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Paul Barsch: Going For Growth…In China

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:10:00 -0800

Charged with finding new markets for growth, many Western marketers are eyeing China’s rising middle class and terrific GDP numbers. And while getting Western products and services into the Chinese market is hard enough, the ability to compete and thrive in China takes mastery of specific skills and processes. Success also involves a drastic change in mindset.

As one of the few countries in the world showing positive economic growth, the future of China sure looks promising. And to take advantage of a very large marketplace, Western companies like Pfizer, Astra Zeneca, Goodyear and others have established beachheads in Chinese markets. However, an Economist article titled, “Impenetrable” reminds readers how truly difficult it is to sell foreign goods in China.

To be sure, some companies are thriving in China. The Economist article cites luxury good makers, airplane manufacturers, and commodity producers as successfully penetrating China. Yet, for every success story, there are a dozen works in progress especially in fields such as pharmaceuticals, banking and insurance and telecommunications. In fact, Ronald Schramm, a professor at the Chinese European International Business School says that the impact of Western firms’ total sales in China are little more than a rounding error.

Why all the difficulty? Western firms must deal with the fact that for all the excitement of capitalistic economic zones in China, most of the enterprises in China are state owned. That means Western companies must deal with plenty of costly and unending red tape from protective Chinese authorities. And while China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, there is much work to be done to level the playing field for Western companies to effectively compete.

Yet, all hope is not lost. Digging a bit deeper for strategies to penetrate and prosper in Chinese markets, I interviewed Globe Trade founder, Laurel Delaney. Ms. Delaney argues that companies doing business in China need to change their mindset and think of China as an investment that will pay off over the long run. She says, “It takes tremendous time, incredible patience and phenomenal preparation to do business in China. Many companies just don't have the stamina, perseverance or dollars to last -- yet, if they hang on and keep working on it, they will eventually find success.”

The path to successfully navigating Chinese markets also involves avoiding the biggest blunders. To that point, Ms. Delaney mentions the number one mistake a Western marketer can make when looking to China for growth is attempting to go it alone. “You need a strong and effective team and good "Guangxi" (relationship) when doing business in China,” she says. “The stronger the team you assemble breaking out of the gate -- the greater your likelihood of success in developing business in China.”

Ms. Delaney also mentions the types of local talent, needed “on the ground” to propel success. First, she says, Western companies should set up a peer-to-peer advisory board consisting of legal talent, an individual with M&A knowledge, a transportation and logistics “superstar”, a banker and a governmental contact. It’s these people that can help a Western marketer iron out issues and challenges they’ll likely face.

In addition, outside of setting up a joint venture with a company, consider hiring local talent to help market to Chinese consumers. According to Ms. Delaney, someone on your marketing team, “(needs to know) native tongue languages of China, is smart and masterful at communicating which includes marketing/advertising, has experience with your product or service offering, and has a history of proven success.”

China is an economic giant and is poised—eventually—to be the number one economy in the world. For Western marketers, finding ways to get your products and services into China is definitely worth strong consideration. Success in Chinese markets won’t come easy, and it won’t be cheap. China’s markets hold great promise, but also peril for companies that lack determination and endurance for the long-run.

Questions:

A Business Week article notes that in many instances the Chinese government has of late, “strengthened its grip on the economy.” Is there any hope for Western companies to sell their wares against state owned companies?

Green industries are often cited by futurists as an area where the United States and other Western nations can create competitive advantage. And yet, currently, 35% of the world’s solar cells are made in China. Will the next Green revolution take place in China?

Beijing University professor Michael Pettis says, “There is little real innovation or branding ability in China.” Does this provocative sentence scream “opportunity” for Western marketers and their associated products/services?

Paul Chaney: The Model Small Business Blogger: J. D. Iles and Signs Never Sleep

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:10:00 -0800

In my most recent Daily Fix post I made the boast that social media works for small business and that I had proof. Delivering on my promise to provide such evidence, here's the first of a series.

If there is one small business owner I could point to as a model for others, it is J.D. Iles, owner of a four-person custom sign shop in Lincoln, New Hampshire.

J.D. started his blog Signs Never Sleep in 2004 because he needed an easy way to update his otherwise static Web site and blogs fit the bill.

In the beginning, J.D. confessed he didn't know what he was doing. He posted about his work, but mixed in posts about both his family and the local area. (Not a bad idea in my opinion if done in moderation.)

One of the strategies he began to use that proved to be highly effective was showing photos of signs in the process of being made. Not only did it demonstrate his artistry and craftsmanship, but served as good PR for his clients as well. Seeing a sign being made, there was no question that J.D. completely understood his craft.

He later experimented with the use of video, but quickly returned to a combination of photos and text. “While I could shoot the video in a few minutes, editing proved to be a time-consuming process. I determined it wasn't the best possible use of my time,” he said. “I backed away from video pretty quickly.”

When asked what part his blog played in his overall marketing plan, his response was straightforward and concise: “The blog has been my only form of marketing. I even pulled my yellow page ads!”

Based on his extensive experience, J.D. sees a number of benefits to using a blog, search engine optimization being chief among them. He has found the medium as a way to generate leads and close sales. “People will call me who have seen the blog and say 'You're doing our sign, no questions asked.'”

When asked what advice he would give to small business owners considering the use of a blog, J.D. says it's certainly worth a try. “Many industries are not using blogs at all and being in a first mover position will give you great advantage. Not only that, many of those who are using them aren't doing so effectively,” he states.

One caution he gives is to be patient and understand that it will take time, but that blogging will pay off. “If you blog for a year, no one will be able to catch up with you on Google,” he says.

J.D. has become a mentor to others in his industry and has turned his blog into something of an online community for custom sign-making. “It is another step in my blogging evolution,” he says. However, J.D.'s influence extends far beyond his industry. His story has been written up not only in my book, The Digital Handshake, but in a number of others dating as far back as 2005.

Because of his experience and success using blogs, J.D. serves as a model for any small business and is proof positive that social media can and does work.

Paul Williams: Off-Site Meetings: Last Century Technology

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:40:00 -0800

Did use an abacus or slide rule to build your FY'10 budgets?

To prepare and distribute information about next year's Marketing Plan did you use a typewriter and make a duplicate with a layer of ink paper?

Or did you hand crank copies on a Ditto (or Verifax) machine?

Of course you didn't. That would be crazy and inefficient. We have invented better and more efficient tools.

With that said.. while we are in the 21st century... there is a tool that is stuck somewhere in the mid-1900s: The Off-Site Meeting.

It is interesting we don't perceive meetings as a "tool" the same way we do a photocopier, computer, or even the coffee maker.

And, of all meetings, the "off-site" is critically important. So important, it warrants sending a hand-picked group away from the office, sleeping away from their families, huddled in a hotel conference room for three days, not allowed to return with out "the plan."

Yet we put no thought to the meeting room. It is a "people container."

Meeting Space = Commodity

Look up commodity in the dictionary, and there will be a picture of a hotel meeting room. Tan. Accordion folding walls. Wall to wall patterned carpeting. Sweaty pitchers of water dripping into black coasters. A small paper pad and hotel logo pen. Sums up 99.9% of the meetings and conferences you've attended, right?

And we don't care... when we book it. We ask the office admin to call around and find a cheap place that can hold the number of people we're bringing. If there was a preference, it would be something like: "Oh, let's stay at that place we were last time likes their Caesar salad."

Yet, as marketers and business people we intimately understand the importance of environment and ambiance and the affect it has on behavior and action. We create it for our customers everyday. Especially right now, the holiday season is when we pull out the stops! Christmas lights, holiday music, decorations, special programs and themes... All this to create a more pleasant environment mood and environment conducive for purchasing.

Pay Per Stomach

And the hotel doesn't care... what you do in the room. They just want to know how many stomachs will be present.

Catering Manager:

Your Assistant:

Catering Manager:

We literally pay "per stomach."

And, because the rooms are where hotels make their money - book enough rooms and there is no additional charge for use of the room - just the food costs. But, of course that does NOT include all the tools for the meeting itself. Add on fees for renting the projector, a mic, access to the internet, easels, flipcharts...

The room is tan to be generic. To accomodate yesterday's Bar Mitzvah, your meeting today, and the wedding reception this weekend.

That is the venue that we think will inspire the multi-million dollar strategy and "killer idea?"

Today's meeting spaces are the equivalent of using the Ditto machine. With hard work you can crank stuff out... But your results will be inconsistent, sloppy, and slightly blurry.

The Solution?

Hire A Better Space - If you're going to have an off-site where creative thinking, problem solving, and new ideas are involved - get yourself into a space that will inspire you - yet not be distracting for your work.

Below I've listed a few places throughout the United States and Europe built to be a creative space for creating thinking. But it doesn't have to be a 'meeting space' either. You could get inspiration from your local art museum, science museum, or zoo. Find a place that works for your particular group.

The Boardwalk, Manchester, England
The Boardwalk Creative Center, Ann Arbor, MI
Catalyst Ranch, Chicago
Heineken - The City, Amsterdam, NL
Idea Loft, Kansas City, MO
Meet, NYC
The Old Laundry, London, England
SoHoSoleil, NYC
SparkSpace, Columbus, OH
Strategy Loft, Denver
Spaces, Amsterdam, NL
Thinkubator, Chicago

Hire A Better Lead - If you don't have someone on your team skilled at leading groups or drawing ideas out of people - hire someone. (This will also allow you to relax and focus on coming up with the "killer idea" instead of running the meeting).

What spaces have you found inspiration for you and your team?

Image Source: OfficeMuseum.com

Ted Mininni: Taking a Bite Out Of Apple

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:10:00 -0800

Indications are that Apple--long admired for setting the bar high when it comes to beautifully-designed, innovative, game-changing consumer products--may be facing some stiff competition. According to Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey: “Apple is under threat on the brand front in a way they haven’t been in recent years.”

A recent Brandweek article: “Amid Transition, Rivals Are Descending on Apple,” questions whether the company’s competitors are finally launching products that might take a bite out of Apple. Apple’s response doesn’t seem reassuring, either. New ads have gone away from its core message about product strengths to a defensive posture concerning competitors’ products.

Okay. No more Apple puns...I promise.

The gist: Microsoft ads are spoofing Apple’s Mac spots with tongue-in-cheek take-offs on the “Mac vs PC” campaigns. It seems the nerdy PC might be ready to turn the tables on the hip, contemporary Mac. Microsoft’s new Windows 7, unlike the problem-ridden Vista operating system, is so Mac-like it’s going to be tough—if not downright impossible—to poke fun at it.

Some point to Apple’s response via its own ads as “a bit defensive,” as a harbinger of this slowing momentum. “Industry watchers say there’s a sense that the company’s marketing momentum is stalling as it faces tougher new competition,” according to Brandweek. Apple’s current ads depicting our loveable PC nerd praising every version of Windows operating systems over the years obviously points to the deficiencies of past Windows incarnations and seems defensive to some industry analysts.

This may be an even bigger headache for Apple: quality perception among consumers is running neck and neck between Apple and Microsoft now, according to Brandindex. Amazingly, it is even suggested that “Microsoft is getting more bang for their (advertising) buck” than Apple is. Even as the Mac vs PC battles continue to rage, a new ad campaign has hit the airwaves for Verizon’s new Droid cell phone, based on Google’s Android operating system.

Ads cleverly lampooning iPhone’s “There’s an app for that,” while running the features the Droid offers that are unavailable on the iPhone are getting a lot of attention. It’s too early to tell how the Droid will impact iPhone sales. But it’s about to get very interesting in the cell phone market.

Even with increased competitive threats on these fronts, Apple posted a huge fourth quarter that ended on September 26th, beating both its guidance and Wall Street analysts' over-inflated consensus. Sales increases in the fourth quarter of this year versus last year showed healthy increases. Macintosh computer unit sales increased by 17% and iPhone sales by 7%.

However, iPod sales fell 8% in the past quarter versus the same quarter one year ago. Of course part of this is due to “cannibalization from the iPhone, but still spells change,” according to IDC senior analyst Danielle Levitas.

But you can bet Apple has already moved on; which is not to say the company doesn’t continue to innovate the products it already has. In October, new iMacs With 21.5 and 27-inch displays were unveiled. The MacBook was updated with an LED-backlit display. In early November, it was announced that over 100,000 apps are now available on the App Store.

Still, daring new ideas fuel companies with innovative cultures like Apple. They never rest on their successes, and never stop pushing the envelope until they’ve created the next game changer. Currently, Apple fans are all abuzz about a rumored new tablet PC. It’s being touted as the next potential product revolution from one of the world’s hottest brands.

This raises some questions for me. And they’re not about launching potentially expensive new consumer products in the midst of an economic downturn, either. Recession or not, consumers always seem to be able to pony up some cash for game changers.

Here are my questions, and I’d love to get feedback from HBR readers on these. Please feel free to jump in:

Do you think Apple’s innovation-driven culture may stall over time? That they just might run out of ideas?

Do you think it matters whether Steve Jobs’ team stays in place or not when it comes to innovation?

Do you think it’s just a matter of time before a smaller, hungrier company comes along and outmaneuvers Apple with game changing products?

Do you think consumer product companies can be innovative without integrating designers directly into their organizations? If so, how?

Do you think if a company like Apple continues to produce quality products but loses the edge on being first to market with game changers they can still be a viable company?

If that happened, what would it do to consumer and financial industry perceptions about the Apple brand?

I'd love to hear from you.

Elaine Fogel: Cash-for-Grades Fundraiser Just Another Marketing Incentive

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:00:00 -0800

What's all this outrage for North Carolina school principal, Susie Shepherd, for supporting her parent advisory council's innovative use of marketing incentives? Who are we kidding? I used to teach, so I know how some schools operate like they're in the third world, without proper books and resources. This school was just looking for creative ways to raise much-needed money.

In my opinion, the outpouring of disdain is hypocritical. The days of doing well in school for the intrinsic value are waning, as more parents offer reward systems. Read Barbara Coloroso. The kindergarten sticker turns into a car at 16 - IF you get good grades.

Sure, it's disappointing, and certainly not the ideal way to raise and educate children, but the real world is comprised of all kinds of incentives - discount coupons, loyalty programs, work bonuses, gifts, prizes... Many nonprofits engage kids in fundraising events by offering prizes. i.e. MS Readathon. Open a box of cereal and get a prize. Collect enough bottle cap liners and win something big. Kids are exposed to this type of promotion every single day as soon as they can understand what it's all about.

Are kids immune to being motivated by a few points on a test? Gosh, NO. It'll likely mean increased revenue for the school. Are the extra points going to make a big difference? Likely not. Teachers aren't stupid. This was purely a marketing incentive for a fundraising project.

"Shepherd rejected the suggestion that the school is selling grades. Extra points on two tests won't make a difference in a student's final grade, she said."

Notice the other incentive prizes that have nothing to do with grades.

Rosewood Middle School price list:

A $20 donation buys 10-point credits to be used on two tests of the student's choice.

A $30 donation buys the test points and admission to a 5th-period dance.

A $60 donation buys students test points, the dance invitation, and a "special 30-minute lunch period with pizza, drink and the choice to invite one friend to join them."

Photo ops with Rosewood principal Susie Shepherd, the vice principal, and a home room teacher go for $75. The photos will be posted on a school bulletin board and on the school's Web site.

Teaching was my first marketing job. Try exciting junior high students for mandatory string instrument classes. Need I say more?

If Susie Shepherd is a good principal with a good work history, she should be able to keep her job. What do you say?

Ann Handley: Innovation Matters: Balancing Sustained Versus Disruptive Innovation

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:06:35 -0800

This is a guest post by Eric Zeitoun, president of Dragon Rouge USA, a leading independent brand and design consultancy.

While we struggle to emerge from a full-blown recession, marketers know all too well that advertising and (unfortunately) innovation are the first budgets that are most likely to get cut. So how can marketers continue to innovate?

Before we answer this question we need to go back to the definition of innovation since it has become a very popular and often misinterpreted topic. There are four distinct types of innovations:

Product optimization (which seeks to optimize a product or service’s usage)
Brand extension (stretches a brand’s equity into adjacent spaces)
Target ownership (to own a greater share of a specific target’s wallet across multiple segments, whether the segment is attitudinal, psychographic or demographic)
Category leadership (to sustain or achieve leadership by re-shaping consumer attitudes and behaviors in a given segment or industry).

Innovation types 1. and 2. (referred to as “sustained innovations”) usually tend to build off of an existing frame of reference. Therefore, although safer, they are likely to only generate limited incremental value.

Innovation types 3. and 4. (referred to as “disruptive innovations”) on the other hand can yield much larger growth, but they are also more capital intensive and more unpredictable. Indeed because they have the power to shift the paradigm, they can set new standards and change consumer behaviors, but they require significant time and dollar investments.

The easy conclusion could be to argue that in a period of recession, marketers should focus on “sustained innovation” because senior management is more likely to sign off on an inexpensive innovation initiative, which can repay for itself in the short term. Unfortunately, what could sound like a really good idea may turn out to be a really dangerous one.

Recessions usually act in a two-step process as filters or regulators that purge weaker players from the marketplace. The structurally weak players are typically the first to go. These are the companies whose business model is fundamentally flawed or those whose cost structure cannot suffer tighter margins (think about how many airlines go bankrupt in any kind of recession).

Then follows the players whose relevance keeps eroding over time. These players tend to suffer more towards the end of a recession cycle, and generally get hit when they think they have reached the end of the tunnel.

Why do these companies lose relevance? They do so because of their inability to shape, grasp or influence societal shifts, and a lack of vision or willingness to take risks. Organizations that are not willing to constantly invest in ‘disruptive innovation’ quickly become irrelevant and vulnerable in a recession. So what does this mean in terms of innovation? It means that marketers need to find smarter ways to invest in ‘disruptive innovation,’ rather than simply pull the plug. Recessions should be viewed as an opportunity to re-assess the effectiveness of innovation processes. To do this, you must:

Have a clear strategic goal for your innovation. Make sure it fits into your marketing strategy and your business strategy.
Create a focused ideation process that accelerates the pace of the consumer’s validation of ideas and prototypes ideas at a lower cost.

According to A.G. Lafley, 8 years ago P&G financed between 20 and 40 innovation projects at an average price tag of 5 to 10 million dollars. Today, with the same total innovation budget of $150-200million, P&G manages to finance 10 to 20 more innovation initiatives because they have brought the average project cost down. With a larger sample of prototyped innovation to choose from, they can sustain a continuous flow, which will thus sustain their competitive edge without having to invest more.

The bottom line: if you want to leave a recession cycle unscathed, remember that you need to preserve a sound balance between ‘sustained innovation’ and ‘disruptive innovation.’ But, more importantly, take this opportunity to clean up your innovation closet: focus on the most strategic innovations and invest smarter.

Stephanie Miller: Are Email Preference Centers Worth It?

