SEO - Web Strategy - Communications
Do you wish your site loaded quicker?
We all want our site to load as quick as possible for our users convenience and to keep Googlebot happy.
My friend Janet’s new site was dead slow when she asked me to take a look. Here’s how I spent about a couple of hours to get a WordPress site to load in about 2 seconds. When I started in was regularly taking over 10 seconds, sometimes hitting 20 seconds.
If you’re the type of person who feels like you’ve been working hard on your WordPress powered blog, but not getting the results you desire, this is for you.
I wrote up a checklist for a client yesterday and thought it was worth sharing with anyone struggling with a WordPress blog that is underperforming.
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Do you have good ideas for blog posts, but no time to write them?
What if you could give a writer the title, some simple instructions and get back a well-written blog post that you could make your own?
That’s where many small businesses are. They have the ideas, but no time to execute. Let me tell you about a service I tried that might make your life easier.
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In 1970 Honda unleashed the N600 sedan on the American consumer. The car featured front wheel drive and an air-cooled, four stroke, 31 horsepowered two-cylinder engine, which was borrowed from the Honda CB450 motorcycle.
Honda didn’t think the N600 would replace the Chevy Impala, but they had to start somewhere. It’s the same on the web.
Every SEO gets asked the dreaded “how long until I’m number one on Google” a lot. At that point our job becomes one of teacher. Ranking first on Google means that your web page is better than any of the other 40 trillion pages on the web. That’s a pretty high bar right out of the gate.
So you spend a year making your site more responsive, adding better content, optimizing for conversions and building out your community. You still have very little traffic. You start to think you’re doing something wrong. You start asking around and looking at your competitors. Amazon makes it look so easy.
As you start to slog your way through year two you see some progress. You are starting to attract some links, a few people start to leave comments on your blog posts. Now you can feel your expectations start to rise. You feel like something good is right around the corner. Okay, maybe the next corner. Damnit, maybe that next one.
This is where half of the population gives up. This is what Seth Godin refers to as “the dip“. Seth’s main point in that book is knowing when it’s a dip that you have to power through, or something you should quit all together and move on.
I love the graphics that Rand Fiskin uses to illustrate this exact point. It’s the Google Analytics traffic line of his wife’s blog.
I’ve heard it said that it always feels like you’re losing, right before you win. If you still love what you’re doing and it feels right, I implore you to stay on the treadmill a little bit longer. Real success doesn’t come overnight.
I still remember the impact of Chris Brogan’s blog post about overnight success from way back in 2009 and how it made me more determined than ever.
This is the latest update that my friend Jason saw today concerning my Casey Movers saga. 
I can’t say I’m surprised that Casey Movers is now rated an F by the Better Business Bureau. Their track record of posting fake reviews and threatening past customers with lawsuits for posting negative reviews really tells you all you need to know.
If you take the time to review the Casey Movers reviews at the BBB site you may notice some interesting things.
First the positive reviews come in in clumps. 3 reviews in 5 days in August of 2012 and again 2 in 2 days in May. That along doesn’t mean that the reviews are fake or that the reviews were paid for, but it is a bit suspicious. If you dig a little deeper you can see is the people who were happy enough to leave a review on a third-party site we also excited enough to fill out the piece of paper that the movers ask people to fill out after a move.
Quincy O, does not show up in their scanned in reviews on their own site, neither does Paul T or Dan W. Again, this doesn’t mean Casey Movers are dishonest or that they are astroturfing BBB reviews. I’m just pointing out some discrepancies. The May reviews from Carrie R. and Steve L. also fail this test.
It’s been months since this whole kerfuffle and I still haven’t heard a word from them about any of it.
I would have left them some information about it on their Facebook page, but it is no longer available.
While I was out picking up some yard supplies this morning I entered into a Twitter conversation with my friend who asked if I could recommend anyone to help moderate some of the panels at this year’s Internet Summit.
I need a couple of moderators for panels – do you have anyone you can recommend as being Entertaining, Intelligent, Engaging…?
