October 10, 2009

Wake Up! - The FTC is screwing with bloggers

If you are a blogger in the US your life is about to change big-time.

You have just entered the Twilight Zone...

New FTC guidelines (read full version) described in the official press release state:

1 - "the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service."

and

2 - the revised Guides reflect Commission case law and clearly state that both advertisers and endorsers may be liable for false or unsubstantiated claims made in an endorsement - or for failure to disclose material connections between the advertiser and endorsers. The revised Guides also make it clear that celebrities have a duty to disclose their relationships with advertisers when making endorsements outside the context of traditional ads, such as on talk shows or in social media."

My reading of this is very disturbing.

Here is a possible scenario:

1. You - a "social media" "celebrity" "blogger" (this is anyone who has more than a few followers on Twitter or some number of subscribers to their blog RSS feed) reviews a book, product, or service - making it an "endorsement"
2. You got a copy of the book to review, or got a free trial of the product, or a free trial of the service
3. You did not mention the freebie in your blog post
4. If someone does not like your blog posting you can be sued

To try to regulate bloggers as if they were professional journalists or compensated endorsements is asinine (incidentally - these guidelines do not apply to professional journalists!) The FTC is trying a land-grab into Internet regulation so they can extend their bureaucratic tentacles and justify their continued existence and funding. All of this is being done under the slogan of their official tagline "Protecting America's Consumers". This of course begs the questions - "from whom?"

This is a screwy world we live in, but the whole premise of blogging on the Internet is predicated on the notion that anyone can have frank and open discussions about any topic of their choosing. Most bloggers do not get paid and do not make any money directly or indirectly from their blogging efforts. They try to build their reputation and disseminate information that their followers may find useful. They never claim to be "objective" and often hold very strong, peculiar, and very personal opinions.

It has always been "buyer beware" on the Internet. I don't think anyone needs to be reminded that we should carefully consider the source and reputation of any information that we encounter online. We certainly don't need a chilling effect on the whole online conversation from a huge government agency.

It is ironic that this is happening under the direction of a man who was elected with the strong support of the Internet community and specifically active social media leaders. Unfortunately typical liberal-leaning tendencies are also to regulate people's lives via the government in order to protect them against unscrupulous big-business practices.

Don't get me wrong - frankly I don't care if the assault on individual liberties comes from the left or right (the four FTC commissioners who voted unanimously for the new guideline were all appointed by Bush). But I do care when big brother injects themselves into normal Internet discourse this heavy-handedly.

Fight this unconstitutional over-reach - these are simply regulations from unelected bureaucrats within the executive branch.

Let's make our voices heard and protect the First Amendment and our ability to have unfettered discourse without fear of lawsuits online.

BTW - no one paid me to "endorse" this position on the new FTC regulations - I guess that my butt is now legally covered (at least for this blog post).

Posted by Tim Ash at 7:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

October 5, 2009

Go to SES Berlin or SES Chicago for "Four Keynote Themes"

During the past three weeks, I've given you three great reasons for going to either Search Engine Strategies Berlin or SES Chicago 2009. For those who want to catch up, they were "three key trends", "two early birds," and "a ranking in the top three."

This week, I'll focus on a fourth compelling reason -- and it isn't to hear "four calling birds."

You should plan to attend SES Berlin or Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2009 to hear "four keynote themes."

Let's start with SES Chicago 2009, where there will be three keynote themes well worth hearing.

On Day 1, the opening keynote is being given by Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do? He is associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York's new Graduate School of Journalism. He is also consulting editor and a partner at Daylife, a news startup.

Jarvis writes about media, technology and business on his blog, BuzzMachine. A former TV critic for TV Guide and People magazine, as well as the creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly, he has also been assistant city editor and reporter for the Chicago Tribune and a reporter for Chicago Today.

"My keynote, like my book, isn't really about Google," says Jarvis. "It will be about the profound changes in the economy and society brought on by the Internet -- as seen through the success of the one company that has figured out and exploited them better than any other: Google."

Jarvis adds, "We'll have fun discussing the impact of search and the Google economy on every sector from media to advertising to restaurants to government.

