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SEO - Web Strategy - Communications

Mad Men Rules – Do they still work

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Mad Men Season 4
Mad Men Season 4

One of my favorite shows is AMC’s MadMen. If you haven’t seen it, start watching season 4 this Sunday.

I watched a promo video off of iTunes today that listed the Mad Men Rules and wondered if they still worked today.

  1. You are the product: If people don’t like you, they will do their best NOT to buy from you. Showing some of your personality allows people to connect with you. See Don Draper at his best in this clip from season 1 – The Carousel.
  2. Live like there’s no tomorrow: Don’t let opportunity pass you by. Grab it and live each day to the fullest. Maybe that no longer includes drinking scotch at your desk.
  3. There’s a place to cry – your apartment: You’ll get a lot of advice at work, not all of it is good, but some of it could change your life. You’re lucky if you find a mentor who you can trust.
  4. When God closes a door, he opens a dress: Rule breaking. How does the way you live your life in one quadrant effect how you live it in another. In the end, crime doesn’t pay.
  5. If you don’t want to have a fight, stop talking: Communication is the key. If you don’t let the steam escape in a controlled way, it will eventually bust a main pipe.
  6. Being with a client is like being in a marriage: As many different types of people there are in the world, there are that many types of clients. Some clients you kiss their butt, some need to be scared and some clients you’re better off avoiding all together. See Don Draper explain to a client how it is.
  7. Evaluate your strengths: If you take the time really evaluate your strengths and weaknesses and remain dispassionate and honest, what do you see?
  8. Have a summer house: What kind of company do you want to work at? The kind where everyone has a summer house? How free are you to speak where you are now?
  9. Only boring people are bored: This is one of my favorite lines ever from this show. I believe there is actually quite a bit of truth in it. Are you ever bored at work?
  10. Put your nose down and pay attention to your work: This has been an old standby for many decades. Is the best way to stay creative and motivated at your job? Do you take time to think or do you just “work” all day?

Do you watch the show? What do you think of their rules?

7 Posts You May Have Missed

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Old floppy disks in the street
Digital storage?

I’ve seen a couple of bloggers respond to ProBlogger’s 7 Link Challenge last week, so here I am jumping on that bandwagon.

  1. Your first post. SEO as an Afterthought was a cry for help. The marketing team at McClatchy was totally disconnected from the web development team. When we reached ou to the SEO, she had no idea how our CMS worked. Her boss had even less understanding. When I tried to bridge that gap I was slapped. My first post isn’t great but I still remember how cathartic it was.
  2. A post you enjoyed writing the most. How You Can Be As Memorable As Morgan Siem stands out. It’s always easy to joyful to write about something that makes you happy. Morgan’s success and the way she’s achieved it should be a roadmap for the social media age.
  3. A post which had a great discussion. Nobody Reads Anymore. Talking about reading always lets people pipe up with what they have enjoyed in the past.
  4. A post  on someone else’s blog that you wish you’d written. One of the most powerful headlines and blogs I’ve ever read. It’s Not The Recession, You Just Suck. You probably already know I’m a fanboy of Lisa’s writing style, but this one is a masterpiece IMHO.
  5. A post with a title that you are proud of. How Social Media Can Save The Newspaper Industry. The title says it all. I still believe it to be the truth. Sometimes the straight forward headlines are the most powerful.
  6. A post that you wish more people had read. Can Online Newspaper Sites Survive was one that had been forming in my head for a long time. The ideas behind it got me an official “talking to” at my job. Apparently the ideas are so heretical that they shouldn’t even be discussed.
  7. Your most visited post ever. This one has 2 answers. The clear winner by a huge margin is Why You Should Be Twittering More. It had a little help when Mashable linked to it in a tweet so I sort of discount that one. The next winner combines a good headline and a good write-up: Social Media Case Study: How The Pit Uses Twitter and Foursquare.

This was more fun than I expected. It’s a good excercise to look back through your writing and take stock. Let me know if you’ve done the same.

Photo by: Jonathan Harford

Hiring For Performance

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The day Martin Smith left his post as E-Commerce Director at Sinclair Institute there was a large vacuum left behind. Martin was a formally trained, pure bred marketer who had a vision of a perfect and profitable future.

Who do you look to when filling a position like that? I think there are 3 distinct options.

  1. A 25 year veteran who has been leading teams of skilled specialists who will cost you a fortune, but you can be pretty sure that the job will get done. This person will be the one guiding the company. They have a lifetime of knowledge and experience to pull from that can help everyone become better marketers.
  2. A warm body that has some experience in direct marketing. Nothing terrible in their past, but nothing remarkable either. Visionary is not a word you normally associate with this person. This person will do the job, probably not do anything really dumb and be in their office everyday.
  3. A person who seems capable but has almost no experience in leading a team and doing the political work that managers and directors are forced to do. They are “too young” and “inexperienced” but have the respect of their co-workers because they’re always doing the hard work. They are first in and last out everyday. They respond to emergencies that need attention even if it’s not their responsibility. They are a 27-year-old linchpin.

