We had a Secret Santa gift exchange this morning and wouldn’t you know, Bruce got just what was on his wish list! A Shake Weight! This is Bruce’s “how did Santa know?!” face. Our gift to you!

Audience: Eternal optimists
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

It may be the time of year but I can’t help but be hopelessly upbeat about the future. From the look of my Facebook and Twitter feed, I know I’m not alone in this feeling. Let’s frolic a moment in the rosy revelry brought on by glittering lights, the promise of presents and brandy-warmed bellies.

Public outlook on the Internet seems more overwhelmingly positive than usual. Stories are cropping up on everything from increased consumer spending this season, signs of moderate economic growth, online ad spend blooming in the new year, and the upward trajectory of online marketing fluency by businesses of all sizes.

If you’re up for it, here are 3 noteworthy life lessons (applicable to life, of both the business and pleasure variety) that had an effect on me today, and which I hope might do the same for you. Some conveyed new perspectives, and others were welcomed reminders that, when kept at top of mind, make life that much sweeter.

Lesson 1: Your difference is your greatest selling point. Make it work for you.

Case in point: Have you got 17 minutes to become a better businessperson? A better communicator? A more fulfilled human being? Watch this. I don’t want to spoil the journey, but the quote at the end really brought it home for me.

Lesson 2: Engagement is important, but don’t forget about the payoff: data.

Case in point: In analyzing what characterized the top 5 tech companies, industry watcher John Batelle names deep engagement resulting in the collection of useful data. Your company should not be so unlike Google, Amazon and others among the highest echelons of those brands deeply embedded in American lives.

Lesson 3: Stealing isn’t always wrong. “The best writers are thieves.“

Case in point: This Thursday I’ll be attending the Copyblogger Headline Clinic and we’ve been given some homework to complete beforehand. We’re to read “52 Headline Hacks: A ‘Cheat Sheet’ for Writing Blog Posts That Go Viral”. It starts out with the lesson above, which is one I’m familiar with but could stand to be reminded of every so often.

Are you among those taking the time to appreciate where they are, both personally and professionally?

Any mental highlights spark your interest you’d care to share?

I’m coming off the high of hobnobbing with sexypants DJ Flula last night.

That’s Gracie and me at Avalon with our favorite YouTube comedy star killing the camera with a blue steel stare. This is right before he went to prep for his MC duties, a ritual he described as staring at himself in the mirror and crying. They say comedy comes from a dark place.

But I’m not here to bum you out, man. That’s what Monday’s for, and we’re about to roll into the weekend so sink your earbuds into this!

Jess, Bruce and Shannon light up Vegas at PubCon next week. Jess is liveblogging and heading up the BCI spirit committee, so I beg you please buy this girl a drink when you find her tearing about the convention center like decapitated poultry.

There’s also the very important business of the Google freshness algo update that was announced this week. What you need to know:

• Google is now able to better determine when to deliver more up-to-date results for varying degrees of freshness based on relevancy to query.
• The algorithm update affects 35 percent of queries. This is double the amount of queries previously impacted by freshness ranking factors. Compare this to Panda, which affected 12 percent of queries.
• Affected queries include recent events or hot topics, regularly recurring events or subjects with frequent updates.
• Twitter updates are still not included within Google search results.

The just-released 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report report finds that SEO beats out PPC and social media marketing as the best lead getter for both B2C and B2B. At the same time, budgets are generally expected to rise across all online marketing channels. No shock there, but you may be more surprised to learn that 64 percent of all online spending is controlled by just five companies.

An interesting case study on what NOT to do in social media is unfolding at ChapStick. Basically, avoid ChapStick’s patented three-step process:

1. Use provocative image in ad campaign.
2. Delete negative Facebook comments regarding said image.
3. Look dumb.

If that’s what dumb looks like, what does smart look like? In my mind, smart has tortoise-shell glasses, an ascot and a glass of red perched in one hand. If you’ve ever embodied this strain of smart, you may have impressed your friends by pointing out the earthy notes and plum finish of your fine grape elixir. Here’s trivia to impress them even further: the music playing while one drinks wine influences taste in a major way.

As marketers we’re keenly aware that the words we choose can either work to influence our audience or fall flat. I highly recommend everyone read this list of recommendations to hone a writing style that’s highly persuasive, culled by the leading community of rationalists on the Web.

Content is king may be cliche… but you know it’s true! So consider the role of a content strategist for your marketing team — nay, for the health of your business!