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:40:00 -0800

Add global compliance and cultural custom to the list of why email preference centers are really hard to sell internally and build well. I had a meeting this morning where we started to list out all the different country and local laws governing choices across various brand service agreements, and it quickly became overwhelming. It was no help that the database guy kept saying, "That'll cost you more."

No wonder the director of marketing looked at me and said, "Is this really the best way to spend our precious time, energy and IT resources?!"

So many email marketers say that they know a preference center will enable more choices and value for subscribers—particularly as we build relationships across a matrix of brands, social networks and email message types. Do moms want to be alerted via email to community discussions on Facebook? Do business users want LinkedIn weekly news headlines but prefer event invites via email? Are Australians particularly sensitive to "service" messages in the guise of marketing?

We'd all like to give our customers and prospects those choices. Does it have to be that hard to build such a self selection tool that will actually work?

We are already fighting hard to get a preference center on the planning table. Management wants us to keep the list large and growing, and to send more messages rather than fewer. There are penalties to not offering preferences, usually too high frequency with low relevance. These strategies (or lack of strategy) will quickly depress inbox placement due to higher complaints (clicks on the Report Spam button at Gmail, Yahoo! or in Outlook). An untargeted approach also churns the file, reduces response rates and lowers lifetime value.

Those penalties are real, but the pressure is also real to accept the long term hit for a short term gain. Selling a preference center internally often fails because fundamentally, most companies don't want to give up control. We want to keep our marketing options wide open. If we respect subscriber preferences, we may not be able to e-mail anything we want at any time.

Yikes. It's hard to compete with that sort of thinking, especially if the IT team is telling management that building a preference center is costly and time consuming.

There are soft costs to every marketing decision—and particularly when it comes to subscriber-centric ones like lowering frequency to increase relevancy, removing inactive/non responsive addresses from the file—and building a preference center where subscribers can choose their own message types and frequency.

Advocating for these things can quickly make the email marketing person very unpopular. That's no fun, even if you know you are representing a good cause: The interests of your customers.

The ways that I've been successful advocating preference centers and improving relevancy by sending fewer messages with higher relevancy always couples the hard costs, real rewards, lost opportunity value, and the impact of those longer term "soft costs."

Revenue—now and later. Sending information that subscribers want, even if it's less frequent, will earn higher response now, and improve the chances that subscribers will continue to engage and respond in the future. Prove your revenue opportunity by measuring for the same set of subscribers, the difference in response rates between messages that have explicit permission (information specifically requested by this subscriber) and messages with assumed permission (everything else). That lift can range between 2% and 200%, and is generally what you can expect to earn in overall revenue by targeting all your e-mail marketing by preference.
Cost. Over mailing or sending irrelevant and untargeted e-mail messages has a cost – both in opportunity and real dollars. Subscribers who do not find value will complain (clicking the Report Spam button) which depresses inbox placement for all your messages. If you don't reach the inbox, you can't earn a response. There is also a small but real cost and wasted marketing resource (pennies per message) to sending e-mail that no one is interested in reading.
Data. Subscribers tell you about their interests and needs when they visit the preference center. Use that data to guide social and other digital content and improve the depth of connection with prospects and customers.
Persona. Customers are not all created equally, and nor do they have static needs. All great B2B marketing operates dynamically within the sales lifecycle. Preference center data identifies subscribers who are moving in the cycle or have new needs (e.g.: changing content selections) or are feeling neglected (e.g.: lowering the frequency). Use that data to guide segmentation and targeting, and sales team outreach.
Investment pays off. If you build it, they may not come. A preference center has to be marketed in order to provide value. Be sure to celebrate your preference center in the welcome message, on the unsubscribe page, in your website navigation, via Twitter, in your footer and with dedicated e-mail messages. Like any other feature of your website, a preference center must have real value or it won't be used.

How have you made the case for your preference center? Also, if you are technical, what sort of ideas can you offer to help us design tools that are easier to build and simpler to keep current?

Love to hear thoughts on this, thanks!

Paul Williams: Three Ps For Better Leading: Pace, Process, Pulse

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:00:00 -0800

One of the characteristics of a great leader—no matter whether that leader is a person, a brand, or a company - is the ability to stay "tuned-in" to the needs of their audience. Are they still "with" you? Do they get where you're going? Do they have confidence in the direction?

Out of college, my first job was at Walt Disney World in Orlando. I was a tour guide at the "Listen To The Land" boat ride in Epcot's Land Pavilion.

I led Guests on a 20-minute journey through farming methods of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

It was one of the easiest "leading" jobs I've ever had. I didn't have to worry about the pace, the process, or the "pulse" of the Guests on my boat. Disney already figured that out. The boats moved along a track at a pre-chosen speed, through carefully crafted scenes. I simply had to re-recite my 20-minute spiel "with a smile in my voice" in pace with the different show scenes.

Unfortunately, most audiences are not as captive.

As leaders, we need to constantly check-up on our followers. While you push forward, you also have to look back. The mountain guide a mile ahead and out of view of his pack, is worthless. A meeting lead sticking to the agenda with a confused team, has stopped adding value.

Pace, Process & Pulse

To avoid losing your audience, regularly check your pace, the process, and the pulse.

Pace

Process
Are you taking them along an appropriate path? Are they in shape for a rocky climb, or do you need to take the paved path? Are we using the right tools?

Pulse
How are they feeling? Have they tuned out? They may be keeping up with pace and process, but may be frustrated.

A responsible guide checks on her group. She asks questions to ensure folks are still confidently following. She makes necessary adjustments, being mindful of the end point.

Remembering "Pace, Process, and Pulse" in your box of leadership tools can help you shift from good to great.

This article was inspired by a chapter in Ingrid Bens' book Advanced Facilitation Strategies.

The Land Boat Ride For people who have been on the boat ride (at least in the early 90s)... the three things they remember are...

hydroponic gardening (plants grown without soil),
the 1-piece babyblue polyester overalls (i.e. farmer of the future) costume, and
the theme song: "Let's Listen to the Land." (It is the 2nd most haunting song after "It's a Small World" and sticks in your brain - forever).

Galen De Young: Blogging: What are You Talking About? It Might Surprise You.

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:20:00 -0800

The other day I ran across a neat tool that generates a word cloud for a blog. This is different than a tag cloud. A tag cloud is a cloud of words based on how you’ve tagged your blog posts. As such, you obviously influence the cloud based on how you tag your posts. The word cloud, however, looks at the text of your blog posts.

The image above is a word cloud. When I looked the word cloud for our b2b marketing blog, I thought it reflected our subject matter and the intent of our posts. We focus strictly on B2B. We specialize in the development of B2B content marketing assets as a primary way to convey and support key messages and establish thought leadership in a client’s given niche. We help B2B clients effectively use social media, search engine optimization, and email marketing to promote these content marketing assets, and generate and nurture leads until they are sales ready.

Okay. Given what we focus on, we’re doing pretty well, I said. Some of the related key words really stand out in the word cloud—like B2B, content, and marketing. Some of the content vehicles have visual prominence, like blogs, email, newsletters, site, and article. And the word “lead” pops out a bit.

But there were some words that were far less prominent or even absent, like optimize, search, SEO, social, and thought leadership. I was a bit puzzled by that. Those are things I thought we were definitely talking about and focusing on. When I went back to recent posts, I found that in some cases we cover these issues in posts, but we don’t actually end up using the words as prevalently as I thought. In other cases, it had been a while since we posted about certain issues and topics. Finally, I found that all of our posts and articles tend to run together in my mind; while I’ve written several articles recently on blogging and thought leadership, the ones discussing thought leadership were articles published elsewhere, not on our blog.

This has implications for both visitors and search engines. For visitors, we may be talking about and around the issues, but unless we’re clearly using the words that resonate with visitors, they might not connect the dots (issues, implications, concepts) in the same way we do. The key words we use give readers context within which to evaluate or consider the subject matter. Make sure you’re using familiar words that give your readers context of the issues. These words serve as touchpoints and help position your content.

Secondly, it’s smart to do an audit of your blog posts. What is the subject-matter allocation of your blog content, and how recent are the posts in each category? Don’t just look at the category or tag of the posts, but remember to look at the copy of each post. Doing an audit will also help you sort out what you published on your blog and what content was published elsewhere.

Finally, while there are many factors that influence how well a blog post is optimized for search, the copy you use in the post an important factor. Make sure your posts are sufficiently keyword rich. This doesn’t mean you should be keyword spamming. However, you should make sure you’re actually sufficiently using the keywords for which you want to be found.

As a test, I created word clouds for a couple of blogs I follow. Some were spot on, totally aligned with my impressions of the blog’s focus. Other word clouds left me guessing as to the intent and the content of the blog. If you simply showed me the word cloud, I could not have told you with certainty what the blog was about.

I know the word cloud is a far stretch from a complete analysis of a blog or its content. It’s simply a fun tool. But it gives you some insights into how others might view your content and your focus. Just one note: If you try to generate a word cloud from a blog feed that shows only the introductions to posts, you'll obviously get different results than if you point it at a full feed.

So what about your blog? What does your word cloud look like? Is it aligned with what you think you’re talking about?

If you’re curious, you can go to Wordle to find out. Let me know what you think. Did your word cloud align with your mental image of your blog?

Paul Barsch: Of Risk Control and Thanksgiving Turkeys

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 05:20:00 -0800

To forecast the future, marketing leaders often look to the past. But the past isn’t always a very reliable gauge of future conditions. For proof, we need to look back to a day-in-the-life of a turkey, and implications of not preparing for possible “extreme” events around the corner.

First, let’s start with a fun exercise courtesy of Wilmott Magazine. Let’s look at damage estimates of earthquakes in California from 1970 to 1993 in the table below. Can you make an educated calculation of losses due to earthquakes in 1994?

Taking a look at the distribution of data, notice the low end is “0” and at high end, the most damage caused was “129”. So what’s your guess?

If you’re like me, you probably guessed wrong. Using the above numbers as an “anchor”, most people would reasonably assume that 1994’s earthquake was either an average of the above numbers or perhaps a bit higher than 129. Maybe you even threw out “129” as an outlier in the dataset. To be honest, I guessed around “200”.

The correct answer is “2217.2”! FEMA estimates that every year earthquake losses in the United States add up to $4.4 billion a year. But then, some extreme outliers can really skew that number, especially years like 1994 where just the Northridge Earthquake in California alone tallied $20B in damage!

Let’s get back to talking turkeys via a parable from Nassim Taleb, author of the “Black Swan”. Dr. Taleb reminds us that fat, dumb and happy is probably the best way to describe the life of a turkey. They’re fed and nurtured for three years straight. Day after day, they expect the same thing. But then, one fateful day arrives and the “life” of a turkey ends quite abruptly.

Can we accurately predict the future based on reviewing and analyzing historical data? Sometimes, but we have to make assumptions of similar conditions, a normal distribution, and event independence. Complex systems will have none of these characteristics. Dr. Taleb says as much; “Real life isn’t a casino.”

Indeed, the parable of the turkey and the earthquake loss estimation exercise show us that predicting the future in complex systems can be a futile exercise because there are so many unknowns, changing conditions, and inter-connecting relationships. Extreme events that carry a huge impact happen, and some would argue they’re happening a whole lot more often as interlocking financial markets and globalization become commonplace.

Should prediction exercises be avoided? Nassim Taleb would argue otherwise; “We need to start thinking of the inconceivable,” he says. And while we cannot determine the exact probability of tomorrow’s events, we can “get a general idea about the possibility of their occurrence.”

And that’s where scenario planning comes into play. Bill Ziemba, author of the aforementioned Wilmott Magazine article says, “Getting all the scenarios and their probabilities right is impossible and doesn’t matter much anyway. What is important is to cover the board of possible occurrences. Then you will make sound decisions with risk under control.”

The fact is, like the turkey, we just don’t know what tomorrow will bring. So, plan for the five to seven most likely occurrences and then develop contingencies based on those scenarios. French microbiologist Louis Pasteur says it best, “In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.”

For a turkey, today may appear like any other “normal” day. However, tomorrow could be the chopping block.

Questions:

Nassim Taleb says, “It is only in very rare circumstances that probability (by itself) is a guide to decision making.” Does this mean that historical data analysis isn’t worth the effort?

If chance favors the prepared mind, what’s the “next unexpected twist” that marketers should be looking for?

Mack Collier: Get Over It; We're All Content Channels Now

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:30:00 -0800

If you go to Robert Scoble's blog, to the right you'll see a widget he has added that streams tweets from people on his Twitter lists. And in a round-about way, this is one of the reasons why I am spending less time on Twitter these days.

As many people do, I use Twitter primarily as a tool to connect with other people. Now for the most part, I'd always had some so-called unwritten rules about my Twitter usage. The main one was that time spent on Twitter during 'business hours' was mainly for business usage, while time spent 'after hours', or on the weekend, I would give myself leeway to use Twitter more as a chat facilitator to talk about pretty much whatever I wanted.

But I noticed that clients and companies that contacted me about work would, on occasion, reference my tweets made during my 'personal' time. Nothing shocking, it might be someone saying they didn't realize I was a Bama fan, or that they also liked Flash Forward, but it made me realize that the people that are following the content I create on Twitter, and on any social site, don't understand my unwritten rules. They are basically approaching the content I create (and the content we all create), as a channel.

And I think this is an important point for us to remember. I'm constantly having people that work in this space ask me who they should be following. If I tell them to follow Jason, and Jason has one INCREDIBLY profound business tweet once every 2 weeks, my friends might not stick with Jason's tweets, and might begin to question my judgment in recommending them.

Yes, the very name 'social media' implies that interaction is going to take place. But we have to remember that so many people simply want to consume content, not interact with it. To these people, they look at us as being content channels, and nothing more.

Am I saying that we should change how we use social media in order to placate others? Absolutely not, but I am saying that I do think we should be aware of the content we are creating, and how it is being received, and by who. If you're primarily using your blog as a tool to get more sales, but also like a good political rant every once in a while, you have to consider that your potential customer might not like your rant about how much their political party of choice is dead wrong.

So for now, I am using Twitter more for business, and less overall. How are you using Twitter and other sites? Is one for business, the other for personal, or do you mix the two? How do you manage different sites being used in different ways?

Paul Chaney: Mojitos As a Social Object: How a Miami Realtor Uses Social Media To Build Her Business

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:40:00 -0800

Ines Hegedus-Garcia is a real estate agent in Miami, Florida, who uses a number of social media tools to market her business. “I use a variety of applications to reach different groups of people,” says Garcia. “Some inhabit one social network such as Facebook, for example, while others are active at Twitter. I get results in different ways from all of them.”

“At first, Facebook was a way to reconnect with old friends and high school classmates,” says Garcia, who, over time, recognized its potential advantage as a business development tool. “I find just having an active presence there is enough,” she adds. While she uses some “soft sell” marketing techniques such as uploading photos of property listings, never is there a pitch to make a purchase.

Garcia’s Web site, Miamism.com, incorporates both a blog and a photoblog. Though most of her posts are real estate related, she has created a series called “Miamism Fridays” that feature posts which promote and showcase the area from a local point of view.

She has also set up a Miamism group on Flickr, where she invites others to join using the incentive that she may feature their photos on one of her Miamism Friday posts. “When I do, I let them know and they share the link with friends and family,” states Garcia. “It is a way to drive traffic to my site and build exposure among people who may not otherwise have ever heard of me. It is working beautifully. I am seeing leads and referrals coming as a result.”

Garcia actively uses Twitter as well. “When I started, it was just a place to have fun and to connect with colleagues in the real estate industry. Then, I began to connect with people locally and realized that Miami has a strong social network community built around Twitter,” says Garcia.

Garcia has not limited her interactions to the online world solely. In fact, she finds that what starts out as online connections leads to real world one. “I’ve been able to turn virtual connections into real ones via local tweetups. These tweetups take on the character of a business networking group such as BNI,” she adds. “In one such group comprised of mostly professional people, I am the only Realtor.”

One of the most interesting outcomes of Garcia’s involvement with social media involves, oddly enough, mojitos! “In December of 2007, I was playing with SEO keywords related to my business, real estate in Miami, when I happened to notice that, at the time, ‘mojitos’ was the number one keyword searched for in Google. Given that mojitos are a Latin drink and that I am of Latin descent living in Miami, the mention really struck a chord, stated Garcia. “I grabbed my video camera and my husband Rick and, together, we produced a video on how to make a mojito, which I posted to my blog. Since that time, the video has been seen 33,000 times!”

Garcia says that, while the idea has nothing to do with real estate proper, it is something fun that helps keep her top-of-mind with friends and associates so much so that it has become a "social object" associated with her brand. “I regularly post mojito recipes, reviews, photos and videos on my blog and have even gone so far as to setup a Mojitos group on Facebook,” she says. “The lesson I’ve learned is that everyone has the opportunity to find their social object. Keep an eye open for what works for you. Just don’t make it mojitos. That’s mine!”

This post is part of a series called Social Media Works for Small Business: I Have Proof (See Part 1 and Part 2). It is also excerpted from my new book The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media.

Ann Handley: Thought Leadership: It’s Not About The Writing

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:22:00 -0800

This is a guest post by Tim Parker of the Bloom Group.

There’s a lot of talk about thought leadership marketing these days, and not a lot of agreement on exactly what it is. At the Bloom Group we define it as “Publishing informative material on a complex issue to position a company as an expert in its field.” Not because it’s catchy, obviously, but because research shows that’s what business readers want. A 2007 survey for instance, found that nearly three quarters of readers search for white papers to help them solve a current problem and they most value those with educational content that helps them do that.

There is a lot of advice on how to write white papers, but it rarely addresses the creation of the core idea, which is generally presumed to exist. But advice like “Break up the gray space with diagrams” isn’t going to help much if the recommendations are unconvincing, or have already been made elsewhere.

The available advice for developing thought leadership concepts rarely addresses the business reader’s need for a solution to an immediate, complex problem. A typical suggestion is “Begin by creating a big picture idea with relevance to many. Look outward, not inward.” Curious, when there isn’t any research to indicate that business readers particularly value an idea about a big picture. If you look at the most popular IT white paper downloads, for instance, you’ll see that they are almost invariably practical, and not necessarily expansive. A white paper on the application of Business Intelligence in Financial Services is an example. The topic is specialized and the audience isn’t broad, but it explains to executives a complex and relevant issue and how to profit from it. It still gets many downloads 18 months after it was published and it positions the author as an expert, which—from the marketers’ perspective—is the point.

Anyone capable of creating a “big picture idea with relevance to many” out of thin air should seriously consider giving up real work and sell rarified concepts for high prices instead. The rest of us need a process. The one we use has five steps for creating compelling content, all of which go before writing a report or article.