On Day 2 of Search Engine Strategies Chicago 2009, the keynote speaker is Peter Morville, author of the best-sellers Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become and Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites. He is also the President of Semantic Studios and blogs at findability.org.

During his keynote, Morville is expected to expand on the themes found in his published works, including the idea of findability and the importance of a navigable and friendly user interface.

"At SES Chicago, this will be my first opportunity to talk about ideas in my new book - about the future of search and discovery," says Morville. "In addition to exploring the relationships between information architecture, ambient findability, and search engine optimization, we'll also be covering mobile search, decision engines, augmented reality, and emerging technologies that will change the way we find everything from answers and articles to products and people."

On Day 3, the keynote speaker is Dan Siroker, the web entrepreneur known for leading the analytics team for the Barack Obama presidential campaign. He also served as the Deputy Director of New Media on the presidential transition team.

Siroker's team of software engineers and analysts were responsible for optimizing the effectiveness of the Obama campaign's online operations that ended up raising over half a billion dollars, registering over 2 million voters, and enabling 3 million phone calls to be made in the final four days of the campaign.

Before joining the Obama campaign, Siroker was a Product Manager for Google Chrome and, before that, he worked as a Product Manager for Google AdWords.

"SES Chicago is, of course, in the President's hometown, so I'm really looking forward to sharing the lessons my team and I learned during the Obama campaign and how these practices can be applied to any data-driven decision," says Siroker. "Whether you're a developer, designer or marketer, if you're building a product or selling an idea, you can use data to do it better."

The fourth keynote theme will be delivered by Bill Hunt, the President of Back Azimuth Consulting and co-author of the best selling book "Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company's Web Site", who will be the opening keynote speaker at Search Engine Strategies Berlin.

Hunt is currently on the Board of Directors of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization and writes Bill Hunt's Rants & Raves blog, which provides digital marketing commentary from a global marketing road warrior.

Hunt firmly believes that when we understand the searcher's intent, where a searcher is in the buying cycle or even understanding the type of search they are doing, advertisers can better intersect with the current demand for their type of products and services to increase sales. That's a keynote theme worth going to SES Berlin to hear.

Next week, we'll look at more reasons to go to either Search Engine Strategies Berlin or SES Chicago 2009. In the meantime, keep singing "four keynote themes, three key trends, two early birds, and a ranking in the top three."

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 3:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 2, 2009

Google Cash Scam Artists vs. White Knight SEO Campaign

During SES San Jose 2009, I heard about plans to launch a White Knight SEO campaign to fight the legion of Google Cash Scam artists. If you want some background on the effort, read Jonah Stein's post "Using SEO for Good - Introducting White Knight SEO."

As Stein explains, the group aims to protect users from spam blogs (splogs), Made for AdSense (MFA) sites, and other Google Cash Scam artists by "dominating organic search results with consumer protection information. We hope that we can place advisory content to take over the top 10 results in Google for searches related to common scams and online fraud with a particular focus on areas which are using adwords & adsense to snare victims."

The White Knight SEO campaign's first target is "Google Cash" and related terms. And it has already started generating posts.

One of the earliest that I've found is "Alert - Google Cash Scam," which was posted August 19, 2009, by David Rodnitsky of PPC Associates. Rodnitsky says, "Move over flogs, now there's something meatier! Introducing, um, fnews - fake news! I got a full-screen pop up today from the 'Los Angeles Tribunes' with the headline 'Breaking: Google is Hiring at Home Workers. Pay $373 Dollars a Day (or more).'"

On August 21, Jonathan Hochman, the founder of Hochman Consultants, joined the White Knight SEO campaign when he posted, "Google Turns Blind Eye to Scam Ads." According to Hochman, "Unless you live under a rock, you've no doubt seen those 'Google Cash business opportunity' ads from entities like Google Money Tree and Google Treasure Chest. They seem to be everywhere."

And earlier today, Stein re-doubled his efforts by posting "Google's Cash Cow - Scam Advertising & Profits." Stein writes, "By now, you have gotten at least one email inviting you to make easy money by placing links on Google. These scams go by names like 'The Google Cash System' or 'Easy Google Cash'. The bottom line is pretty simple, these offers are scams and they are designed to take advantage of the most vulnerable people in our society, the unemployed, the opportunity seekers and the naive."