Seems like both yesterday and forever ago that we mourned the loss of technology’s greatest visionary, Steve Jobs. If you haven’t yet read it, Mona Simpson, novelist and Steve’s sister, penned a eulogy that brings to life one of the most vibrant minds of our time.

Of course, time keeps pressing forward for all of us, and it’s interesting to see what a blip we’ve been on the universe’s radar.

We do what we can to enjoy ourselves while we can and make a difference in the world. In the story of how the graphing calculator came to the computered masses, we see a man and a community who devoted themselves to a computer programming project with a selflessness I’ve rarely seen.

Now go out there and enjoy the world this weekend. If you need anything, you know where to find me!

Bruce Clay, Inc. wishes you a spooktacular day!

View all our Halloween pics on flickr.

Happy Friday, boos and ghouls. If you <3 Halloween as much as I do, you already have your two+ costumes ready for the festivities.  I, for one, am relieved that the whole bite-size candy thing is going away in less than a week (Bruce, please stop filling your candy dish up after Monday. K thanks). Let’s start the Friday Recap off with some modern-day juggling art, shall we?

In social sharing news, StumbleUpon builds a case for longer content shelf life in this infographic on the lifecycle of a Web page on StumbleUpon. Explain this one though: a post we wrote about WordStream more than a year ago on the Bruce Clay blog consistently grows it tweets month over month, and is the highest-grossing tweet count we’ve ever seen on any of our posts. Thoughts?

Speaking of Twitter, looks like it  rolled out a new timeline feature that allows users to click on individual tweets to expand the conversation and follow other things like retweets. Thank you, Twitter, you just increased my productivity by 10 percent.

We can always learn something from those businesses that have wildly popular marketing campaigns (Old Spice, anyone?), and today’s lesson comes from McDonald’s and its mysterious McRib offering. The lesson? Scarcity and elusiveness in a product offering creates buzz and yearning for said product – if it’s well-known and likes to begin with.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll remember how devoid of quality and logic 75 percent of the movies out there are in this parody on modern-day films; it’s Shark Pool, a tale of young friends whose pool party takes a turn for the worse when it becomes infested with a shark. Watch as these young adults, caught in emotional turmoil, try to figure out how not to get killed by the shark in the pool.

Really, Google?

– This post showed up on Tosh.0 this week; after I laughed out loud, I performed the search myself and didn’t get the same results, so either the queries were manipulated on purpose prior to get this, or it’s the result of behavioral targeting for this person is my guess.

Barbie caused a stir this week when the tattooed edition of the doll from L.A.-based fashion company Tokidoki went up for sale. Mounds of news bits on how this doll was not appropriate for children feverishly hit the wire, while everyone seemed to be missing the point: this was a limited-edition doll created for adults. Some parents said the tattooed doll was not giving children a positive image. Really? ‘Cause I thought the whole unrealistic representation of female beauty that Barbie has always represented to young girls might be the bigger problem – no?

The Internet world is a very unpredictable one; what’s here one day, is gone the next. Nostradamus may have been hard-pressed to make predictions in modern day tech events. In this post on SteelCast, author Courtney Bishop talks about predictions in Internet and tech that never quite came true. Bruce Clay is also in the predictions business; if anyone wants their fortunes read, we’re setting up a crystal ball in the corner of his office, fortune-teller hat and all.

Over at PotPieGirl.com, the topics of how Google makes algorithm changes and how humans make a difference to your site’s ranking is discussed. The post covers everything from how Google’s algo changes to how to survive a manual review of your site by Google. We’ve also had some related posts, like how to create quality content on the Web, and how to keep Panda happy with your site.  Check ‘em out!

Welp, that wraps it up for today — excuse me while I go get my sugar buzz on. If you celebrate it, have a great Halloween weekend, everyone.

You come here on Fridays for one very good reason: to be entertained. I can’t promise to go as far as BCI’s BFF YouTube sensation DJ Flula to keep viewers, or in this case readers, happy. But I will use the next 500 or so words to try to seduce a smile from you.

Just a week and a half before Halloween! I’ve taken it upon myself to construct Daily Candy’s Halloween-themed playlist with YouTube videos, so feel free to turn up the volume and get grooving to some monstrous mood music.

Know what puts me in a good mood? Yoga, a massage and laundry service, am I right? All in a day’s work for employees at Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other Internet giants.