As I started going through the Rolodex in my head it dawned on me that what I was really doing was giving her a list of people I would want to see moderating a panel. People I feel are entertaining, intelligent and engaging. Then it dawned on me that I don’t enough people how much I enjoy their contributions to the whole online/social/interactive scene here in the Triangle.
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I spent a couple hours this afternoon fixing one of my less popular blogs to include proper markup to have the authors linked to their Google profiles. The reason to do this is so that you can have your photo appear in the search results next to the article you wrote.
While I was modifying the code it got me thinking about how many other people might want to do the same thing. So I’m going to add som additional information to the already good overviews out there on how to get your photo to show up in the Google search results.
Follow the directions that Mark lays out in his post, but when you get to step 2 come back here… I’ll wait.
Ok, now you have to add two specific pieces of code to your WordPress blog to make this work. Each one of your articles has to have an author link back to your author page. That is core functionality in WordPress, just make sure it’s turned on – yes, even if it is a single author blog. The catch is that the link needs to have the rel=author attribute added to the link. You can add a link to your author bio but WordPress will strip out the rel attribute. You can attach it in a parameter like this: https://plus.google.com/107187240364808249726?rel=author
Many better themes now include this capability (or soon will), if they don’t you’ll need to create a filter in the functions.php file. A filter is a way of catching output from the database and reformatting it before it hits the page.
Before we get to filters, let’s add some new fields to the author’s section of each user. I don’t know about you but I’m not really a big AIM Yahoo Messenger or Jabber user, so I can get rid of those, but I’d like to include Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Here’s what I added to my functions.php file.
[php]
function my_new_contactmethods( $contactmethods ) {
unset($contactmethods[‘aim’]);
unset($contactmethods[‘jabber’]);
unset($contactmethods[‘yim’]);
// Add Twitter
$contactmethods[‘twitter’] = ‘Twitter profile URL’;
//add Facebook
$contactmethods[‘facebook’] = ‘Facebook profile URL’;
//add Google+
$contactmethods[‘google’] = ‘Google+ profile URL’;
return $contactmethods;
}
add_filter(‘user_contactmethods’,’my_new_contactmethods’,10,1);
[/php]
Great, now you can go update your blog author profile an make sure you include your Google profile url (which should look something like https://plus.google.com/107187240364808249726 (you don’t need anything after the number).
Now let’s build out that filter!
This is for your author archive page, for example, mine is at http://www.1918.com/author/phil-buckley/. The idea here is to link your name to your Google profile using the rel=me attribute. I accomplished it this way:
[php]
/** Customize the author box function */
add_filter( ‘genesis_author_box_title’, ‘author_box_title_filter’ );
function author_box_title_filter($author_box_title) {
if (is_author()) {
$author_box_title_filter = ‘‘. get_the_author() .’‘;
return $author_box_title_filter;
}}
[/php]
You might have noticed that mine is inside a Genesis child theme, but you can do the same thing with almost any theme.
The addition of get_the_author_meta(‘google’) is what pulls in the new author attribute.
Now you have remember to add your website to your Google profile. Make sure that under the About section of your profile you add the url for the site you just set up under the Contributor to section (in the right rail).
Once that’s done you can test your pages to see if all is well using the Rich Snippet Testing Tool. I suggest testing your homepage, a post page and your author archive page.
You can also fill out this form, it might help.
If you need any help, let me know and I’ll try to give you a hand.
Look at your last 10 posts, do they fit into your content strategy? Have you ever thought about your content strategy?
If a new reader dropped by your site would they be able to tell what the general focus of your site is?
You don’t need to have a one single focus and only write about one thing all the time. This site certainly hits a couple of themes, but I do stay true to writing about search, social media and people who inspire me.
Each piece of content should have a purpose, if it doesn’t, why are you spending time working on it?
Look at the last piece of content you invested some time in and published and answer these questions:
If you find yourself wandering it’s not too late. You can always rework old content, or you can just make a resolution that future work will have more focus. If you have trouble keeping focused, cheat. Here’s some good tricks to keep focused on what’s important:
I’d love to hear from you in the comments what 1 word you associate with me or this blog.
