case you hadn’t heard, when it comes to scantrons, B is the new C.

BoingBoing pointed to a great Harper’s Weekly excerpt that confirms what I lknew in my heart as a child growing up on Long Island. Forty-nine percent of New Jersey residents admit they’d rather live somewhere else, probably because it smells like dead cat. CoughRaecough.

Consumerist outlines the 5 expenses you can’t afford if you have credit card debt. I can totally handle the no eating out, continuing to drive my little Aveo and resisting the urge to White Chocolate Mocha my day away, but no cable? Is that even possible?

Lifehacker tells us the time limits for frozen food. I suppose this means all those chicken breasts that have been sitting in my freezer for a year are now no good. Drat.

The weekend is upon us! If that’s not enough to turn your frown upside down and put some jollies in your belly, here’s a list of 10 surefire ways to kill your crabby mood.

Things I Learned From BoingBoing This Week:

• It’s a squid…with teeth?
• Ice cream ramen. It’s what all the cool college kids will be eating this season.
• A woman claimed not to know how a three-inch piece of toothbrush became lodged up her nose. Not surprisingly, it seems the blames falls on her husband.
• Vampire cupcakes that bleed deliciousness. Mmm.

Oh yeah, and go Red Sox! [That's eight times you mentioned your team. We're so getting penalized for keyword stuffing. --Susan] Quiet. Not even you can’t bring me down today. Go Sox!

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/26/07 at 4:01 PM | Comments (3)
See more entries in Fun Stuff

Live Webcast: Setting Standards and Making Sense of Web Analytics

Hi guys! I know its Friday and Fridays are usually reserved for talk about puppies and boys and baseball (Sox! W00t!), but when I heard that the Web Analytics Association was giving a Webcast to discuss industry standards and the recently released WAA Standards Analytics Definitions Volume I, I thought it was worth liveblogging. So you can read all about that below. And don’t worry, the puppies and boys and baseball-related stuff will come later (Sox! W00t!).

Introductions all around. Introductions. Today’s panel of experts includes Jason Burby, Avinash Kaushik, and Angie Brown. Brian Induni will be acting as moderator.

Understanding Web Analytics

Jason Burby is up first to talk about the importance of understanding Web analytics. Analytics experts need to understand what is going on in order to make improvements. Marketers also need to understand what is going on in their business. What the WAA committee is finding is that these people are speaking two different languages to the determinant of their sites and their business. How can we better educate people and get them to speak the same language?

You have to break down the barriers. There are more people in Web analytics, with greater sophistication in tools and Web analytics. There are also many more people wanting to look at Web analytics data that aren’t currently, and won’t ever be, Web analysts. There are too many silos of data and insight (Behavioral, attitudinal, competitive, social networking, transaction, etc). Combing this information together allows you get better results, but in order to do this everyone needs to be speaking the same language

Jason identifies five core problems or “threats of confusion”. They are the misinterpretation of data (people looking at the same data points and getting different results), wrong decisions being made as a result, not leveraging all available insight, a lack of trust in people and data, and no action.

By removing these threats, businesses will be able to make smarter decisions, better understand their site visitors, improve the overall site experience, impact offline decision, increase ROI and improve resource allocation.

Those are just some of the things the committee has been talking about in terms of clarity. It’s all about getting people to speak the same language regardless of who they are – an analyst, a marketer, etc. They want to meet all audiences.

What Makes a Great Metric?

Next up is Avinash to talk about what makes great KPIs. Avinash says he wants to share some of the learning and perspectives of things he’s had and to “demystify” the myths related to metrics.

What makes a great metric? One of the beautiful things about the Internet is that you can put a piece of JavaScript on a page and 16 seconds later you’ll have a million different kinds of data. But what are the important metrics to help you understand your business?

He applies four best practices to each of the metrics that people have or would like to have to see if it passes the “sniff test”.

According to Avinash, great metrics are:

1. Uncomplex: He’s trying to rank for the term “uncomplexify”. It’s common for people in our industry to take five different metrics and add/subtract/multiply them, turn it into mush, and then try to make it an index. As you consider what metrics are important for your business, the first thing you have to do is “uncomplexify” it. If your metrics cannot pass the Occam’s Razor test then you don’t have the makings of a great metrics.
2. Relevant to you: Even though Best Buy and Circuit City are the same type of business, the key metrics for them are radically different. This is the one thing he wants people to understand and apply. People have a tendency of researching other people’s metrics and then applying them to their business. Resist this tendency. Don’t take metrics that work for other people and simply slap it on your business. You have to find the metrics that work for you.
3. Timely: Get information back in a timely manner. For the most part, if you want to execute data driven process, it’s important to know that most of your metrics should be available in a timely fashion so that you can understand what is going on. You don’t want to wait 16 days or 16 weeks to get them.
4. Instantly Useful: You are the analyst. You understand everything. And yet, when you send a dashboard, the person at the other end knows none of that. If you display great dashboards, try and apply the instantly useful test. This means that as soon as people look at the numbers, they should instantly know what it means and what action they need to take. You should be able to look at a metric, know what the number is and if it’s good or bad. Instantly useful means it drives action.

An example of a great metric is bounce rate.

It’s uncomplex, easy to understand (bounce rate is people who only have one page view in their session. The geniuses understand that and so does your CEO.), it’s relevant in any business because it helps you locate the crap (hee!), it’s timely and standard in all tools, and it’s instantly useful.

Avinash sums this up by sharing three lessons learned from a tough life.

1. What works for Jack…might not work for Jane: You are unique and your business is unique.
2. Perfection is…the enemy of good enough: If you have 90 percent confidence in your data, move on. It’s not worth it for you to get the last few percentage points. Embrace incompleteness.
3. Critical few, baby, critical few: When the crap hits the fan, what are the metrics that are most important to your business? At the end of the day, there are probably only 1-3 metrics that will indicate the key success of your business. You should know them.
4. You have one best friend – The Metrics lifestyle process. Define a metric, measure it, analyze it, take action against it, then improve or eliminate it and start the process again. Good companies have at least a 30 percent turn in metrics every year. If your metrics are the same every year, you’re probably not thinking hard enough about your visit.

The Web Analytics Association’s Mission

Jason is back up to discuss the intent behind the WAA creating standard definitions for Web analytics. They wanted to:

• Define common Web analytics terms – Easy to understand both by marketers and Web analytics professional.
• Balance the need for specific definitions while offering flexibility based on changing technologies and individual company needs.
• Help people “speak the same language”.
• Definitions created by a diverse group of people, not just a few experts.

The new definitions that have been released are a work in progress. It’s a starting point to help people speak the same language. They’re building the framework.

An Update on the WAA Committee

Angie Brown is up to give us an update on the WAA standards committee.

