The difference between Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech and any political rhetoric we’re experiencing now is the difference between love and hate, the difference between inspiration and loathing.

At no other time in my life have I been more inspired by this speech and at no other time have I been more disenfranchised with our political leaders.

Image via Wikipedia

Kings assertion that:

‎’Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.’ – Martin Luther King, Jr.

should drive political messaging. Never in my life have I been so disgusted and so irritated with the political rhetoric driven by accusation, misinformation and hate.

It’s beneath us. All of us.

Contact your senators and representatives and encourage political campaigning without hate.

You don’t have to like Martin Luther King to understand its’ longevity.  The message is honorable and inspiring, whether or not you agree with his politics. Politicians may want to ask themselves, “Would my children, grandchildren and fellow Americans watch my political message 10, 20, 50 years from now with pride and honor?”  If the answer is no, go back to the drawing board.

Going Viral

“Have fun and engage with your customers” Allsion Dempsey, Parenting Magazine

(Loved their postcards series, favorite read “Boob, it’s What’s for Dinner”

“Start with a good program and scale with great content” Jordan Koene, eBay

SoLoMo

“Twitter: 50% mobile usage” Jed Williams, BIA/Kelsey

“Twitter and texting are twins separated at birth” Bryson Meunier, Resolution Media

“Use mobile specials (Foursquare/Yelp) to connect with your customers and potential customers” Matt Siltala, Dream Systems Media

Measuring Social

“Turn down the noise to get a more accurate picture” Allison Hartsoe, Semphonic

“Don’t have to choose lots of tools, pick a tool that works for you that you’ll share.” Merry Morud, AimClear

AimClear was the only company that used social media interaction at SMX to grow their own presence on FB. Nice!

AimClear

Best Practice Tools & Tips

“One of the best social marketing tools is you, you ARE a tool” (funny;) Ty Downing, SayItSocial

“Educating your team about your goals makes your messaging more cohesive” John Carcutt, Advance Internet

“Lots of great tools, even free ones, but sharing is most important. Give management access to top level so they’ll understand it but don’t overwhelm. More data isn’t necessarily better.” Courtney Seiter, Raven Tools (also she works for a tool company and didn’t shamelessly promote her own, super classy. That’s confidence in your product!)

Thanks so much to all the speakers and attendees, pleased to be a presenter on such a fabulous agenda. What a great SMX show.

10 Takeaways from Day 2 at SMX Social

10 Takeaways for SMX Social Media Marketing

Twitter

“Do your influencer research” Kurt Krejny

“There’s a lot of opportunity for promoted Tweets, get a budget and test” Mathew Guiver

“Direct sales on Twitter is difficult, have a plan for branding and measure with multiple tools.” James Zolman

Facebook

“Think like a behavioralist/psychologist when targeting for Facebook Ads” SMX Attendee

“As a marketer, target competitor ads and offer them a better relationship” Marty Weintraub

“Coordinate with your call center to help monitor and respond to Facebook conversation.” Jean Scheidnes

Google +

“Google Pages aren’t going anywhere. Google is throwing a lot of effort, time, money behind the effort. Get involved now.” Tim Moore

General Words of Wisdom

“Let editorial calendar start with blog posts and craft that content to fit the other social channels.”

“Create stuff that people want to read and want to share.”

“Be genuine, be sincere.”

10 Reasons Why SEO is Like Fitness

10. Everybody Has an Opinion – Some people will tell you the answer to fitness is running 5 days a week, or never eating processed food, or drinking a glass of red wine each day. Most fitness experts would tell you it’s a combination of things, not just one thing. There’s not just one answer. Same with SEO. I’ve had people who have no understanding of SEO or online marketing of any kind say it’s a useless effort. Reality is that it’s a cost-effective strategy for gaining traffic and revenue for a website. Even the best SEO’s have different processes. Some put heavy focus on on-page content while others put focus on technical issues. There’s nothing wrong with either approach as long as it gets the job done. Most experts would tell you it’s a combination of things, not just one SEO tactic.