The tree image comes from another good article on content strategy at Connected Marketer by Barbra Gago
I was excited when I started talking with Meredith Morgan about speaking at this years RDU Real Estate BarCamp. I’ve long felt that there are a few industries that have had to figure out the Internet fast, or perish. One is the newspaper industry which I recently left, but another is real estate.
I remember back in the stone age (1990’s) when you would go to a real estate office and flip through giant binders and then the agent would take you for a drive to see them, chances were about 50/50 that she had never been to that property before. You learned to lean on the agent for almost everything.
Buying and selling a home will never be that way again. People have changed. The culture has changed. If you are web saavy you start your search at someplace like homes.com or realtor.com. The reason you start there is because when you search for houses for sale in Raleigh, those are the first two organic listings. Smartly Howard, Perry & Walston has decided to spend some money and grab the top paid spot for that query on Google.
Rounding out the top of the search results are Trulia American Homeguides and Zillow. Did I mention Google now incorporates listing into their super popular Google Maps platform?
How can John Q. Agent possible compete with that? It will require a change in the process. Marti Hampton competes by buying a sponsored listing at the top of the search results. The first organic listing for an agency (on page 2) is FMRealty, which goes about it the old school way – putting the phrase Raleigh and Real Estate on the page a zillion times. Paul Setliff also shows up doing a good job of putting a good blurb about all his properties on a page that is HIS page, not an iframe’d MLS page.
I’ve written before about bad realtor websites, and they continue to bother me. I’ve talked to a couple of agents about doing something better, but many don’t want to spend any money, which means the money they do spend on a site ends up getting wasted. I think most buyers and sellers would be more impressed with a kick-ass website that is a one time $2,500 investment than with a leased luxury car that runs $700/month.
I’ve talked to a bunch of real estate professionals that mostly get it, but say that they don’t have the time or resources to put towards their website/blog/Twitter/video blogging/Facebook/forums… you get the idea. The truth of the matter is that’s like someone in 1970 saying they don’t have time for talking to people on the phone. It’s just the way more and more people are doing business and leaders will take advantage of it and put even more space between themselves and the also-rans.
You don’t have to do everything, concentrate on channels that are working for you, or that you see working for others in your situation. If you’re selling mainly to retirees then Twitter is probably not going to be the most effective. If you are trying to attract newly married couples looking to buy downtown, the newspaper will not be where they are hanging out. What about the 45 year olds looking to upgrade?
One of the hardest part to teach people trying to expand into the new social space is the idea of listening. You do not have to be a selling machine to get sales.
That will be the hardest sell for me. Teaching sales people that they can take their foot off the gas pedal in social media, and probably get even better mileage.
These are just some of my ideas… your mileage may vary.
In a couple of weeks I’m going to do something new. I’m going to bring about a dozen bloggers and make something great happen.
The Blogger Roundtable will be my first event that attendees will have to pay to attend. It’s scary to make the jump from, “I know a little more than you so I’ll teach you at a free meetup” to “I know enough about a subject that I can fundamentally change the way you blog and help you get to the next level.”
The reason I can make such a bold statement is that I’ll have a lot of help. The Blogger Roundtable will take place in a quiet private room where a dozen people will all have the same goal, to make their blog the best. You may be 90% of the way there, or only 10%, but everyone can learn from the group. While we’ll expect solutions to problems can be developed and acted upon, the larger yield will be the learning itself. Everyone’s problems can become the fulcrum on which a critically reflective learning will occur. Fresh questions will pop into your head because some of your fundamental assumptions will be challenged. You will be asked questions that may have never occurred to you before.
I feel that the group dynamics involved in a tightly knit blogger clan offer some distinct advantages:
The advantages of having a technical marketer helping shape the event offers additional advantages:
Wondering if you’ll fit in? Check out who is already signed up. If you’re currently blogging, you’re ready.
The 3+ hours are an investment in yourself. If you really think that your blog is something that will help you reach your ultimate goal, what are you waiting for? I bet you could think of something you spent the same amount of money on that was nothing more than a burp and a hangover the next day.