The status there is that they released 26 definitions back in August. What they’re doing right now is reviewing the feedback they’ve received from the Web analytics community to see if they need to rework or clarify things. They’re trying to add new definitions as time permits. The new version of the document will be focused on improving things, not necessary adding new terms.

Angie explains that in the definitions document, each definition is broken down into different parts:

Type – count, ratio, KPI, dimension
Universe – aggregate, segmented, individual
Definition – meant to be meaningful even if read by itself.
Comments – clarifies the definition and/or describes where customization is often available.

As has been mentioned earlier, the definitions are needed to help people speak the same language. Definitions lay the groundwork for methodologies. They recognize that some conflicting methodologies can be useful to different stakeholders. The key is to be clear about which concept is being reported. Your metrics need to be relevant to your particular business. In some cases your tool will allow you to customize things for your business. You need to be clear what concept is being reported on. If you’re reporting visits, it should be called visits, not visitors or elephants.

Angie offers up some examples of conflicting methodologies:

Question: Should a count of page views include PDF requests?

Angie: That’s up the analyst and to how the business thinks of these types of content. Could also be events if you prefer.

Q: How long can a visit remain active before being cut off and considered “done”? Until the end of day? 8 hours? 12 hours? 24 hours? Forever?

A: That’s an open issue. The tools available to use right now are all over the place. Realistically, one cut-off is probably no less useful than another. In fact, if you have sessions that last for too many hours, you should probable revisit your spider/bot filtering scheme.

Q: If I land on the home page of your site, refresh the page in my browser, and then leave, will the activity count as a bounce? Will my visit be included in the single page visit count?

A: Your activity is a single page visit (ie only one page was viewed, even though it was viewed twice). However, it is not a bounce (aka “single page view visit).

She mentions that the committee will probably issue a new release of these terms by the end of the year. Some of the 26 terms will be updated based on feedback. They’re looking to publish quarterly. There's a chance for a possible Web 2.0 subcommittee. Opportunity to establish standards in parallel with technology invention instead of after the fact.

Question/Answer Session

Q: Are there any efforts going on by the WAA to translate its analytics terminology into other languages?

Jason: That is not something we’ve explored, but it is something he thinks they should do. They’ll bring that up at their next meeting. If you’re bilingual and want to help with that, let them know.

Q: Can you answer why analysis from a log file state tool differs from analysis from page tagging?

A: There could be a whole host of reasons why the data will be differently. Think of it as the way you fundamentally collect the data is dramatically different. It could be due to cashing, session-ization, cookies, the way they deal with people turning JavaScript/cookies on and off, etc. Those are just some quick reasons. If you want more info, search for Web analytics in Wikipedia. It’s a very complex topic.

Q: What kind of measurement standards are being developed for AJAX, Web gadgets, etc?

Angie: That’s one of the things we’re looking into right now. Members have expressed interest in forming a subcommittee.

Avinash: Web 2.0 as a term is very fluid in regards to what it means and what it’s trying to accomplish. We’re trying to figure out how to get ahead of the train instead of getting to the party after the fact.

Q: How do you handle AJAX in terms of page views?

Jason: We’ve talked about that in the page views definition itself. We tried to structure it to allow flexibility for the person/company to define what they consider a page view. It’s something we’ve begun to discuss but we need to spend more time on it.

Q: There are many different kinds of Web sites out there. What are some of the top KPIs to measure for content/information Web sites?

Avinash: The definitions document that was released actually had metrics broken down based on different types of metrics.

Jason: There are three types of content sites --- ad based, subscription based, engagement based. Even within that it differs significantly.

Q: How would one measure online viral marketing in something like SecondLife?

Avinash: I think what people are doing is still trying to figure out how to hack at some of the ways to track Web pages. There aren’t any standards. There aren’t a lot of people who have figured out what SecondLife is or how to take advantage of it. It’s very much virgin territory for now. The way that viral marketing is being tracked is that it depends. If you’re sending out an HTML rich email and it’s telling you to forward to the Nigerians to send you money, you can tag it. Other viral campaigns are things like YouTube where they’re encoding events into the action or video to allow the event logs to capture it that way. You still have to decide what your campaign is after and then use the standard ways.

Jason: We’re looking at what people are doing once they come back to your site. How do their behaviors differ when they’re coming from a site like Facebook? Look at their search queries, where they were, what they did and then tune the site experience based on that. Those people perform an act very different than your “average visitor”.

Angie: The WAA does have a social media committee.

Q: Now that there are standards being created and generated, what do you think the chances of adoption are?

Avinash: I’m very optimistic. Many of the vendors have already reached out to the committee and are referencing the work of the committee. At eMetrics, several people from Google and Yahoo mentioned the standard definitions that were released. Now that we have created a baseline, we’re confident that we will get participating from the vendors. For better or for worse, it’s a great stick to have.

Thanks, guys! You can get a recording of the Webcast later today on the Web Analytics Association Web site. You should go and listen when it comes out, if only because Avinash is hilarious.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/26/07 at 3:53 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Analytics

October 24, 2007

Google, Facebook Get Smart with Targeted Advertising

Google is trying to find out what viewers are doing when ads appear on their television screen, Facebook is targeting women between the ages of 20-30 getting married in Orlando, Florida and interested in snorkeling, and we’re being taunted with rumors of another AdSense-killer. What’s going on?

Google Makes Nielsen Its New BFF

Search marketing blogs are overflowing with the news that Google and Nielsen have “entered into a strategic relationship” and it’s all very secret sounding. Or at least it would be if wasn’t all over TechMeme.

According to the coverage, Google has made Nielsen its new BFF, partnering with them to get their demographic data which Google will then use to get a better understanding of who is watching their ads and for how long they’re sticking around. Good stuff. Personally, I’d be interested in how things like TiVo are affecting ads. I’ve watched television with Susan. She fast forwards right through that crap. Does everyone?

I don’t know, but I guess Google soon will. This information, combined with the second-by-second reporting they get from their EchoStar and Astound Cable deals, will help them bring the same accountability and tools to television ads that they get with online ads. Or at least that’s the goal.

That’s all well and good and I’m sure the advertisers are salivating already, but I’m still not totally psyched about television ads. This is 2007, not 1987. I’d also like to know how Google’s deal with Dish and that Bay Area company they partnered with is going. We haven’t heard much of anything. What’s the deal with that?

Facebook Flyers Target by Interest, Relationship Status, Location

TechCrunch reports that Facebook is now experimenting with their Facebook Flyers ad units, allowing advertisers to target their ads by an extensive list of factors, including country, gender, age range, political views, relationship status, education level or even any keyword listed in their interests. You can see how this would be a very attractive offer to advertisers. Marriage vendors can target those listed as engaged, health food suppliers can target those interested in physical fitness, the local fair can advertise to those located in a selected geographic location and Susan can get ads targeted at people with no personality at all. Everybody wins!

The reach of the flyers is still pretty small, but if advertisers start seeing success with them, who knows? Definitely something interesting to watch, especially in light of that other ad announcement they have coming….