On the other end of the biz size spectrum, small businesses may want to look to Starbucks for more than the pick-me-up from caffeine. The coffee house is looking to enter the small biz lending arena, financed by donations from customers in a campaign tagged “Americans Helping Americans.”

Today Google dedicated a Doodle to Disney artist Mary Blair on what would have been her 100th birthday.

Speaking of helping out Americans, much of the country is eager to get its hands on tech’s newest personal assistant, Siri. I’m impressed by her resourcefulness and wit, but I never considered why she’s a she in the first place. So here, some interesting points on the female voice and human perception.

Social media experts shared their perceptions of emerging marketing opportunities for agencies at the Be On the Look Out conference. Raven has compiled 10 important SMM trends to look out for as shared by the speakers. Even if you’ve heard some of these before, take a minute to think of how you can position your organization ahead of the curve and avoid playing catch up.

Some news needs no introduction. M.C. Hammer launched a search engine. Yup.

It’s been a whirlwind week here in the BCI office. I hope you’ll check out Bruce’s probing insights into what Google might really be doing in introducing encrypted search. And also please enjoy October’s SEO Newsletter. If you’re a subscriber, I hope you’ll accept our apologies for any confusion that may have been caused by missing article’s. They’re available now, with double the global flavor.

I’ll leave you with final words of wisdom: Life is complicated enough. Remove the onions from your varnish.

Ahhh, Friday. You make me very happy. You know what else makes me happy? Virginia was nice enough to share with me all the things that happened this week for today’s Friday Recap. Because some weeks, I am a cave-dweller. I’m glad Virginia is still cool enough to keep us going. Let’s start of with a video clip that had us dyin’ in here all day yesterday:

This week, we lost a visionary, Steve Jobs. This post, written by Jobs’ neighbor, was actually written weeks ago before he passed. I agree with Virginia, who shared this link, that it paints a moving picture of the man behind the Apple.

And a New York Times blog post by journalist David Carr reflects on his connection with Jobs through his reporting career, and commends Jobs for never being just another “suit” in the business world.

The folks at BlueGlass share ways to use social media to network and connect in new ways in order to land the job you want. Not surprising, as it’s often all about who you know, and social mediums are breaking down the conventional walls between candidate and decision maker.

Breaking scientific news: women have stronger immune systems than men (so many jokes I want to insert right now). ScienceDaily reports the X chromosome actually leads to a stronger immune system in women and, says the report, is why women are less likely than men to develop cancer.

And in not-so-scientific news, looks like Nestle Purina created a dog food commercial specifically targeted to dogs, with special sounds incorporated to get the attention of Fido during commercial break. I’m not quite sure how this would in any way impact sales, but it’s an interesting concept. In fact, just recently, Virginia told me she knew someone who is working to develop shows for a canine TV channel – with show themes and production techniques geared towards the way dogs hear, see and learn.

Tosh.0 shared a photo this week that proves all the fancy calculators and computers we have at our disposal these days leaves no room for basic math skills.

So, maybe NFL players aren’t so savvy when it comes to social media etiquette. This infographic from Mindflash shares with us some of the more memorable tweets from our beloved athletes.

We’ll leave you with a memorable quote, a palindrome Virginia discovered in her Facebook feed:

“Go hang a salami, I’m a lasagna hog.”

In the immortal words of Rebecca Black:

Friday, Friday
Gettin’ down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend
Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah)
Fun, fun, fun, fun

Do a little partying for me while you’re at it. I’ll be getting myself in gear for SMX East next week. Lisa Buyer and I have committed ourselves (and I do mean straight jacket committed) to liveblogging 15 sessions during the week. Plus I’ll be reviving my roving reporter role for SEM Synergy along with keeping dates with some of my favorite industry and Gothamites.

Birthday dude Tony Adam is one man I’ll be buying a drink for in the Big Apple. This week Tony thoughtfully prodded us to think for ourselves, sharing his own story of how these simple but potent words have shaped his life in wonderful and unexpected ways.

Birthday wishes are also in order for the beautiful Golden State, California, who turns 161 today. You were the 31st state, but always the first in my heart. Commemoration is also in order for Star Trek, which marked its 45th anniversary this week.

And on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I know we’ll all be taking a moment in our own way to remember brave Americans, our many blessings, and the unbreakable pride we have in being part of this great nation.

Remembering the past can hurt, but it can also empower. We can read the past to see a clearer future. The Evolution of the Web was a stand-out visualization I came across this week, both for showing how interactive infographics can redeem some novelty for the medium and for illustrating the complex history and interactions of Web technologies over time.

