Social Media Summit Day 2 – Take Aways

By E. Brown

Day 2 is down but not out. In today’s line up was Mari Smith, Jason Alba, and Ann Handley. Mari covered the in’s and out’s of using Facebook for business while Jason revealed the power and reach of using LinkedIn. Finally, Ann ended the day with her Top 5 reasons to be on Twitter and listed some of the tools she uses.

My take aways from the today’s Summit are listed below. I have broken then down by Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Facebook
Create a loyal following by:

1. Optimizing your profile
2. Choosing your core message
3. Creating a fan page
4. Adding “friends” strategically
5. Thinking about relationships first
6. Creating viral visibility
7. Running tests with social ads
8. Adding Facebook to your overall marketing strategy

Also, use Friendfeed.com as another means to networking and creating community. You can pull your Twitter tweeps, Facebook friends, and Google contacts in as well.

LinkedIn

• Create a comprehensive and complimentary Social Strategy for your organization
• Tie your Twitter tweets to your LinkedIn status updates
• Use keyword phrases in your profile summary
• Export your LinkedIn contacts to a personal database for backup and mining
• Use the Slideshare app for displaying presentations
• 2-Minute Per Week Strategy = accepting/rejecting connections and asking/answering questions

Twitter
Why use Twitter? Here are several reasons:

• Create a strong community of followers
• Use it to provide Customer Service
• Stronger brand awareness
• Networking
• Monitoring the online community conversation in regard to your organization

Tools to use:
- search.twitter.com
- backtweets.com
- bit.ly
- Tweetie (iPhone app)

Related Links
- Social Media Summit Day 1
- Social Media Summit Day 2

WeirdGuy Blog Needs You!

Message From Eric - a.k.a. the WeirdGuy

As a reader of WeirdGuy blog I’d like to humbly ask you to help me. I have a short 10 question survey running from August 28 – September 7, 2008 on Zoomerang.  The survey should take 2-3 minutes to run through. Your thoughtful responses will aid me in future developments for this blog.

I realize I am asking you to volunteer your time, but I value your opinion. Please follow the link provided today — the survey is only available for 10 days.

And, if the survey takes longer than 2-3 minutes then you can feel free to spam me with your hate mail.

Thank you for your patronage…can I say “patronage”?…whatever, you know what I mean.

By the way, I’ll reveal the findings here on WeirdGuy when the survey is up, so if you want your response to count, now is the time to act…now! If you do not care, then what are you doing here at WeirdGuy blog to begin with?

Time Off WeirdGuy Blog – Just One Week

By E. Brown

I’ll be taking a week off to focus on closing out a project (July 28-August 1). More to come from the lessons learned during this engagement. It’s a really cool online course with custom hooks into a client app. The back-end was designed as “plug and play” so content can quickly and easily be swapped out while still being applicable to the course testing and grading scenarios.

See you in a week.

5 Effective (Though Less Obvious) Powers Of A Press Release

What is the goal of a press release? You’re probably thinking, ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ The hope is that your press release gets picked up by your media of choice and you get free advertising. Marketers dream their press release will wind up as the main headline on the front page. And it’s true: The value of being on the editorial pages of the media is priceless. But what some marketers don’t consider are the hidden advantages, the less obvious but equally powerful benefits of P.R.

1. Improves Internal Communication And Messaging
Communicating effectively to employees is more than good H.R. – it’s essential to retention and relationship building. Employees don’t want to learn about their company’s accomplishments over the news or online. They should hear it first from the source: their employer’s communications department.

Making your press release accessible to employees — via a company newsletter, corporate intranet, or company website – is effective internal communication and plays a valuable role in professional development. Furthermore, when written properly, the press release is chock full of corporate messaging, and serves as a “key message” document, which employees can use when speaking with clients and prospects. It’s a great way to build consistent messaging throughout the organization.

2. Boosts Search Results
The content in press releases is by nature rich with key words, making it high-value content for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Press releases increase the value of your website in the eyes of search engines, as well as encourage other sites to link to yours. This inbound linking is also highly valued by search engines and can lead to much higher organic SEO ranking.

To get even more back-links, submit your press releases to free PR submission websites. A live link from the press release back to the website owner’s site will be posted on most of the syndicated places that the press release shows up. The more channels you reach out to, the better chance you have of getting picked up in the search engines.

The residual online benefit for the press release publisher is the coveted fresh content that is so hard to come by on the Internet today. Your website stays relevant and up-to-date with the latest news.

3. Defines Your Company As A Leader
When journalists use your press release to write about your products, they provide an independent review that creates credibility. When consumers read press releases, it strengthens their perceptions of your brand. Included as part of a company’s integrated marketing program, the press release reinforces branding, boosts loyalty and contributes to sales results.