Let’s catapult you and your blog on September 13 at the Blogger Roundtable.
Photo by: Steven Depolo
I was chatting with my friend Fadra last night over Twitter about something I get asked about all the time.
Fadra was asking me about when the next SEO Meetup is and the Thesis WordPress theme, but really her question goes far beyond that to the core of search engine optimization.
It’s the same thing I had just been talking to Rachel Healy, the Garner Citizen’s web editor about earlier this week. We set out to rank for the phrase “Best Newspaper in Garner” and after about a month, they were #1. The reason I bring that experiment up is, that phrase became a stake in the ground that they could drive towards. With a particular phrase in the back of your mind, you can start to see places you can wedge it in. Rachel told me that when applicable, she tries to use that phrase when talking about the business end of the newspaper so that it will be associated with it. They also added it to their footer as a constant reminder of what they are always trying to achieve.
Rachel told me that last year, they didn’t really have any particular phrases they were aiming for. I understand that as a newspaper that’s not their primary focus, but as a business it needs to be in the mix.
Ok, now back to Fadra’s question. Her blog lives at the domain allthingsfadra.com, so obviously she has that phrase locked up, but wanted to rank for other phrases that she was writing about.
The problem with a blog like Fadra’s is that she writes about a lot of different topics. Search engines probably don’t see any real “authority” from her blog. So how does she overcome that?
That doesn’t mean Fadra can’t write about potty training, falling in love and passports all in one blog, it just means you have to do a little extra work. First off, define a handful of categories you want to write in, not dozens. It will help you stay focused. If you want to go wild, you can use tags. If you are dying to write about the new tires you bought, but they don’t fit in any of your categories, guest blog at a new tire blog and link back to your home blog. Trust me that other bloggers love guest bloggers and it exposes you to new readers.
Think of the keywords you would love to actually rank for, and target them. Write those words down on a yellow sticky note and put it on the wall next to where you write. There’s no reason you can’t keep the fact that you really want to rank for “peaceful moments” while writing about potty training – there is some ability to link them.
You have to decide what stakes you’re going to plant in the ground. SEO is all about focus. Without a plan, you won’t get there.
Knowing some of the technical details will help. Knowing that the title tag doesn’t have to be the same as the headline of your post, or that you can edit the permalink url of the post. All 3 of these items working together can help a post perform better. Look at this post as an example.
Title of the page: Improved Rankings for Mommy Bloggers
Headline of the post: Getting Better Traffic
Permalink:/attracting-the-right-traffic/
Splitting those 3 items up, and using slightly different words helps a little, but it usually also helps me rethink exactly what I’m trying to say in the post.
Knowing how good your aim is will help you get better. I suggest a great free tool from seoMoz called the Term Targeter. You give it the url, and the keyword you THINK you’ve targeted, it gives to a grade.
I’ve also been very happy using the ScribeSEO plugin from Copyblogger. It helps you do the same kind of aiming BEFORE you publish.
The mother of all SEO factors is still people linking to you. If I link to Fadra’s super sweet love story that will make you smile with relevant anchor text, that helps. If I link it this way, “See part 2 of Fadra and Sean’s great love story here” – not as helpful.
So what’s the big finish to this long-winded post? SEO is a process, and when you move your blog to the next level you need to think more about it.
I’ve seen a couple of bloggers respond to ProBlogger’s 7 Link Challenge last week, so here I am jumping on that bandwagon.
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
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:
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.
December 7th, 2009 – a date which will live in infamy. The World Wide Web was suddenly and deliberately indexed, in real time, by the robots from the Empire of Google.
So how will Google’s latest update change the rules? I immediately thought of one thing specifically – keyword tweeting.
Since Real Time Search (RTS) means that a LOT of twitter updates will flow, if you’re tweeting professionally, you need to step up your game.
No more tweets like “at @peiwei – I love this stuff”, now you’ll start seeing much more targeted tweets like “I’m at @peiwei for lunch – I love the Pei Wei Spicy Chicken #good #value #hungry”.
Facebook will probably also see a move in that direction, especially on Fan pages.