Big Facebook Ad Announcement Coming Nov. 6th

AdAge reveals that several advertisers and agencies have been invited to a “discussion” being held Nov. 6 (presumably in time for Ad:Tech NY) where Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will “unveil a new way of advertising online”. The early buzz is that this “new way” of advertising includes allowing advertisers to use the data that Facebook members offer up about themselves in their member profiles to target them off the site, like some sort of syndication deal. Do you know what that sounds like? It sounds like a competitor to AdSense. You can cut the tension with a knife!

Obviously, everyone in the Facebook camp is being very tight lipped until the November meeting, but that’s not going to stop people from speculating. Radar has a list of nine advertisers who have reportedly shelled over a bunch of money to be invited into the “Landmark Partners” program, including Condé Nast, Nike, Apple, Sony, General Motors, Coke, CBS, Chase, and Verizon.

With big brand companies putting faith (and dollars) into a Facebook-designed competitor to Google AdSense, this is definitely one to watch. And if Facebook does launch a new online advertising platform, what does that mean to the new deal they just signed with Microsoft? Would their ad platform compete with adCenter or would the two combine efforts to take on Google?

When did online advertising get so juicy?

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/24/07 at 3:49 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Pay Per Click

Can Link Bait Mature? Yes, It Has To

The question over at the Cre8asite Forums is can linkbait mature? Yes, it can. It has to.

Today, social media is our little baby. It’s full of promise and potential, shiny and superficial. It’s great for getting lots of cooing and oohs and aahs, but so far getting it to actually convert is hit or miss. And even when you can attract the eyeballs, often they’re the wrong eyeballs. Like real babies, social media is exciting and lots of fun at first, but after awhile it starts to stink and you’re ready to trade it in for something else. Like a puppy, perhaps.

In order for social media to grow and develop into a fierce toddler (and keep its place in your house of marketing tricks), the types of link bait techniques we’re seeing must evolve. It has to lose its tendency to focus on the vapid, and mature into a sticky Internet marketing tactic that search marketers can use to increases conversions and user engagement.

And I think that it will.

Everything that we’re seeing in terms of link bait and social media today represents the ground floor of what’s to come. Things are going to get smarter and more creative. They have to. I mean, “old” standards like Top 10 and crafty How To lists are becoming less and less effective at getting your audience’s attention. They’re played out. They’re boring. And that’s okay, because they were really never that good of a social media marketing campaign to begin with.

The link bait attempts we’re inundated with today are typically geared at the lowest common denominator. It’s about appeasing the Digg/Reddit crowd and trying to get 10,000 visitors to your site in an hour. And while I will agree that its super fun to watch your traffic spike, that kind of attempt at links isn’t going to leave you with much. At the end of the day you’re going to end up with the same empty feeling you felt after all your one night stands in college. It’s time to grow up and find a more targeted approach at life, love and links.

And I think that evolution is already occurring. During last week’s Linkbaiting panel at SMX Social Media, Rebecca Kelley stressed the importance of doing your homework and applying actual research to your social media marketing strategy. Knowing what kinds of content do well on which kinds of site, knowing what your industry responds to, and seeing what’s already been done. When we talk to clients or SEO training students about establishing themselves as a subject matter expert, we often talk about some of the things Rebecca mentioned. Only we’ve never called it linkbaiting; we call it a link magnet.

The different between a link magnet and linkbait is how targeted it is. Successful linkbaiting will get you massive amount of traffic that often won't convert. Creating a successful link magnet will help you stand out in your field and increase your visibility to the segment of people that are important to you. It’s about creating a valuable resource. That’s the maturation of link bait. It’s less about the baiting and more about creating quality, link worthy content. The kind of stuff that is also likely to help you in the new era of blended search, as well.

The key to creating a great link magnet is research. When we talk to people about creating an effective link magnet, we often advise them to take a look at their industry. What tools do they use every day to do their job? Better yet, what’s that one thing you always complain about not having? What magical tool or resource or mashup or page do you think would make your life or job easier? Why don’t you go ahead and make your life easier and create it? And then share it with everyone else.

For us, the greatest in-house example of this has always been Bruce’s Search Engine Relationship Chart. Bruce created it to help himself get a visual understanding of how the search engines work. He spent the time to create something that was uniquely valuable and when he perfected it, he decided to share it with the entire search marketing industry. It was created as an educational resource and has continued to be a link magnet for us. It wasn’t a Top 10 list or a video of Susan falling down the stairs (though that would be awesome); it was link worthy content that continues to valuable years after it was initially created.

And that’s what this whole link bait is going to have to mature into in order for it to be successful. It’s not about reaching the front page of Digg and attracting a massive amount of eyeballs, it’s about attracting the right eyeballs. That’s the only way social media marketing will be able to achieve the kind of long-term success and viability search marketers are looking for.

What do you call grown up link bait? You call it a link magnet.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/24/07 at 11:49 AM | Comments (4)
See more entries in SEO, SEO Tips & Tricks, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media

October 23, 2007

USAToday’s Widget Love, The Death of SEO Revisited & Spam Issues

USAToday Adds More Widgets. I Hurl Myself Off Tall Building

What do you do when your audience is telling you that they don’t like the revamp you did on your traditional news site in your effort to become “hip” and “trendy” and “pretty”? You add more widgets! Yes! The widgets will save you.

901am reports that USAToday has added five new widgets to their already cluttered site and will be adding even more through November. Awesome. Today’s added widgets include CelebWatch/Lifeline Live; Most Popular Headlines; Politics; Pop Candy; and USA Today Snapshots.

USAToday says their widgets are designed to provide another way for readers to experience and share news online. That’s all well and good but haven’t their readers been pretty vocal about not liking the revamp? Why stuff more garbage in their face? I don’t get it, or maybe it’s USAToday that doesn’t get it.

If you want to read my previous thoughts on USAToday’s botched redesign, you can read them here and here.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go hit myself in the head with some large, blunt and heavy. Hmm, where’s Susan? [You think I'm fat? *cries* --Susan] - Yes, you’re ginormous. Cry about it.

Search Engine Optimization Experts to Be Out Of A Job?

That’s what Jakob Nielsen is claiming. He says opportunities for jobs in search engine optimization will remain bright through the next 5 years but will start to dim once we hit the 10 year mark. Have no fear, though. Jakob says all that experience in search engine optimization will help you “springboard to a more senior position in Internet marketing or user experience”.

Zing!

Wait. Isn’t search engine optimization part of Internet marketing? And isn’t usability under that same umbrella? Why are we separating them? I’m confused again.

Semantics aside, Jakob is pessimistic that SEOs will be able to earn their keep because the basics are “fairly simple” and site owners shouldn’t need to hire someone to structure their sites for them. He says eventually it will just be a core competency. I agree with him on that last part. Search engine optimization should be a core competency. In fact, I expect in 10 years every business with a Web site will be doing search engine optimization, which will make the field harder, not easier, and will increase the need for qualified SEOs, not diminish it. Jakob missed that memo.