4. Works In Your Marketing Tool Kit
Get double duty from your press releases, by including them in collateral, or information kits. Too often, salespeople starve for tools that will support and improve their sales efforts. A well-stocked arsenal of sales materials—the marketing toolkit—is crucial to successful sales efforts. When left with prospects, along with case studies, fact sheets and other collateral, the press release is a fundamental tool for arming salespeople with materials they can use to “get in the door,” ensuring the right message is delivered and keeping your name in front of the client long after the initial sales call.

5. Broadens The Net To Prospects
A release can be distributed to a range of publications through paid news services, sent directly from your communications department to targeted members of the media, and can be posted on your company website for potentially thousands of people to view. You broaden the audience who learns about your company – and ensure that your brand is well-known in your industry.

Put together a P.R. plan that includes distributing and posting press releases on a regular basis and you will start reaping hidden benefits of a press release.

–Source: Media Brains May 2008 issue

Additional Reading
- Grow Your Network And Make Your Contacts Work For You
- SEO: The Elusive Target
- Free SEO and Blog Rank Tools
- SEO Design Tips – Part 1
- SEO Design Tips – Part 2

Weird Week In Review – May 16

In case you missed last week, here is your one stop review of all things from WeirdGuy blog. Have fun!

SEO Design Tips – Part 1

SEO Design Tips – Part 2

Related Links
- Weird Week In Review (May 9)
- Weird Week In Review (May 2)
- Weird Week In Review (Apr. 25)

Share This With Others

SEO Design Tips – Part 2

By Barry Fenning

If your visitors like your Web site, there is a very good likelihood that the search engines will, too. Here are the last 5 tips from Barry Fenning, that focus on how to develop your site with your visitors in mind, and also effectively conduct search engine optimization.

6. Descriptively label your links and images (aka, the “anchor text”)
This technique is both common sense and good practice. Saying “click here” is not enough to help visitors understand what they’re going to find once they click through. Be as descriptive as possible with every text and graphical link on your site. When writing your anchor text and alt attributes, you can almost always describe the page you’re pointing to by using its main keyword phrase. That is an important factor that search engines take into account when it comes to ranking your Web pages.

7. Make sure your site is spider-friendly
Your site may look fantastic. You and your Web designer may be talented graphic designers who can make Flash and JavaScript dazzle your visitors with a show that would put Michael Flatley and his River Dance to shame. However, if your site contains Flash and JavaScript, it’s important to know that search engine spiders have difficulty reading this code (or appreciating the effort you put into the design). The way around this is to provide navigation alternatives such as static links and a site map to allow the spiders crawl deep within your Web site and index the pages within their results. Overuse of Flash, JavaScript, and images can also lead to your Web pages’ being very slow to download. If these file types are used sparingly, your visitors and search engines will appreciate your efforts a lot more.

8. Create fresh content
When you are optimizing your site properly, you will see a trend. If you are doing something that benefits your site’s visitors, then the search engines will reward you for it. Blogs and forums are effective and easy ways of adding new information to your site on a regular basis. However, if your only purpose of setting up a blog or a forum is for better search engine rankings, then there really is no point in doing it. Only add a forum if it contributes something beneficial to your site and if you have the traffic to make it interactive enough for visitors to return to it. And, only add a blog if you have something of interest to say on a regular basis. Once you have your blog and/or forum up and running, you should optimize them with the same professionalism you do with any other page on your site.

9. Do not think that you can trick search engines
As noted before, if you are benefiting your visitors, then the search engines will reward you for it. If you try to trick the search engines by hiding keyword phrases, joining link farms, or any other sneaky practice, your sites will be removed from the search engines. (And you will also have to spend more time cleaning up your site before they will accept you back in.)

10. Offer something unique
If your Web site offers something that is unique and interesting to your target market and it is properly optimized (by applying all of the techniques listed above), you will not only rank well within the major search engines but also get the added benefit of people linking to your site in forums, blogs, and through other sites. That will send your site more visitors and create more inbound links, which will help it rank higher.

Remember, it’s human visitors that you are trying to impress, not search engine robots.

Related Articles
- SEO Design Tips – Part 1

SEO Design Tips – Part 1

By Barry Fenning

If your visitors like your Web site, there is a very good likelihood that the search engines will, too. With this in mind, here are the first 5 tips from Barry Fenning, that focus on how to develop your site with your visitors in mind, and also effectively conduct search engine optimization.

