We see the value in Earth Day.  We recognize the importance of World Peace Day. In deference to our wife we think even Mother’s Day is OK. But Twitter Day?  Somehow Oprah coming online and saying “Hello Twitter World.” (or whatever) is not quite up there with the wizard of Menlo Park (Edison) calling one of his assistants for help! For the most part, we don’t really care that Oprah, Shaq,  Parris, Kutcher and a lot of other folks are thinking about or talking about.   Yet a million +/- folks have signed up and track their every 140 character utterance. Our son  - who has an account but is too busy instant messaging with his smartphone and Skyping on his notebook – made the observation that if you Twittered in the real world instead of on the Internet you’d be arrested for stalking! Heck we have people following our updates and all we have is a Twitter account…and we thought we didn’t have a life! But there is a growing Twitter population.  In just a couple of years it has grown to well more than 10 million according to ComScore. As Domino Pizza, Amazon and other firms are quickly realize the mob mentality can be a force to be reckoned with. In the old days you used email, the phone and if you wanted to use the wayback machine you sent a letter.

Hum of Noise

Today people young and old can’t stand the vacuum of silence and we rush to take advantage of every personal and social networking tool that is available.  Twitter and other microblogging tools caught the attention of people everywhere when terrorists attacked the hotel in India and when the US Air plane went down in the Hudson River.  Instantly people around the globe could see the news first hand.  News media incorporated the citizen journalists’ inputs with their coverage seamlessly.

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Today’s Web 2.0 social media environment offers a tremendous opportunities for companies to closely engage with customers, prospects and market segments in a positive, mutually beneficial manner.  The problem arises when marketing and communications people view these new 1:1 outlets as a great marketing/sales and PR pitching opportunities.  They forget that the individuals if not treated properly and with professional respect can turn and instead of being the ones who are being hunted can become the hunters.  People - regular folks - can be mean and brutal if they are abused.  Marketeers need to know the pros/cons, challenges/opportunities.  Consumers need to know that they have a powerful platform to strike back and cause real damage. It requires a mutual understanding on both sides and a meaningful two way relationship otherwise…duck.

“Nothing in those files makes their sacrifice worthwhile. You have to let go. We’re professionals, when an operation goes bad, we tie it off. ” – Ward Abbott (Brian Cox) – The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

The world of new media – widgets and social applications – looks like a beautiful marketing hunting grounds.

It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

Imagine people flock to Web 2.0 locations where they blog.

They upload/download audios/videos of specific interest to them.

They congregate at business/special interest web sites to gain information and be entertained.

They twitter.

They gather daily/nightly in online communities to exchange information, news and just hang out.

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There is so much information floating around out there about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how to get some rankings.  So much of it is contradictory and confusing.   I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about the secrets of top rankings. 

So, let’s jump right in with the secrets to SEO success…

Search Engine Secret # 1: There are no secrets!  The search engines make it all very public and clear what you need to do to get top rankings.  The success lies in the details and proper implementation.  But there is no top secret, proprietary technique for getting top rankings.

OK, so now we all know there are no secrets, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t information you need to know, such as:

If you don’t optimize your site, you won’t get top rankings.  It really is that plain and simple.  If the engines can’t spider your site and you don’t have links and strong content, you don’t stand a chance against the sites that do have all that in place.  So many people don’t want to spend money on SEO, or are afraid to take the plunge but then they can’t understand why they don’t have rankings.  So maybe there is a secret – maybe the secret is take action and get your site optimized!

Your site structure matters!  I can’t tell you how often people have said to me “I know my site is a mess, but I don’t want to spend the money fixing it, so can’t you just throw up some keywords and Meta tags and get me some rankings?”   Ummmm, no, I can’t.  Your site structure is your foundation.  You would never build a house without a solid foundation, why would you build an SEO campaign without a solid foundation? 

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Larry Page and Sergey Brin are famous entrepreneurs that fulfilled the lifelong dream of many individuals all over the world by creating something from scratch that effectively made them billionaires. In fact, they did not just create any old thing but the company that revolutionized our use of the Internet. They founded Google Inc and the Google search engine. Both Page and Brin are still in their thirties and are worth around $18.7 billion each as of February 2008. Their entrepreneurial skills are an inspiration to millions, who all dream of doing the same thing.

Google Founders - The Early Years

Both Larry Page and Sergey Brin come from an extremely academic background. Larry Page, who was born on March 26, 1973, is the son of an influential and esteemed computer science professor, Doctor Carl Page. His mother also taught computer science at Michigan State University. As such, it was perhaps inevitable that he would also dedicate his academic career and his life to the sciences. He achieved a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Michigan before moving on to Stanford University, which is where he met Sergey Brin.

Sergey Brin, on the other hand, serves as a different sort of inspiration. Larry Page proved that anything was possible in the entrepreneurial world with a good education, but Sergey Brin became an entrepreneur despite extremely humble beginnings. He was born in the Soviet Union in August 21, 1973 to a mother and father that were both mathematicians. Feeling that they could not give their children the life they deserved, Michael and Evgenia Brin moved to the United States in 1979. He followed the same academic path as his family but moved into computer science at the University of Maryland before enrolling in Stanford University.