Choice #1 is safe, but few choose it because of the up front cost. They will no doubt be twice or three times the cost of choice #2.

Choice #2 is often the choice. She’s cheap and competent.

I’d like to make the case for #3.

Harrison R. Thyng plaque
Harrison R. Thyng - full Colonel at 26 years old

To us old guys, a 27-year-old seems like a slightly advanced high schooler, but at 27 some people are leading hundreds of soldiers in pitch battles, overseeing the largest social media site in the world or writing speeches the entire world listens to. We love the 27-year-old captain or major that comes home from overseas with a silver star pinned on his chest… we just won’t hire him to lead a team in our company.

My advice would be to nurture and take advantage of your opportunity for a win/win situation. You can get #3 for cheap. Instead of $250K for #1, or even $90K for #2, you can probably get #3 for $70K. Give them 12 or 18 months to prove themselves, maybe with a kick ass bonus if everything goes right. If everything goes wrong at month 3, you tell them and they can drop back to their previous position where they were crushing it anyway

They’ll be disappointed, but they’ve also gained fantastic experience, meaning they are more valuable to you.

They’ve been tempered and will be able to withstand more the next time.

You’re Not Actually Multitasking

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multitasking
multitasking

“I’m a multi-tasker” she says, “I’m constantly doing 2 or 3 things at once.”

I just finished watching an interesting program from PBS’s Frontline called Digital Nation. There was a lot of really interesting parts, but the one that really stuck with me was when they were talking to a handful of MIT students who were all totally convinced that they were expert multitaskers who could fully consume multiple streams at once without significant data drop.

I’m not a true digital native, but I’ve assimilated. One thing I know for sure. There’s no such thing as multitasking. Ok, there is low level multi-tasking. I can mow the lawn while listening to my iPod.

The kind of multitasking people claim to do is just BS. You can’t talk on the phone at the same time you’re typing an email and pay attention to both activities because both use the same part of the brain. Have you ever “zoned out” and missed your exit while driving on the highway? If you could really multi-task, that would never happen.

About a year ago, I decided to check my email a lot less often. The world is still on it’s axis and I now can focus for at least a couple hours at a time. Switching between email, twitter, Facebook, data gathering, report writing, blog posting and strategic thinking should take 3 days, but we’re now convinced all that can fit into a 45 minute lunch break.

Take a minute and think back to the last really productive stretch you had. During the most productive part of that stretch, were you focused on one thing or were you multitasking?

I understand that multitasking is here to stay. I walk and txt at the same time, I check my email when I’m waiting sitting at a red light. But when I have to do real work, it requires focus. It did 20 years ago, and it will 20 years from now.

So the question now is, how do you focus in a society that tells you multitasking is the answer?

Caught Off Guard

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I tried to share some SEO knowledge today at a Food4Thought luncheon. After my presentation, two of the organizers asked me to have lunch with them.

Lorana Price of Holy Cow Branding
Lorana Price of Holy Cow Branding

Lorana Price, Holy Cow’s CEO and brand strategist and Lea-Ann Berst, lead strategist for Sleddogg Marketing Management sat down with me and we talked about the presentation. We ordered lunch and talked for a while. After the check was paid, Lorana turned to me and asked, “how can I help you?”

I haven’t been asked that question very often in my life. I was totally unprepared for the question and the sincerity with which it had been asked.

It’s a beautiful question when it doesn’t come at the end of a strained call to AT&T or Time Warner Cable.

What would your answer be to that question?

Latent Semantic Indexing

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Sometimes when you are trying to explain a simple idea, people zone out because they think they already know it all. That’s when you whip out a phrase like Latent Semantic Indexing.

semantic web think tank
Sign on door to Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambrige University

It’s a great phrase because it sounds like a super complicated scientific method for… well, something. In reality, it’s sort of what good search optimizers have been talking about for a while.

Latent Sematic Indexing can have a very technical sounding definition:

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is an indexing and retrieval method that uses a mathematical technique called Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) to identify patterns in the relationships between the terms and concepts contained in an unstructured collection of text.

I usually only throw out LSI when I’m losing people while talking about simple semantic document structure as a “best practice”. When I explain the the title tag should encompass the main thrust of the content of the page, it seems almost silly to say that out loud to a room full of adults – but sometimes titles and headlines seem barely thought through.

When I explain that the header tags should be used in a nested fashion people roll their eyes, until I show them they their sites are doing the opposite. Header tags are not a style, they are a semantic queue about what is important on your site.

I actually use a cocktail approach to semantically related phrases and real LSI. If you have a page about Sesame Street, you wouldn’t just stuff it with the phrase “sesame street”, you also want to include oscar the grouch, elmo and big bird.

Learning what words Google thinks are semantically related can help you. Try using the tilde operator, for example: ~bbq and you get a slew of relationships: barbeque, bbq grilling, grilling, bar-b-que, grilled.