9. It’s Important to Understand the Math - Your body needs X amount of calories each day (depends on weight, your sex, muscle mass, other factors). If you eat more calories than you burn you gain weight, if you eat fewer calories than you burn you lose weight. With SEO Google and other search engines return a page for a search query that their algorithm determines is the most relevant to that query. One page will be determined to be the most relevant and trusted based on many factors. Understanding the math on ranking for a particular keyword helps businesses make decisions about which keywords to pursue for natural search (if you’re a brand new site with little content and no reputation or trust, it’s not possible for you to rank for “shoes”). It’s a math equation. Just like in fitness, define your goal and understand the math around that goal.

8. The Fast Way Isn’t the Best Way – Weight Loss isn’t the only factor in fitness, but losing 50 pounds in 2 months isn’t likely or even healthy. Fitness experts agree a combination of nutrition and exercise done safely over time is more effective and provides long-lasting results. Same with SEO. Asking a Search Professional to hurry up and implement SEO efforts is like taking a diet pill. It’s not going to work or provide long-lasting results. Haste is the least effective and most frustrating path.

7. It’s A Long Term Commitment – Fitness goes away if it isn’t cared for on a regular basis. If you’re a fit person and quit exercising, start smoking and eat out at every meal, your fitness will go away in a hurry. Natural Search requires regular SEO because the competitive landscape changes and because search engine algorithms change.

6. It’s Important to Make Goals – Weight Watchers is a successful program because it involves creating goals and making a plan which is a part of everyday life. Same with SEO. You can have multiple meetings about the importance of better online marketing for your sites health, but until you come up with a goal and a plan it’s not likely to happen.

5. Find a Professional – If you know how to do it yourself, do it. Reality is that if you knew how to do it yourself, you already would have. If you’re a long ways away from your personal fitness goals, it’s wise to hire a fitness professional to help you. There are many kinds out there (nutritionists, trainers, etc.) All of which can help. Same with SEO. There are people who provide SEO for better rankings and natural search presence, PPC for paid search efforts, Social Media for engagement on social sites, Analytics to provide learnings and actionable analysis for your sites health, Landing Page Optimization to improve the likelihood that a visitor will take the action you desire on a site. All of these skills are necessary. For fitness, in a perfect world, everyone would have a personal trainer, a shopper, and an on-site chef. For online marketing, in a perfect world, everyone would have a Danny Sullivan, a Tim Ash and an Avinash Kaushik. Find a professional who has had success with other clients.

4. Be Honest and Realistic – The danger in making fitness a goal is not being honest and realistic. Don’t create a fitness goal of looking like Beyonce. Create a goal of weight loss or improved cardio capability or reduced cholesterol. If you’re a small shoe company, you’ll probably never overtake Zappos for “shoes”, but if you specialize in “red stiletto heels” you may be able to rank for that term. That honesty should go both ways. If an SEO tells you they can give a particular ranking in 2 weeks, that should be a red flag. SEO’s should promise improvement and return on investment, not guarantee ranking in a short period of time.

3. Fitness Is More than One Thing. If you run 5 miles a day but eat Ding Dongs and Big Macs you won’t achieve a high level of fitness. If all you do is for SEO is put lots of keywords on a page or spam blog comments you won’t achieve your site fitness goals.

2. It’s Easy to Be a Hater – Be supportive of the friend who is achieving his/her fitness goals. Often times the people who try to give SEO a bad name are the people who wished they understood it, or feel like they should understand and are frustrated that they don’t.

1. If it Sounds Too Good to Be True, It Is – Diet pills and weight loss schemes are a huge business. People want to just take a pill or do a crash diet and be fit, but that’s not how it works. Good nutrition and exercise are the recommended path for long-term fitness. It’s not easy. Same for SEO. It requires keyword research, competitive analysis, content development, technical skills and a number of other strategies and tactics if done well.

Analogies for SEO are important because it’s such an misunderstood industry. SEO’s often get a bad rap. Check out this post by Elisabeth Osmeloski that addresses this week’s Dexter which dings SEO.

The reason SEO’s have a bad name is two-fold.

There are people who will take your money and accomplish very little in fitness and SEO. There are businesses who will pay those people to take their money for making miracles in fitness and SEO. There is no easy way to either.

Morsel of the Story – For the people who do it the right way (fitness or SEO) it’s a valuable and rewarding effort.