During the press conference, Amit Singhal, a Google fellow who heads Google’s ranking systems and oversaw the development of the new real-time search system, announced that they would be pulling RTS from a number of sources including:
In the future, content from Facebook and MySpace will also be included. One thing I missed, but Danny Sullivan caught was, “Google also noted that it is expanding shortened URLs. You’ll still see the shortened version listed (say if it is from bit.ly or another URL shortener), but then you’ll also see the final destination URL. Content from that destination page is spidered.”
Danny has an awesome post that goes into a lot of the nooks and crannies of RTS, you should take the time to read his post at Search Engine Land.
So what does this mean to content producers? If you were half-assing it up until now, you will now be quarter-assing it, and probably be out of a job soon. If you write crappy headlines, it’s time to stop.
If you are Tweeting with a purpose, take note of what words you’re using.
One side effect of this may be that the automated tools that try to figure out sentiment may have an easier time if people start becoming more aware of how their updates are seen.
How is RTS going to effect your business?
At the next Raleigh SEO Meetup, we’re covering Your Brand Presence & Managing It Online. Ashley had this one queued up for at least 3 months, but over the last week or so, some of my favorite blogs have decided to also write about it.
Lisa Barone over at Outspoken Media wrote about Protecting Your Brand From Online Attacks. She sums it up nicely with her 4 bullet points:
Don’t over look #4, not every attack or slight needs a response. When you get in an argument with a crazy person, nobody can tell that only one of you is crazy.
Then Chris Brogan gets into a discussion of Timberland and his bad experience with them and then pulls back when he realizes that his powerful blog can do real damage to a company’s online presence. It was a really smart move on his part to pull back and recalculate.
If you or your brand are known by more than a handful of people, you have an online reputation. The more connected you are, the easier it is to see what that reputation is.
Let’s take a quiz, shall we? I’ll say a brand name, you shout out the first word you think of that relates to it, ready?
Toyota Prius
Fox News
Michael Moore
Oprah
AT&T
NY Yankees
Sarah Palin
Well, how did that go? Did you have an opinion on those brands?
Those brands have people dedicated to monitoring and defending their brand, even so, I probably found at least one that you don’t have a positive opinion of . So with that in mind, how is your online reputation?
The other day I was in the Wake County Courthouse watching as the kids that broke into my house last summer and stole 2 laptops went in front of a judge in juvenile court. A couple friends had asked for updates, so I tweeted out some updates.
Now, if you do a search on Google for Derice Utley(who pleaded guilty to felony breaking and entering) this is what you see:
That’s a classic online reputation problem. So what can he do to fix this, I mean besides stop breaking the law?
Well, step 1 would be what Lisa Barone suggests. Get control of your brand on the search result page. If your only footprint on the web is what other people have said about you, it will eventually be something bad. People will rarely write a post about how awesome you are, they are much more likely to write a long rant about how much you suck.
I try to regularly Google my name to see what is showing up. I share a name with a comedian so we share most of page 1, but more importantly I control all of the sources of information that show up on that page about me. Twitter, this site, LinkedIn and my Google profile page are all places I have the opportunity to put my best forward. Any brand can, and should be doing the same thing. If you wait until Defcon4 before starting, it’s too late, start right now. If you’re not a big business, you can do some personal branding to inoculate yourself against future screw ups.
If you are a business, you can do something that can head off a nasty rant, you can stop sucking. I know that even the best companies sometimes have customers that can’t ever be satisfied, but more often, that’s not the case. For example, my wife sprained her ankle really bad this morning so we spent a chunk of the day on the phone with doctor offices and in x-ray offices. In almost every exchange, on the phone or in person, the treatment we received ranged from below average to really bad.
So what happens when you see someone trashing your brand, or your company or even you personally? First decide if it’s worth engaging at all. Sometimes, it’s just not worth the effort, but other times you have to. First, take a breath and realize they are pissed off about something. Is the complaint actually warranted? If you could have done better, say so. Apologize to the person and move the conversation from “I hate you guys” to “how can we fix the problem”.