The problem with people, like Jakob, who like to predict the death of SEO is that they’re still looking at SEO as being just the on-page technical factors. They haven’t evolved past 5 years ago. Today’s search engine optimization is far more complex than that and it’s only going to get harder. I have no idea what SEO is going to look like in 10 years but I know it’s not going to look anything like it does now and I know it’s not going to be site owners who are trying to decode the puzzle.

As things become more crowded, more competitive and more complex, the need for experience and knowledgeable SEOs will continue to grow. Personally, I’m feeling pretty good about my job security. You?

BC’s Overaggressive Spam Filter Takes Hostages

We’re so sorry! It seems the spam filter for the blog has been feeling a little predatory lately and decided to take many of your loving, delightful and only slightly argumentative comments hostage. So, if you’ve left a comment recently and you’re thinking that we’re a bunch of jerks for waiting days to approve it, it’s not so! We’re just jerks for not realizing sooner that the filter was having a Susan moment.

Have no fear, though. We went ahead and lowered the gate for entry so that everyone’s comments should be getting through. This means I’m seeing a whole lot more Levitra ads in my inbox, but hey, what’s some performance enhancing drugs between friends?

I also have to admit that I’m kind of relieved. The lack of comments lately was making Lisa very sad! [We don't know how long the filter has been eating your comments for lunch and we don't have any comments older than 5 days unfortunately, so if you've commented and we didn't approve it, we're sorry. Blame Lisa, she's the one who was whining about it not being aggressive enough. --Susan]

Fun Finds

Dave McClure gets all deep on us discussing The Zen of Poke: A Facebook Story. It made me entirely rethink all the Facebook pokes Dave gave me last week. 

ResourceShelf tells us that Reuters is the newest addition on the Facebook application train, giving users a weekly news quiz (account required) where they can compare quiz points with their friends and declare themselves intellectually superior. Or at least better up to speed on the news.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/23/07 at 4:22 PM | Comments (6)
See more entries in Blogging, Branding, SEO, Search Engine Optimization

Ask: No Blended Search Result Without Proper Capitalization

I find myself in a mild state of shock, disbelief, confusion and it’s not because of the So Cal fires. I don’t even know how to start this. I guess I’ll start from the beginning.

I read an interesting post by Jeff Woelker yesterday. The posted pondered whether Ask.com dropped by the ball with its recent commercial touting the blended search results users get when they perform a search for singer KT Tunstall. Jeff was impressed by Ask’s blended search results and wanted to share the commercial with friends. However, when he tried to find it, he couldn’t. It was nowhere to be found. Bummer.

And he wasn’t the only one disappointed by that. There was apparently an entire thread on a KT Tunstall discussion board regarding the missing video. Crazy, right? I mean who knew KT Tunstall had fans?

I found myself agreeing with Jeff. I think it would have been smart for Ask.com to put the videos of their (awesome!) new commercials online and allow users to share them with their friends. Let’s get that whole viral thing going. I thought maybe I’d try to help Jeff out and see if I could find the commercial myself and then send him the link.

However, now I have an entirely different problem with Ask regarding that commercial. A huge, huge one.

In the commercial, a magic hand appears to perform a query for KT Tunstall. And when the search is pulled up, viewers see a beautiful blended search results for the artist, complete with pictures, audio clips, concert dates, and lots of other wonderful unique-to-Ask things. In the commercial, Ask.com is shown as being truly awesome.

Here’s what happened when I did a search for [kt tunstall] in an attempt to find the video.

Um, hello? Where is the blended search result? There are no pictures, no video, nothing besides 10 blue links. Ask, you lied to me!

I calmed down and thought, okay, how about Kt Tunstall?

Nope.

I tried a few other permutations and discovered that the blended search result will only appear 100 percent of the time if a user types in “Kt tunstall” or “Kt Tunstall”. Apparently, capitalizing that initial K is a really big deal.

Are you kidding me?

Ask, I love you more than any other SEO blogger in the whole world loves you, but this is not okay. You need to be better at meeting user expectations. Your blended search offering is by far the most impressive out there. You’re schooling everyone. But you can’t run a commercial to get people excited about what you’re doing and then drop the ball. You have to deliver what you’re promising. It’s the only way searchers will ever trust you.

Stuff like this is incredibly frustrating to searchers and is a sure way to alienate them. Either you’re going to make them feel lied to because you didn’t deliver what you promised them you would, or you’re going to make them feel dumb because they couldn’t replicate what they saw on TV. You don’t want your users to feel betrayed and you definitely don’t want them to feel like they’re not smart enough to use your search engine.

And what’s worse is that when the search fails on your engine they’re going to go try it on Google and Yahoo. And when you’re not running your totally awesome blended search result, their offers are better.

Google:

Yahoo:

It’s simple. If you’re going to run a commercial showing users how great results are for a specific query, it has to match up to what they’ll see in real time. And you can’t make their success rest on whether or not they used correct capitalization. That’s ridiculous. Guys, I don’t care if you have to hand edit the results for KT Tunstall; I won’t tell anyone. But make sure you’re delivering what your commercial is promising. Don’t make me hurt you.

Update: Ask's Gary Price assured me that this was just a rare technical glitch and that Ask's blended search results are definitely NOT case sensitive. I tried my searches again and all of Ask's superior blended search results appeared, so it looks like he was right. Thanks for the taking the time to look into this for me, guys!

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/23/07 at 2:57 PM | Comments (3)
See more entries in Ask

A Letter to the SEO Community: Nobody Owes You Anything

SEO Unique’s Matthew Ridout is calling out popular search engine optimization bloggers like Matt Cutts and Rand Fishkin because they’re bloody boring and haven’t been keeping him properly amused or informed with their optimization pearls of wisdom lately. Poor guy, relying on others is so hard.

He writes:

“I understand you can’t make up new findings but I can think of 101 different topics to write about that would be more interesting and related to seo.”

Then why are you wasting your time on Matt and Rand? Go write those posts and steal some of their readers while Matt is busy blogging about Halloween costumes and Rand is writing about bunnies or whatever it is the Mozzers are covering these days. ;)

Personally, I enjoy off-topic posts, most of the time (Scoble drives me crazy). It gives you that glimpse into the author’s life that you can’t get while they’re talking about the search engine optimization basics. But that’s me. The four posts from Matt and Rand that SEO Unique outed as lacking in quality happen to be four posts that I truly enjoyed. I thought the two posts he named from SEOmoz were some of the best stuff they’ve produced lately. Were they strictly search engine optimization-related? Not really, but did they give something to the community? I think they did.