Develop the initial argument: Start with a draft of the problem and the solution. The story will change as you develop it, but a draft provides a good basis for refining it as you go.
Gather the evidence: Readers need proof that other companies have solved the problem in the manner you prescribe. A company with significant preexisting experience or research on an issue will already have content that its marketers can tap for thought leadership material. Often, especially if it is pushing into a new area, it won’t. In that case you will need to conduct original research (case studies, lab research or surveys, for instance) to substantiate and adjust the prescriptions.
Analyze and synthesize: New insights only emerge through a process of analysis and synthesis. Analysis involves studying and mining the data, looking for patterns and important findings. Synthesis refines and combines them into new insights.
Create frameworks: At the heart of any compelling point of view lie one or more frameworks that capture the issue and describe how to address it. The white paper above has several, including a high-level technical architecture for Business Intelligence. Good frameworks make a point of view memorable and help it last; the SWOT analysis framework and Kotler’s 4Ps of Marketing are two that have endured for decades.
Craft and refine the outline: Draft and collaboratively refine a detailed outline of the report.
Write the report: Finally with the finished outline in hand, create a full report, articles, a slide presentation and/or series of blog posts, from the core material.

The power in thought leadership marketing comes from the point of view, not the pen. Unfortunately, too many companies regard thought leadership initiatives as writing assignments, producing well-written, but lightweight copy.

Does your company’s thought leadership fall into this category? If so, can you fix it?

Tim Parker of the Bloom Group has more than 20 years experience in the sales, marketing and delivery of professional services. Tim leads and contributes to programs to develop the firm’s own points of view in areas of thought leadership marketing and writes and presents on these topics. He also helps clients develop their intellectual capital and take it to market. In the course of this work, he designs and analyses surveys, conducts client case studies, leads and performs the analysis and synthesis of findings, and writes final reports and op-eds for publication. Tim earned his undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University in England and an MBA from London Business School and MIT Sloan School.

Beth Harte: Giving Thanks

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 05:00:00 -0800

“Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. [Football] half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.” Erma Bombeck

Today is one of my favorite holidays... Thanksgiving! Not only is it historical (I dig history!), but it’s also a time for great food, days spent with family and friends, and to reflect on what we are thankful for.

Me? This is my typical marketing nerdiness, but, I am thankful to be part of the MarketingProfs team as their community manager. It’s great to be part of a company that has embraced the changes we are experiencing in the world of marketing. In doing so, we can lead by example and show other organizations that, while challenging, change can lead to great success. As a marketer, I can’t think of anything better! (See, told you...nerdy!)

The team at MarketingProfs is also thankful for all of you! You may know only a few of us (Ann, Allen, Roy, Shelley, Val, Anne, Susanne, Kathy, Penny), but everyone here works really hard to provide you with the best marketing resources available. And when you take the time to leave your footprints behind in the form of comments, questions, interaction, debate and problem solving here at the Daily Fix, over at our KHE forum, in our resource area, during a seminar, at a conference, or over at Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook, you give all of us a chance to get to know the individual personalities that make MarketingProfs a special place to hang out.

We know there are a lot of places for you to get marketing information and yet you choose to carve (No pun intended. Really.) time out of your day to spend it with us. Thank you for being a part of our community!

Wishing you, your family and friends a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!

Twelve minutes is up...back to that game.

Ann Handley: Using Email Marketing To Create Buzz About Cyber Monday Sales

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 05:04:48 -0800

This is a guest post by Wendy Lowe, director of product marketing at Campaigner, which is an email marketing solution.

The holidays are here: the most important time of the year for retailers, as they hope that huge sales bring them to profitability for 2009. Big box retailers will use millions of dollars to flex their marketing muscle to bring attention to their products and sales. It gives them a huge advantage over small retailers, but the little guys do have an equalizing arrow in their quiver: email marketing campaigns.

Email marketing campaigns are affordable, and can help small retailers to compete with the big boys during this crucial sales period.

Before launching any email marketing campaign; however, retailers have to ensure that the program will meet the objectives they have defined. They also have to determine what will make their campaigns stand out and what value they will provide to their subscribers. In order to pull that off, retailers have to combine aspects of promotional, informational and operational communications in their email marketing efforts. Programs that include all three help retailers to promote longevity and strong relationships, while still encouraging immediate sales.

Here are strategies any small retailer can employ to make their email campaign click with their audience:

Clean up promotional campaigns. Every promotion should include these items to be effective a: subject line that describes the offer; call to action listed in the top right corner; relevant offer;clickable image of what you're promoting; and short text.
Tone down informational campaigns. Since informational campaigns focus on loyalty, tone down the sales pitch. Even during the holiday season, retailers need to balance quick sales with long term revenues. Create a monthly (or weekly or bi-weekly) e-newsletter to run throughout the holiday season and fill it with recipes, gift ideas, and other holiday goodies. That will keep brand recognition high amongst subscribers and provide more unique value than just a product discount.
Spread holiday cheer through operational emails. Spread a little holiday cheer through welcome, thank you, and confirmation messages. While these messages are not meant (or allowed by CAN-SPAM laws) to be predominantly marketing focused, adding a little company branding is 100 percent acceptable and even suggested by most email experts. Operational emails can be easily leveraged by including a link: to an email header that links to the retailer's website; to a coupon offer; to a web page with complementary products; or where recipients can manage their subscription preferences.
Select occasions not days. Stop stressing about email send dates. There is no universal best time or day to send an email campaign. While historically, marketers have tried to define this, the result was merely a greater volume of email sent at the same time, leading consumers to tune out more and making the marketer's theory completely obsolete.

Instead, base the email schedule around audience behavior and environmental factors. Retailers should ask themselves: When are my consumers at their computer? Moreover, when are they interested in my
product?

Additionally, tie messaging to occasions such as each holiday, the weather, new product releases, etc. For the holiday season, try creating seasonal campaigns that deploy before each big holiday.

Docstoc Launches DocShots

Neil Patel — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 16:17:42 -0800

For all of you bloggers and website owners out there, you have to check DocShots.

If you ever embed files into your website, you should use DocShots because it makes it easier for your visitors to browse them.

Ineternet Marketers Charity Party at SES NY

Neil Patel — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:49:32 -0800

If you are going to attend SES New York, or live in New York, you HAVE to attend the Internet marketers charity party! Unlike most parties, you won't just have fun, but you will also be saving lives.

For $50 you can buy a ticket for the party and you will get access to an open bar. The cool part is, all of your $50 will be going to a ton of different causes. The main reason this is possible is because Best of the Web and We Build Pages is going to cover all of the costs.

I hope you sign up!!!!

The Inside Scoop from Facebook Advertising

Neil Patel — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 17:08:41 -0800

One of my friends, DK, had a chance to visit Facebook a few weeks ago and he learned some cool stuff about it.

There are 175 million active users.
The fastest-growing demographic is those over 30
The average user has 120 friends
There are 850 million photos uploaded every month

If you want to learn more about Facebook, check out DK's blog.

Check Out Search Muffin

Neil Patel — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:42:14 -0700

One of my friends just released a new service called Search Muffin that allows you to see how you rank on Google in different locations. As you know, Google has different datacenters, so it is always a wise thing to see where you rank regionally.

Affiliate Theme Revolutionizes The Affiliate Industry

Neil Patel — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:03:52 -0700

Have you seen those big checks on the web from affiliate marketers showing how they made thousands, if not millions of dollars? I know I have, and every time I see one of those checks I always think about how I too could make that kind of money through affiliate marketing.

The main problem I have been facing, and probably you as well, is that how do you get started? Well luckily enough, the guy over at Unique Blog Designs just launched a cool new service today called Affiliate Theme that solves this problem. What the service provides is that it creates affiliate sites for you, allows you to easily plug in offers from networks like Azoogle, and it tests the crap out of your design and traffic so that you can make thousands of dollars.

Whether you are an affiliate newbie or a super affiliate, Affiliate Theme can make your life a lot easier. Here is how:

Change your design on the fly - you won't have to wait for slow designers anymore. Anytime you want to change your design, all you have to do is log into Affiliate Theme and change it with a click of a button.
Modify your designs with ease - whether it is the color of your design or placements of objects, you get a cool WYSIWYG editor with Affiliate Theme.
No more coding - this is my favorite feature because I hate dealing with code. Whether it is fonts, backgrounds, or effects, I don't have to worry about coding anymore.
Design testing - testing your designs doesn't have to be hard anymore. With ease you can do things like making your call to action button bigger or brighter.
Lifetime support center - if you are a newbie you may have some questions about Affiliate Theme or just affiliate marketing in general. Never the less, Unique Blog Designs has your back and they will help you with all of your needs.

Now get out there and sign up for Affiliate Theme. If you don't, you will regret it!

IM Spring Break

Neil Patel — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:05:19 -0700

Getting bored of those dull Internet marketing conferences? Most of them are packed with great information, but if you have been to any of them, you'll realize that they can be boring.

If you want a great conference experience in which you will learn a lot and have fun, you have to come to IM Spring Break. You will learn all about Internet marketing, plus you'll have tons of fun.

Go check it out!

All Advertising Agencies Luanches

Neil Patel — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:35:24 -0700

If you find yourself looking for a great advertising agency, All Advertising Agencies is a site that helps businesses find and contact advertising agencies based on the specific kinds of services they are looking for, their industry, budget and location. By providing just the relevant agencies, All Advertising Agencies allows businesses to rapidly filter out most agencies, and spend their time narrowing down the right match from a smaller pool of possibilities.

iNetMania Now Available for Download on the Apple App Store!

Neil Patel — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:25:30 -0700

Do you love Monopoly? Then you have to check out iNetMania, which is kind of like a Monopoly type of game for Internet companies.

If you have an iPhone, you can download the game here.

Tip'd Turns 2.0

Neil Patel — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:51:36 -0700

Financial social media site, Tip'd, just went 2.0.

You Have to Talk to People to be Successful! Who Knew?

Neil Patel — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:35:50 -0700

Almost everyone on this planet wants to become successful, there is no doubt about it. You can't blame people for wanting this. Success in wealth can take you places you've always dreamed of going and buy you things you always wished for. Success in contribution allows you to feel the joy and happiness in others feeling fulfilled. Success in spirituality allows one to explore areas of their mind that bring them closer to enlightenment. Since there are several different areas of success that people want to indulge in, it's no surprise they're willing to do whatever it takes to get it.

Do you want to know what the secret to my success is? I talk to people every single day and persuade them to do business with me. Yes, to be successful you have to talk people! No you can't just sit on your computer all day confined in your room. I'm almost always have interaction with other people every single day. Whether I'm meeting potential business partners for lunch to pitching my new idea to a VC, I'm always selling myself. I truly believe that your communication is the key to your success. A friend of mine, AJ Kumar who blogs on Persuasive.net, a personal development blog, writes amazing articles a few times a week on how you can powerfully change the way you communicate. When I met AJ, we both almost instantly realized that way shared the same philosophy. AJ has finally released his highly anticipated book: 7 Day Persuasive Communication which he sent over to me a few days ago. It's a short read, very informative, and teaches you the core skills necessary to become a powerful communicator. The top 10 reasons you should learn persuasive communication are:

A person can double their income from $35,000 a year to $75,000
Obtain undivided attention with people you communicate with
Convince investors to give you $$$$Money$$$$ for your start-up company
Go from being laid off to successfully employed within a few interviews
Sell your product or service to someone right now to put cash in your pocket
Create a powerful network of millionaires and billionaires
Acquire that self confidence you have been searching for
Bring more readers to your website or blog
Sway your website visitors to stay longer on your site to allow the maximum conversion rate
Become an expert negotiator to find the best deals possible

For any entrepreneur, this book is definitely a must read and should be implemented right away. I like the way AJ incorporates assignments that easily integrate in your everyday life so you don't have to go out of your way to learn. For a person who can barley find time to breathe sometimes, this is perfect.

The cost of the eBook is less than $20 bucks so it nothing that will dent your wallet. If you, like me, considering your communication skills to be your "ammo", then this is something you should get right away. With the technology, information, and accessibility available to everyone on this planet, it's difficult to become successful. It seems as if everyone can do what you do and many times at a lower rate. The one thing that can separate you from everyone else is your unique ability to communicate. Instead of placing all your focus on small things like making your websites look pretty, invest in your communication skills and network your way to a successful future.

Click here to download AJ's book right now!

How To Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time

Neil Patel — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:09:28 -0700

Over the past few weeks I have been reading a book called Twitter Power by Joel Comm. As many of you know I am not a big fan of books, but I have to say it is one of my favorite books. Even though I already know a lot about social media it made me think about Twitter in a new way. Here are a few things I learned:

Get Started the Right Way

When I started using Twitter, I went about it the wrong way. My user name wasn't my name and I tried to create a profile that wasn't tied to my company or me. Because of this no one really paid attention to my Twitter profile and cared about what I tweeted. So if you are new to Twitter, make sure your profile represents you.

On top of that you need to make your profile is inviting. For example you want to use a picture of yourself and design your profile instead of just using the generic designs Twitter gives you. And when doing so make sure you take into account colors, because you don't want it to be too distracting and causes people to ignore your tweets.

Building a Following

When you first sign up for Twitter there are two ways you can get followers. The first is the quantity route and the second is the quality route. If you go for the quantity route you can do a few things:

Look for people you already know.
Tweet your blog, so every time you write a blog posts it goes to Twitter. You also want to make sure your twitter profile is linked to from your blog.
Offer your followers freebies and gifts. The more you offer to them, the more people will follow you. A good way to do this is through contests.
Every time someone tweets you, make sure you respond to them.
Put your Twitter name in your email signature.

If you are looking to get quality users, you can:

Identify and follow the experts in your industry.
Gain people's friendship by doing things such as replying to their tweets.
Always give more than you take by doing things such as giving other people advice and when they ask for it.

The Art of Tweeting

As you probably already know, I don't tweet too often. I have only made a few hundred tweets in a year to 2 years. After reading Twitter Power, I finally understood how I should be tweeting.

Follow Twitter etiquette. For example you never want to spam (which I have done), you want to give credits when retweeting, and most importantly you want to stick with 140 characters (don't create multiple tweets to get across a message).
You want to join the conversation. I always just tweeted what I wanted, but my profile never grew. The main reason for this is because I never joined the conversation and contributed to it.
Make sure you are interesting on Twitter. If you want to tweet crap, that's fine, but you will probably gain a lot more followers if you are interesting.

Conclusion

There is a lot more great information that you can learn by reading Twitter Power. I personally loved it so much that I recommend you get out there right now and buy a copy. If you don't you will regret it!

By the way, you should also Twitter about Twitter Power. ;-)

DocStoc Charges Out Of Beta With DocCash

Neil Patel — Wed, 13 May 2009 22:16:32 -0700

If you are looking to make money on the web, but aren't too technically savvy, DocStoc has just released a cool new product that lets you easily make money. Through their new program, DocCash, every time you upload a document to DocStoc you will get 50 percent of the ad revenue DocStoc earns.

For more information, check out TechCrunch's post on DocCash.

Want to be a winner? Join the Winners Circle!

Neil Patel — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:16:47 -0700

Gyutae Park from Winning the Web just launched a new membership site called Winners Circle. I don't normally post about stuff like this but I wanted to mention it because I think it has a lot to offer marketers of all levels.

Winners Circle is unique in that it uses real case studies and specific examples to show what works and what doesn't. Gyutae isn't claiming to be a super guru or anything like that but he's good at analyzing successful sites and breaking down step-by-step how they reached the point they're at today. For example, the first case study included shows how a small site beat out huge companies like Toshiba and Wal-Mart in Google for a very competitive keyword. It's very interesting analysis that reveals some little-known link building strategies as well. I recommend you check it out - you can't find this sort of information anywhere else.

Winners Circle features weekly case studies, bi-weekly interviews, and some other bonus material. The program costs $47/month but the first 200 get in for $27/month and the first 50 get a free personal site audit from Gyutae.

Join Winners Circle and give it a try.

Want to be a winner? Join the Winners Circle!

Neil Patel — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:16:47 -0700

Gyutae Park from Winning the Webjust launched a new membership site called Winners Circle. I don't normally post about stuff like this but I wanted to mention it because I think it has a lot to offer marketers of all levels.

Join Winners Circle and give it a try.

The Micropreneur Academy

Neil Patel — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 22:37:57 -0700

My friend Rob, just luanched the The Micropreneur Academy. Here is a bit more information on it.

The Micropreneur Academy, an online learning environment for solo software entrepreneurs, is opening its doors to new enrollments soon. Launched in April by noted software blogger and entrepreneur Rob Walling of Software by Rob, the Academy takes developers and entrepreneurs through the process of building and launching a software product (including web applications) with a focus on online marketing topics such as blogging, buzz marketing, social media marketing, and search engine marketing.

Academy members support one another through the private forums and a members-only LinkedIn group and they follow a proven blueprint for finding a profitable niche, building a product, launching, marketing, and supporting it as a one-person software company. Many current members have launched or are launching their own product/web app in the first few months.

Look for a review of the Academy in Bob Walsh's upcoming book, The Web Startup Success Guide.

Weekend Favs November Twenty-two

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 06:44:26 -0800

Weekend Favs November Twenty-two

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

I’ve added a weekend post routine that I hope you enjoy. Each weekend I write a post that features 3-4 things I read during the week that I found interesting. Generally speaking it won’t involve much analysis and may range widely in topic. (Flickr image included here is also fav image of the week)

Image credit: nordic design

Enjoy!

Good stuff I ran across this week:
5 Real-Life Google Wave Use Cases – get used to hearing more about Google Wave

21 Plugins for Multi-author Blogs – Add expert content to your blog by recruiting other writers.

Google Webmaster Channel – Google’s official home for all things webmaster related. Lots of great videos with straight answers on what works and what doesn’t from Google’s Matt Cutts.

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Stop Wasting Your Time With Social Media

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:11:21 -0800

Stop Wasting Your Time With Social Media

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

If you have no precise marketing strategy, or even a simple set of marketing goals, social media participation will only serve as a glorious way to highlight that your business is precisely like every other business that says they do what you do. (That’s a nice way of saying you are doomed to compete on price.)

In short, without a plan, one that’s steeped in your overall marketing strategy, any tactical form of marketing, including creating a Facebook Group, will be a waste of time. Don’t get me wrong, I think social media is a killer small business platform, but without a marketing strategy it won’t prove any more effective than anything else you’ve tried.

Marketers and entrepreneurs have always been easy prey for the “idea of the week.” Looking for the next big thing, they jump, sometimes before they finish or implement that last big thing, willingly onto whatever catches their attention today. With the onslaught of change brought by social media, the next big thing is coming in waves, making the “idea of day” the new affliction.

Lack of a marketing strategy or point of differentiation has always been a problem for small business, it’s just that it’s easier to overcome if you can build trust by meeting someone face to face.