What that would tell me is that if I had a website for the best bar-b-que in downtown Raleigh, I would try to get inbound links around all of those semantically related phrases.

You may have heard people talk about a site, or a page being “over-optimized”. Usually in those cases the content is focused on a single term that ends up looking spammy and forced rather than a semantic mix of phrases.

Photo by: pshab

Bring The Hardcore Data

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Next Wednesday I’m speaking about search marketing at Food4Thought, an invitation only professional series in Raleigh. I was recruited by Lorana Price CEO & Brand Strategist at Holy Cow Branding after one of the SEO Meetups.

I’m not sure how search savvy all of the members are, but I know that if I try to softball it, everyone loses. My goal is to give the attendees at least 3 memorable things that can go back to their offices with that afternoon and start making positive changes. That’s impossible to do by giving a broad overview.

I have to bring the data. A lot of people already think that SEO is smoke and mirrors so more fluff won’t help.

Think about the conferences and speakers that you’ve liked the most, usually they hit you with facts and data.

Filed Under: SEO

What Happens When You Let Others Define You

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This week there was a online reputation management crisis that hit a local bakery. The online reputation management part of the equation was handled so poorly that now all that exists is the digital tire tracks.

There’s a lot of talk about how the bakery handled their problem poorly and how Twitter and Facebook filled up with comments from people saying they’ll no longer support them. But what about someone who moves here tomorrow, how does today’s blowup transfer?

Here’s how Google answers a query for crumb bakery raleigh tonight:

Google search result for crumb bakery raleigh
Google search result for crumb bakery raleigh
Bear eating a fish in a river
Bear Food

This means that eventually the “bad press” will overwhelm their other run of the mill search results. Since they have basically gone silent since the shit started hitting the fan, they have allowed others to totally define the entire event, including how they should respond.

I love the advice Lisa Barone gave LeBron James during his reputation management problem.

Here’s my advice. Constantly feed the bear. If you aren’t the one feeding the bear, someone else will feed him for you.

Awesome Alaskan Coastal Brown bear photo by: Alan Vernon.

Why I Shop at Kerr Drug

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When I moved down from Massachusetts in 2003, I had to adjust to living in a new environment where many things were different. Things that were familiar were easy for me to stick with. The few Dunkin’ Donuts and CVS were the two most familiar stores that were here.

Kerr Drug with Kerr Cafe in Hillsborough, NC
Kerr Drug with Kerr Cafe

Now it’s seven years later and I love sweet tea, Carolina BBQ, the Bulls and I shop at Kerr Drug.

There’s a couple of reasons I now shop at Kerr Drug, but mainly it’s because they are a local drug store, and because of Morgan Siem.

At the 30,000 foot view Kerr, CVS and Walgreens may appear to be very similar. So why do I choose Kerr Drug?

I’ve written about why I love The Pit BBQ, and it’s almost the same reason. For me, it’s personal. Having one of my best friends working with Kerr means that I will do what I can to support her. I know how hard Morgan is working to show Kerr Drug the value and power of social media – and I believe in the same things. I also want to help support a strong social media presence so that they lead the way and help prove the benefits of creating community with outreach, recognition and online coolness.

So the funny thing is, for me, this is absolute ground-zero grassroots social media 101. I am friends with Morgan, Morgan helps Kerr Drug with their social media, so now I support Kerr Drug.

See if this makes sense…

  • I’m lucky Morgan decided to come to my social media presentation at one of our SEO meetups
  • I was lucky that Michael offered up the MediaTwo conference room at the last minute for that meetup
  • Kerr Drug is lucky that they sent Shawn to that meetup
  • Michael and Ellie were smart to see that the questions he was asking that night were cries for help
  • Michael was smart to see the potential in Morgan from her participation at that meetup
  • Kerr Drug is lucky to have one of the best social media strategists in America working on their campaign.

I know that I can’t possibly be the only person that has been impacted like this. Maybe someone reading this will be swayed to Kerr Drug also.

Welcome to a social media world Kerr Drug, you’re in good hands.

Here, take this $60,000 and use it however you want

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Raleigh SEO meetup at Hi5
Raleigh SEO meetup at Hi5

Last night I sat in a slightly over crowded room in downtown Raleigh while Ashley Berman Hale held court at this month’s Raleigh SEO Meetup.

I’m not sure people are aware of the value of the Raleigh SEO meetup so I want to take a minute to put it into perspective. When I started at my current job, my boss was on the verge of signing a contract with an SEO firm in Boston who was going to perform an audit of our site for $60,000.

No doubt their audit would have been in a cool binder with lots of white-labeled charts and graphs, but at it’s core, it would have contained the items that Ashley spent just under 90 minutes last night outlining for the 65 people who attended. Having the knowledge of how to comb through your site and find it’s problems means you don’t have to pay $60,000 for someone else to do it for you.