If you disagree and you think SEOmoz is getting too fluffy for you, then delete it from your feed reader and use the time you spent reading that blog to go write your own. It’s that type of entrepreneurial spirit that this industry is based on.

I’m not picking on Matthew. Plenty of people have echoed the same complaints, especially lately. There was even a thread on Sphinn not so long ago semi-complaining/semi-joking about the lack of conference coverage that was available for SMX Travel. Suddenly there is a sense of entitlement to free conference coverage and stellar blog entries. It sort of makes me giggle. When did that happen? What did people do before livebloggers came about?

I feel like while California is burning to the ground and people are watching their personal belongings go up in smoke, that it’s a good time to remind people that nobody owes you anything. We all have to work hard to achieve the things we want.

Rand and Matt do not owe you blog posts on the exact topics that you’re interested in. You are not owed extensive conference coverage. And you’re definitely not owed high Google rankings. Be thankful for the educational search engine optimization coverage that is out there, realizing that most people don’t get paid to blog. Matt Cutts? Yeah, he has a job working at Google. He blogs in his personal time. If he wants to blog about his cats, I say bring it on. You can’t be all work, all the time.

Instead of calling people out, view the off-topic posts as an opportunity to establish yourself as an industry leader. If you have 101 different blog entries on search engine optimization sitting in your head, go write about them. I would love to read them and I bet others will too. If there’s a concept you think should be explored, start a conversation about it. If you think there’s a tool the industry could benefit from, go and build it. That’s how you become a Rand or Matt. That’s how you get targeted links, gain the authority, create some goodwill, and get people talking about what you’re doing. That’s the stuff that great link magnets are made of.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/23/07 at 1:11 PM | Comments (23)
See more entries in Blogging

October 22, 2007

Weekend Update

How was your weekend?

Mine was super awesome. On Friday, I met Boyz II Men, there were pumpkins and pumpkin bread on Saturday and on Sunday, my Red Sox earned a spot in the World Series. Can you say huzzah?

But now it’s Monday and it’s time to revisit all that search engine optimization stuff. Let’s do it.

Google News Facebook Application

There’s a Google News Facebook application. Do you know what they call it when the two gods of the Internet join forces to give you free stuff? They call that “awesome”.

According to Google, once added, the Google News beta application will allow Facebook users to choose from a bunch of pre-selected topics (Entertainment, Technology, World News, etc), identify some keywords, and then browse and share stories with their friends. Depending on how many categories you choose, you’ll typically get between 1-3 stories per topic. It’s basically a Google Alert plugged directly into your Facebook profile.

I’ll never use the application but I do find it interesting that Google is now developing official applications to work inside Facebook. They do seem to be bumping up their socialness lately, don’t they? I wonder what we’re going to see next? Will Google relaunch Orkut as is rumored or will we instead see more pairing of the Google and Facebook awesomeness? You’ll have to stay tuned to find it if the two Web powerhouses combine their powers for good or for evil. I’m sure it will all be in our Facebook News Feeds in no time.

WebmasterWorld Members Bothered by New Ask Commercials

Over at Search Engine Roundtable, Barry Schwartz tells us that some members feel that Ask’s “Instant Getification” commercials are taking a shot at Google. Personally, I don’t think they are. They’re simply showing you that the experience you get from using Ask’s blended search outfit is considerably richer than the ‘10 blue links’ you get from the other engines. At least one WebmasterWorld member, however, disagrees with me. Member Rj87uk thinks Google “would have something to say” about these commercials.

What are they going to say? That the Ask commercials are right and perfectly illustrate the kind of search experience you get from Ask.com? They’re not saying anything untrue and they’re really not picking on Google. Just a white label search engine. Users will interrupt that engine as being whatever engine it is that they currently search on.

Props to Ask.com for releasing some awesome new commercials. I’m sure you’ve seen them. After all, they’re everywhere!

Jakob Nielsen: First Two Words Most Important in Headlines

Passive voice is the key to writing good headlines, according to Jakob Nielsen, who says because users scan Web content in an F-pattern., those first two words of a paragraph are absolutely vital. Get rid of those filler words and hurry up and tell readers the most important things up front.

I suppose that makes sense, considering that most users are scanning your pages and not actually read them. Jakob argues that the first 2 words of your page title could be the highest-impact ROI-boosting design decision you make for your site. Yowsa, no pressure now. This is why I often ask Susan to help me write my titles. I still haven’t mastered that skill.

On a similar note, you should also read Matt Bailey’s post on Content v. Creative – Where does the Customer Count? It’s a very good read.

Fun Finds

In case you don’t live on the West Coast and haven’t yet been hit by a newspaper, California is on fire, causing much of the state to smell like a giant fire pit and my lungs and eyes to be coated in ash. (There was also that branch the Santa Ana winds put through my bedroom window, but we won’t even go there.) If you’re looking for some eerie pictures of what’s been going on over here, Danny has them over at Daggle.

Social Media Explorer offers up 8 Things Conference Officials Don’t Advertise. My favorite was number 8:

“No matter how comfortable the chairs, your butt will be numb.

There’s a lot for the conference organizers to cram into a day. Count on breaks that are too short, sessions that are too long and chairs that make you Google “sciatica.”

So true.

BlogHerald tells us that b5media will be hosting an additional teaching day at BlogWorld & New Media Expo next month in Vegas. I’ll be doing some liveblogging at the event so I am super psyched about this.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/22/07 at 12:44 PM | Comments (6)
See more entries in Ask, Google, SEO, SEO Tips & Tricks, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media

October 19, 2007

Friday Recap

Happy Friday, everyone! If you ventured off to SMX Social Media in NYC this week we hope you had a fantabulous time and learned a lot. We hear Danny enjoyed himself immensely.

I need your help. I’m having a difficult time deciding what my favorite video find of the week was. Which was your favorite?

• The cockatoo that rocked out to the Backstreet Boys?
• The little girl reciting her prayers in a way that makes you fear she’ll grow up to be a famous serial killer.
• Harold McCoo and his ladder mishap.
• The 2-year-old Steven Colbert protégé.

I heart Zappos. You know why? Because they’re awesome. You should buy all of your shoes from Zappos. Thanks.

This is what an honest Monopoly board looks like. Only they forgot the card that says your opponent has to pay you money, and then your little brother opponent flips out and tries to knock over your perfectly placed hotels in a fit of fury. Ah, family game night.

Lifehacker finally answered the age old question of what the hell is the difference between hibernate and standby mode on your computer? My computer and I will both sleep better knowing this information. [Mine will be hibernating while yours sleeps. --Susan]

This is the scariest Microsoft error message ever. That’s probably the only thing they could get me to switch over to a Mac.

Scary Ideas presents The Office Collar, a way to cut out all the distractions that come from working in a cubicle environment.

Free Rice fills your need to feel smart, while also filling the bellies of those less fortunate with rice. Each time you’re able to match related words they donate 10 grains of rice to a hungry person. It’s fun for everyone. Except the dumb people.