In the search-powered, information overload, social media world we now live in, a marketing strategy is no more or less important than it ever was, it’s just more apparent when you lack one. Marketing fundamentals don’t really change, only the platforms and tactics have new names.

Strategy before tactics looks like this
1) Clearly define who makes an ideal customer for your business – there are lots of ways to say this – who do you want to work with, who are you most equipped to get a result for, what kind of problem does an ideal customer need to display to prove you can help them, what behaviors, attitudes, fears and needs are you most ready to address?

2) Clearly communicate in very simple terms so way that you, your product, your service, your experience, your packaging, your guarantee, your people, your process is different in a way that really is different (good customer service is not it) in a way that matters to your ideal customer.

3) Boil this difference down into a word or two, like fast, practical, fun, whimsical, or posh and make certain that every tactic, every communication, every tweet conveys that word. If you can’t do this, even if you have to change everything about your current business to do so, don’t expect to generate much momentum on or offline.

I know conversation’s surrounding marketing strategy aren’t as sexy as talking about the next twitter advancement, but this is the harsh reality that is marketing – social or not!

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Update of My Free Social Media Ebook

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:16:16 -0800

Update of My Free Social Media Ebook

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Social media and online marketing tools and tactics are an evolving lot. What was true last month may have a new twist this month.

With that in mind I am happy to report that I’ve once again teamed up with the Microsoft Office Live Small Business team to bring you the revised and freshly updated – Let’s Talk: Social Media for Small Business.

While the reasons why a small business might jump into the social media fray have remained fundamentally the same, the how of it all has evolved substantially since version one. In this update, I’ve added a lot more information about Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and also included some thoughts on managing the social media beast, including my own social media system.

Thanks to Microsoft for making this free guide available again. You can grab a copy from the Office Live Small Business site or here.

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Marketing Podcast with Biznik

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:22:15 -0800

Marketing Podcast with Biznik

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing podcast with Dan McComb (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes

I’ve been running with a consistent theme of late that the best use of social media platforms comes from blending online and offline tactics. My guest for this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is Dan McComb the co-founder of Biznik.com. Biznik is a social network that allows people to join and form local communities as well as create and host local events. You can view my profile on Biznik here.

Biznik recently conducted a small business survey in conjunction with iStockphoto and the finding make up a large part of our interview. You can view a summary of the survey findings here

Some notes of interest

33 percent said that the most important reason they started a business was to do something that they enjoyed!
26 percent said they did because they didn’t want to work for someone else
6 percent did it for the money

The biggest challenges facing entrepreneurs? I

Reduced income (44 percent)
Isolation (19 percent)
Long hours (15 percent)
Lack of access to health insurance (13 percent)

In this podcast:
The meaning of Biznik

Findings from Biznik and istockphoto entrepreneur survey
Online support/community for entrepreneurs
Using social media to expand business
Difference between Biznik and other networking sites
Biznik’s growing success

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Referrals Are Always Cool

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:17:02 -0800

Referrals Are Always Cool

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

If you’re doing good work, have products that people enjoy, and provide a service and experience that exceeds expectation, chances are, your business is benefiting from word of mouth referrals.

While this occasional lead generation windfall may be great, there are things you can do to shine a light on referral generation and generate significantly more referrals.

This week I shared five of my favorite ways to get more referrals in my article for OpenForum – Read 5 Ways to Get More Referrals

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Will Customer Opinion Overtake Search?

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:00:01 -0800

Will Customer Opinion Overtake Search?

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Right now showing up on page one of the organic search results is the holy grail of small business online marketing. Any business that spends significant time consistently producing keyword rich, educational content, draws links, and is active in numerous social network can eventually gain some real traction when it comes to search results.

For about five years rating a review sites like Yelp! and Insider Pages have been slowly bubbling up and impacting search results and buying decisions. More and more people are relying on search results combined with reviews. In other words, they might find you on page one and that was good, but then they find some so so reviews on CitySearch and that could kill the deal.

While ratings and opinions have dramatically impacted purchases made at hotels and restaurants, they haven’t had nearly as big an impact on other industries. After all the the searcher needed to use these rating sites and the reviews, while carrying some weight, were from strangers.

This past week Google added something they are calling Social Search. (Here’s the official Google announcement) For now Social Search is opt-in (you need to activate it in Google Labs), but when activated you will start to see the opinions, blog posts, tweets and reviews from your friends and those you follow in other social networks at the bottom of the regular Google search results.

Search for San Francisco restaurants add these social search results

If this feature becomes standard, which I think it will, a surfer looking for a good place to get a pair running shoes on a business trip can do a search and not only get results for the stores in the area, but also opinions and recommendations from friends. Do you think those recommendation, up or down, will carry more weight than those hard earned SEO results – I think it’s highly possible they will.

Getting great search engine placement and results is still essential. Paying attention to what your customers are saying, helping them say it, participating in real time conversations good and bad, and monitoring and measuring every mention may just become the new SEO.

If you would like to see what this looks like you will need the following
1) Google account
2) Google personal profile with some elements of your social graph added – Gmail contacts, Twitter profile, Facebook profile (This is where the Google gets the content to show)
3) Social Search enabled through Google Labs

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For This I Do Give Thanks

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 09:14:27 -0800

For This I Do Give Thanks

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

I know that spouting words of thanks on this day can come off a bit disingenuous, but I just feel like giving readers of this blog a look into some of the things I humbly feel blessed to have and in some cases share. I hear from so many of you and know that you can relate and maybe you’ll even add to my list in the comments.

Things I am thankful for (in no order)

1 – That my daughters are each so uniquely independent
2 – The amazing people I get to work with in the Duct Tape Marketing Coach Network
3 – That my 13 yr old Chocolate Lab (pictured) still wags his tail lovingly no matter what I say to him
4 – All those that point out my torture of the English language as sport
5 – How my wife can keep me grounded with a simple knowing smile
6 – Readers who take the time to suggest when they both agree and disagree with me
7 – That I am able to call myself a small business owner
8 – That my father and mother loved and respected each other so
9 – Pop Tarts (they are a banned substance in our household, but I am still thankful for the memory)
10 – The freedom to worship, speak, live and cast a vote as I see fit

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Weekend Favs November Twenty-nine

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 06:04:59 -0800

Weekend Favs November Twenty-nine

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Image credit: atotto

Enjoy!

Good stuff I ran across this week:

20 Brand New, Incredibly Useful WordPress Plugins – Some good stuff here to extend the power of this popular blog software

7 Harsh Realities of Social Media Marketing – I like this article because it’s well written and paints the non-hype side of social media, but maybe goes a little too far in making social media participation sound too hard to do

Retaggr – a gateway to all you online profiles

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What’s Your SEO Code? - Musings on Outing other Websites for Fun and Profit

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:50:36 -0700

Most people are taught that the first rule of SEO club is that you don’t talk about SEO club (some learn this rule harder than others.) This is an important question as far as most people in the SEO community are concerned. Based on the system that information is knowledge, power, and ultimately money, you can see how people often have a vested interest in outing other peoples techniques, or keeping them secret. You also learn very quickly that who you can trust is extremely important. Everyone has their own code. Mine personally is started with - ""their are no hats, only goals". With the essence of that being that only illegal techniques are truly crossing the line, but everyone has to determine their ultimate level of risk and reward (similar to investing or anything else). Hats are bullshit. Techniques and code should be determined by one’s career choice and goals.

My buddy Brent got a little bit of flack last night for this post, about digg selling links. I’ve also had more than a few conversations defending my friend Rand’s choices for outing sites on more than one occasion (as well as arguing with him about where I disagree with his choices). I figure I’d open it up for a bit of public debate, as well as state for the record where I stand with it, since I helped Brent in this case rather than mentioning it was a bad idea. This of course, got me riled up on a pretty good topic of discussion anyhow, so I figured it was a good time to put it on paper quick and bust out a blog post.

I’m not gonna point out names, but you know who you are, and where you stand.

When is it okay to out a site’s SEO techniques? Here’s the spectrum of types of people I would categorize people into. "Outing" a site includes doing a spam report or blogging about it, which are essentially different methods to do the same thing.

Old School Affiliate SEO/ Competitive Webmaster

It’s never okay to out a site. EVER. EVER. EVER. Google Japan buying links MAY qualify as an exception, but probably not. They’ll definitely talk about spammy techniques in the bar (and you’ll learn a helluva lot), and swear you to secrecy, or have you know that secrecy in these matters is always implied. I respect this code the most, and only disagree with it in a very few rare instances.

I think Rae sums it up nicely, “back in the days when we used to have Omerta and anyone with a name earned it - kinda like television before reality TV”

Basically - the rule is “keep your mouth shut unless you have been granted permission to speak about it” on anything outside of a conference presentation (especially if you heard it in a smokey pub at 1 am).

SEO Consultant/ Blogger (aka me)

It’s okay to out ultra large sites on very rare occasions with proper justification and research, knowing that they are large enough that there will be no penalization instituted because of the hypocrisy of search engines. Outing these sites is mainly to piss them off a bit (get their attention), or demonstrate the hypocrisy of search engines. I didn’t get this, until I saw some of my favorite OG SEO folks discussing Colgate, BMW, and other large brands that ultimately got a tiny slap that amounted to nearly nothing more than probably a link monkey getting a scolding from their boss. In cases of big brands being the new black hat

Personally, I still wouldn’t out these, but I can at least find a rational reason why a journalist/practioner (see below) might when they discover and seo company or consultant that totally sucks at what they do and does it for a giant dumb corporation. Again - not my thing (and I would never do it since I respect the OG affiliate competitive webmaster code far too much), but I can at least understand their logic, unlike some of the other following types of people.

This being said, on at least one occasion, I’ve ACCIDENTLY outed things that I didn’t mean to (and still feel bad about it JS:) Tough lessons to learn, so I always try to err on the side of STFU

"I’m curious who the genius is that told Experian buying a straight link on Digg was a good idea. Pretty fuckin clueless." - Greg Boser on Twitter

Oh - one other time it’s probably okay to do a spam report - if you’re searching for blues clues and get beastiality pr0n

Weak (and cowardly) SEO

People who do spam reports and outings because they’re not competitive enough to play the game. I probably have the least amount of respect for these people than anyone. They hope that by reporting others, their rankings will improve. I learn from my competitors, and it pisses me off when someone acheives higher rankings than I with a bogus OLD technique. It still NEVER justifies reporting them in my opinion/code.

Journalist

For people whose business model is based on news, hype, ratings, and traffic - they’re going to out as much stuff as they can to get the traffic. Just the same as traditional media, they are not active practicioners of SEO. The trouble becomes when you are an active practicioner of SEO and don’t respect your craft enough to have a solid code.

Pointy White Hat "Ethical" SEO.

These folks have spam report bookmarklets in their tool bar, and pride themselves on making the web a better place (by ruining other people’s livelihoods) because they think google will make a rather benovelent dictatorship. Kind of the equivalent of the religious right, and often get outed themselves with something equally as morally ambiguous like Jimmy Swaggert or Larry Craig.

Search Engine Engineer

Always okay. It’s they’re job, and at least their consistent in what they do. Even google japan deserves a penalty for buying links. I respect consistency.

It’s very difficult to be respected by both sides of the fence, but in order to do it you have to have a level of respect for both sides of those playing the SEO game.

So the question becomes - when is it okay to "out" a site, and where do you see yourself on the spectrum? Anything I missed?

Mr. Ploppy’s Monday Tool List - Volume XXIV - Search Engine Sitemap Tools
Getting a site indexed correctly is a critical aspect to good search rankings. It never ceases to a...
Mr. Ploppy’s Monday Morning Tool List Volume XVIII - CSS Tools
I really don't do a lot of coding and development these days, but I certainly used to try. I've alw...
Examples of Bad Reciprocal Link Requests
I get bad link requests all the time. I'm sure you do as well. The below is only a few days worth ...
Custom 404’s - Don’t Make Your Users Feel Stupid
The SEO Algorithm - Best Practices and Quality Indicators

San Francisco Search Marketing Happy Hour

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:31:44 -0700

Be sure to stop by if you’re in the Bay Area.
Thursday, April 30th - 6pm
Avalon Penthouse
255 King Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
Details, Directions, and signup

Upcoming Speaking Engagements - SMX Advanced in Seattle & SES Toronto Training
Just a quick note - if you'll be in Seattle, I'll be speaking on Buying Old Sites for SEO. I'll als...
San Francisco SEO Meetup Part II - Gordon Biersch - Friday August, 10th 6:00 pm
6:00 pm - Friday August the 10th at Gordon Biersch 2 Harrison St, San Francisco, CA. If you're plan...
San Francisco SEO Meetup Part II - Friday Feb. 29th
A little Pre SMX West warmup to get your liver (oh and your search questions) ready. You can RSVP on...
Rush Hour - Neil Patel and Cameron Olthuis on WebmasterRadio
San Francisco SEO Meetup

Link Development Training: How Link Building for SEO is Like Picking Up a Girl

Wed, 13 May 2009 04:19:31 -0700

Link development is tough. Not everyone can create amazing linkbait, as easy as the experts make it sound. It’s not an easy proposition to get people to link to your website if you’re a local realtor, mortgage broker, or holistic doctor for that matter. It is POSSIBLE though with the right approach to actually solicit and develop links that will help your search engine rankings. From LOTS of trial and error, here’s the process I’ve developed for training link developers to become true link ninjas that will hunt and pursue links that actually make a site rank high for targeted terms.

The updated "How to Train a Link Developer for 2009 Guide"

Teach them why links are important and the basic criteria for establishing their value

Overall value of the link theme (use cost per click as a rough metric)
Total links
Total unique linking domains (find with linkharvester)
Anchor text and surrounding text variables
Placement on page
Check Age (Archive.org)
More link value factors

Explain the contradiction of pagerank mattering

It is a quick indicator to dismiss low value websites
Toolbar pagerank is for entertainment purposes only, and can be spoofed
Finding high pagerank (or global link popularity) sites is a great starting point to finding authority links

Show them how to find good starting points
(and WHY this is important)

Explain how to find contact information

Page search for name or webmaster
Whois.sc or other whois tool
Phone number search
People search

Explain how to search source code and within the browser to find things quickly on a page

Firefox - control+U to view source
Control+F to find text
Find text on the actual page
Open tabs with shift+click or other methods
Mouse gestures FF plugin

Explain the 12 different types of links

Order of importance
How to get each
How much time to spend on each type
Links is to SEO’s what Snow is to Eskimos.

Explain how to write contact emails (see pickup tips below for more)

Explain how to write converting titles to improve open rate
Explain how to write an link request

Write some descriptions and anchor text

Explain getting content for article links
Explain writing titles and description
Explain varying anchor text
Explain current keyword strategy
Co-citation techniques

Demonstrate how to negotiate

anchor text or alt text
type of link
rates
term
exclusivity

Explain how to tell if a webmaster is cheating or if a site sucks

Non-cached pages
Linkfarm pages
Sneaky redirects
Robots.txt
Nofollow
Buried links pages

Let them go out and get some links

Setup a paypal account with limited access
Setup a one time credit card with a limited amount
Have them verify purchases

Explain how to mine a competitors backlinks

Linkscape
Link Harvester
Yahoo Site Explorer
Quirk Search Status plugin for FF
Hubfinder (in SEObook community, and a few legacy versions)

Start a persona for your website

Real or psuedonym (real are much more credible)
Be consistent across websites (and interlink within reason)
Have picture and bios
Make sure you own your brand (in addition to generic personas)- Secure with KnowEm

Explain they are a brand advocate, and their actions represent the company

Similar to business development
Establish phone etiquette
Establish email and IM etiquette rules

How Link Building for SEO is Like Picking Up a Girl

Yes - I understand that I will probably get a bunch of flack for writing this part of the article. I’m willing to bite the magic bullet, and make the parallel anyhow for the good of humanity.

The simple facts are:
1. I will likely use as a presentation to train people on link development
2. It’s remotely entertaining and memorable.
3. Like a beautiful women, a great link can be damn sexy.
4. (if you agreed with #3, you’ll agree) Most people who practice SEO, and lots of people I train are geeky like me, and could use a little bit more understanding of the female species.
5. If you are female, you can debate the finer points of both how and why both work or why they don’t(conversation is important to the development of both of these skills).

This post is inspired by a handful of things including my original post on "how to train a link developer" (from 2005 that was sorely in need of updating), and the "emotional progression model" laid out by the infamous Mystery from VH1 and "The Game" fame.

Approach **

Learn to get a response (of any type) from a target
Use Twitter, IM, Email, Facebook, or any other communication method
Overcome approach anxiety and approach sites early and often

Transition

Discuss webmastering
Discuss content of a similar nature
Mention the website you are associated with

Attraction

Demonstrate value as a webmaster
Demonstrate value as a web user
Demonstrate value to the webmaster’s users

Qualification

Allow the opportunity to have a webmaster help you in return (ask intelligent questions)
Find attractive opportunities to work together (perhaps brainstorming ideas or content trading)

Comfort

Discussing opportunities to work together through trading links
Discussing advertising opportunities

Seduction

Discussing anchor text and surrounding text
Discussing ad placement and terms

Relationship

Discussing the duration of the contract
Discussing renewal terms of the contract
Discussing mutual arrangements of the contract
Make sure there are no lies (nofollow, robots.txt, javascript redirects)

**Numbered points are from the "Emotional Progression Model"

For more on information on SEO and link development training, check out MarketMotive, or let me know if you need something more custom.

Inspiration:

Additional Resources:

Anything I missed? Great Tips? Great Tools? Great Links about Links? Leave ‘em in the comments.

10 Tips for Training a Link Developer
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Mr. Ploppy’s Monday Morning Tool List Volume XIX - Link Development Tools Revisited
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You Owe Greg and Dax Beer on Fridays - SiteExplorer Backlink Mining Tool
I went by Greg's site to get a link to send someone for the other tool (espion) that he had released...
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Hyperlink Hot Seat

SEOMoz Linkscape and Tools are Badass - New Visualize Tool in the Labs

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:19:41 -0700

I had a chance to spend some time with my buddy Rand from SEOMoz.org this week, and he gave me a peak at some of the cool new things they’re working on. I’ve always been a big fan of Rand and crew’s work, and they’ve proved me right again with the release of some of the toys in their lab.