If the problem is someone who is misguided, enter gently and explain why they might be looking at things differently than you. Personally, I still think an apology doesn’t hurt in this case either.
Sometimes you will just get a situation where someone doesn’t want reconciliation, they want vengeance. This is harder. If a former employee calls you out on Twitter as a liar or says you did something illegal, how do you react? In this case, you have to make a judgment about the other person and if you think there is any way to salvage the relationship. If there isn’t, don’t respond directly where everyone else can see a running transcript of the craziness. In a situation like this, you may want to ask your network of friends to offer up a defense for you. That way, it makes the disgruntled ex-employee just look like a disgruntled ex-employee.
If you want to find out about some of the really cool tools available to you so that you can listen in to what’s being said about you, join us on the 15th, or check back here next week for part 2.
Working in the US newspaper industry isn’t always rainbows and unicorns… I know, it’s shocking.
Over the past few years I have come to believe a few things.
The problem with most newspapers is they don’t love their readers. Most, stopped loving their readers a couple generations ago. But it’s not to late, although it will take a cultural change that some may be unable to achieve.
Step 1: Start loving your readers.
Show your love by listening to them, by responding to their comments and by offering to co-create with them.
Learn who you most avid users are and engage with them. If you ran a coffee shop and the same customer came in twice a day, you would get to know them, you would know just how they want their coffee. You might even give them a free coffee mug. Can you offer your best fans anything similar?
2. Understand that your world is changing – stop fighting, start adapting
The generation leaving school today has never known a world without high-speed internet access. Generation Y expects information to come to them, so they can share it, mix it, mash it and repurpose it as they see fit. How easily can your users share your content?
3. Make it easier for your users
Every person who visits your site is different, and they all want something different, sometimes, a lot different. Are you trying to give them what they want or are you handing out Men’s XL t-shirts in a one-size-fits-all strategy? I think it’s important that the front page (or lead story on a website) be what the editorial brain trust has decided is the big story. They have experience in picking out stories that should be important to the community – they know that the XL t-shirt will cover most people.
After that opening editorial salvo, I may want to read about where I can listen to jazz this Sunday or find out who won the boy’s basketball game at the high school last night. The next day, all I want is weather. By Saturday, I need the to find out if there’s a parade and what it’s route is.
There’s a good chance a local newspaper site will have some of this, but some of it will fall through the cracks. That’s okay, I have no expectation that you can cover all my interests – but someone is talking about it somewhere. Help me. Be a resource for me and I will always start at your site. Connect me to the guy who blogs about the high school basketball team for in-depth coverage of that, and how about the video blogger who covers the local music scene?
When you help me I will probably share out that information with my friends on Twitter and Facebook. My friends will probably click on the link to see what I’m doing… see the eco-system that is being built?
4. Let me help you
You can’t be everywhere at once. You don’t run in the same circles I do, but sometimes I might be someplace where “something” happens. I have an iPhone and I’m not afraid to use it! Make it easy for me to share my photos, videos and thoughts with you when I happen to be the best reporter you have – also known as, the only person there.
Last month I asked WRAL if they wanted photos of kids on Halloween. They did, they had a page on their website where I could upload photos of little trick-or-treaters. That’s not good enough, because it means more work for me. It means I have to take a photo with my phone, come home, remember to connect my phone to my laptop and extract the files, then create an account at WRAL, then upload my photos one by one. For me, that was too much work. What I wanted was an email address I could just send my photos to as I take them, or an iPhone app. Why wouldn’t WRAL set up a Flickr acct or Tumblr, Whrrl or Posterous to make it easier on me? Media companies are not used to gathering information that way. What would happen to all of the multimedia from all the smart phones if another hurricane Katrina hit? What’s the plan to let me help you?
I’ve embedded the slide show I gave to a very sparsely populated conference room at my company last week.
What advice would you share with the guys running your local newspaper?
You know the famous I love Lucy episode where Lucy and Ethel are working in the chocolate factory and the conveyor belt keeps going faster and faster? Eventually they start shoving the chocolates in their mouth and hat because they just can’t keep up.
As you ramp up your social media life, you start to spread out. This is good, because you can meet and connect with more people as your network expands, but what about home base?