Speaking of hungry people, the eatmecrunchy cereal bowl separates your delicious cereal and your yummy milk so that you don’t have soggy breakfast cereal. Sweet, right? Yeah, until you have to try and clean the bowl.

If you prefer to eat your breakfast on the go, Hardees unveiled a 920-calorie breakfast burrito, thus ensuring that you are in a food coma by the time you reach your desk. And that you have a heart attack by age 28. Mmm, clogged arteries.

If death before 30 doesn’t sound appealing to you, Yahoo Food offered up 8 Healthy Halloween Treats That Taste Good. I have to admit, those organic gummi bears and dark chocolate edamame sound might tasty.

I’m not sure why but this left me completely mesmerized this week. It’s rocks balancing on other rocks. And not falling over. You know what they call that? Magic!

In case you’re in the mood to be freaked out, Cracked.com authored up The 5 Creepiest Urban Legends (That Happen to be True). It’s cool; I had no intention of sleeping tonight anyway.

Things I Learned From BoingBoing This Week:

• Halloween carnage is delicious.
• Greatest Headline Ever: Leprechaun Opens Car Door for Pantless Man. Hee!
• How to change the “printer ready” message on your HP printer to anything you want. Say, for example, “I Hate Susan” or “Death to Susan” or “Why Does Susan Still Work Here”.
• Clear ice is superior to unclear ice.
• Sometimes pregnant women are oblivious.
• The truffle industry is far more competitive than I gave it credit for.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/19/07 at 3:19 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Fun Stuff

October 18, 2007

Stop Sucking and Become a Top Blogger Today

Everyone’s talking about this blogging thing. The latest State of the Live Web told us that there are more than 70 million or so blogs currently in existence. That’s a lot. But a lot of them aren’t very good. What do you need to know in order to be one of the top bloggers and avoid being the kind of blogger who sucks? Let’s dissect a top blog and find out.

Contemplating which blog I would dissect, I immediately decided upon Dooce, the personal blog of Heather B. Armstrong. Why? Well for a couple of reasons. It is my most favorite blog on the Web, it’s well positioned up there in Technorati’s Top 100 so some of you guys probably like it too, and lastly it allows me to avoid inflating any of the egos in our industry. :)

So based on my scientific analysis, what are the three qualities all top bloggers seem to possess?

• Attractiveness
• Uniqueness
• Sex Appeal

Attractiveness: Face it, we’re shallow creatures. Unless we already have some sort of emotional connection, we’re not going to buy a CD with an ugly cover, we’re not going to talk to an ugly person (whatever, you know I’m right), nor are we going to interact with someone who doesn’t “feel” like us. I’m also not going to invest my energy reading a blog that looks like an online word document.

The top bloggers out there know this, that’s why they’re all rocking blog designs that resemble who they are and who their audience is. It helps your readers immediately feel at home when they land on your blog. According to the great Lorelle VanFossen, it’s also in your best interest to make sure your blog doesn’t actually look like a blog as this tends to turn people off. Your blog should look like you so that readers know what they’re getting from the very first point of contact. My personal blog looks like “the crazy”, because that’s what people are getting when they visit – all of my crazy.

This is what Dooce looks like.

Or at least that’s what it looks like this month. Each month Heather changes the header and color scheme to help readers start a new month with a clean slate. Some would probably argue that this takes away from “branding” or that it may “confuse” readers, but those people don’t get Heather or her readers. Heather writes to a pretty savvy crowd and she knows they can take it. Though, I’m pretty sure if Heather thought her audience couldn’t handle it, she wouldn’t care. Heather is kind of kickass that way. It’s one of the many reasons why I like her.

Uniqueness: Top bloggers offer something unique to their readers. They’re not out there trying to game TechMeme; instead, they’re trying to share something important with you. Maybe they’re writing about the hottest tech gadget, maybe they’re finding you the best homes in your area, or maybe they’re just trying to invite you into their lives. Either way, they’re giving you something that you can’t get anywhere else. And that makes them valuable.

On the outside, the content of Dooce isn’t all that earth shattering or exciting. Most of Heather’s entries are dedicated to the dog (Chuck), the kid (Leta) and the husband (Jon). However, every day, even if there isn’t an actual post, Heather offers her readers something fresh and new. Each day we get a new photo of Chuck, a second original photograph and a daily collection of cool links to check out. Best of all, each month on the anniversary of Leta’s birth, she writes her daughter a heartfelt letter recounting the past 30 days of Leta’s life. These letters typically evoke tears and make you want to run home to call your mother to tell her how much you love her. Heather always leaves readers with something to encourage them to keep coming back to the site.

Sex Appeal: You don’t have to be a full on sex goddess to be sexy, you just have to show a little leg and a whole lot of personality. You have to be brave enough to show people who you really are.

We hear all the time that “content is king” and that you have to give readers “compelling and unique” content in order to draw them into your site and get them to engage. This is all very, very true. In order to be a good blogger you must offer something unique and exciting to your audience. What they never tell you, however, is the “ideas” and “insights” and “opinions” will never make you a great or top blogger. In order to reach that status, you need to be able to tell a story in a way that will touch your readers on an emotional level. You need to have sexy storytelling skills.

Heather is an amazing storyteller. Regardless of what the day’s blog entry is about, Heather has the ability to capture your attention and take you somewhere else. She can complain about her dog and make you laugh or she can write about her recent miscarriage and bring you tears. That’s what makes her great. Whether you’re trying to produce a laugh, tears or just generate excitement, you have to use language to form a connection.

There you have it. The top three qualities I think all top bloggers possess. Now stop sucking.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/18/07 at 5:46 PM | Comments (4)
See more entries in Blogging

Respond, Don't React, To Social Media

Everything we’ve heard about social media tells us that marketers should take the opportunity to engage with users. They should invite customers to share their experience, while also participating in the conversation themselves to build the brand and make the company feel tangible to users. It was always about connecting with customers and creating that warm, fuzzy feeling. However, one small business has decided screw that, let’s fight back!

Greg Sterling writes ‘No Yelpers’ Says One Local Café where he explains how Oakland’s Cafe Rooz is now displaying “No Yelpers” stickers after they encountered “a stream of would-be critics ‘with attitude,’ predisposed to take issue with or be critical of the business.” As a result, Yelpers are now persona non grata at the local café.

Do we think this is wise?

I mean, I get that people talking smack about the company that supports you and your ability to eat is a problem. I get it, I do. But is antagonizing the very group that has already proven they have no problem being vocal, snarky and mean really a good idea? Do you really want to make these people feel alienated from your business or do you, perhaps, want to re-engage them and try to make things better?

Personally, I’d go the second approach. I’m not sure if the sticker was designed to discourage customers from participating on Yelp or if they’re just there to unwelcome past Yelpers, but either way this is a lost opportunity.