This is a great way to see if you have a chance to rank for a phrase visually. If you are out of balance in any of the six major variables, you will see it here:

The tool incorporates several elements of linkscape including:

mozrank
external links
domains linking
domain mozrank
external mozrank
moz trust

This is a really great way to checkout where your site needs balance in your ranking equation. The only place the data falters is in incorporating anchor text (which is a computational pain in the ass to collect and process). Great job as always Mozzers. Don’t miss these tools, they’re getting better by the day. Be sure to check out all the tools in the Moz Labs

Search Engine Labs
Yahoo and Google both offer a peak into the future along the lines of beta technology. See what the...
Mr. Ploppy’s Monday Tool List - Volume I
So I have a section of this site that is for tools, and I have a ton of tools in my bookmarks. Crea...
Personalized Google in the Works
"Personalized" Google Search was released at G Labs today. The technology is supposedly based on th...
Mr. Ploppy on Hiatus
Suggested Google Alphabet - Reverse Engineering Google Suggest Tool

SEO Game Changers - Search Engine / SEO History

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 15:12:35 -0700

There is a misnomer in search marketing and SEO that things change all the time. I think I stopped consuming SEO blogs and news sites on a daily basis about 2 or 3 years ago when I decided enter full time consultancy with no one else’s safety net. There was no extra time for anything accept a low information consumption diet. I had to develop unflinching confidence in the work I was doing to execute on various strategies based on my understanding of how search engines have historically worked, and the assumption that they will continue to function in basically the same manner for some time to come.

This is from a conclusion that there have only been a handful of changes that affected how I conducted my business. I learned from both blackhats and search engineers both to come up with a strategy that fit my ethical code while indulging my competitive nature and hunger for success. I am convinced that the cat/mouse dynamic between blackhats and engineers has helped to form the current state of information retrieval based on strong needs to stay relevant in certain areas that were exploited solely for capitalistic monetary gain.

I’ve found some great posts and articles about search history and how search engines have evolved over time, but not many mentions of how search optimizers have changed their strategies over time. There are a few good resources listed below, but none quite summed up the changes that affected what I like to refer to as the “SEO mentality”. I’m hoping to create a fairly comprehensive document for Market Motive Internet Marketing Training (where I’ll be discussing this shortly with legendary SEO’s Greg Boser and Marshall Simmonds, to help add to the increasingly comprehensive body of SEO training we’ve developed over the past two years (Over 40 Videos now!).

I learned what SEO was in about 2002 - shortly after offpage factors started to strongly determine relevance. I spent several years and thousands of hours on forums reading, learning, an interacting and teaching to figure out how search engines worked. When I made the choice to work for myself at home after another great year of learning and consulting at We Build Pages (with Jim Boykin - one of the sharpest SEO’s I’ve ever known), I decided it was time to start doing. I built sites, and strategies for myself, using consulting money to fund development of website projects, and parlaying to thinks like being able to even afford the insane cost of living in the SF Bay area. It was based on the unwritten understanding of the changes that are mentioned below, and not listening to a lot of the SEO garbage that is spewed all over on the interwebs.

When I started doing - I realized that not much changes with SEO in terms of strategic execution. It is a pretty logical art and science of determining risk to reward ratios, and implementing strategies in a sequential fashion following certain established rules based on intended outcome. I’ve developed a playbook and these SEO rulesets by understanding the HISTORICAL GAMECHANGERS in SEO. Feel free to add some on twitter with #seogamechangers

I’ve been taking a mental inventory of these game changes for a few months, and here is what I have them broke down to:

1. Onpage factors (1995 – 1999)
2. Offpage factors (2000)
3. Florida update (2003)
4. Fresh Crawl/ Everflux (2004)
5. Sandbox effect (2005)
6. Duplicate content filtering (2006)
7. Human editorial (2006)
8. Onebox/ Universal Search (2007)
9. Paid linking handling (2007)
10. No follow (2008)
11. User data validation and segmentation (2009)
12. Brand Mentions (update Vince - 2009)

Some of my dates may be a bit off, but for the most part these are the major factors that affect my actionable SEO Strategies. These are the major changes that contribute to the hurdles, filters, and challenges of ranking a site on a search engine.

I’d love to hear from other folks on the things that you think should be included in the list. There are MANY minor things that full under these categories, but after revisiting most and asking twitter, I think this is pretty comprehensive, as things like local search 10 pack, personalization, geotargetting all fall under one of these other areas (even if the dates aren’t exact). Please let me know if you can think of anything I missed. I’ll try to watch the comments on the post closely for once:) Please post any great resources, or suggestions for adding/updating to the list.

Resources

Brett Tabke
Danny Sullivan
Aaron Wall’s extensive writing on SE history
Jim Boykin
James Svoboda
Rand Fishkin
Mark Knowles
Funny from Pat

The Ultra-Brief History of Mr. Ploppy
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Zunch Leader Challenges CEO’s to a Game of Galaga
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I Thought Google Hated Affiliates? - Google Enters the Affiliate Game
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Last Ticket to SEOktoberfest on Ebay

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:43:51 -0700

Since I am incredibly lazy - here are the details from the auction for the last SEOktoberfest golden ticket copy and pasted. I do agree with Greg’s assessment of why Rebecca should attend, and will add that I’m expecting it to be a lot like Bavarian Festival in Frankenmuth, Michigan, except 10,000% larger and more rowdy…which may remind Rebecca of home if she was from Frankenmuth (but she’s not), though she IS from Michigan, and I will need some representation from another Michigander to remind me where to get booze when there are no “party stores” around. That is all for the mindless blathering on this post - just go to the damn auction so you can join us. I’m sure the event will be epic.

The original ticket price is 5.000 euros, and the 15 tickets were sold out after only 20 minutes!

15 International Online-Marketing Experts, 15 Attendees, and 10 former Playmates - one conference - one big Party!

Here´s what´s happening at SEOktoberfest:

Tuesday, 22nd of September:
10 a.m - 4 p.m. - SEOktoberfest Conference
4 p.m. - 10 p.m. - Oktoberfest at famous Käfer Wiesn-Schnänke
open end - After Party at P1 Club

Wednesday, 23rd of September:
11 a.m. - 8 p.m. - We got a whole luxurious Spa completly rented out for everybody. 6 massage therapists etc. will get you fit again!
8 p.m. - open end - Friends & Family Dinner at Munich´s No.1 Wine-Restaurant Die blaue Donau

Thursday, 24th of September
10 a.m. - 4 p.m. - SEOktoberfest Conference
4. p.m. - 10 p.m. - Oktoberfest at Schützen-Festhalle
open end - After Party at a secret location

What´s included in the price?
Everything!
Every Attendee gets a whole Oktoberfest Outfit - Shoes, Lederhosen, Shirt etc., and everything you eat and / or drink, as well as all the transfers etc. - everything´s included!

Who are the Online Marketing Experts?

* Todd Malicoat
* Chris Winfield
* Bob Rains
* Johannes Beus
* Brent Csutoras
* Sickness
* RSnake
* Greg Boser
* Barbara Boser
* Todd Friesen
* Marcus Tandler
* Quadszilla
* Frank Watson

The proceeds from this charity auction go to the AMAZONICA Foundation!

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Kris, Jeremy, Neil, and I will be chatting about social media stuff this week, and doing a live Q an...
Paypal Levying Fines for TOS Violations
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The Rumors Ring Louder - Google Adwords Affiliate Policy
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Affiliate Summit East and San Jose Search Engine Strategies and IMCharityParty.com

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 04:07:35 -0700

3 Things to post here at Stuntdubl Land. 1. IM Charity Party - Please help by spreading the word. If you were there last year, you know, and can help spread the word. Should be a great time for a great cause. 2. Affiliate Summit Panel of social media for affiliates - should be good with a great group of speakers. 3. MarketMotive and SEO Clinic panel at SES San Jose - MM folks have built something awesome, and we get to show it off a bit at SES this year. More details on everything below. Looking forward to lots of great meals, great drinks, and awesome seo discussion in my near future:) Be sure to say hi.

IM Charity Party

IM Charity Party.com

Donate to drink and have a good time. Don’t miss it, or I’ll remember that you hate sick kids and puppies.

Affiliate Summit East ‘09

Social Media Marketing for Affiliates at Affiliate Summit East, and SES San Jose in the next two weeks. Details listed below.

Social Media Marketing for Affiliates
Session 5b

Location: Classroom B Clinton
Time: 2:00pm-3:00pm

Learn from some of the top Social Media Marketers, how you can use social media to build links, drive traffic, and increase your site’s visibility.

Neil Patel, Co-Founder, KISSmetrics (Twitter @neilpatel) (Moderator)
Brent Csutoras, Social Media Consultant, Brent Csutoras, Inc. (Twitter @brentcsutoras)
Chris Winfield, President, 10e20 (Twitter @chriswinfield)

Search Engine Strategies - San Jose, California

Organic Track
Advanced SEO Roundtable: What is it Really? And Where is it Going?
It’s been said that you stand a better chance of getting two SEOs to share a toothbrush than to agree on a common definition. If that’s so, what really qualifies someone as an advanced SEO expert and how should “the next level” of SEO be defined? Don’t miss what is sure to be a spirited debate as we try to separate “the art” from “the science” and figure out what actually constitutes an Advanced SEO.

* Moderator:
Richard Zwicky
Founder & CEO, Enquisite
* Speakers:
Matthew Bailey
SES Advisory Board & President, Site Logic Marketing, Marketmotive faculty
Bruce Clay, President, Bruce Clay, Inc.
Mike Grehan, SES Advisory Board Co-Chair
Todd Friesen, VP Search, Position Technologies

Speaking at SES San Jose Next Week
Really big thanks to Danny for givin' me a shot to speak on My SEM Toolbox. I think I've got a slew...
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I Love Tools - and Bryan Eisenberg has 69 Awesome Ones for You!

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:50:51 -0700

Market Motive faculty Bryan Eisenberg has a great list of 69 really killer tools for making your website better. Since I’m a big tool fan myself, we’re planning a future Market Motive panel to discuss our favorite tools for website. It should be truly awesome - if for some reason you don’t know Bryan - you’ve been living under a rock, and are missing out on one of the true top level experts on conversion optimization. This guy literally wrote the book on the subject (in fact, several of them). Check out Bryan’s awesome list of tools to make your website better, and keep an eye out for our upcoming webcast on MM on all our favorite tools in the web marketing arsenal.

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Query Specific Search Engine Ranking Variables
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Friday Favorites 5/18/07

16 Things I’ve Learned About Business while Being an SEO Consultant

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 22:33:31 -0700

1. Pay extra for premium domains (if you develop them)

If you can’t find and buy a good aftermarket domain and get creative - you need some marketing classes

2. Don’t skimp on hosting

Such a painful expensive lesson to learn.

3. Respect contractors, but don’t overpay

Don’t ever talk down to anyone you work with, but don’t allow people to tell you how smart they are without them proving it.

4. Always pay on time

Evereyone always appreciates this, and you will lose contractors respect if you don’t.

5. Pay attention to cashflow

See above. If you can’t balance cashflow and production, you will cut corners and build a house with cheap parts.

6. Price services for yourself - not for your clients

If you do consulting to pay the bills, make sure you take ample time for both, and charge on the value you provide, and provide the value you charge.

7. Take time for yourself

If you don’t take time off when you need it, you will end up taking surprisingly more time off than you originally intended.

8. Stay unflinchingly positive

When you doubt yourself you lose. Confidence in failure and humility in success is a trait that exemplifies most true heros, role models, and success stories that I’m aware of.

9. Stick with winners, fold the losers

While you’re being positive, maintain enough realism to be a critic and know when you’re beat or have a bad hand.

10. Stay well organized

You can never be too organized.

11. Set goals

1 hour, 1 sitting, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 1 year, 2 year, 5 year are generally good.

12. Track yourself

This is why keyword reports and QBtimer ARE a good idea. Adjust your goals as necessary based on your results.

I almost never live by this one, but I’d be smarter if I did.

13. Take lots of notes

I’ve pretty much never thought to myself "self, I wish I had taken less notes during that meeting." When you have a good idea, take a note about it.

14. Only consume news media 10 - 20% of the time (once you figure it out)

Only consume media and information at a high rate while you’re trying diligently to learn a new skill. Otherwise, it is pretty fruitless and will burn you out if it is beyond your capacity for input.

15. Focus on execution, not research

Do something instead of writing another blog post:) That’s why this one has taken quite a while. Build links, write content, learn perl, python, linux, apache, mysql, php, social media, seo, or web design, but don’t sit too long reading about it before you DO it. Do something today, instead of learning, researching, or whining about why you can’t.

16. Be upfront and honest

Don’t bullshit people. Lies will follow you a lot farther than the truth ever will.

10 Things to Ask Your SEO Clients
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Top 10 Ad Agency SEO Lies
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Social Media Expert Consulting

Miami Florida Real Estate Agent Needed ASAP

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:23:49 -0700

I will just be renting for a while - but I could use a hand on the inside scoop on things. If you are a top notch real estate agent in the Miami area, I could use your help. In return, I’ll be happy to answer some SEO questions, because I’m sure your website could use some improvement. I promise it will absolutely be worth your while. If you’re a Miami SEO, and you’re reading this - do your real estate buddy a favor and have them get in touch;) If you’re the person I’m looking for - drop me a line at todd at this domain name or just fill out the contact form. I am looking at moving around the beginning of January to either Coconut Grove, Brickell, or Sunny Isles. I’ll be taking applications for a week or two - tell me why you’re my realtor - if you don’t have a website already - you needn’t apply.

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Deep Sea Charter Fishing Trip in Florida
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Google Invests in Overseas Search Engine Baidu
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The NEW Advanced SEO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics now Available on DVD

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:59:03 -0800

Posted by great scott!

Ready to upgrade your SEO skills, learn actionable new strategies, and get ready to make 2010 the year you totally rock online? Well, we've got just the thing to help you finish out the year with the latest tactics to take your SEO to the next level.

That's right, the SEOmoz Advanced SEO Training Series is back with an all new DVD Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics! Whether you're a fan of the series, or this is your first time experiencing SEOmoz Training DVDs, this new six DVD set is one you won't want to miss. Filmed before a live audience in Seattle, Tips, Trick & Tactics features over a dozen world-class instructors teaching high-level, actionable strategies on 17 advanced topics.

This brand new edition of the Advanced SEO Training Series includes over 10 hours of immediately actionable material designed to really push your SEO skills to the next level. These advanced strategies will help you launch your SEO plan or reinvigorate your existing efforts with fresh tactics that will change the way you think about online marketing.

Don't miss out on your opportunity to get the latest and greatest SEO strategies from the world's top experts. The information you get in Tips, Tricks & Tactics is the sort of in-depth, high-level stuff these pros don't normally share at conferences, or even online. We actively encourage them to share their best advice, and most effective strategies that they use to be at the top of the SEO game...and they really deliver!

Until Sunday, December 6th you can get the Advanced SEO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics 6 DVD Set for just $399 (that’s $100 off the regular price of $499) and we’ll include FREE Shipping. That's less than 1/3 of what most industry conferences cost, and you can share this among your entire team (no travel expenses either).

Want to save even more? SEOmoz PRO Members only pay $199 during launch ($249 regularly). Do the math and you’ll see that this is a great opportunity to get the brand new Advanced SEO Training Series, try SEOmoz PRO and save a ton of money at the same time. Order soon, because the special release pricing will only last until December 6th and these DVD Series' sell out every year (we only do a limited run of each DVD series). Get Tips, Tricks & Tactics now, and rev up your SEO in the new year!

Here's a sneak preview of The Advanced SEO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics, and what people are saying about it...

What’s covered on Tips, Tricks & Tactics? Tons! This series features 15 Instructors (including Rand Fishkin, Todd Malicoat, Vanessa Fox, Ben Jesson, David Mihm, and more) speaking on almost every topic important to the advanced search marketer…

Disk One

SEO for Content
Advanced Site Architecture
Advanced Keyword Research

Disk Two

Local Search Strategies
Alternative SEO Tools
News & Image Search Strategies
Advanced Linkscape Tactics

Disk Three

How to Design a Link Building Campaign
How to Launch a Startup

Disk Four

History of SEO
Future of SEO
High ROI Social Media

Disk Five

Researching the Algorithms
How to Win SEO Budget
Conversion Rate Optimization

Disk Six

SEO Business Strategies
Avoiding Search Engine Penalties

Still want more? We have a limited quantity of free passes to SES Chicago ($1,995 value) if you purchase a new 1-year PRO Membership! That means you can get the Tips, Tricks & Tactics DVD Training Series, a full year of SEOmoz PRO, and an all-access pass to SES Chicago for almost $1,000 less than just the conference pass alone! Not going to Chicago? SES will let you exchange your free Chicago pass for any of their other conferences in 2010, including London, West, New York, or any other!

What Did Live Attendees have to Say About Tips, Tricks & Tactics?

"If last year was 'tech school' this year is 'Grad School'! Really powerful presentations."

"I'm the SEO for a $200 million company and I plan to use the knowledge I gained from this Training to radically change the foundations of my company."

"I've seen the future...This is absolutely essential to businesses and did nothing short of blowing me away."

"I'd recommend it to anyone but my competitors."

"I felt like I had a serious wake-up call to remember why I'm optimizing websites in the first place."

"It's nice to hear about theories and logic, but these presentations with examples definitely make the 'putting it into practice' part much easier."

"I've been doing SEO for four years now, and I found a lot of things in here that you just can't find online."

"This is very high-level, actionable stuff!"

"There's a lot of information! It really gives you the edge."

Get Tips, Tricks & Tactics now and get the edge for the new year!

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Whiteboard Friday - Content & Technology Licensing

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:32:24 -0800

Posted by great scott!

Looking for a super-powerful tactic to build lots of high-quality links? Well we've got a winner for you! Licensing your content and/or data can be an immensely powerful, highly scalable strategy for building powerful links and brand awareness alike. It's incredibly effective for folks who have quality content or data and want to leverage that material into a great link building solution.

Be warned though: there are important rules to consider in order to avoid potential duplicate content issues as well as cannibalization. You want your content licensing working for you, not against you, so watch this week's WBF to learn how you can manage licensing arrangements to best reap the benefits...

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Content & Technology Licensing from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

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SEO and Social Media Benchmarking

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 06:36:36 -0800

Posted by RobOusbey

Introduction

We'll often rattle off various metrics quite casually in conversation, but it's easy to forget that others (such as your clients!) might not know whether these are big numbers or small ones. For example: "We've just published a guest post on a site with Domain mozTrust 5.67. Mr_Gadget mentioned it to his 64 thousand followers, and it managed to get over 1,000 Diggs."

This post should be useful to anyone who needs to orientate themselves around such numbers. The Website Benchmarks section shows metrics for around half a dozen sites from ten different niches (based on the list originally prepared for comparing SEOMoz Trifecta data.) This is followed by Social Media Benchmarks, to give an idea of the impact and influence of votes and people on three popular social websites.

Links and Traffic: Website Benchmarks

This section uses three particular metrics:

Domain mozRank: the strength of a website, based on the sites & pages that link to it,
Domain mozTrust: the trustworthiness of a website, based on links from trusted sites & pages,
Unique Vistors: Compete.com's estimate of the number of monthly unique visitors to a site.