Technologies, as we know, phase out other technologies over time. The U.S. Postal Service seems to be the latest vicitm of this effect thanks to e-mail. The snail mail service is looking at major cuts immediately and a possible shut down by this winter.

Facebook, darling of perhaps the most popular Web genre ━ that is, social media ━ has been moving itself forward this week, testing friend filters, News Feed organization and sharing controls.

Do you have time to kill and have exhausted your Facebook feed? Venture at your own risk into the wonderland that is the Sleep Talkin’ Man‘s colorful sleepscape. Hat tip to our own Mike Thompson for introducing the office to the delightful nightly dream drama. My favorite so far is the turd turtle. Share yours in the comments?

Some are calling the newest Nike a dream come true. A 1500 pair limited run of the Nike Air Mag, a recreation of Marty McFly’s Back the Future sneaker, will be made and auctioned on eBay. All net proceeds of the shoe (sans self-lacing capacity) will go to the Michael J. Fox Foundation and its efforts to eradicate Parkinson’s disease.

While time travel is still a major mystery, scientists remain hard at work at solving mysteries of the human mind. My favorites this week include research into free will and the brain (studies of brain activity suggests decisions are made at least 7 seconds before a conscious awareness of that decision is reached) and tips for avoiding decision fatigue (the will power you use up throughout the day to help you make choices).

Now go out and make good (read: fun) choices this weekend and I’ll see you next week in New York!

Anyone else looking forward to the long weekend? I, for one, am ready to soak up the last bits of summer complete with poolside drinks and good music. Is it bad that I didn’t even know the origin of Labor Day until just today? No, it’s not derived from what I thought was a systematic honoring of all the hard work we Americans do. Labor Day actually stems from a controversial event that happened back in the late 1800s involving the killing of people on strike by U.S. Marshals. Party time?

Speaking of party time, it’s been a fun-filled week here at Bruce Clay, Inc. Most notably, we are really excited at the turnout in the chat room and the engagement around this week’s SEM Synergy show. If you missed it, you can read all the SEM Synergy highlights and inside scoop that covers topics ranging from Affiliate Summit to hacking and website backup to Google+.

And of course, you can tune in to the recorded session any time. Someone in the Webmaster Radio chat room recently said they would listen to SEM Synergy while biking, mountain climbing and fishing. Now that’s dedication!

Let’s get into this week’s chit-chat, shall we?

Branded content is the creation of advertising content that incorporates brands in subtle ways. The key? The content has to be engaging enough for people to want to consume it first, and then the brand plugs follow in a very subtle manner. Think product placement in movies and it’s kind of the same thing. Looks like Red Bull understands branded content. Wouldn’t it be great if we could actually stomach all the commercial ads that accost us each day?

Welp, it’s official. I’m at that age where I can say I’m older than some sort of technological advancement that changed the world. Yes, folks, I’m older than e-mail. Guess that’s better than saying I’m older than dirt. This week, e-mail turned 29. So, happy birthday, e-mail. You cause lots of joy, but mostly you irritate me during the weekdays. However, I couldn’t live without you.

Speaking of the birth of things, the creation of the word “nerd” has a very mysterious background with several charming possibilities behind it. One theory suggests it comes from a 1950 Dr. Seuss story called, “If I Ran the Zoo,” which features several fantastical creatures, one of them a nerd. And without the word “nerd,” there would have been no Nerds candy, of which I nourished myself for the majority of my high school years. True story.

Questions about the First Amendment and Twitter have come into play with a case surrounding one man and his threatening tweets about Buddhist leader Alyce Zeoli. This is just one example of how the government plans to handle our right to free speech as forms of communication continue to expand.

Is that a good segue into some Google+ talk? One blog post ponders the meaning of a recent statement by Google’s Eric Schmidt that Google+ is primarily an identity service.

Are you a try-before-you-buy kinda person? So are a lot of people, according to this post on trust and conversion rates by Oil Gardner from Unbounce. If you have an ebook or white paper, the research suggests that there’s no need to put good quality content under lock and key aka asking for an e-mail address, in order to facilitate a conversion.

The HP TouchPad is reportedly the No. 2 best-selling tablet next to iPad, yet it’s planning to be discontinued. But not without one last round of inventory being pushed out and HP reducing the remaining inventory to just $100 a pop.