Here are some alternative approaches Café Rooz could have tried out:

• Instead of creating negative stickers, put up stickers inviting customers to log onto Yelp and comment about your business. Set the tone that you care about them and their voice.
• Use the café’s wireless connection and set up a Yelp station where customers can head over to the site while still enjoying their coffee and tell the world how great you are.
• Create a Yelp account and participate in the conversation. Don’t write false reviews or turn into a spammer, but respond to the criticism, explain how you’re going to fix things, and invite customers to come back and give your business another try, maybe with a discount.
• Create some goodwill by hosting a Yelp event at your store and inviting past and future reviewers.

And those are just the things I came up with off the top of my head. I’m sure if the Café Rooz people used a little brainpower they could have thought up a million different ways to combat the negative criticism. Ideas that didn’t include creating stickers that basically say “You’re Not Welcome Here; We Don’t Care About You”. Just because your first instinct is to fight, doesn’t mean you should follow it.

In this case, all the press seems to have helped the business and the community around it to grow. You can still find the Yelp listing and these days, reviews are pretty positive. But they got lucky. Setting the tone that you don’t want people’s opinions isn’t a good idea for any business.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/18/07 at 4:46 PM | Comments (1)
See more entries in Social Media

October 17, 2007

Finding an SEO Company, Mobile Google Docs & Super Branding

Does Your Search Engine Optimization Company Get You?

Over at Search Engine Guide, Scott Buresh asks: Does Your Search Engine Optimization Company Understand Your Marketing Strategy?

I hope so. Otherwise, what the hell are you paying for?

If you’ve already made the commitment and hired a search engine optimization company, my hope would be that, at some point before the contract was signed, the two of you got together and discussed your goals, what your SEO campaign would entail and how you’ll work together to achieve all of that. If not, well, let’s just pray you didn’t just make a huge mistake.

Part of the are-we-compatible test that clients and search engine optimization companies must go through involves ensuring that everyone is on the same page and that the SEO company will be able to deliver what you’re asking. And those goals have to be specific. You shouldn’t just accept an optimization company’s promise that they’ll get you “number one rankings”. Number one rankings for what? A keyword phrase you have no interest in? As Scott points out in this article, anyone can do that.

Beyond just establishing your campaign goals, you also want to make sure everyone is okay with the means that will be used to accomplish these goals. You want to know before you sign the contract that the search engine optimization company you’re looking at plays on that other side of the fence.

The only way you’re going to have a good relationship with the search engine optimization company you’ve just hired is if everyone is working with the same strategy and end goal in mind. It’s really comes down to setting expectations.

An Almost-functional mobile Google Docs

That workaholic inside of you is going to be so very happy! Google has gone ahead and released a semi-functional mobile version of Google Docs. This means that you can access your saved files while shopping, eating out and most especially while you’re driving and supposed to paying attention to the road. Huzzah for near-death car experiences!

I called the mobile version of Google Docs “semi-functioning” because all you can really use it for at this stage is for reading text documents or viewing spreadsheets. You can’t write, edit or even view a presentation. It’s basically just a big tease. But it’s a big Google tease, so look excited, people!

An Excellent Example in Branding

Do you know where I want to work? I want to work at Netflix. I mean, just read that ad:

Read it?

Good. Now go look at your employment page/site content/blog. Does it get people excited the way Netflix’s does? Do you encourage customers to be creative, promise a delightful experience, and exude a fun, caring attitude? If not, are you trying to sabotage your marketing efforts?

Everything that your company puts out should be written in the feeling that you’re trying to evoke from your customers. It should make them excited about investing their time or dollars with you. If it doesn’t do that, it’s time for a rewrite. And maybe time to go hire a better copywriter.

Fun Finds

Search Marketing Guru’s Alex Cohen was lucky enough to attend Mike Grehan’s eMetrics session Who Moved The Goal Posts? and provides us with a recap. Huzzah. (Hi, Mike!)

Search Engine Land issued The Big SMX Social Media NY ’07 Roundup. Go check it out and relive the show all over again.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/17/07 at 5:12 PM | Comments (1)
See more entries in Branding, SEO, Search Engine Optimization

Leveraging A Social Media Marketing Campaign

As I’ve already mentioned, my blood pressure was a bit heightened reading the recaps to this morning’s Effectively Leverage Social Media session. In it, Dave McClure, whom I respect very much and who is very intelligent, seemed to be advocating spamming Facebook’s News feed and tagging capabilities in order to market yourself and push content to users. He gave the example of tagging an SMX logo as “Vanessa Fox” or “Neil Patel” as a way of getting these people’s attention. As you can imagine, this quickly put people into fight mode.

Dave has since clarified his statements (via my Facebook wall, no less) but I think the following statement is worthy of another mention:

Marketing in the social networks does not equal spamming them. That is how you make your customers hate you.

When you start thinking about your social media marketing strategy, you should focus on listening to the community, understanding who they are and their value systems, and then creating content that benefits them, not you. Ask yourself what’s your purpose for entering and what you’re trying to get out of it. How much time are you going to invest? Will you have someone dedicated to advancing your social media goals? Is this person going to be an intern or someone who actually knows something about your company and its goals? As great (and cheap!) as interns are, I’d recommend the latter.

A big part to leveraging social media involves knowing where it’s appropriate to target and where you’re just asking for trouble. One of the reasons I think Dave’s comments put people into flight mode is because it looked like he was suggesting that advertisers throw out irrelevant URLs and tags on a site that most don’t even consider a marketing platform to begin with. If you ask the community, Facebook is a networking channel; it’s not a place for marketers to spam us to death. Know the difference and respect it.

In case you’re living under the same rock Susan is [Welcome! --Susan], sites like Facebook and LinkedIn are networking tools. If you want to market to me and try to get me to buy your silly product, go play in SecondLife or on MySpace. I’ll be way more receptive to your offer there. Even better, I won’t write a blog post about how absolutely clueless you are. This doesn’t mean you can’t brand yourself on sites like Facebook, it just means you have to be more subtle about it.

Ask Walmart. They gained some good press yesterday when they offered up a free Facebook gift in the form of a Walmart-branded ghost cookie. Was it silly? Yes. Did lots and lots of people pass it around to their friends? Yup. Are we talking about it today? You betcha!

At this point, I think many business owners understand the concept of having a MySpace page or creating a Facebook group in their namesake. However, that in no way qualifies as having a social media strategy. Leveraging social media entails creating something that will remain exciting and be able to hold the interest of community members. Throwing up a MySpace profile that just sits there, no matter how “pimped out” it is, isn’t going to do wonders for your site. It’s not going to make people want to interact with you. It may help you attract eyeballs, but eyeballs who gawk at you and offer nothing in return aren’t going to help you. It’s a bit like dating that way.