If you missed the awesomeness last night then you missed one of the best SEO meetups of the year. But I have good news. Even the beautiful and talented Ashley Berman Hale couldn’t force feed all of the information in one session, so next month is part II. If you’re already a member of the meetup group, you can go grab the handout from last night and marvel at a document with over 40 links where you can test almost every aspect of your site.

The most important thing that I took away from last night was a quote from Einstein that Ashley mentioned early on, “Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.” A website audit requires real brain work. There are tools available for gathering data, but it’s what you do from there that matters.

Now go make your site better before next month, you don’t want to get called out as the site with problems right? Better is you are called out as the best newspaper in Garner with only 1 css warning!

Getting Better Data From Your Links

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jquery logo
jQuery- write less.do more

It’s late, but I just finished up a fun little web analytics project that I think a lot of people could use. It’s not very sexy, but especially if you use Google Analytics, read on.

I wanted to track traffic from two sister sites that link back to the main e-commerce site more accurately. I decided that appending some traffic parameters to the links was the way to do it. So instead of having a link that looks like this:

Awesome Page

it would look like this:

Awesome Page

The advantage to having links like this is that they will allow you to collect more and better data. You can learn about building smarter links here.

So the down side was, nobody wants to have to write all that junk after every link. So as usual, my go-to javascript framework jQuery saved me. I’m no jQuery guru like my friend Lucas Myers (who runs an awesome javascript meetup), but I can usually get something working.

So I added this to my global footer of the site:

Those 6 lines of javascript is actually a jquery call, that waits for the dom to finish loading, then walks through the page, finds only the links that begin with http://www.example.com, and appends our super-duper tracking code to them.

Done!

Easy solutions like this make web development a lot easier.

Note: you need to invoke the jquery framework up in the head of your document.

Why you need to build your business one customer at a time

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Happy
Happy

There’s no other way to build a business than one customer at a time. The truth is, even if you have 100,000 customers each week, they all found you one at a time. Your prices, or value or something appealed to each one of them on a different level. What I like about The Pit may make someone else hate it.

I have brought people to The Pit for lunch and dinner because I love the food AND the way I’m treated there. Some of those people will return because they had a good experience also. So maybe Eric the manager doesn’t come out and greet every customer, but if I’m selling a new guest on how much I like it there, then the job is already being done.

The truth is, there’s no such thing as a single customer. Anywhere I go, I’m going to tell my family if my experience was at either end of the customer service spectrum. Because we hang around a tribe that is mostly the same, we influence them. “It’s a small world” because we hang around people we have a lot in common with. If my wife loves a new thing for our son, she’s going to tell her friends who also have small kids. Gaining or losing a single customer is rare.

99% of the businesses in the US could do with better customer service. That starts at the top and spreads like a virus. If the boss cares, you tend to care. I experienced that first hand while working at a Marriott in Boston while I was in college. There was a feeling of “let’s do everything we can for the customer” that permeated everyone who worked there. It was almost impossible to not be helpful.

But what if I did upset a customer? What if in the modern social media world a customer gives me the Kevin Smith treatment? I realize that it’s an opportunity to learn from. I step in as quickly as possible. Admit my mistake and try to fix it. The days of deny, deny, deny, cover-up, deny are hopefully gone forever (except, of course, in Washington DC).

If you like being treated like a real human being when you’re the customer, why would you think anyone else wouldn’t. For example, when I’m at Home Depot and can’t find anyone to rip my plywood it drives me insane, but then just as often there’s someone there who goes totally above and beyond and gives me hope.

The ideat that big companies can’t do one-on-one relationship building is just plain wrong. They can, and they can do it well if they want to allocate the resources. When you compare the lifetime value of a customer, it makes the salary of the person keeping them happy seem well worth it.

Consider that the cell phone companies spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars to capture each new customer. Yet seemingly then do everything in their power to alienate you! If you could keep just 1,000 customers from switching carriers, you could save your company half a million dollars a year.

Building your customer base one satisfied customer at a time seems silly, until you realize that’s there’s no other option.

Photo by: loop oh

Can you really build your business one customer at a time?

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Web 2.0 Bullshit Bingo
Web 2.0 Bullshit Bingo

Come on, we all know that you hear stuff like, “value every customer”, “a single customer can have an impact beyond that single sale” or “1,000 true fans can sustain you”. But in the real world that’s bullshit right? You want to be the one to tell your boss that you spent the last 8 hours cultivating a single sale? You want to be the person to tell your boss that 1,000 customers can sustain his 401K, medical plan and bonus structure?

The real question is how do you fake it? Can you make it appear that you care about your customers? When they start complaining about some silly minor issue, you’re suppose to stop what your doing and coddle them. Is that really where we’re at now? My dried out chicken breast gives me some sort of right to chat with some underpaid social media intern who apologizes for a store he’s probably never heard of and asks if I’d like a dollar off coupon. It’s pathetic really.

Am I going to “connect” with my local plumber on Facebook? Maybe I should become a fan of  the children’s resale shop in the next town over. Oh, wait, I know, I’ll start following Ashton Kutcher on Twitter so I’ll know all the trendy places in Los Angeles (even though I live in North Carolina).