Many people can feel like Lucy trying to keep up with the increasing flow of data, but there are a lot of us that also feel the pressure to keep pumping out more chocolate.
I was reading Adam Covati’s post about this very subject this morning. Adam was wondering where the different sections of his online life fall. It got me thing more about where I’m spending my time. Like Adam Twitter takes up a decent amount of focus if not time.
The power of Twitter lies in how many other apps are now connected to it. I don’t think I use a single tool that doesn’t have the ability to ping Twitter. I use Brightkite as a way to geo-locate myself to friends, which pings Twitter, well, I did until I found Foursquare, which basically does the same thing, except it gives me pretend prizes.
I started using Posterous a little while ago, I love how drop-dead easy it is to upload almost anything. I use that to upload mostly photos that I want to connect to both my Facebook account and my Twitter account. This weekend I started using my Tumblr account that I signed up for a year ago.
I also make a concerted effort to get into Google Webmaster’s Forum and help out in there a couple of hours each week. Family photos sent up to Picasa, Non-family photos sent up to Flickr. Cute videos of my son sent to YouTube.
I also need to add content to this blog as often as possible. Oh yeah, email,
I’m not alone, you’re probably in the same position. Maybe you have different channels, but your conveyor belt is turning just as fast. Don’t forget to add in your email, your daily workload, your family and that whole sleep thing.
How are you handling your online conveyor belt?
Have you ever thought about what would happen if you came home from an afternoon walk and someone had run through your house and stolen your computer?
Neither had I.
This past Saturday, my family returned to our house to find just that situation. We had 2 Dell E1705’s, and then, suddenly, someone else had them.
We had taken our son for a walk around the neighborhood, about a 30 minute trip. When we were walking up the driveway, we saw the neighbor’s dog loose wandering around, and their back gate open. I called the dog and put him back into their backyard. Then we walked into our house.
My wife went in before me and walked into the living room and shouted, “Our laptops are gone!”
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Have you seen the BBC version of What Not To Wear? Well, I have. It caught my attention as my wife was watching a dvr’d version of it. The women who starred in it are now offering their services for American women.
The show I watched started by introducing the viewer to a divorced woman who is a cheerleading coach. The woman is feeling frumpy and fat because she used to be a size 4 and now shes some number bigger.
They next scene is at her cheerleading gym where Trinny and Susannah explain what they are going to do by making two women who are roughly their shape/size try on their clothes, except swapped – the results are, predictably, the cheerleading moms look awful, but when they put on the clothes that are cut in a more flattering style for them, they look great.
So by now you’re asking, what the hell does this have to do with SEO!
If you’re in charge of SEO, SEM, Social Media, Community Management or Branding at your company, you need to make the same kind of choices. Will this look good on me?
Not every tool or strategy is going to make you look your best.
If you don’t think you can keep up with the demands of Twitter, then don’t start using it. If you are terrified of blogging, that’s ok. Maybe you’re more of a glad-handing in-person kind of guy, that’s fantastic.
My advice to anyone thinking about entering the social space is, “do what feels natural”. If you try to do something that is awkward, that’s how it will be perceived, and you’ll fail. But, and this is a major but, if somone else in your company excels at one of your weak spots, you should empower them. Maybe the receptionist is a Twittering fiend, why not make her the person in charge of monitoring Twitter for the company? Twitter looks good on her.
Just because Facebook makes your ass look huge doesn’t mean Elizabeth in accounting can’t pull it off with style left over.
Tonight I decided to answer the questions, and I have to admit, she was right, it’s a great way to get a rolling start on writing a better bio.
1. How did you arrive at running this business? What path brought you here?
I’ve been running 1918 for the past 10 years. It started as just web development, then about 3 or 4 years ago, I started doing more and more organic SEO, and in the last 18 months I’ve become a social media evangelist. I think the future is the social space and how it’s being leveraged.
2. What are you known for professionally? What do you have a knack for?
I am known as a “wouldn’t it be cool if…” kind of guy. I have a lot of ideas, and I love bouncing them off cynics so I can either move on, because it was a bad idea, or hone my response because I successfully defended it. I have a knack for taking one more step when everyone else thinks they’ve reached the end.