N.B.: The 'moz' metrics use data exposed by SEOMoz's Linkscape, and are on an exponential scale from 0 - 10. Data collected in 2006 suggested that the no visitor metric - Compete included - could be used to precisely estimate unique visitors to blogs at the time.

Arts & Entertainment

Business

Economy & Politics

Health

Home & Housing

News & Media

People & Society

Science

Sports & Recreation

Technology

Social Media Benchmarks

Digg

Reddit

Twitter

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Google Link: Command - Busting the Myths

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:48:48 -0800

Posted by randfish

I'm a big Google fan - my wife often sleeps in their t-shirts, I speak on panels with Googlers all the time and I've even got a Google water bottle for working out (which happens all of once a month these days). However, I am NOT a fan of the Google link command, and I'm shocked by the number of folks who operate in and around the SEO, webdev and technology industries who haven't realized this.

Here's what Google themselves have to say on the matter:

You can perform a Google search using the link: operator to find a sampling of links to any site. For instance, [link:www.google.com] will list web pages that have links pointing to the Google home page. Note there can be no space between the "link:" and the web page URL.

To see a much larger sampling of links to any verified site in Webmaster Tools:

On the Webmaster Tools Home page, click the site you want.

Under Your site on the web, click Links to your site.

Note: Not all links to your site may be listed. This is normal.

Here's what Matt Cutts (head of Google's Webspam team) had to say in a video on the subject:

The short answer is that historically, we only had room for a very small percentage of backlinks because web search was the main part and we didn't have a ton of servers for link colon queries and so, we have doubled or increased the amount of backlinks that we show over time for link colon, but it is still a sub-sample. It's a relatively small percentage. And I think that that's a pretty good balance, because if you just automatically show a ton of backlinks for any website then spammers or competitors can use that to try to reverse engineer someone's rankings.

Google themselves is telling us not to pay too much attention to the link command, but that doesn't seem to be stopping folks. Let the myth busting commence.

Myth #1 - The Google Link Command Returns Accurate Numbers

Nope. Not even close. Google themselves say the numbers aren't accurate and that they're showing a small sub-sample. The numbers show this as well. Check your link counts with the Google link command vs. the number inside Google's Webmaster Tools (when you verify your account, you'll see them shown). Here's the stats for SEOmoz, for example:

Google's link command claims 1,590 links. Let's see what Webmaster Tools says:

Hmm... 381,403 seems slightly larger than 1,590. In fact, the link command is showing me 0.4% of what Webmaster Tools says exists. Running this analysis on another few domains that we have access to in Webmaster Tools, I saw numbers ranging from 0.1% to 4.4% (meaning there's not even any consistency between in the percentage of links from the two counts).

Myth #2 - The Google Link Command Returns Important Links

Tragically, a long time ago (pre-2004), Google did show only important links via the link: command, which created the myth that exists to this day. In fact, the links shown in the link: command have no particular importance or relevance. They are truly a random sample, including links that are nofollowed, links from pages that have had PageRank penalties applied to them as well as links that do pass link juice and value.

Myth #3 - The Google Link Command Returns Links in Some Kind of Order

No one in SEO has been able to show any ordering of any kind in the Google link: command's results. Important, well-known websites may be listed on page 2 or page 20 of the results, and it is likewise with spam, scrapers and low quality sites that Google's likely not counting. In Site Explorer and the web results, Yahoo! appears to do some type of ordering, tending to show more important links, pages and sites before less important ones (though not with great consistency). Unfortunately, many SEOs suspect that, should Microsoft's deal to power Yahoo! with Bing results go through, Yahoo! is unlikely to maintain their own web index (and thus, link, linkdomain and site explorer will be gone).

As exemplified above, Google appears to be very random indeed when showing link: results.

Myth #4 - The Google Link Command Returns a Numerically Representative Count of Links

This is possibly the myth that's most disturbing of all, primarily because so many operators in the SEO field belive it and track the link: command count as a reliable, useful metric. Nothing could be further from the truth - and here's some data to help back it up:

Root Domain	Google Link: # (external + internal?)	Yahoo! Linkdomain # (external only)	Linkscape Count (external only)
Yahoo.com	3,650	331,000,000	201,681,667
Recovery.gov	7,550	328,000	155,780
Facebook.com	165,000	567,000,000	116,748,934
Real.com	11,400	4,600,000	5,596,165
Adobe.com	51,200	124,000,000	78,550,468
Reddit.com	18,300	128,000,000	29,071,291
Twitter.com	224,000	515,000,000	132,528,763
Salon.com	12,300	3,420,000	1,535,342
SEOmoz.org	1,590	957,000	486,405
NYTimes.com	7,990	21,200,000	12,884,758
TurkeyDayRun.com	3	68	22
Ninme.com	539	42,000	3,149
Burgerking.com	942	106,000	23,761
Alaskaair.com	1,010	44,000	38,358
Smashingmagazine.com	8,730	1,130,000	592,054
Smithsonian.org	4,860	25,700	14,545

I collected the data above spur of the moment, so I won't try to claim great statistical integrity. However, looking at Google's link: command results, the best I can say is that Google has some relationship to the others within 1-2 orders of magnitude, though they may be directionally inaccurate much of the time as well. Just look at the NYTimes.com for example - Google claims they have 2/3rds the links that Salon.com has, yet Yahoo! and Linkscape agree that, in fact, NYTimes.com has 6X+ Salon.com's link total.

These are not numbers you want to hang your hat (or any crucial business decisions) on.

Myth #5 - The Google Link Command Tracks Accurately Over Time

Unfortunately, I don't have data points I can show, but our observations over time indicate that Google's link count in Webmaster Tools might rise, along with the Yahoo! and Linkscape link counts, yet the Google link: command will show lower numbers. The reverse is sometimes also the case. Without directional consistency, even when compared against their own counts, it's very hard to take the Google link: count seriously.

Myth #6 - The Google Link Command is Up to Date

Most SEOs & webmasters have noticed that the Google link: counts update infrequently, inconsistently and most often in correlation with toolbar PageRank updates (another data point I'll need to takcle in a future post). These updates from Google occur every 2-10 months with little warning about when they're coming or have happened. If you watch sites like closely, they'll report many of these as they occur.

The next time someone tells you their Google link: command numbers as a metric for SEO, competitive analysis or anything else, make sure they read this post. Google's not nearly as up-front with the information as they should be (honestly, removing the link command would save so much time and effort for poor site owners who get needlessly confused), but hopefully as a community, we can help build more awareness around this issue.

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Illustrating the Long Tail

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:55:19 -0800

Posted by randfish

The long tail of search demand has been around since the dawn of web search and, since that time, search marketers have been attempting to tap into the powerful stream that high quantities of unique content can provide. I recently came across some great data from Hitwise (about 1 year old, but still highly relevant) showing off just how substantive the long tail can be. Bill Tancer's post - Sizing Up the Long Tail - gives some stats:

...the head and body together only account for 3.25% of all search traffic! In fact, the top terms don’t account for much traffic:

• Top 100 terms: 5.7% of the all search traffic
• Top 500 terms: 8.9% of the all search traffic
• Top 1,000 terms: 10.6% of the all search traffic
• Top 10,000 terms: 18.5% of the all search traffic

This means if you had a monopoly over the top 1,000 search terms across all search engines (which is impossible), you’d still be missing out on 89.4% of all search traffic. There’s so much traffic in the tail it is hard to even comprehend. To illustrate, if search were represented by a tiny lizard with a one-inch head, the tail of that lizard would stretch for 221 miles.

Top 10,000 Search Terms by Percentage of All Search Traffic

The truth is my research is still greatly understating the true size of the tail because:
• The Hitwise sample contains 10 million U.S. Internet users and a complete data set would uncover much larger portions of the long tail.
• The data set I used filtered out adult searches.
• I only looked at 3-months worth of data (which were some of the slower months for search engines).

To help put this in perspective, I made a few spiffy charts that can help to illustrate these points:

In this first chart, you can see a representation of Hitwise's data from the four chunks Bill broke down.

In this next representation, I'm showing the classic "long tail" style curve, but color-coded to help show the various areas of keyword demand. Note that you could conceptually say that the 9,000 of the top 10,000 terms should technically fit into the chunky middle. Bill classified them thusly in his post, but I tend to think that at those demand levels, we're still talking about "head" of the curve figures.

For both of these graphics, there's a large, high-res version available by clicking the chart. You can find lots, lots more on our Free Charts page :-)

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Favorite Tidbits from PubCon 2009

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 03:28:20 -0800

Posted by jennita

Photo courtesy of Michael Dorausch

It has been a couple weeks since PubCon and yes, it's taken me this long to recuperate! Bare with me here as I reminisce about my favorite tidbits over the 3 days of sessions. PubCon does an amazing job of putting together a schedule that covers a multitude of tracks and topics. Which usually means that I often end up with a case of "session envy." You know, when you're sitting in a session and you start to see tweets about how great another session is. It doesn't even mean that the one you're in is bad, it's just that you want to be in two places at once.

Many people were live blogging the event and obviously there have been quite a few recaps of PubCon as well. I realize I'm a little late to the game. :) But, let's get to the good stuff! While there were many great speakers and presentations there were a couple that stood out to me. What I was looking for were answers to questions that we often get either through comments on the blog or through Q & A. With that said, these are my favorite take-aways from PubCon 2009.

Day 1 - How Do You Optimize For Universal and Personal Search?

This was a great session, full of valuable information. The biggest takeaway for me, came from Bruce Clay. He took the road of sticking to a very specific topic, image and video content and explained how to get them indexed.

Since these are topics that come up quite a bit in Q & A I was excited to get some specific information on interesting ways to index images and videos. Thanks to Virginia Nussey over at Bruce Clay sending me the actual presentation (woot!).

Case Study - Indexing Images

The first thing Bruce spoke about was a case study they did involving getting images with text indexed. Here are the steps they took:

Take a newspaper article
Scan it to create a jpg
Include that image into a PDF
Submit that PDF to Google
Search for info in the article as a PDF and the article is found.

So what happened? Well the PDF was indexed AND the text from the image was also indexed. Take a look at this SERP.

The result above seems to only come up when using some data centers but not all. :) Also, the search query contains text directly from the article which is an image in the PDF. It shows up in the title and meta description. Pretty sweet eh?

Obviously this isn't going to work for you in all cases, but it's an interesting way of getting images indexed and could be useful in a number of scenarios.

Case Study - Indexing Video

Next, Bruce went through another case study where they got a video indexed. Here are the steps they took.

Take a Video
Run it through our processor
Edit the text transcript and save with the image
When playing the video, search for words
Jump into the Video

You can see this most clearly at Google audio indexing in the Labs section. Do a search for "economy" then notice how it shows you where in the video the word "economy" is spoken. I can see this being the wave of the future. How awesome would it be to have your videos come up in a search for words that were spoken within the video. Yea, pretty cool.

What I really liked about this presentation was that the information was displayed as a case study. If you read SEOmoz often you know how much we like to test theories out and put them to action. And although indexing images and video in this way may not be new to everyone, it's new to some people and could be a great way to enhance your sites.

Day 2 - SEO/SEM Tools

This was seriously one of my favorite sessions. The speakers (including Rand) had a ton of great information but the one that really stood out to me was Jim Boykin of We Build Pages. He gave away some really great tips but the one I liked the most had to do with how to find out what keywords your competitors are targeting. Here are the steps to take:

Go to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool
Enter in the URL of your competitor's sitemap
check box for " Include other pages on my site linked from this URL"
When you get results, Change "Match Type" to "Exact Match"to see actual searches and volume for specific phrases.

Obviously not only does this help with checking out which keywords your competitors are focused on, but it can also help you make sure you're site is also focusing on the right keywords.

Day 3 - The Search Engine Smackdown

For me the third day was my favorite. I actually wanted to attend every session in the first slot. I ended up watching the first part of the Link Buying session and the second part of the site review with Matt Cutts. I have to admit also that I loved the fact that the PubCon team programmed Matt Cutts doing a site audit at the same time as the Link Buying session... pretty darn ingenious if you ask me! Rand posted information about the site review, so I wont go into detail but it was a great session.

Although I think the best part came after the session when Matt took to shaving Evan Fishkin's head due to a bet they made while at the SEOmoz Werewolf party earlier in the week. And although that alone was pretty great, I loved the fact that while Matt was shaving Evan's head, people were asking him questions and he was answering as if it were a regular Q & A. Here's a short clip of the shaving!

Ok, ok back to the Search Engine Smackdown. I should admit that I debated whether I should head back to the hotel after a long 3 days or go to the final session, and I'm glad I went! These are the topics I found most interesting... and yes they're all from Matt Cutts.

Google Social Search
Here's the information straight from the site:

Sign in to Google and do a search. If there's relevant web content written by people in your social circle, it will automatically show up at the bottom of your search results under a section called "Results from people in your social circle."

To see even more social content you can click the "Show options" link at the top of the results page and then click on the "Social" link.

What is your social circle? It's a combination of your Gmail chat buddies, your Gmail contacts friends, family and co-worker groups, and people you're publicly connected to on other social sites (such as Twitter and FriendFeed). Learn more about social search.

I can see myself using this quite a bit. Most of my job is about "social searches" in general,so this one is right up my alley! It was a fun find for me.

Testing for Speed

As Rand mentioned in his post, Google representatives have mentioned several times that page load time is important and Matt himself said at this session that although they haven't used speed as a ranking factor in the past, that they're thinking about adding it in the future. He gave some resources on how to check the speed and ways to make it faster.

http://code.google.com/speed/ - Ways to clean up your site's speed
webpagetest.org - Let's you input a URL, select test location and other configuration options, then test!
http://code.google.com/closure/ - a JavaScript compiler

Wrap it up

I'm sure if you follow me on Twitter you know quite well how I feel about Vegas. I really wish there was a good way to clone myself so I could attend multiple sessions at once. With up to 7 tracks going on at the same time, it's difficult to pick one. In the end PubCon was a hit, and it was great to meet many of our SEOmoz members and see some old friends. See you again next year!

Kate Morris, Dana Lookadoo, Amanda Stewart, Jen Lopez, Kristy Bolsinger, Lyndsay Walker, Joanna Lord, Manda Otto
Thanks to Dana Lookadoo for all the great photos!

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This Week in Search for 11/26/09

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 05:54:32 -0800

Posted by Sam Niccolls

Google Displaying Site Hierarchies in SERPs:
Google provides yet another reason to have sound site architecture.

Google Displaying Movie Times in SERPs:
In addition to the many other things Google is testing, movie showtimes are being shown in the SERPs.

ACC Approves Microsoft Yahoo Deal in Canada & Australia:
After a 40 day review the ACC approved the deal which will allow Bing to power Yahoo search results in Canada & Australia.

Michael Gray - How Bing & WSJ Could Team Up on Google:
Whether you agree with Gray or not, his post aggregates some of the most relevant articles following Rupert Murdoch's announcement several weeks ago.

SEOmoz Advanced Training Series on DVD:
The latest release of the training series has arrived. And if you order the 6-disc DVD set before December 6th you will get 20% off, plus free shipping.

Avinash Kaushik - Measuring Social Media:
How should you track success on sites like Twitter? In a forward-thinking post on social media analytics Avinash offers several suggestions. On a related note, Econsultancy also has a list of 35 Social Media KPIs worth looking over.

How Web Analytics Helped the Obama Campaign Win:
Dan Siroker left Google to become the Director of Analytics for the Obama Campaign. In his hour long presentation he shares some amazing statistics & interesting tactics they used to help Obama win the election.

Cuil Theory Poster:
Licenseplate's tongue and cheek poster captures the essence of Cuil.

Link Builders Share Advanced Queries:
You've probably used the Advanced Search Operator Guide (it's a useful resource if you haven't), but Garrett French's compilation includes 21 advanced queries used by expert link builders to identify link opportunities.

69 Sexy Portfolio Designs:
The designs are not all conversion focused, but Smashing Magazine's list of 69 portfolio designs has some elegant layouts that'll provide idea inspiration.

Google News - Eric Enge Interviews Josh Cohen:
Maile Ohye talked about Google News SEO and best practices a number of months back, but Enge's interview with Google News' Senior Business Product Manager offers some useful Google News insights.

Get Elastic - Increase Average Order Value:
GoDaddy might be the extreme when it comes to upsells during their checkout process, but if you have an e-commerce site, testing the location of your "continue shopping" button on your checkout pages might lead to increases in average order value.

Online Dating Trends:
How much do looks matter on dating sites? OK Cupid helps answer the question with interesting user behavior data.

21 Tools for Spying on Your Competitors:
Bryan Eisenberg's compilation of competitive analysis tools is a useful one. Although admittedly, if it were my list I might add a few other SEO tools, too. :-)

Feedburner Integration with Google Analytics:
Google Analytics users now have better campaign tracking and subscriber consumption statistics for their Feedburner feeds.

Page Load Times & AdWords Quality Score:
Matt Cutts recently talked about how page load times will play an even bigger role in organic search, but ROI Revolution shares a few other reasons to identify and fix long page load times.

e-Marketer - Cautious Optimism for Holiday Sales:
Good news for e-commerce sites from e-marker. The holiday season could yield big online wins for retailers.

Google Analytics API - Development Growth Continues:
Juice Analytics' flow visualization is yet another creative extension of the rapidly growing Google Analytics API.

Linkbait - Mint Aggregates Finance Related Twitter Streams:
Mint has great design and their blog has it's fair share of great linkbait, but their new Twitter aggregation is also intriguing.

Luna Metrics - GA Plugin for Copying Goals & Filters Across Multiple Profiles:
If you're a GA user and you have to set up 20 profiles with the exact same goals, the Luna Metrics plugin is a great time saver.

Top YOUmoz entries:

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Whiteboard Friday - Analytics for SEO

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:27:04 -0800

Posted by great scott!

Happy belated Thanksgiving my American moz-Comrades, and welcome to Black Whiteboard Friday (and just Friday to everyone else)!

This week we're looking at analytics. No, not the normal stuff you probably pay attention to, but a few sneaky little metrics that can give you some great SEO insight. Since it's now officially the "Holidays," I'm not going to reveal too much; rather, I'll let the video serve as an early gift, ready to be opened! Suffice to say, prepare to start looking at your referral traffic, abandonment rates, browse rates, and more in a whole new light :)

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Analytics for SEO from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Since it is Black Friday, I want to remind you of some killer deals that are still available for you or your favorite SEO!

There's still time to get your FREE SES Chicago Pass by purchasing a year of PRO! We've only got about a dozen passes left, so you should probably hurry. SES just raised their prices to $1995 for a pass, so $799 for an entire year of PRO and a full-access SES Pass is an awesome deal (and if Chicago's not your thing, SES will let you exchange the pass for any SES Event in 2010).