It's still early days, but it will be worth watching the White Knight SEO campaign against the Google Cash Scam artists. If you search for "Google cash" in Google, the #1 organic listing is the question in Google's Web Search Help, "Is Google Cash a legitimate service?"

But the eye goes to the #4 organic listing, which is a YouTube video entitled "Google Cash Scam." You can also watch the 4-minute, 12-second video by Sean Kells of the ReviewAroo.com blog below.

Who knows, maybe there are already enough warning signs around for even the most naive searcher. On the other hand, it never hurts to ensure that the warnings are even more explicit. Stay tuned. This story has legs.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 5:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

April 6, 2009

Amber Naslund of Radian6 on Social Media for the Little Guy

One of the sessions at SES New York that I had to attend was "Small Voices, Big Impact: Social Media for the Little Guy."

Why did I have to attend? Well, Amber Naslund, the Director of Community for Radian6, was on the panel and I was afraid that she'd spill the beans about how Radian6 gives you a complete platform to track millions of blogs, tweets, videos, and comments.

It's one of my "secret weapons."

But she was so intent on helping helping small companies with even smaller budgets freely tap the world of social media to improve their business and increase sales that she almost didn't mention what company she was from.

I should have been selfish and let her keep my "secret weapon" secret. But, when we got to Q&A I had to ask her about Radian6 -- because it's too good a product to keep under wraps.

We've been using it to track the surprising relationships between people who use blogs, video sharing sites (YouTube), photo sharing sites (Flickr) and microblogging sites (Twitter) as well as Social networking sites (Facebook). What continually amazes me is how frequently the person who Tweets this morning is blogging about the same topic this afternoon and then uploading a video about the subject tomorrow.

If you use different tools to track each of these social media, then you will often miss the connections.

To illustrate this point, I interviewed Naslund after the session, have embedded the video interview below and will Tweet about in a minute. Get it? Got it? Good.

Amber Naslund, Radian6, on the importance of social media for small businesses at SES New York

At Radian6, Naslund is responsible for client engagement, community building, and helping companies tap the potential of online reputation management, customer engagement, and social media monitoring. She's spent the last decade or so raising over $60m for non-profit organizations, building brands for companies large and small, and messing with all things online.

Naslund blogs at Altitude Branding, focusing on brand building and social media marketing for business. She's also an author of Radian6's PowerShift blog, where she's just posted a great story about Southwest Airlines, an old client of mine. And she is a contributor to the popular MarketingProfs Daily Fix blog, and she keeps her personal blog at Innacurate Reality.

Oh, and if you contact Naslund, you'll discover that she's is passionate about helping companies and customers build and share brands, together. Yes, yes. That's wonderful. But, ask her to give you a demo of Radian6. If you don't see the product, you'll be missing one of the marketing tools that should be in your social media toolkit.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 4:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

April 3, 2009

News Blogs Are Becoming the New Online Newspapers

Back in December 2007, I observed that "Blogs Are the New Trade Press." Today, it appears that news blogs are becoming the new online newspapers, too.

According to "The State of the News Media 2009," an annual report by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, "nearly one out of every five journalists working for newspapers in 2001 is now gone, and 2009 may be the worst year yet."

It adds, "Perhaps least noticed yet most important, the audience migration to the Internet is now accelerating. The number of Americans who regularly go online for news, by one survey, jumped 19% in the last two years; in 2008 alone traffic to the top 50 news sites rose 27%."

In other words, people are still looking for news, "But audiences now consume news in new ways. They hunt and gather what they want when they want it, use search to comb among destinations and share what they find through a growing network of social media," reported the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

A Pew Research Center Survey in December 2008, found the number of Americans who said they got "most of their national and international news" online increased 67% in the last four years. The presidential election was almost certainly a key factor in the growth. More than a third of Americans said they got most of their campaign news from the Internet in 2008 -- triple the percentage in previous presidential election year.