How Does Google Adwords Work?

Thank you to our friends at Wordstream for this awesome Infographic on How Google AdWords Works!

Google’s Hangout (video conference) in Google + was used by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu to facilitate their conversation after the Dalai Lama’s visa request for a visit was denied.

Google didn’t miss the opportunity to tout Hangout in the New York times in this article shown on Search Engine Land.

What a lovely convergence of traditional and social media. When warranted, print and direct marketing can be amazing compliments to new and social marketing.

Morsel of the Story: Are you thinking out of the box to include cross-medium promotion?

Trey Pennington wasn’t a household name, but he was a maverick in the social media space. His suicide and death has inspired great sadness in his local and online communities, but it has also dredged up a very negative side in regards to reporting, search and social marketing.

Forbes accused Mashable of shoddy reporting and “cashing in” on the untimely death.

WY44 posted this coverage.

One of Mr. Pennington’s important value propositions was “making sure your marketing connects with the hearts in your marketplace.” Though I never knew the man, I’d be willing to bet this isn’t what he had in mind.

Trey Pennington

Though these comments are primarily supportive and loving notes to friends and family grappling to come to terms with the tragedy, did ALL of these people know that their sadness and intimate comments would be shared with the world, not just Trey’s friends and family and the friends in their own Facebook network? Maybe not.

Do you believe the coverage was ethically questionable or entirely appropriate?

How we get news is changing and our expectation of privacy is changing. Define “appropriate” when sharing social content in news.

Daina Middleton, CEO of Performics, pointed out at last month’s Search Engine Strategies San Francisco Conference that our children don’t have the same privacy concerns we do. Is inclusion of social content in the news the bridge to making our lives entirely public?

Would love to hear your thoughts.

Condolences to his friends and family in this difficult time.

If Search Marketers Ran the Country

Search marketers are some of the brightest and most innovative people in the world. Lately I’ve pondered how different things would be if search marketers ran the country. So I’m listing our top 10 woes and how search marketers might approach those issues.

#10
Debt Debate: Search marketers would assess the data, make recommendations, A/B test and report results.
A) Trickle down economics, keep current tax breaks.
B) Tax corporations and top 5% wealthiest Americans at the same rate as my 19-year old daughter or her college professors.

#9
Data Privacy: Search marketers would recommend aggregate data transparency with no individual data privacy invasion.

#8
Education: Search marketers would assess the future value of educating our countries children and create a plan that increased teachers pay, lowered cost of post high school education and maybe have the military do a bake sale for a change.

#7
Cash on Hand: Search marketers would point out that Apple has more cash on hand than the US government.

#6
Health Insurance: Search marketers would benchmark the world’s top 10 health care programs and recommend best strategies and tactics from each country.

#5
Military: Search marketers would announce the beginning and ending of military engagements and assess impact for future reference.

#4
Unemployment: Search marketers would analyze top 5 growing sectors of their economy and invest 10% in related programs and job placement. (BTW: Search marketers would also include the number of unemployed who are no longer eligible for unemployment in unemployment analysis;)

#3
Banking: Search marketers would have insisted that a bank bailout stipulate a mandatory percentage of investing in small business.

#2
Oil: Corporations like Exxon and Shell who are reporting record earnings would insist they be taxed at a higher level (see #10) and recommend that a percentage of profits be invested in finding more sustainable resources.

#1
Morale: Search marketers would get together as a group, share what they know, encourage each other to make a change for the better and recognize that any real improvement in the country is good for everyone.

1) Think of a Keyword as a Recommendation. When a visitor types in a search query (keyword search) in a search engine bar, Google is recommending sites. SEO friendly sites are created to support ranking for more long lists of relevant keywords (short tail and long tail) and are selected based on a combination of keyword research, competitive factors and overall business goals.

Google has more than 240 algorithmic elements (that they don’t share;) Getting sites to rank requires many things, but most importantly good site architecture, good content, a competitive link profile, and (more recently) social signal.

2) Google Gives “Recommendations” to Sites based on Relevance and Trust. The latter is achieved over time. Sites may or may not achieve every keyword in the list, but the goal is continued work on and off page to reach that goal.