You've also still got 10 days left to get super-low release pricing on the brand-new SEOmoz Advanced SEO Training Series: Tips, Tricks & Tactics six-disk DVD set! Until December 6th, you can get this killer new series for 20% off and Free Shipping anywhere in the world. Hundreds of people have already ordered and supplies are limited, so take advantage while the price is low, and this limited-edition set is still available.

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SEOmoz's First Ever PRO Webinar Dec. 10th: We Need Your Feedback & Suggestions

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 05:17:39 -0800

Posted by randfish

First off, I hope everyone among our US (and expat) readers had a great holiday weekend, filled with tryptophan and football (I know mine was). Second, I'm very excited to announce that SEOmoz PRO is launching our first ever webinar on Thursday Dec. 10th at 11am Pacific (2pm Eastern, 7pm London/UK). We've heard from a number of our members that they'd like to do some live reviewing of strategies and recommendations and get questions tackled in this format. I'll be running the webinar personally, but I haven't quite decided on a topic, and that's one thing I need your help with.

Below is an embedded Google form (they're pretty spiffy) with three short questions. We'll use your feedback to help determine the content and format for the webinar, as well as gauge interest level.

We'll have another blog post in the next few days announcing details (based on your requests + votes), as well as an email to all PRO members with a registration link.

Of course, if you have anything to add in the comments or any recommendations, we'd love to hear from you there, too. If this webinar goes well, we're certainly planning to make it a monthly event for PRO members, and possibly offer some free webinars to the entire community. A future subject that folks have been asking about is training on the SEOmoz toolset - that's something we want to do, but we have some changes + additions coming in January, so we'll get those released first, then follow up.

Thanks for your feedback and happy holiday season!

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The 7 Harsh Realities of Social Media Marketing

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:51:12 -0800

Last Friday I was in Atlanta, where I gave a talk on social media marketing at Dan Kennedy’s InfoSUMMIT conference.

I’m something of a fish out of water at a Glazer-Kennedy event. For example, unlike at Blogworld, I’m the only person in a room of 800 who has pink hair.

I wasn’t sure they’d be too receptive to what I had to say, but they surprised me.

They were warm, welcoming, and extremely interested in my no-shortcuts, no-magic-beans answers to their questions about how to use social media for marketing and business.

So in honor of Dan Kennedy, who sometimes styles himself as the “Professor of Harsh Reality,” I thought I’d talk today about some of the not-so-kumbaya aspects of social media marketing.

Harsh Reality #1: No one is reading your blog

As far as anyone can figure, there are about 200 million blogs around the world. Technorati tells us there are about 900,000 blog posts made every 24 hours.

The world is not waiting breathlessly to hear what you have to say about losing weight with acai berries, making big money as an affiliate marketer, or how to join your Secrets of the Breakthrough Millionaire Insider Guru Mastermind Platinum Club.

Me-too content gets ignored. Scraped and remixed junk won’t cut it. There’s too much good content that you need to compete with. And there’s no magic system that can replace sitting in front of your keyboard and producing something that somebody wants to read. (Or partnering with someone who can.)

If you don’t have a great answer to the question “Why should anyone read your blog?” you’re going to be pretty unhappy with your results. That’s why we spend so much time teaching you how to produce better, smarter, more effective content.

Harsh Reality #2: You’ve got to give (some of) your best stuff away

It’s very natural to expect to get paid for what you do. And you should have a business model that leads to exactly that.

But first, you’ve got some dues to pay.

Commenter Corree Silvera mentioned her favorite Brian Clark quote from this year’s Blogworld Expo:

Don’t sacrifice a lot of money later for a little money now.

The answer to the question in Harsh Reality #1, “why should anyone read your blog?” is that you’re going to give away some of your best, most valuable, most life-improving material away for free, within a well-defined content marketing plan.

Just remember Sean d’Souza’s bikini concept. You can give 90% of it away, but there will always be people who will happily pay to see that last 10%.

Harsh Reality #3: It will eat your life (if you let it)

Social media marketing would be pretty easy if we never had to eat, sleep, shower, or hang out with our kids.

But if doing those things is important to you, you’re going to have to set some boundaries.

Know what you want to do with social media, keep yourself focused, and set a timer if you have to. The tools are amazing, but so is their power to distract you from what you’re trying to accomplish.

Harsh Reality #4: Social media hates selling

Is there anything more pitiful than that guy who gets on Twitter and won’t shut up about how he can put you in a condo today with no money down despite your lousy credit rating? Even the spammers are blocking this dude.

It’s really hard to sell products and services in social media, mostly because this audience hates salespeople worse than they hate Microsoft. You may be able to get some limited success out of it, but more likely you’ll be banned, blocked, shunned, and abused.

Instead of promoting a product or service, promote fantastic content. Promote a great special report or an amazingly valuable email course. Promote wonderful stuff that you’re giving away.

Use excellent free stuff to build authority and trust. Then you have the right to make an offer and possibly do some business. Not before.

Harsh Reality #5: What they say is a million times more important than what you say

Your marketing might be beautifully executed. You might have a special report that goes more viral than H1N1, a great-looking blog that hits Digg twice a day, and an email marketing sequence that copywriting genius Gene Schwartz would have been proud to write.

If your reputation sucks, none of it matters.

People with lousy products, crummy business practices, and shady backgrounds get found out. And word spreads with frightening speed.

Treat people right, because if you don’t, you will be exposed. And it will not be pretty.

Harsh Reality #6: A blog is not a marketing plan

Blogs are cool, but a single useful tool isn’t the same thing as a solid business and marketing plan.

Blogs are just one way to get your best content out there, and they work best when you pair them up with email autoresponders, special reports, Twitter, and any of a dozen other powerful tools.

Just hanging out and being cool isn’t enough. If you’re in social media to do business, you have to develop a strategy for taking mildly interested strangers and turning them into raving fans . . . and customers.

Harsh Reality #7: You don’t get to opt out

Businesses that think they can ignore all this “Twitter stupidity” tend to get painfully rude awakenings.

The conversation will happen with or without you. You definitely don’t need to respond to every chucklehead with a Facebook account (and you shouldn’t), but you need to keep your ear to the ground, and you need a clue.

OK, enough about harsh reality already! If you want our best advice about what to do to create a great online business, subscribe to Internet Marketing for Smart People, the Copyblogger email newsletter. It’s some of our best stuff, no junk, no fluff. And of course we will never, ever spam you or share your information with anyone.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.

What I Learned From Writing 42 Guest Posts in 7 Weeks

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:12:18 -0800

Before you get too impressed, hear this: I did it all in self-defense.

Let me give you some quick background.

I have extreme Tourette’s Syndrome, as Sonia noticed recently. Tourette’s makes people move or vocalize involuntarily and occasionally results in unspeakable awesomeness. My motor tics range from eye blinking to punching myself in the face to even stranger things. My phonic tics range from clearing my throat to hooting and yowling and snarling and slobbering and screaming like the Tasmanian Devil.

Did I mention that I work in a quiet library?

There are only a couple of things that help when it gets bad. Guitar, kettlebells, talking, and writing — they are all forms of distraction that force the itch out of my brain for a while.

But sometimes none of them work. In September I was having a horrible time and couldn’t shake it. I needed a project to focus on. A big fat distraction.

Enter the guest post ultra marathon.

Come one, come all!

I wanted everyone to know they could ask for a guest post, but I still got a lot of “My blog’s probably too small, but . . .” I have a lot of readers with big blogs, and a lot of readers with tiny, new blogs that are still swaddled in onesies. All were fair game.

The criteria

I asked everyone who wanted a post to provide:

A URL and blog title
A topic
A word count
An interesting angle to approach it from

I said I wouldn’t write about anything I felt was unethical, morally reprehensible, or obvious spam. I didn’t want this bio floating around the web:

About the author: Josh Hanagarne is the author of Cialis Rules! He enjoys popping a few Vicodin in the morning and a dozen Viagra for lunch. His hobbies include MAKE CRA-Z MONEY FROM HOME! and topless tell-all webcam romps.

Luckily, I didn’t get any of those solicitations. Well — not many of those.

The response

Uh oh.

I published my post, subtitled “Let’s Get Stupid,” at about seven in the morning in the United States. By one o’clock my teeth were chattering with fear as I looked at my inbox: over 70 submissions.

Refresh. 75.

Refresh. 80.

Uh oh.

Who were these people? I was going to be writing guest posts for blogs about stock options, personal development, computer programmers, home schooling, study skills mentoring, blogging, advice for women, fussy academics, chemists, Capoeria buffs, kettlebell nuts, corporations in the process of building websites and trying to make everyone get along, and so on . . . .

A smarter man, a man whose brain was less of an apocalypse, might have scaled things down or extended the deadline. But this was exactly what I needed.

To work, then.

The first week and onward

I wrote 15 guest posts in week one. They all published within a few days. When the dust cleared, RSS numbers had jumped by 200 during those seven days.

The remaining six weeks were similar. Sometimes I wrote more. Sometimes less. Sometimes I wrote guest posts that I never saw again. My posts appeared with different titles, different pictures, different fonts, and the traffic just kept coming.

After about 10 days, my tics had subsided, but I was committed to the project. I was having a blast.

Lessons learned, surprises, and observations for anyone who wants to try this

By November 1 I had written over 50 posts. 42 of them had aired on other blogs. Here is what I learned:

A lot of bloggers seem to have a fear of guest posting. Get over it or be happy with your current rate of growth.
You will meet awesome people.
Those people will act like you are doing them a favor by borrowing their traffic.
You are doing them a favor, provided you give them something they can use. I love to have guests!
This marathon approach is not for everyone. Do not try to write more than you are capable of. Test yourself but don’t flame out. I have a masochist work capacity and I still wound up with more than I could handle. I thought I would get the 80+ posts written before November 1. Life, sleep, the flu, a book proposal, and kettlebells all conspired against me.
Don’t commit to anything that will prevent you from taking care of business at home(page). There’s nothing more pointless than writing a killer guest post and having all those new visitors land on a dancing Hello Kitty graphic that’s a year old.
Don’t pretend you know things you don’t. If you can’t talk about stocks, either find another approach or turn it down. Don’t be a poser.
Don’t be afraid to say no when people pitch ideas to you. You made the rules, right?

I don’t regret doing the marathon, but I won’t do it again if I don’t have to. I still have nearly 40 posts to get through before I’ve knocked out that initial batch. I’m going to honor them all. In the meantime, if you’d like to be added to the queue, you know where to find me.

I can handle it.

About the Author: Josh Hanagarne is the twitchy giant behind World’s Strongest Librarian, a blog about living with Tourette’s Syndrome, kettlebells, book recommendations, buying pants when you’re 6’8”, old-time strongman training, and much more. Please subscribe to Josh’s RSS Updates to stay in touch.

Landing Page Makeover Clinic #20: TantricSexforBusyCouples.com

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:14:28 -0800

This is another addition to our ongoing series of tutorials and case studies on landing pages that work.

Is it hot in here or just me?

Diana Daffner and her husband want to help people find a renewed sense of joy and connection in their intimate relationships through tantra. Their business, IntimacyRetreats.com, offers couples retreats throughout the year, but realizing not everyone can attend a retreat, they also want to promote their books and media products.

The URL referenced above is actually the “/shop page” off their main site. Diana would like to use the page as an independent landing page, as well. So let’s take a look and see what we can do to warm up product sales for this tantra-loving business couple.

The Goal: Increase sales of all products. (Some current sales may be being diverted to their Amazon listing.)
The Problem: Good traffic flow, email list of several thousand prospects, less than 2% actually buy.
The Current Landing Page:
http://TantricSexforBusy Couples.com
Value: $45.00 for the set:

Click image for larger view

The Maven’s 10-Point Critique

#1 — Treat this page as a standalone from the get-go.

If you want this page to be able to do its job properly, you need to think of it as a discrete entity — not just as an extension of your retreat offerings. It has to have all the usual landing page elements: a strong, emotionally-resonant headline, benefit-rich copy, attractive images, sweeteners like testimonials and purchase guarantees — and a clear call to action.

#2 — If you want to sell tantric-sex info products, your banner and messaging have to speak to tantric sex and not intimacy retreats.

You have too many taglines in the banner. I do like, however, “Transform your relationship into a love affair” and would highlight it, perhaps moving it into a pre-head position. I suggest you make the banner a little shorter to allow for more copy below. And yes, you have to say “Tantric Sex for Busy Couples” upfront. I like the product image and might use it in the banner rather than the one you’re using now.

#3 — Copy needs to reflect the original mindset of the visitor.

If visitors are coming to your home page looking for “couples workshop” then they’re not thinking DIY tantra at home. They may decide after they arrive that a workshop isn’t what they want right now and may look at other information, but it wasn’t top of mind originally.

Therefore your landing page copy has to acknowledge that in some way and position the products as a “If you can’t come to us, we’ll come to you” alternative.

#4 — If you want to sell information products, think about testing a pay-per-click campaign.

As noted above, your organic search visitors are knocking at your door looking for workshops. I’d strongly suggest testing a pay-per-click campaign based on the relevant keywords and phrases folks might use to find tantric sex info products for couples. Although I’d probably recommend testing different landing pages per male and female campaigns, one solid landing page that hits all the core points would be a good place to start.

#5 — Articulate the “big idea” behind your product offerings.

Tantra is a sort of “out there” practice to many people. Maybe they’ve heard about the supposed multi-hour tantric sessions between Sting and his wife, Trudy Styler, or that it requires lots of strange, uncomfortable positions — and what’s up with all the breathing and staring?

So what’s the big idea behind your tantric-sex info products? Probably something like this:

Tantric sex isn’t weird — it’s as easy as gazing into each other’s eyes and breathing. Everyone can do it, no matter how old or out of shape. Every relationship — from newlyweds to couples celebrating their golden anniversaries — can benefit from it. And we’re going to show you how to use it to regain your passion for your partner.

That’s the conceptual “big idea” umbrella under which all your specific products reside.

#6 – Consider the different personas — the different needs — of your visitors when crafting your copy.

My guess is your main site gets roughly three kinds of visitors:

Happy couples who view a retreat as a special gift or vacation for themselves;
Relatively happy couples who want to spice up their sexual relationship; and
Unhappy couples who are looking for a way of fixing things.

Your product buyers are coming from groups #2 and #3, especially #3. Since pain relief is more of a motivator for action than pleasure-seeking, my guess is that most of these visitors are coming from the “fix” mindset. Men want to fix the sex and women want to fix the relationship, and maybe tantra is a solution to their mutual problem. (Thinking broadly, of course, because that’s what I do. Pun intended.)

Your headline/intro copy needs to promote your products as a smart, thoughtful, and effective first-step to solving intimacy issues. Copy needs to highlight “pain points” that both men and women would relate to and resonate with through their respective desire/gender lenses.

#7 — Ratchet up the sense of urgency.

Why does your prospective customer need this now? What is happening (or not) in their lives that they’re brought to searching for information to help them connect more passionately, genuinely with each other — and why get it from you?

Your intro and individual sales copy has to stay on point that what you’re offering will help relieve, solve, heal and help couples reconnect with each other. Make sure all copy is written in the ‘you’, the second person, to underscore your connection with the prospective buyer.

Click image for larger view

#8 — Trim the product copy to its scannable essence. Don’t use links to send visitors to other pages.

Your bulleted copy is good, it’s the paragraphs that are wordy and a little too “woo-woo,” especially for those whose relationships might be a little shaky and who might be unsure about tantra in general. Speak to your visitors in clear, clean prose that instills hope and confidence that you have what they need.

#9 — Redesign the page from the ground up.

Actually, I’d strongly suggest redesigning your entire site from the ground up. It looks amateurish and when it comes to folks spending, especially when every dollar counts, a polished and professional look will serve all your interests well.

Regarding the landing page, all the same good advice I generally offer applies here, too.

Get rid of all unnecessary distractions. If using a content management system for your site platform, then think about creating a static landing page that incorporates all the best practices. I’d suggest a two-column format — left wide, right narrow. Use the right column for testimonials, order details, and satisfaction guarantees, etc. The wider column handles the big marketing load. Use Verdana or Georgia for your font, black as your main font color, and use color for accent only. Clean up your product images. Make sure your images/content elements are balanced for a pleasing appearance.

You want to get the bulk of the key content in the first screen. Push your product shots left and add order buttons to the right with pricing and sale info. (You want a call to action in every screen.) Do get rid of the awful red highlighting. Also, for the main product and the CD, put the audio player either under the cover image or above the order button. Provide a meaningful caption to encourage folks to click and listen.

#10 – Use pop-up windows to provide additional information and still keep visitors on the page.

Right now you have “learn-more” links for each product that take them off the page to another longer product page. I don’t think this does you any more good than the shorter, more concise copy you have here. So if you want to add more info without making the copy longer, use the link to a pop-up window with whatever you think will aid the visitor’s ability to say yes to tantra and to a purchase.

I’d also think about using an exit pop-up to offer a sweetener — free shipping, perhaps — or to ask them for their name and email address in exchange for a free chapter, free music, or some other taste of your products. I’d create a second prospect list of potential product buyers (as opposed to just adding these names to your current list) and market accordingly.

My thanks to Diana Daffner for her patience and support of Heifer International. Look for my next makeover in approximately 4 weeks.

Want to get a future Copywriting Maven landing page makeover?

Got a landing page that’s more poop than pop? Willing to share with Copyblogger readers? Prepared to put a little of your own “skin in the game” for a Maven Makeover? Then follow your click to Maven’s Landing Page Makeover page for all the details.

I’m booked for gratis “Heifer” critiques until 01/16/2010. If you’re interested in a private critique/makeover or other services, please email me directly.

About the Author: Roberta Rosenberg is The Copywriting Maven at MGP Direct, Inc. Find her @CopywriterMaven on Twitter.

Free Report: How to Become an Entrepreneur

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:58:19 -0800

I’ve written another piece of extended content, this time for Lateral Action. Rather than sending you over there, I’ll just tell you about it here.

It’s a free 31-page PDF report (don’t worry, it reads fast) called The Lateral Action Guide to Becoming a Creative Entrepreneur. It’s probably the most personal I’ve gotten about my history, but it’s still heavy on actionable, real-life examples.

Here’s what you’ll discover:

Why I quit my cushy law firm job and turned to online publishing.
How I failed miserably.
How I then succeeded miserably.
How I learned my lesson the hard way.
The allure of the global microbrand.
The rise of the “feeder” business.
Why small is beautiful (and powerful).
The 37signals approach to market research.
Real-life examples of tiny, highly-successful entrepreneurs.

Plus, a deeper examination of the 5 critical components of the new entrepreneurship:

Create (Don’t Compete)
Lead (Don’t Manage)
Communicate (Don’t be Shy)
Automate (Don’t Duplicate)
Accelerate (Don’t Stand Still)

This report is totally free . . . you don’t even have to provide an email address.

Click here to download the PDF.

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of DIY Themes, creator of the innovative Thesis Theme for WordPress. Get more from Brian on Twitter.