Although the growth in online news consumption cut across age groups, the growth was fueled in particular by young people. Young voters and activists now rank the Internet as a news source of importance parallel to television, according to the Pew Research Center Survey.

The State of the News Media 2009 added, "And the video site YouTube also became a major delivery system for people to get news posted and recommended by friends and associates, and often from political campaigns. The Obama camp reported more than a billion minutes of campaign-produced material was downloaded from YouTube. And Youtube reported that the Obama campaign's 1800 web videos were viewed 100 million times in total."

According to Pew Research Center data, as of August 2008 the percentage of Americans who went online regularly for news (at least three times a week) was up 19% from two years earlier to nearly four in ten Americans (37%). No other medium was growing as quickly. Most saw audiences flat or declining.

The new numbers put the Web ahead of several other platforms for the first time. In the same August survey, 29% of Americans said they "regularly" watched network nightly news, 22% watched network morning shows and 13% Sunday morning shows.

The percentage of Americans, who relied on the Internet regularly, according to this data, was now roughly similar to that who regularly watched cable television for news (39%). More people still read a newspaper "yesterday" (34%) or listened to news radio (35%) than had viewed news online "yesterday" (29%). But the gap was narrowing.

Although the shift in audiences from print newspapers to online newspapers is "old news," Newsknife, which rates the top news sites at Google News, has just reported some "new news" that indicates of source gathering the news is also shifting.

According to an article posted yesterday, Newsknife noticed changes at Google News at the beginning of March that could affect traffic to news sites.

It appears to Newsknife that Google News has significantly increased its listing of blogs. "Compared with our previous findings there's now a real blogstorm," it reported.

Newsknife found 150 blog sites at Google News during March. "The growing number of blogs appearing at Google News seems to offer a simple success formula to news site owners: start blogs for your site and increase your chances of being listed at Google News," it advised.

Many news site owners started doing this a year ago. For example, Newsknife reported on March 1, 2008, a that blogs from the Washington Post, New York Times, Baltimore Sun, USA Today, and Los Angeles Times were starting to appear in Google News.

The topic of news business models for publishers in these changing times was addressed at SES New York last week. I moderated a panel that included (in aphapbetical order): Mark M. Edmiston, Managing Director of AdMedia Partners; Murray Gaylord, Vice President of Marketing and Customer Insights at NYTimes.com; Erik Matlick, CEO of Madison Logic; and Gill Torren, Associate Publisher of SC Magazine at Haymarket Media.

Following the session, Byron Gordon of SEO-PR interviewed Gaylord about the changing media landscape. Gaylord says The New York Times was aware of social media's impact back in the 1990's and has taken steps to integrate such developments into its brand making it the largest news site on the Web.

Gaylord added that NYTimes.com has more than 55 blogs and is integrating thousands of videos and related digital media into to its website, making the NY Times the most shared site on the Web. He went on to highlight a particular New York Times collaboration with Facebook, in advance of President Obama's inauguration.

S. Murray Gaylord, VP Marketing, New York Times, on social media's impact on publishing

What does this mean to readers of this Search Engine Marketing News Blog, which is also one of the more than 4,500 English-language news sources worldwide that have their headlines aggregated by Google News?

It means news search SEO is larger than press release optimization. It's larger than news article optimization. It includes blog post optimization.

And based on the latest Newsknife findings, it appears that news bloggers may be better at optimizaing their posts than traditional newspaper reporters. And this was happenening even before the economy collapsed.

What are the implications? The news industry has to reinvent itself sooner than it thought. And it has to do this at a time when economists are trying to draw the line between a recession and a depression.

In the meantime, marketers need to focus on the news blogs that are becoming the news online newspapers.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

November 14, 2008

Blog Content Influences Consumer Buying Behavior

New market research has found that blog readers are strongly influenced by blog content when it comes to purchase decisions across a number of categories, and that blogs play a key role in ushering readers to the point of an actual purchase. BuzzLogic, a social media analysis company and ad network, sponsored the market research and JupiterResearch, a Forrester research company, conducted the survey of more than 2,000 online consumers in the US.