Where would the world be if people cared about each other in a real way? Could we have giant corporations that employ thousands of people and treat them like human machines? Hell no! We couldn’t have companies like General Motors, AT&T and Microsoft if we had to value customer feedback and bend to the will of the mob. Those companies are there to make a profit for their shareholders, not to listen to you whine about “bad design”, “spotty coverage” or “monopolistic tendencies”.

There’s people saying that the current wave of social media tools are fundamentally changing the way business is being done. You may have noticed those changes because your mortgage is going down, cars are getting cheaper, your cable company called and is now delivering all channels in HD for free and cell phone plans top out at $14.99/month (unlimited).

Now you may be able to pull out one small example of a business “doing it right”, but please don’t drag that ComcastCares horse out of the barn again. How old is that one? And have you talked to people who use Comcast? They still hate their cable company.

If you got this far reading this post, you should probably leave a comment so we can “engage”, but that’s a lot of work and bother, so you’ll probably just click away – because as micro-consumption digivores, we only make an effort when it’s really no effort at all.

Photo by: Barry Adams

What are you really hiring for?

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Last night I was searching for a used car on Craigslist. When I was done, I decided to see what type of SEO jobs were being advertised. As usual it was a depressing collection, but one help wanted ad in particular caught my attention.

…a web professional to handle our new website and other tasks. The individual we hire will be in charge of all things web related including, managing the CMS, inventory, data entry into shopping cart, social media campaigns, web marketing, SEO, and more. Experience is necessary but we do not want an over qualified candidate. Starting salary will be somewhere in the $30,000 range with opportunity for frequent raises and bonus potential. Again, candidate must be proficient and experienced in shopping carts, SEO, CMS systems and social media and have the ambition and desire to be a part of a fast growing company

Exhausted
Exhausted

So what depressed me most about the ad was the idea that they wanted to hire a single, very inexpensive person to handle 3 very important jobs. Here’s my take…

First off they ask for a web professional, yet make no effort to offer a salary that a true web professional would consider working for.

They then explain that the person will be in charge of all things web related, yet I doubt they’ll be “in charge” of anything. I would imagine if they wanted to start changing copy and colors they would have to get it ok’d from someone else.

I’m not sure what data entry into shopping cart means, but I would guess that means they’ll be hand entering products into the CMS. Who hand enters data anymore? Certainly not web professionals. Have they checked into the Mechanical Turk?

They are also looking for someone to handle their social media campaigns. People right out of college taking a position as ONLY a social media strategist make over $30,ooo/year. Yet this would be just one of their jobs.

They would also be expected to run down web marketing and SEO as well. Again, just hiring a full-time search marketing person would run you much more than $30,000/year.

Then comes the part where I cried a little, “Experience is necessary but we do not want an over qualified candidate.” My first thought was, “who could possible be over qualified for a position where it normally takes 3 or 4 people?”, my second thought was, “why wouldn’t you want that over qualified person?”

My advice for this company would be to focus. I wouldn’t hire an accountant and also expect them to fix the leaky roof. Do they want a web developer, a marketer or a search engineer? If they want one person to do all three, they need to increase the salary offer by about 300%.

If all you can afford is $30,000. Don’t try to hire just one person, because you’ll be disappointed that they’re unable to do 3 jobs.

Spread out the money and buy expertise in the short run so that next year you can hire the right team.

Spend 1/3 of it on a kick-ass SEO audit from a respected search engine genius like SixTurnSeven. The reason I suggest this one first is that the finding can influence the next two.

Spend another 1/3 of it hiring a social media/pr ninja like Gwynne Murphy before she gets snapped up as a full-timer by Bandwidth. Gwynne is a workhorse, and gets passionately involved in her projects. That’s the kind of passion you don’t get when you stretch someone too thin.

Use the last 1/3 to hire a web development contractor to work with you to add value to your current CMS. Try reaching out to Ara Yapejian, one of the smartest developers in the Triangle. One of the best parts of working with Ara is he’s happy to point out the problem roads you’ve already started down so that you can turn back and get to profitablity faster.

That’s my advice for this company. They really don’t need a full-time person, what they need is some problems solved.

Photo by: Darwin Bell

Raleigh Media Leaders Lunch Prize

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I just got back from a great lunch with some of the smartest people in the Triangle world. It was the prize that we gave away at the April 6th Raleigh Media Leaders event.

We met up at Raleigh’s best Asian restaurant, The Duck and Dumpling. I hadn’t met Brooks Bell (Founder and CEO of Brooks Bell Interactive) or Jesse Lipson (CEO of ShareFile) before so I was happy to make those new connections. I had met Michael Hubbard (CEO of MediaTwo Interactive) before, and always enjoy talking with him about the current social media landscape. The winners of the lunch were Jenni Bruckman who is the Senior Marketing Manager at Coldwell Banker Howard Perry and Walston, Maura McDonald who is a freelance designer running McDezigns and Theresa Spera who is the Director of Programs and Member Services for the Automotive Aftermarket Suppliers Association.