1. Pick appropriate keyword phrases
This is the single most important thing to do when it comes to optimizing your site for search engines. The words and phrases that your potential customers type into the major search engines are the keywords your site should be using within the specific areas of your Web page (see points 3 and 4, below). Useful keyword research tools are available on the Web, including Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery (both offer trial versions).

However, if you want to find out accurate figures of how many people are searching for your targeted keywords per week/month/year, run a Google AdWords and/or Yahoo/Overture campaign and you will get extremely accurate figures of search engine traffic while (hopefully) generating income that will pay for your research.

2. Optimize every page on your site
Optimizing each Web page is overlooked by so many sites. It can be the difference between competing for a highly competitive keyword phrase such as “Irish Hotels” on your home page, and competing for a much less competitive keyword phrase such as “Hotels in County Galway” on another relevant landing page.

3. Optimize your page titles
All of the major search engines have hundreds of different algorithms that compute where your Web page should be listed for different keyword searches. Putting your keywords within the title description tag of your pages is one of the most important SEO techniques and will help your site climb through the rankings. It will also allow your visitors to remember exactly what your page is all about when they save it to their “favorites.”

4. Optimize your page content
It is sometimes very difficult to write content for your Web site. Not only do you need to put the information you want the visitor to see in front of them in an easy-to-read style, you also have to keep in mind the keywords that your page is targeting so that you can rank better within search engines.
One of the best pieces of advice I have come across is to write for your visitors and include the keywords as much as makes sense. Read what you have written out loud to yourself and a few others. If it sounds silly or stilted… lather, rinse, and repeat.

5. Create an inbound linking strategy
Submitting your site to Web site and article directories is a very beneficial way to drive targeted traffic to your site.

Links within these sites bring visitors to your Web site, and search engine “spiders” are easily able find your site and index your pages within their results. If your site doesn’t have a link pointing to it on the World Wide Web, the search engines will never find it and you will never see any traffic from Google or the other big ones.

- As published in Marketingprofessionals.com

Weird Week In Review – Dec. 21

Your one stop to review all this weeks articles on WeirdGuy. Have fun!

9 Essential Rules Of Great Web Design
From the PSDTUTS (PhotoShop Tutorials) blog comes this little article on Wed design. Though loaded with good solid principles, remember in the Web world, many rules can be changed and should be broken. Read more…

Weird Management Tips From Harvard Business Review
Due to the current trends in business, I would not suggest hiring the kinds of individuals mentioned by Harvard Business. I would, however, recommend…. Read more…

5 Tips To Increase Blog Linking
I have tried a few of these and they work pretty well. Give one or all a shot and let me know what worked for you. Read more…

Free SEO And Blog Ranking Tools
Here are listed five tools that can assist you in generating better traffic and help you know the status of your blog ranking. Read more…

Tips For Designing With Typography And Color
Every designer wrestles with the use of good typography. In print, and especially on the Web, type can make or break a design. See the tips and examples below from ColorLovers. Be inspired and have fun! Read more…

Can You Rank With Paris Hilton or Britney Spears?
See for yourself by using the Bloglebrity tool from Kineda. Find out how your blog ranks on the internet. Read more…

Quotable Quote
Wilberforce: “There would be no escape from power once…”. Read more…

Your Virtual Snowglobe
For the holidays, here is your very own virtual snowglobe at AlbinoBlackSheep by E-Tractions. Try it out for yourself. You can shake it and watch the snow and little people inside go swirling about, screaming helplessly! Read more…

Related Links
- Weird Week In Review (Dec. 14)

Share This With Others

Free SEO and Blog Rank Tools

I especially like the blog ranking tools — very nice.

clipped from www.techipedia.com SEO for Firefox: An excellent Firefox addon that provides users market data from Google and Yahoo search results, including PR, age of domain, links from external pages (and types), type of domain, Technorati data, Alexa ranking, DMOZ listing, number of cached pages, Bloglines subscriptions, Yahoo directory listing, and whois information. Top Ten Analysis SEO Tool: Released by Jim Boykin and company last week, this tool allows you to see a number of stats based on a domain name and a search phrase, including top 10 sites for that phrase on Google/Yahoo/MSN, number of pages in the index, backlinks, .edu/.gov site links, Alexa ranking, Google’s allinanchor rank, whois age of URL, Wayback machine age, and how often the keywords were used on this page. BlogJuice calculator is fairly new. It’s a great little tool that enables you to see how your blog is doing compared to others in your niche, or in general. Bloglebrity Tool Rank right up there with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. “How much is my blog worth?” Tool Want to sell your blog? Find out how to price it here.

Grow Your Network And Make Your Contacts Work For You

I am rereading, Make Your Contacts Count, by Anne Baber and Lynne Waymon. If you are not prone to handing out business cards and giving people a reason to stay in contact, this book is for you.