The Making Of Google

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If you aren’t creating a monthly newsletter you are missing out on an opportunity to market to your list. Newsletters help establish your credibility, keep you top of mind for your prospects and allow you to make special offers to your list. Please note a paid newsletter needs to be informative and doesn’t always offer the same sales opportunities. However a freebie newsletter can have ads, special offers and promotions and more.

If you are running a monthly newsletter, it is important to make sure you are getting the most out of it. Here are some things you should keep in mind month after month as you work on your newsletter.

1. Determine what your readers want - If you aren’t covering topics they are interested in, no one is going to want to read it. And although your newsletter should promote your business, it’s also meant to establish your credibility and build your relationship with your prospects and customers. Be sure to discuss topics of interest and value for your customers and prospects.

2. Personalize your newsletter - there are hundreds of newsletters circulating on the Internet and in the mail. You need to make your newsletter stand out from the crowd. Making your newsletter uniquely you will make a difference. So be real. Feel free to include personality and emotion in your newsletter. Create a template with a look and feel that your prospects will associate with you and get to know.

3. Make it look good - people will first judge your newsletter by appearance and if it doesn’t look professional and compelling they won’t bother reading it. Also, remember to keep it brief. Use bullets and appealing headlines. And include graphics.

4. Ask for feedback and opinions from readers - include your readers in the process. Invite them to provide feedback and then actually implement some of their suggestions.

5.

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With so much talk about social media these days, everyone is jumping on board and trying it out.  We are seeing some common mistakes out there and I thought it was important to address these mistakes to help eradicate them in the future.

Don’t get me wrong, there will be a learning curve – we all went through it (and I met some great people that helped me, and that I helped along the way) but the key is to learn up front to minimize errors!

So, here we go…

Mistake One: Completely Ignoring Social Media

Believe it or not there are still some people out there that are ignoring social media.  They may be unsure of how to participate or maybe they just don’t have time to get involved.  No matter what the reason, this is a big mistake.  Social media continues to grow in popularity and in importance to internet users - the exact users you are trying to reach.
                    

Mistake Two: Bare Profiles

If you don’t bother completing your profile people won’t be able to get to know you.  It is also a sign to other users that you aren’t serious about participating on that site.  Many spammers don’t bother to complete their profile and a blank profile has become a red flag.

Your profile should include a custom background when possible, a photo, contact information, and a list of interests to help people get to know you better.

Don’t be afraid to show some personality and let people really get to know you and your company and what you stand for.
                   

Mistake Three: Faking It

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As a website owner, I’m sure you are always looking for new sources of traffic.  Have you considered Google News?  If you regularly publish news in your industry and want to be seen as a source for news you can request Google include your  site. 

This can be a great source of traffic and an excellent way to boost credibility for your company.

There are some important details you need to be aware of in order to increase your chances of Google including your site.

First and foremost, you have to request that Google include your site by visiting: http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/request.py.

Here is some of the criteria Google is looking for.

Make sure that your pages that display the full text of news articles have unique URLs so that the Google is able to index each story individually. URLs with more than one article will not be included on Google News. 

The URL for each article must contain a unique number consisting of at least three digits, and should not resemble a date.  I’ve often heard you should aim for more than six digits to be safe. 

Here is what Google says about this: We can’t crawl an article with this URL: http://www.google.com/news/article23.html. We can, however, crawl an article with this URL: http://www.google.com/news/article234.html Keep in mind that if the only number in the article consists of an isolated four-digit number that resembles a year, such as http://www.google.com/news/article2006.html, we won’t be able to crawl it.

Make sure content on your news site is original.  You can’t republish a CNN story and expect Google to include your site in the News search results pages.

Your site should have more than one author. You should also have a page listing  all of the authors with their bios.

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Below are some of the crucial items you should have on your Blog. Take a look at this list and your Blog and see how you measure up. I can tell you that I did it myself and I had to create an action plan to fix my own Blog.

You see, just because I know what needs to be done doesn’t mean I always have time to implement it myself.

It is like the shoe cobbler’s children going to school with their shoes falling apart. I am so busy helping clients, I don’t have time to work on my own things.

The same may be true for you. You are so busy but you know you want to, actually you need to, Blog. So you start it and don’t necessarily have everything in place.

That’s OK. The key is to find out where you are lacking and create an action plan so you can take steps towards getting everything in place,

So, here is your checklist. Do you have:

A strategy in place? Do you know why are you Blogging? What are you hoping to accomplish? Do you know how often you have to Blog, what types of posts you need in order to accomplish your objective?

A posting schedule? Ideally you should have at least 2 new posts a week, and up to 5. Less than 2 is too little, and over 5 is often too much (unless you are a great writer and have lots of news and information to share, so you aren’t just writing fluff).

A comment policy? Do you moderate? If so, how long does it take to approve comments.

An ‘About Us’ section? Since Blogging is about connecting, sharing information and creating dialog to form relationships, you need to be sure to tell people who you are and what you are all about. Including contact information is a good idea

A Blogroll? Be sure to include NON company links. Point your readers to sites/blogs that you think THEY would be interested in reading.

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