3. What’s the one problem you are best at solving for your clients? What do your ideal clients say about you?
I’m great as spotting places where clients have decided to just settle. There’s no need to stop at 90% of the way. My ideal client would say, “he was a pain in the ass who never stopped pushing us to believe we could be better than we first realized”.
4. Who have you worked with in the past? And what have you done for them?
At McClatchy Interactive I try to raise awareness among everyone about our SEO shortcomings, and that spread out to the 30 markets we serve. Today there’s a small amount of SEO thought in almost every discussion. I like to think that I was partially responsible for that.
5. What are you most passionate about professionally? What most excites you about your work & the contribution you can make?
No question, social media. I don’t remember exactly what started me rolling down this hill, but I feel like there’s not enough time in the day to do everything I want. I wish I could read more books and attend more meetups, conferences and networking events. I also love the feeling of connecting people who I know are a perfect fit and can help each other get to the next level.
6. What are you passionate about personally? What do you really enjoy? What can’t you stop talking about?
This may sound geeky, but it’s social media and the ideas at it’s fringes. The ideas that leap out of books like Wikinomics, Groundswell, Free and Trust Agents make me want to take notes on every page. I also help run an SEO meetup in Raleigh that I love every aspect of, even the boring administrative tasks I enjoy.
7. Where can we find you when you’re not working? What’s your favorite way to spend a weekend or a Sunday afternoon?
Usually doing something with my family. If it’s a Sunday afternoon, and my 2 year old is napping, you’ll find me right next to him.
8. How long have you been doing what you do?
I’ve been working on the web since the late 90’s.
9. Where did you grow up and why aren’t you there now?
I grew up in Massachusetts. I moved down to North Carolina in 2003 to escape the crazy home prices on Boston’s North Shore.
10. Any volunteer activities you’re crazy about?
I love helping Ashley Berman-Hale with the monthly Raleigh SEO event (through meetup.com). I wish we could do one every week.
11. Any nonprofits you love, & why?
I’m not sure if it’s a non-profit, but I love watching the little kids play Little League. I was just watching the Little League World Series last night and it’s such a feel good event. You just know those kids couldn’t be any happier after a win, and any more dejected after losing.
12. Any awards or medals, or even medallions? Personal okay, too.
I have a basbeall from when I was 16 and threw a no hitter against Hopedale!
13. What would be impossible for you to give up?
I could never give up on my Red Sox.
14. Why would someone not want to work with you?
I know myself well enough to understand how I work best, and that’s with one or more people. I’m a social animal and do my best work when collaborating with co-workers, clients, friends really anyone who’s willing to listen and throw back other ideas. If you want someone to sit quietly in the cubicle next to you, you’ve picked the wrong guy.
15. How do you want to be remembered?
As a good dad, husband and son.
Last night I finally got around to updating my site to start using the Thesis WordPress theme. I was always impressed with the great reviews it received from blogger I respect, but was a bit skiddish because most of them are also kick-ass affiliate marketers, and DIYthemes was smart enough to build in an affiliate program to help spread the word about their framework.
Last night I was fed up with my crappy “free” theme and decided it was time to bite the bullet. I ponied up the $164 for the developers version and a few minutes later was uploading it to my server. Then I activated the theme and I immediately became a fan. Never in my short blogging life have I used a theme that wasn’t broken in some way when I first activated it, but Thesis worked right out of the gate.
As I started looking through the new options available to me I also realized I could get rid of a few of the seo plugins, because they were already totally integrated with Thesis. Chris Pearson seems to have covered just about every step, I couldn’t be more pleased.
So to Sugarrae and the girls at Outspoken Media, Graywolf, Copyblogger and even Chris Brogan, I’m sorry I doubted your motives. You were shooting straight with me all along. Thesis is awesome, and now they have me as an affiliate also.
So if this has swayed you to try Thesis Premium WordPress Theme, click on my link so I’ll get a couple of bucks back 🙂