I am always in need of reminding, “Why are you making this contact? What is the purpose of the connection? Is it for selfish gain or for partnering and career success on both sides?” (See It’s All About Me article)

I especially like “Targeted Networking” bulls-eye. See if these will help you in your networking and contact management.

Moving from the outer rings toward the center are the following:

Accidents
These are the random people you meet on a day-to-day basis. Take advantage of time on the plane or in the taxi and give them a reason to remember you.

Acquaintances
These are the people you see on a semi-regular basis. Either at the store, son’s soccer game, or other place you frequent. If you needed to, you could find these people again.

Associates
These are the people you see regularly at associations or other work/career related clubs. You know something about their work and they know about yours. You have some of their contact information.

Actors
These are the people you exchange information with on a regular basis. You know enough about each other to be useful to each other. You have all their contact information.

Advocates
These are the people you promote and they promote you on a regular basis. You know about them, the quality of their work and their character.

Allies
These are the people that know you very well. They know what you do and how you do it. They know where you have been and where you want to go career-wise. They are looking out for you and you for them. These are the people you call upon for advice and counsel.

Additional Reading
- Networking For Introverts
- Excellence In Self Promotion
- Community Jumpers

Add this book to your Business Library

SEO: The Elusive Target

Everybody wants to be number one. No, I am not talking about sports teams, but Web site rankings on Search Engines. Search Engine Optimization, or SEO as it it known today, is a discipline (and lucrative job if you’re well versed) that has been around since the first Search engines hit the Web. Early on, SEO was used in a desire to get your site listed at the top of search listings. Being amongst the first listings, data showed that the greater the chance you had of being clicked on. More clicks, more traffic. More traffic, more money, And so it went for early engines such as Inktomi, AltaVista, Yahoo!, and others.

When Google came on the scene a lot of things changed:

Google brought a new concept to evaluating web pages. This concept, called PageRank, has been important to the Google algorithm from the start. PageRank is an algorithm that weights a page’s importance based upon the quantity and quality of incoming links. PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who randomly surfs the web, and follows links from one page to another. In effect, this means that some links are more valuable than others, as a higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random surfer.

The PageRank algorithm proved very effective, and Google began to be perceived as serving the most relevant search results. On the back of strong word of mouth from programmers, Google became a popular search engine. Off-page factors such as PageRank and hyperlink analysis were considered as well as on-page factors to enable Google to avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines focusing primarily upon on-page factors for their rankings. (from Search Engine Optimization in Wikipedia)

And so, the rules changed slightly. The requirements and algorithms from prominent search engines began to change and you were hard-pressed to stay on top of the requisites in order to achieve high rankings. Yet, over the years Search Engine Marketers (SEM) agree that much is still the same.

Search engine optimization often involves more than just rankings. By improving the quality of a page’s search listings, more users will select that page. Factors that may improve search listing quality include good copywriting such as an attention-grabbing title, an interesting description and a domain and URL that reinforce the legitimacy of the site. Some commentators have noted that domains with lots of hyphens look spammy and may discourage click-throughs.

SEOs widely agree that the signals that influence a page’s rankings include:

1. Keywords in the title tag.
2. Keywords in links pointing to the page.
3. Keywords appearing in visible text.
4. Link popularity.
5. PageRank of the page (for Google).
6. Keywords in Heading Tag H1,H2 and H3 Tags in webpage.
7. Linking from one page to inner pages.
8. Placing punch line at the top of page.

Black Hat Methods Can Lead To Black Ball
“Black hat” SEO are methods to try to improve rankings that are disapproved of by the search engines and/or involve deception. This can range from text that is “hidden”, either as text colored similar to the background or in an invisible or left of visible div, or by redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is more human friendly. A method that sends a user to a page that was different from the page the search engined ranked is Black hat as a rule. One well known example is Cloaking, the practice of serving one version of a page to search engine spiders/bots and another version to human visitors.Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines’ algorithms or by a manual review of a site.

One infamous example was the February 2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany for use of deceptive practices. Both companies, however, quickly apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google’s list. (from Search Engine Optimization in Wikipedia)

As site designers and company marketers continue to strive for consumer attention on the Web, SEO will also continue to be a big part of their thinking. If a large part of our business strategy involves Web traffic you may want to invest in an SEO firm, consultant, or create an in-house position for SEO.

Sure, SEO is elusive, but with the rights tools and personnel you increase your chances of hitting a bulls-eye more often than not.

Links
- SEO Consultants
- SEO Book.com
- SEO (Wikipedia)