How to Persuade People to Accept an “Unfair” Offer

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:36:55 -0800

Ever heard of Charley Hill? He seemed like an average, ordinary guy.

He lived in a mid-sized town with his wife, two children, and a dog. He went to church on Sunday, coached Little League, and drove a pickup truck. He was friendly but quiet, the sort of guy you could walk by on the street without noticing.

But appearances can be deceiving. Charley Hill was one of the most successful farm equipment salesmen in the Midwest. People would travel hundreds of miles to see Charley, even when there were plenty of dealers much closer to home.

What did Charley have that other salesmen didn’t? Not a thing.

He sold the same equipment as everyone else. Carried the same parts. Provided the same service. Yet his sales were typically two or three times that of similar-sized dealers. The reason?

Charley Hill didn’t believe in “fair” offers

Every customer went home, shaking his head, thinking that good old Charley was the most unfair salesman they had ever dealt with.

But they thought it was Charlie who was getting the raw end of the deal.

Charley didn’t cheat his customers — no, quite the opposite. He simply made offers that were so compelling, and seemed so skewed in his customers’ favor, people just couldn’t say no.

What is a “fair” offer, anyway? A reasonable price? There’s nothing wrong with that. But there’s nothing very exciting about it either.

An “unfair” offer, on the other hand, is very exciting. It’s a deal that makes customers feel as if they’re getting far more value than what they’re paying for. It’s an arrangement that makes a purchase seem irresistible, easy, and free of risk.

How do you make an unfair offer?

First, let’s consider what an offer is. The most basic offer is simply “Here’s something I’m selling and this is what you have to pay.” But an offer can be so much more.

Consider some of the other elements that could go into an offer, such as:

The unit of sale (each? two for? set?)
Optional features (personalization? e-book or hardcopy?)
Presentation of price ($40 or $39.99? $12 a month or 40 cents a day?)
Terms (credit card? delayed billing? installments?)
Incentives (free gifts? discounts? contests?)
Guarantee (money-back? buy-back? refund unused portion?)
Trial period (30 days? 60 days? 90 days?)
Time or quantity limit (respond before date? reply in 10 days? only 500 available?)
Shipping and handling (extra or included?)
Future obligations (buy 3 more in 6 months? no obligation?)

Once you have an idea of the parts that make up your offer, you can improve each one-by-one. For example, let’s say you’re selling an e-book on your blog and your price is $30. Here’s a breakdown of the possible elements of your offer:

Unit of sale: 1
Optional features: none
Presentation of price: $30
Terms: credit card payment
Incentives: none
Guarantee: none
Trial period: none
Time or quantity limit: none
Shipping and handling: none
Future obligations: none

So basically, you offer an e-book for a flat $30 and you want payment upfront. That’s it.

If you’ve built up the benefits of your book, it seems like a fair offer. But how could you turn this into an unfair offer? Let’s look at each element.

Unit of Sale

You’re selling one e-book. Okay, makes sense for most individuals. Though if your market is business or government, you could offer a lower price for a higher unit of sale, say 10 for $250. This works even better if you’re selling physical items.

Optional Features

Many people prefer books in hard copy. A hard copy also seems more valuable because it’s a physical object rather than just an electronic file. In fact, many people print e-books to make them easier to read.

So you might offer a printed version for $10 more. Perhaps the printed version could have an extra chapter or bonus features. Once you have a finished book design, hard copies can be relatively simple with print-on-demand services, such as Lulu.

Presentation of Price

You’ve done your research and found that $30 is a good price for the type of e-book you’re selling, but you could use a “price break” to make the cost appear smaller. You can present this price as $29.99 or $29.97 or $29.95.

It costs you only a few pennies, but transforms a thirty-dollar price tag into what feels like a twenty-something price tag. For simplicity, you could even set the price at a flat $29.

Terms

There’s nothing wrong with accepting credit cards. But you could also accept PayPal. And as odd as it may seem, some people don’t like to use credit cards or Paypal and prefer to send a physical check.

I work with a political organization that sells products online and we always allow payment by check for the small percentage of people who feel more comfortable with that. It is more time-consuming, so you would have to evaluate whether it’s cost-effective for you. With many online businesses it’s not practical.

Incentives

Here’s where you can really pump up your offer. You can offer a free gift or bonus (or two or three) with each sale. This might be other e-books you already have or sections that you pull out of the main e-book. Offering a 100-page e-book with a 20-page free bonus is more attractive than offering a 120-page e-book.

You could also offer special discounts, such as $10 off for the first 4 weeks of your promotion, then raise the price later.

Guarantee

Here’s another great way to strengthen your offer. Remember that people don’t know what they’re getting until they get it. They’ve been ripped off before and have doubts any time they buy something sight unseen.

You could offer a 30-day money back guarantee to assure them that you’re honest and stand behind what you sell. Better yet, a 60-day or 90-day guarantee. It may seem counterintuitive, but the longer the guarantee, the less likely people are to return something.

Trial Period

If you’ve promoted your e-book as a “system,” such as how to build blog traffic step-by-step, you could turn your guarantee into a risk-free trial.

Try my blog traffic-building system risk-free for 3 months. If you’re not satisfied with the results, I’ll refund your money no questions asked.

Time or Quantity Limit

Quantity limits work for physical items. “Hurry. Quantities are limited.” Time limits work for anything. “It’s available only for the next 19 days.” A time limit forces an immediate decision and increases sales.

If you don’t want to set a limit on your e-book, you could set a limit on a bonus. “Order in the next week and get the bonus e-book free.”

Shipping and Handling

For an e-book, there is no shipping and handling. But if you choose to offer a hard copy or physical item, it is acceptable to add a reasonable amount to cover your shipping costs.

You could also offer free shipping as a bonus offer, which is popular for online sales. By the way, most cities have one or more “fulfillment” businesses who will package and ship your items for a small fee.

Future Obligations

Book clubs sometimes offer special low prices on an initial purchase if you agree to make future purchases at the regular price. “Get 3 books for 3 bucks. Order 5 more books later for our regular low price.”

I’ve not seen this offer used with e-books, since there’s a chance you could get ripped off by your customers. But for the right audience, it could work.

Okay, so let’s pretend your e-book is called “The Magic Blog Traffic Building System.” Here is your original “fair” offer:

Order The Magic Blog Traffic Building System for $30

A little boring, huh? Now let’s compare that to this “unfair” offer using some of the elements above:

Try The Magic Blog Traffic Building System risk-free for 90 days. Your satisfaction is guaranteed. If your blog doesn’t explode with traffic, return the book for a full refund, no questions asked. Order in the next 30 days and pay just $19 ($29 after March 15) PLUS get 3 FREE BONUS reports: 9 Ways to Boost Blog Traffic with E-mail, Blog Design Secrets that Make Visitors Come Back, and The Lazy Blogger’s Way to Create Popular Posts.

How could you turn down an offer like that? It’s so good, it actually appears “unfair” to the person selling you the e-book.

“How could anyone make money asking so little and giving me so much?” That’s the impression you want to create. And that’s what can turn a boring “fair” offer into an exciting “unfair” offer.

Old Charley Hill came before the Internet and wouldn’t know a blog from a bullfrog. But he understood the idea that customers come first. When you make people feel you’re giving them more than you’re getting in return, you make sales. Lots and lots of sales.

Want learn more about putting together killer offers, and presenting them in the most compelling fashion? Subscribe to Internet Marketing for Smart People, the Copyblogger email newsletter. It’s some of our best stuff, no junk, no fluff, and no charge. Hey, that’s a great offer!

About the Author: Dean Rieck is one of America’s top freelance copywriters and publisher of the Direct Creative Blog and Pro Copy Tips, a blog that provides copywriting tips for professional copywriters.

The Art of the Paragraph

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:11:28 -0800

Anyone can write a paragraph, but not everyone knows how to write one that other people want to read.

You’ve seen it:

You open a book, and the whole page is one long block of text.

Each sentence in the paragraph makes exactly the same point, said in a slightly different way, and you wonder why they didn’t just say it once and be done with it.

Every paragraph is the same length (five lines, maybe?), whether it makes sense or not, and it gives the piece a monotonous rhythm.

The paragraph makes a point without telling you why that point is important, and you can’t help thinking, “So what?”

Like a little island, the paragraph doesn’t connect to any ideas that came before it or after it, and it seems vaguely out of place.

We all hate paragraphs that make these mistakes. Those of us who are in the National Society of Writing Snobs (raise your hand, if you’re a member) even get a weird sort of thrill from pointing them out.

Yet, somehow, they keep showing up.

Not just in the work of third graders, but in the writing of people who call themselves professionals, including yours truly.

It’s like Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss in the movie What about Bob? — every time you think they’re gone, you open the door, and there they are again, grinning and happy to see you.

The question is: what are you going to do about it?

It’s okay to write a bad paragraph, but publishing one will only endanger your bond with your readers. Before showing your writing to anyone, you should always go back through and check your paragraphs to make sure they are in tip-top shape.

Here are some questions to guide you:

1. Does it pass the Guy Kawasaki test?

You know how we all have blogging mentors who we look up to?

Well, Guy Kawasaki is one of mine. Three years ago, he wrote a post passing on some of his blogging wisdom, and one of his pieces of advice stuck with me:

. . . Imagine that there’s a little man sitting on your shoulder reading what you’re writing. Every time you write an entry, he says, “So what? Who gives a shiitake?” If you can’t answer the little man, then you don’t have a good blog/product.

It’s true. Every time you write a paragraph, stop for a moment and see if it passes the “Who gives a shiitake?” test. If you don’t have a good answer, then delete your paragraph and start over.

2. Is it a two-headed baby?

Babies are adorable. Two-headed babies, on the other hand, are something you would see on the cover of National Enquirer. It’s just . . . wrong.

Paragraphs work the same way.

A good paragraph has one head. In other words, it has one point, one idea, and all of its sentences work together to support that one idea. Do it right, and it’s adorable in its simplicity.

If you try to stuff more than one idea into a paragraph, however, you’ll transform it into a monster. Grown men will shy away from it. Small children will burst into tears. English teachers will clutch their chests and fall over dead.

Okay, maybe not. But you will confuse readers, and that’s serious business. Don’t do it.

3. Is there an echo in here?

Some writers have what I call an “Echo Problem.”

They start with an idea, and then every sentence in the paragraph echoes the same idea, although in a slightly different way. For example:

I hate green beans. Every time I think of them, I feel nauseous. Green beans are the absolute worst. If you put any green beans on my plate, I won’t eat them.

This paragraph only has one idea: I hate green beans. Every sentence in the paragraph just echos the same idea. They’re unnecessary.

When you write a paragraph like this, it feels like you’re expounding on your original point. But you’re not. All you’re really doing is adding fluff and boring the reader.

A good rule of thumb is to read every sentence in your paragraph and ask yourself, “Could I remove any of these sentences and retain the same meaning?” If you can, then by all means, get rid of them. It’ll make your writing tighter.

4. Are you writing in a monotone?

Ever listened to a speech, and the speaker used exactly the same vocal inflection from beginning to end?

It’s annoying, and it’s not just because humans are predisposed toward rhythmic language. When we’re listening, we also depend on the speaker to use vocal inflections to tell us what’s important. For instance, if they’re speaking quickly and then suddenly start drawing out their words, we know to pay attention. The change in inflection means something important is happening.

Makes sense, right? But did you know it’s also possible for your writing to be a monotone?

Paragraphs are the vocal inflections of the written word. Good writers vary the length of their paragraphs to show the reader what’s important. Some paragraphs will be 3-5 sentences, but every once in a while, they’ll throw in a one-sentence paragraph in order to emphasize a particular point. It stands out, and it tells the reader to pay attention.

Try it for yourself.

5. Are there on-ramps and off-ramps?

So far, we’ve talked about the paragraph (singular), but it’s time we dedicate some time to paragraphs (plural).

Lots of beginning writers treat paragraphs like little islands unto themselves, floating in the great ocean of ideas without any connection to anyone or anything. It’s jarring. Sometimes you can see how the paragraphs relate to one another, but sometimes you’re also left scratching your head.

It’s far better to look at paragraphs as if they are towns along a highway. Yes, they are separate, but they also have on-ramps and off-ramps that make it easy for people to get back on the highway and get to where they’re going. Similarly, good paragraphs use connector words and grammar to help the reader move on to the next idea.

We could do a whole post on this topic (and probably will, in the future), but the best rule of thumb is to look at each of your paragraphs and see if it’s possible to understand them without reading any of the others. If it is, think about adding some connecting on-ramps and off-ramps. It’ll make your writing more readable.

Are these rules that you must follow?

No, they’re just guidelines.

The point is to consciously think about your paragraphs and the way they affect your readers. Next to sexy topics like headlines, link building, and SEO, it’s easy to forget about them.

But don’t. Like most things, it’s the little nuances of your writing that add up to create a profound impact on the reader. Your paragraphs are one of those nuances, and if you’re serious about your writing, it’s important to learn how to use them.

About the Author: Jon Morrow is Associate Editor of Copyblogger and Cofounder of Partnering Profits. Get more from Jon on twitter.

Website	DmR	DmT	Visitors
AllMusic	7.05	7.26	545,038
Art.com	6.73	6.58	1,595,173
Art Cyclopedia	6.41	6.94	244,849
AMC Theatres	6.23	6.60	1,294,011
Art.net	5.73	6.32	17,122
Shihad.com	5.55	5.65	1,170
The Official Whitlams Website	4.77	4.95	822
EntertainmentTonight.org	2.87	3.01	401

Website	DmR	DmT	Visitors
Business.gov	6.87	7.37	185,142
Business.com	6.47	6.75	4,882,836
Prudential	6.40	6.86	1,028,829
Kansas Insurance Commissioner	5.71	6.18	8,826
WorldBiz.com	5.48	6.03	4,033
HRM Business Practices and Notes	3.89	4.11	114
Chevron Corporate Solutions	2.76	3.01	n/a

Website	DmR	DmT	Visitors
The White House	7.90	8.55	1,976,338
Barak Obama	6.93	7.38	1,180,883
The Democratic Party	6.49	7.01	261,288
Republican National Committee	6.22	7.13	27,592
Democrats.com \| The Aggressive Progressives	5.71	6.36	131,764
Iowa Democratic Party	5.15	5.67	1,009
Republican Party of America	4.32	4.70	2,873
Vote Brian Sayrs	3.11	3.74	123

Website	DmR	DmT	Visitors
WebMD	7.35	7.66	19,871,120
HealthWorld Online	6.18	6.73	88,180
Health.com	6.08	6.41	1,795,763
Men's Health Network	5.71	6.28	6,817
Healthy Child	5.14	5.25	7,409
Healthy Living Natural Foods	4.41	4.79	1,199
All American Healthcare	2.76	3.00	n/a

Website	DmR	DmT	Visitors
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development	7.62	8.07	1,716,602
HGTV	6.83	7.05	3,334,973
RealEstate.com	6.55	6.48	527,147
HousingMaps	6.08	6.70	19,219
Get Decorating	5.02	5.32	53,819
Eastern Corner	4.77	4.81	4,722
RentSpeed.com	4.73	4.68	74,571
WeBuyHouses.info	2.76	3.00	n/a

Website	DmR	DmT	Visitors
CNN	7.40	7.72	10,055,985
Anchorage Daily News	6.57	7.11	183,065
News-Record	6.17	6.68	207,799
Happy News	5.57	6.15	120,209
News Directory	5.56	6.24	1,610
Napier Mail	3.60	3.77	434
Kingsburg Recorder	2.35	4.78	4,011

Website	DmR	DmT	Visitors
U.S. Department of Education	7.63	8.33	6,270,175
ConsumerReports	6.94	7.24	4,339,086
Consumer Web Watch	5.97	6.31	12,213
Consumerist	5.63	5.91	796,933
South Carolina Department of Education	5.44	6.12	4,467
No Nonsense Self Defense	4.86	5.34	18,278
Inner Strength	3.71	4.32	1,055
Acqua Beauty Bar	3.55	3.84	1,383

Website	DmR	DmT	Visitors
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration	7.35	9.14	4,811,397
U.S. Science Portal	6.35	7.33	6,763
Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society	6.02	7.25	6,745
Association of Clinical Research Professionals	5.47	6.39	11,478
SciNet Science & Technology Search Engine	4.73	5.86	4,093
Cafe Science Dundee	3.82	4.51	n/a
Society of Natural Science	2.76	3.00	n/a

Website	DmR	DmT	Visitors
Fox Sports	7.18	7.29	6,294,958
Official Site of Major League Baseball	6.57	6.84	9,969,301
FIBA - Home of International Basketball	6.16	6.23	8,369
NCAA Football	5.44	5.90	232,497
Sports Illustrated for Kids	5.09	5.48	166,599
North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance	4.33	4.43	3,057
Swimwatch	3.03	3.19	1,138

Website	DmR	DmT	Visitors
Apple	8.84	9.33	21,407,512
Google Mail	7.22	7.14	9,336,542
Blackberry	7.10	7.30	2,551,692
Government of India, Department of Information Technology	5.82	6.47	1,862
Internet History	5.72	6.43	20,749
The Society for the History of Technology	4.98	6.32	688
The Loop	3.71	5.58	17,332

# of Diggs	Likely success	Example Story
1+	Little or no exposure	Example
10+	A little exposure	Example
100+	Mild exposure, moderate success	Example
500+	Reasonable exposure, good success - likely to have been promoted with the submission category	Example
1,000+	Good exposure & likely to be promoted to the front page, successful content	Example
2,000+	Lots of exposure, highly successful	Example
10,000+	The very top echelon of articles, extremely successful content.	Example

Points	Likely success	Example Link
1+	Little or no exposure	Example
10+	A little exposure, may send some visits page	Example
100+	Good exposure & likely to be promoted to the category's front page, sends a moderate amount of traffic	Example
500+	Very good exposure & likely to be promoted to the front page	Example
1,000+	Excellent exposure, highly successful & will send considerable traffic to the page	Example
3,000+	Amongst the top links on the site, extremely popular and widely viewed	Example

Followers	Typical behaviour	Example User
1+	Very new, or dormant user	Example
10+	Likely to be using the site for social purposes, has influence within a close circle of friends	Example
100+	Connecting with a modest number of people, has influence amongst a wide circle of friends or industry colleagues	Example
1,000+	Fairly well known within their industry, and likely to have influence well beyond those they know personally	Example
10,000+	Very well known with their industry or niche; likely to have some off-line awareness	Example
100,000+	Popular amongst a wide variety of users; likely to very influential and be widely 'retweeted'	Example
1,000,000+	Amongst the top 200 users and very influential within the site; almost certainly a genuine off-line celebrity	Example

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Explain the contradiction of pagerank mattering

Show them how to find good starting points (and WHY this is important)

Explain how to find contact information

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