Marketing Pilgrim gave us a good example of leveraging social marketing media today with Evian Water Debuts in Second Life. The whole Second Life thing has long seemed crazy to me, but if you’re a marketer, it really is one of the best platforms available to you right now. I know, I was surprised too. What Evian did was create Evian-branded vending machines in the Second Life world. By buying Evian water, members can get new skin for their avatar, skin that is “more vibrant and [has] better texture”. Because, you know, water makes you healthier and stuff. How’s that for a strong signal?

If you’re going to try and brand your company behind the walls of social media, you have to be smart about your attack. There are so many companies competing for users' attention that you can’t just throw up a profile page and pray for the best. Search marketers must give users a compelling reason to pick them over the onslaught of others. You have to show them that your company has the same goals/beliefs/interests that the community does. And you can’t fake it. Your company actually has to align with their belief set. If you’re lying, they’ll know.

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/17/07 at 5:04 PM | Comments (1)
See more entries in Social Media

SMX Social Media, Day 2

The Lisa’s thoughts, impressions and ramblings on the sessions that made up Day 2 of Search Marketing Expo’s Social Media show.

Spamming Social Networks is Not “Leveraging” Them

Okay, kind of disappointed with this one and the flurry of text messages and Facebook wall messages I received this morning tell me I’m not the only one.

Dave McClure was part of this morning’s Effectively Leveraging Social Networking panel (along with Helen M. Overland and Cindy Krum) and gave a presentation on how to integrate Facebook into your marketing strategy.

Dave McClure was actually one of the reasons I wanted to attend this show, but now I’m glad I wasn’t there. I probably would have stood up and started yelling. Why? Because Dave essentially gave a presentation on how to spam Facebook (Dave later clarified his comments, which you can read about here). Not cool, especially when you consider that many of the people in the audience were SEOs--SEOs who are on Facebook and don’t want their community spammed.

Dave explained how you if you want someone to see something (a note, photo, video, etc) you can tag it with their name and then they’ll see it. Okay. Hopefully you’re only doing that if that people tagged are actually in the photo.

I’m sure I’ll elaborate on all this a little later in a separate blog post, but for now I’ll just say this. Trying to leverage social network sites for your marketing campaign is great. Spamming them and becoming a nuisance instead of a contributor is not. The end.

Recaps: Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land

Evangelist - The Marketer's Role in SMM

After the morning’s first session, this one seemed like a breath of fresh air.

I really like Rob Key’s statement that the role of a search marketer in social media is one of a cultural anthropologist. It’s about entering the various social sites, learning about the communities that exist there, and speaking their language.

I was really impressed to hear how Rob’s company was using Second Life in their marketing campaign. It seems like that space is starting to become really powerful for visibility, assuming you do it right, which it sounds like Rob’s company definitely is. Rob explained a bit about what his company did (again I wasn’t there so I’m stealing SER’s coverage):

“We became active and started understanding the community ethos. We spoke to elders and asked what to do with the community. We learned that environmentalism is important so we started a virtual tree initiative…The accolades came in from the global community and the Second Life community - they took ownership of it in their own way. People started to do things with programs that we haven't even fathomed. Let people start to own it. They started talking about dedicating trees to people who passed away in their memories. It became viral. Fifty thousand pages were indexed in search. American Express Member's Project selected this as a finalist. “

Awesome.

Another thing that struck me was Adam Sherk talking about how smaller companies are better equipped to take advantage of social media because they can react to stuff quicker than big brands can who have to go through legal and PR and all that nonsense. Totally true.

Recaps: Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land

Finding Topic-related Micro Communities

I’ll be the first one to admit that I really had no idea what a micro community was before I read the recap for this session (I’m super smart!). Now that I’ve been educated, I can proudly say that I knew what it was, I just didn’t know it was called. 

The most impressive thing about this session: Rand’s awesome overview of a bunch of the micro communities out there, including Care2, LibraryThing, Trulia, PeerTrainer, donorChoose, ThinkVitamin, Minti, DeviantArt, Threadless, Corkd, imbee, Virb, Wayfaring, CouchSurfing, Wikihow, Helium, Etsy, Avvo, Urbis, BakeSpace, FoodCandy, and of course, our own Sphinn.

Micro communities are super beneficial because of their ability to promote your brand. Participating in the community not only increases your exposure, but it helps you to brand yourself as an industry expert. Look at how people have been able to use Sphinn to market both themselves and their companies. It puts your name, face and brand in front of the people who matter most – your customers, as well as other industry experts. There’s no substitute for that kind of exposure.

Search Marketing Gurus’ Liana Evans was also on the panel and brought up a great point about “fishing where the fish are”. To be successful, search marketers need to find the micro communities that are best suited for them. Help narrow down the growing number of sites by considering membership numbers, topical focus, relevance, and how leverage-able the features are.

Recaps: Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land

Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers & Answer Sharing

You didn’t think you’d make it through the end of a social media conference without talking about Wikipedia, did you? Don’t be silly.

If you do want to hear all about the wonderfulness that is Wikipedia, you’re going to have to read the actual recaps. I’m not going to mention it.

For me, the awesomeness from this panel came from Matt McGee’s presentation on Yahoo! Answers. I knew Yahoo! Answers was a popular platform and that lots of people used it (I actually called upon it last night to see if black ants bite. Turns out they do), but I had no idea that it has made them the number 2 reference site on the Web or that it earned a 56 percent year over year growth. That’s massive.

Also impressive was that, according to Matt, Yahoo! Answers has brought the highest amount of new visitors with the lowest bounce rate to his site than any other source. Yowsa, those are some high-quality visitors. Also mentioned during the session is that search marketers should take advantage of the Answers RSS feed to help them stay up-to-date on industry-related topics.

Very smart. I think I know which site I’ll be playing with after I get off work tonight. Because yes, I do my work experimenting on my own time. Nerd? Yeah, that would be me.

Recaps: Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Journal

Posted by Lisa Barone on 10/17/07 at 3:45 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in SEM Events

October 16, 2007

Search Marketing Campaigns: Outsource or Bring It In House?

Sara Holoubek wrote a great article over at DMNews entitled The buy vs. build argument for SEM. The question at hand is what’s more efficient: partnering with a search agency and handing over your search marketing campaign to them, or trying to build that competency for yourself inhouse?

When you’re talking about running a paid search campaign, I think it depends on three things: The amount of time and money you have to spend, how many keywords you’re trying to target, and the amount of sleep to which you’ve grown accustomed.

If you’re a small to medium-sized company only going after a handful of keywords, then I think it’s totally feasible to try and build your competency inhouse. Put someone in charge of running your search marketing campaign, lead them to the education resources, set them up an AdWords/Y!SM/adCenter account and then turn them loose. Trial and error works wonders and there are plenty of bid management tools out there that will help them manage their campaigns. There’s no better way to learn about or get an appreciation for the industry then to jump in feet first and learn to swim.

And like I said, if you’re a