3) Local Search is Different from Natural Search. Google Places has a different algorithm with different rules. It’s an important but separate strategy.

4) Long Tail Search Queries are Important. One of the less understood terms for keyword selection is long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are important as they maximize conversion rates. These are terms that are longer than one or two words and often have stronger intention than more general, higher volume keywords. One of the core concepts in the marketing world is the 80/20 rate. This concept defines that 20% of your clients make 80% of your business. Though long tail keywords will only provide about 20% of your traffic, it may statistically be 80% of your leads and sales conversion. (This isn’t always true, but it’s a guideline that helps clients understand the value of the long tail.) Being more specific, hence less frequent, long tail keywords can go on indefinitely so that the sum of all of them can eventually exceed the combined searches of most common keywords. Let’s take an example. Someone is looking for shoes can type “shoes” in a search engine. That person will have to sieve through some 198 million pages in Google to get to the shoes really wanted. Let’s look at the long tail keywords based on the assumption that the person knows what type of shoes is being looked for (infographic from Marketing Sherpa):

“red shoes” – 94 million results
“red sport shoes” – 7 million results
“red mizuno sport shoes” – 312 000 results
“red mizuno men sport shoes” – 215 000 results

As the query gets more precise, the competition gets lower, hence making it easier to rank on the product. Along with that, as the person knows specifically (deeper intention) what shoes are being targeted, the probability of selling this product or service to that person is getting higher. Long tail keyword traffic is lower but brings more qualified traffic in, maximizing conversions. This means that long tail = better conversion.

5) Keyword Research is One Part of the Overall Search Strategy. Lists includes short and long tail terms to reach the high volume search as well as the less frequent but more conversion-valuable search terms. Additionally, terms should be funneled to the pages that are most relevant to that query (not all keywords should go to the home page).

6) Marketers Use Search Ranking Tools to Define Rankings. Prior to personalized/local and universal search, every visitor saw the same results for a search query. Now the algorithm varies those results based on a number of other factors including personalization, region, past searching history, etc. To define for the client where a search query/keyword is ranking, we use tools. (Like RankChecker and SEOmoz.org). These tools allows us to share an aggregate of how the keywords are ranking (though not every searcher sees the same thing) it’s a good guideline of ranking performance. Rankings can also change daily so week to week focus is on traffic and lead performance and we review keyword ranking and improvement once a month.

7) There are Other (More Important) Performance Metrics. Rankings are one element of our performance metrics dashboard. Rankings get us awareness and traffic, which acquire leads, which generates business. Obsessively monitoring ranking is a waste of precious time. Look at those reports once a month, but focus analytics time on visits and how traffic is using the site and if they’re converting to revenue.

OTBC & SEMpdx

I love doing hot seat site reviews. It’s such a great opportunity for businesses to get expert advice on their site for a lot of online marketing topics. At yesterday’s OTBC (Oregon Technology Business Center) reviews the SEMpdx crew covered 4 topics:

* On page SEO
* Off page SEO
* Social Media
* Site Usability & Conversion

The three sites we reviewed were great and all had wonderful ideas and received some exceptional advice.

The sites reviewed were:

* Valerie Antoinette - International Business Development

* Accumulus – An automated recurring billing system

* Membean – A vocabulary tool to help improve SAT and GRE scores

My topic was Site Usability & Conversion. We did a 90-minute review, but here are top 8 takeaways for the topic.

1. Pay attention to load time. Google cares about this and so do your customers.

2. Don’t launch videos without user prompting. It’s rude;)

3. Use strong calls to action, tell the visitor what to do (otherwise they’re not likely to do it.)

4. You’re solving a problem. Tell people how you’re doing that up front.

5. Offer something to get something (Download a White Paper, or do a Free Trial to get the lead and start the conversation with your potential customer.)

6. Pay attention to your lead acquisition content. Once people give you an email address or sign up, create expectation about what’s next.

7. Use language your customer is using. Don’t say “Recurring Customer Automation” when your customers say “Automated Recurring Billing”

8. Remember that usability and conversion is taking care of the visitors you already have. Driving new traffic is important, but you can really move the needle when you pay attention and convert the visitors you already have.