Raleigh Media Leader's lunch at The Duck & Dumpling
Raleigh Media Leader's lunch at The Duck & Dumpling

After some really good edamame and handmade sweet potato chips we got into some brief introductions and some questions.

Mailing list questions, how to start, how to refactor and how to get opt-n when you buy a third-party list. What I found really impressive was the insightful questions Brooks asked while trying to get to the root of the problem, the on-the-fly solutions Jesse has used in the past to overcome similar problems and the new metrics Michael suggested as better indicators than just “opens”.

We spent some time talking about the changing face of both real estate and automotive. Theresa shared a great story about traditional snail-mail versus email. It’s important to remember that the best medium is the one that works.

I love the idea of a casual lunch like this as a way to make new connections. The Media Leaders were generous with their expertise and time, the winners were also allowing us to cut into their busy schedules and that’s always appreciated.

All the participants are people who should be on your list of people to know in the Triangle. All of them are on Twitter except Theresa, but she did acknowledge that the peer pressure is getting unbearable, so soon she will relent.

Thanks to the entire Raleigh Media Leaders team, Brian McDonald, Morgan Siem, Sarah Burris and Dan London.

How Are Your Influencing Skills?

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I saw a question in one of my LinkedIn groups this morning from a Sr. Marketing Manager about where she could find “a good training course offered locally on influencing skills?”

Steve Jobs with the iPad
The King of Influence

This was the first time I had heard the term “influencing skills”. It’s one of those terms that sounds made up, but it’s not. The more I thought about it, I realized that your influencing skills are your most important weapon in the modern always-on, social-media, follower, fan, comment rich world.

If you have a job that you don’t love, you should be trying to use your influencing skills to make it better. You start with the guy in the next cube over. You convert him and now there’s 2 of you. You have leveraged your influence to double the size of your tribe. You talk to your team leader about your idea, and win her over with your smart idea, but also the way you presented it. The fact that you bought her lunch while pitching her doesn’t hurt either. Now you can approach the manager with some momentum behind you, which gives you confidence, which helps you influence the boss.

If you don’t have a job, you need to polish your influence skills to land one. Think about the company you would like to work at. Do they already know about you? If they don’t, why not? If they do already know you, and like you, how much of a leg up is that?

What are influencing skills?

Communication skills: If you aren’t sure what good communication skills are, you probably don’t have them. Here’s two simple ones to keep in mind. 1. Listen intently to the other person and try your best to grasp the entire meaning of what they’re saying. If you are unsure of something, ask them to clarify that point. 2. Do not multi-task while you have the privilege of getting face-time with someone. Let the phone and email buzzes go.

Presentation skills: I don’t just mean PowerPoint, although that helps. A presentation can take place anywhere, any time.  Maybe you’re out grabbing lunch and your boss asks you something about the pending MacGuilicuddy account. You whip out a napkin and explain it clearly and briefly. What you’ve really done is calmed you boss. You’ve allowed him to not worry about it and enjoy lunch.

Interpersonal skills: You are not an island. There are people around you that can help you achieve your goals, if they love you, they will want to help you. Interpersonal relationships are often based on just two things. 1. Trust. 2. Generosity. Those two points almost always seem to be tightly connected. I probably won’t spot you $10 for lunch if I don’t trust you, and I probably won’t ask you to help out on a cool new project that could get us big bonuses if I don’t trust you.

Seth Godin had a great post today that asked people who were ready to quit, to spend their last little bit of effort quilting.

Spend hours every day integrating the people you work with into a cohesive group. Weave in your customers as well. Take every scrap, even the people you don’t like, and sew them together. Spend far less time than you should on the ‘real’ work and instead focus on creating genuine connections with the people you work with. Including your boss.

Generosity extends far beyond money and time. Are you generous with your emotional labor?

The last, but most important part of becoming a true influencer is to be real. Growing your influence doesn’t happen in a day or a week. It grows stronger the longer you put forth the effort.

Filed Under: SEO

Best Newspaper In Garner – an experiment [updated]

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The Garner Citizen is a small, locally owned and operated newspaper just south of Raleigh. It has competition from two other papers, both owned by large news concerns not based in the area.

There are words and phrases that any business likes to rank for in search results. One of the most satisfying is “best so-and-so”. As of today, I’m going to start an experiment and see how long it takes for me to get the phrase best newspaper in garner to pull up The Garner Citizen as the #1 organic result.

garner citizen search results from 2010-04-16
best newspaper in garner search results from 2010-04-16

Consider it a mini test case.

I’ll update this post with tactics and results as the become available.

June 2nd 2010 Update: Well, it’s now at the #1 spot from a variety of locations. I saw that my handy SEOmoz rank tracker showed that it had jumped seven places since the previous week.

best newspaper in garner in SEOmoz Rank Tracker
best newspaper in garner in SEOmoz Rank Tracker

So let’s go over the gigantic amount of work it took to accomplish this.