Cloud computing? Nah. Tad with the groovy ‘stache says the IT plan from the back of his van is better:

Forget Black Hat or White Hat; Angie Schottmuller argues that it’s the color of your Lightsaber in the SEO wars that really matters. What color is yours?

Hey, you ever think about the value you can create with the resources and skills available to you? Chris Dixon talks about ways we can impact the world through our careers. I like that idea.

I’ll wrap up with a roundup of this week’s BCI blog posts, in case you missed ‘em:

• Monday: Cleaning Up Trashy Web Content: How to Create Posts That Don’t Stink
• Tuesday: A Case for Redefining SEO: Embracing Content Marketing
• Wednesday: How to Get a Handle on Your Social Media Schedule

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Just wanna say I had a blast with SEM Synergy today!

First off, the chat room was bumping! I hesitate to count unhatched chickens, but there’s clearly signs of life creeping back into the WebmasterRadio.fm chat room during our time slot.

Since the show started back up, it’s been a quiet few weeks in the chat room. The SEM Synergy chat room used to host a weekly lunch time party, so the sound of crickets serenading Jess, Brasco and me lately was starting to become rather depressing. We knew that it would take some time to build back up the audience and chat room visitors. And the fact that the show switched from Wednesdays at noon Pacific to Thursdays at noon Pacific may have complicated things.

But lo and behold, not only has life force returned to the show’s chat, but it was a regular lol-apalooza in there today as we were joined by today’s guest, Jonah Stein, Small Biz Local Discovery Contest participant Samara Hart and some of the more colorful cast members of Bruce Clay, Inc. (I’m totally looking at you, Aaron, Bradley, Grace, and Matt. And that’s a good thing.)

Second, the show was an absolute delight! Susan made a special appearance from the other side (read: unemployed) as she griped about social network privacy concerns as only she can. Granted, it was a segment recorded in a galaxy far, far away, and there were some points made moot by recent changes to Google+ guidelines and Facebook sharing features. Still it’s crazy to think of how far the expectations of privacy have come since we first set up personal identities on the Web. That convo is as relevant today as ever.

Of course, our guest Jonah added to the flavor of the show, telling his compelling story of combating virtual blight! What epic battle does we speak of?

“You come across these forums that are kind of like ghost ships flying through cyberspace. No one’s actually human been on there for years and years because it’s been overrun by these spambots and people marketing back and forth. And what I realized is twofold. First of all: these kind of parasitic marketers could actually destroy a community very quickly because as soon as the signal to noise ratio got too high, people ran away and abandoned ship. It was really hard for anybody to maintain a community like that unless they had a critical mass of community members who would enforce it. That was sort of the beginning of the virtual blight conversation.”

It’s sad when good neighborhoods go bad. The scary thing is, your website is vulnerable to the no-good swindlers, too.

“In terms of malware and how prevalent it is, you know, there’s been a lot of studies that have come out, including some by Google and others that say as much as one-and-a-half percent of the sites that show up in search results are actually infected. Some data indicates that when you get into a trending topic with news, that number is closer to 40 or 50 percent.”

Jonah is the evangelist of a startup that helps businesses prevent the damaging after effects of a hack. CodeGuard backs up your site and alerts you if changes are made to it. What can a hacker do with your site if they get in? Well, a lot of things, actually.

“What happens is that people will basically hack a website and take control of it for nefarious purposes. Now some of them want to distribute malware or scareware, which is another subtopic. Some of them want to do the sort of classic hidden links and SEO-related black hat techniques. Some of them simply steal your traffic and redirect them to offshore pharmaceutical company or whatever their particular monetization method is.

I got involved with that topic broadly and what we identified is so many small businesses didn’t really have the technical ability to maintain their site and protect themselves against attack. That really came home because one of my clients was attacked and their website was hacked and they were calling me asking if I had the backup for their site so they could restore it. I realized, if you’re calling your SEO to try to restore your website you probably have problems.”

I want to thank Jonah for coming on the show to share his message with us. It’s startling how many sneaks are out there, and when it comes to your business, it’s hard to envision being too prepared. And I want to thank everyone who was in the chat for making my day so bright. I hope next time you can join us, too! And I want to thank Jorge for putting the show together in stellar fashion, as always. And while I’ve got the podium, I’ll thank Jess for making this little office we share so bright and positive. </sappy thank you speech> [Awwww, the feeling is mutual, V! -- Jess ]

Hope you enjoy today’s podcast on online privacy and security as much as I did. Man, I have a feeling it’s going to be a good Friday tomorrow!