1. I wrote this post with the key phrase in the title tag, the meta description and in the body of the post.

2. I tweeted about it 4 or 5 times over the past month and a half.

3. I wrote one additional article using the same “secrets” I used in step 1 at another site.

Garner Citizen Google Rank Twitter Stream
social reinforcement

When I asked for some help from my Twitter friends yesterday to see what result the Google query: best newspaper in garner was showing at the #1 spot – it socially reinforced the result.

That last part is an increasing important part of what the search engines are considering important. Lots of chatter and linking on Twitter and Facebook will help your site rank better.

The great response to my request for help got me thinking about general social reinforcement of a phrase or keyword by asking people on your social networks to chime in when needed.

I will blog more about that idea after I test out a few more things related to it.

Now the question is, can the Garner Citizen hold on to the phrase “best newspaper in garner” or will their competitors come after them – stay tuned.

Cross Domain Canonical Tagging

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Do Not Duplicate Key
Do Not Duplicate

Duplicate content has long been a problem on the web. Not just a problem for content producers – who create great content only to see places like Mahalo come scrape your content and use it on their site to generate income for themselves.

Sometimes it’s a problem for a normal company. At McClatchy newspapers, they used to publish the same story into multiple sections because it fit in both “local” and “business”. Bingo – duplicate content.

On February 12, 2009 Google and Yahoo announced support for a rel=canonical tag.

That tag allows a web page to tell the search engine spiders, “I’m not the real page for this content, I’m just a cousin, the real page is located at…”

Using the newspaper as an example, they would designate one of those story versions as the canonical version, and the other page would have a meta tag in the head pointing at it.

As good as that was, it still left a big gap that people asked about the minute the original announcement was made. What about cross-domain tagging.

Some cross-host canonical tagging works. I can say that www.1918.com/foo.html is the canonical page even though backup.1918.com/foo.html has the same exact article. Intra-domain canonicalization works now. What doesn’t work is true cross-domain rel= canonical tagging.

That may be changing soon. During his April 13th Webmaster Help video, Matt Cutts says “…we are very far along the path of being able to look at rel=canonical and apply it across domains.”

If you syndicate content, make sure you include the canonical tag pointing back at the original source.

Photo by: Sam

Graduating into a Social Media World

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I recently had a request for some help from a young woman who is graduating this spring from a nearby college. She asked if I could help her get started towards finding work in the communication field.

It got me thinking about a couple of different things. The first became even clearer while listening to Seth Godin’s latest book Linchpin. Most of us come out of school woefully prepared to make our way in the world. We offer a prospective employer only the promise that we’re not really as pathetic as our resume make us out to be. We almost never have any actual experience doing anything valuable. We generally think we’re smarter than we really are, and that we should be paid more that we’re worth.

The second was just how connected you can become by going out and actually meeting people. I’ve spent the last 18 months trying to build up my network in Raleigh. When I received that email the other day was really the first time I stopped to consider the awesome people I am now connected to.

100m sprinters
Hustle!

So back to the first point. My advice to someone just getting started is hustle. If you’re unsure what that means, watch some of Gary Vanerchuk’s videos (or read his book). If you’re still unsure, go have lunch with Molly Buckley and she’ll explain it. Molly lives hustle 24/7, or watch how someone like Gwynne Murphy works her ass off for two different companies and still finds time to attend a ton of networking events and volunteer at still more.

Make yourself desirable. Make yourself memorable. Look at yourself from the other side of the table. Why should someone like Ignite Social Media hire you? There’s no doubt 100 other resumes in the pile with yours that are equal to, if not better than yours. I can tell you that the fancy typeface and extra thick paper you printed your resume on won’t be the deciding factor.

What if you already knew a person who worked there? What if you knew a couple of them? What if you had previously bumped into Jim Tobin and left a good impression? Then your resume might not even be in the pile with the other 100 people.

You’ve heard the old saying, “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Often you hear that said in a derisive way from someone who didn’t get a job or promotion. Usually that person spends more time playing fantasy football at ESPN.com than worrying about what’s going to happen when her job goes away, so she’s unprepared and caught flat-footed.

There’s another saying, “build your network before you need it.” That is one of my favorites. Very early in my social media life, I was sitting next to Raleigh’s Mr. Hustle, Wayne Sutton. We were at a small tweetup because Jason Keath was in town. It was my first visit to The Pit BBQ and the manager came out to say hello because of all the chatter he saw on Twitter about the tweetup. Wayne and the manager chatted for a few minutes and left the door open to do something better planned in the future. After he left, Wayne said 3 important words, “always be networking”.  There were a few other people at that dinner that I have since become friends with, all of them have large and influential networks. Knowing them allows me to connect with their networks if needed, and vice-versa.

Sarah and Morgan at Raleigh Media Leaders
Sarah and Morgan checking out an iPad at Raleigh Media Leaders

Last week I met Sara Gilbert and Morgan Eberle at the Raleigh Media Leaders event. What impressed me about both of them is that they were smart enough to show up. They were hustling. I approached them right at the beginning of the event because I hadn’t seen them around before, and once they said UNC and Journalism I knew I could connect them to at least 2 other people with the same background at the event. I pointed out my friend Morgan Siem to them and saw them all talking a few minutes later. I’m not sure what, if anything, will come of that meeting for any of them, but it’s a connection all 3 would have missed out on if they had stayed home and watched tv.

So if you’re graduating soon, what are you doing to get a jump on your competitors? Do you have your Facebook page locked down properly? Do you have a Twitter stream that wouldn’t scare away an potential boss? How’s your LinkedIn profile? How’s your blog look?

If you think you’re going to be able to run past Molly, Gwynne, Sara and Morgan by simply emailing in your resume,  you may want to apply to grad school tomorrow.

100m photo by Jonas Merian

Value versus Free

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Looking Over Raleigh Media Leaders
Looking Over Raleigh Media Leaders

Tuesday night is the second Media Leaders event being held in Raleigh. The first one held back in January was great and I expect this one to be just as good. The question for some people is, “is it worth paying for?”

It’s an interesting question, free has taken on a life of its own in the social media age. It’s a question that I and the other organizers wrestle with. In the final analysis it comes down to the question of how much do you value an opportunity to meet and socialize with friends, peers and mentors in your industry and community.

For me, if I want to just hang out with my peers at a tweetup, that’s always available to me for free. I have very low expectations of such an event to actually make an impact on my life. It’s just fun to see all my friends.

If I want to see my business peers and maybe take it up a notch, then I would try to see who else in my industry is attending Chuck Hester‘s LinkedIn Live event. I know Chuck spends a lot of time getting those ready and offsets the cost by having companies sponsor the event.

We think of Media Leaders as a slightly different concept. We aim to make the event equally useful for C-level executives and entry-level evangelists. There’s not a lot of interruptions or music or food, it’s aimed at letting people connect.

There’s not a lot of places where someone just starting out can bump into a true leaders like Media Two‘s CEO Michael Hubbard , Brooks Bell Interactive‘s Founder and President Brooks Bell or ShareFile‘s CEO Jesse Lipson. Not only can you talk to them, you have a pretty good chance of winning the drawing, which is a lunch with them where you can pick their brains! Spending an hour with such smart and successful people could actually change your life. Maybe they give you a new idea, or tell you the crazy idea you have is brilliant (or terrible), and maybe there’s some real synergy and they want to work with you on something. It’s the opportunity to make the connection that’s important.

But what if you don’t win the free lunch? Everyone attending the first event seemed to be in the perfect mood. Because it was a straight-up networking event, everyone chatted and met a lot of new people. Use the event to meet a competitor, talk to someone who is hiring or a company you’ve always wanted to ally with.

I’ve been cutting back on time I’m spending attending social events to only include the ones I feel have real value for me. This is one that meets that criteria. If you’re attending just to hang out in the corner with your close friends, you’re missing the true value of the event.

The Raleigh Media Leaders event is on April 6th at Issac Hunter’s Oak City Tavern on Fayetteville Street in downtown Raleigh. You can still get tickets for the event.

Photo from: Brian McDonald

How Does Your Church’s Reputation Fare When Crowdsourced?

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Two Women Leaving ChurchI heard a fascinating segment on All Things Considered during my long commute home yesterday. It was about a new website called Church Rater.

The basic idea is that when you move into a new community and need to find someplace to worship, now you can see what others are saying about the local churches. Interesting right? Then you quickly zigzag into the other associated questions. Who is writing the reviews? Why are they reviewing that church? All the same questions that businesses dealt with a few years ago.

If I run the hardware store on Main Street and my competitor writes a review saying I stink, well, such is life as a private business. With religion, there’s a lot more tied up. People call some churches cults, or certain pastors are singled out as oppressors. Should that type of stuff really be in a church review?

I’m a huge fan of Yelp style reviews, and I think that a site like ChurchRater.com is on to something. I also think that it will become a lightning rod.

When I moved from Massachusetts to North Carolina I had to find a new church, and it meant I had to spend a few weeks sitting in different parishes until I found one I liked. I would have appreciated a little guidance.

One of my favorite parts of the report was a quote from Dwight Friesen, who teaches theology at Mars Hill Graduate School. He says it reduces it to a sort of Ecclesiastical Bandstand, “Yeah it’s got a good sermon, easy to worship to. I’ll give it an 8.7.”

I think the problem stems from the plethora of terrible church websites. I look at my own church’s website and cringe at how terrible it is. If someone takes the time to keep up the church website, you’ll end up getting better, more targeted worshipers into your church, and less angry people who bash you at ChurchRater.com.

This is another case of a business that lagged to far behind the web, and the web hates a vacuum.

I’d love to hear your take on an open church rating system.

Photo by: Ed Yourdon

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