Their Harnessing the Power of Blogs survey also found that blog readership has grown 300% over the past four years. The results also suggest that consumers who read blogs more than once per month -- or frequent blog readers -- use blogs as the top online navigation tool to discover other blog content, ranking higher than general Web search or blog search.

The new market research will be the focus of a free webinar, “Consumers and the Influence of Blogs: What it Means for Your Marketing Mix,” which will be held on Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT. The free webinar will be moderated by Matt McGowan, vice president and publisher for Incisive Media's digital marketing businesses, and will feature Barry Parr, Analyst at JupiterResearch, and Rob Crumpler, President and CEO of BuzzLogic.

Looking more closely at how blogs factor into consumer purchase decisions and the nature of blog influence on buying behavior, the survey found: • Blogs influence purchases: 50% of blog readers say they find blogs useful for purchase information. • Blogs sway more purchases among readers than social networks: More frequent blog readers say they trust relevant blog content for purchase decisions than content from social networking sites. Enid Burns of The ClickZ Network focused on this finding in her recent story about the survey, “Study: Blogs Influence Purchases More Than Social Sites.” http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3631303 • Niche focus ups influence factor: For those who have found blog content useful for product decisions, 56% said blogs with a niche focus and topical expertise were key sources. • Blogs go beyond tech: Outside of technology-related purchases, for which 31% of readers say blogs are useful, other key categories include: media and entertainment (15%); games/toys and/or sporting goods (14%); travel (12%); automotive (11%); and health (10%).

According to the study, blogs factor in to critical stages of the purchase process, weighing most heavily at the actual moment of a purchase decision. When it comes to respondents who said they have trusted blog content for purchase decisions in the past, over half (52 percent) say blogs played a role in the critical moment they decided to move forward with a purchase.

Blog readers were also surveyed about the influence of blogs as it relates to the following steps of the purchase process: • 21% decide on a product or service, • 19% refine choices, • 19% get support and answers, • 17% discover products and services, • 14% assure, • 13% inspire a purchase • 7% execute a purchase.

For frequent blog readers, ads on blogs are on par with sponsored search results. However, trust of blog advertising exceeds that of social networking site advertising. A quarter of these readers say they trust ads on a blog they read; paid search links also accounted for 25% of the responses, while 19% say they trust ads on social networking sites.

The study also suggests that ads on blogs spur a number of activities: 40% of blog readers have taken action as a result of viewing an ad on a blog; 50% of frequent blog readers say this is the case. The top activities include: • 17% read product reviews online, • 16% sought out more info on a product or service, • 16% visited a manufacturer or retailer website.

JupiterResearch designed and fielded the survey in August 2008 to online consumers selected randomly from the NPD Group US online consumer panel. A total of 2,210 individuals responded. For more information on the survey's methodology, go to JupiterResearch.

Now, blogs certainly aren't considered the “newbies” of the social media scene – “granddaddies” is probably a more appropriate term. But that gives them an advantage from a marketing perspective – the medium has matured and moved from early adopter phase to the mainstream.

This may come as a surprise to some search engine marketers, but blog readers do not appear to rely as heavily on search as a means to find new blogs as consumers of traditional online media do. According to the new survey, one in five consumers who have read a blog in the past 12 months -- or general blog readers -- use blog links to discover new blogs. Further, the study suggests blogs are not consumed in isolation -- 49% of blog readers and 71% of frequent readers read more than one blog per session. Other key findings include: • Links more powerful than search: For frequent readers, links beat search as a navigation tool: 38 percent said blog links were the top tool for discovering new blog content as compared to 34 percent who voted for Web search. • Links signal trust: For frequent readers, blog links appear to have similar impact as a trusted recommendation from a person (a response from 39 percent of survey participants). • Blog search not yet mainstream: Blog search engines received the lowest ranking from respondents: 6 percent of general readers and 11 percent of frequent readers say they use these tools to discover new blogs.

If you are interested in getting more details about Harnessing the Power of Blogs, register for the free Webinar. Again, it will be held on Thursday, November 20, 2008, at 2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

October 30, 2008

14.5 Million People in the U.K. Visited at Least One Blog

comScore released a study today that found 14.5 million people in the U.K. visited at least one blog in August, representing 41% of the total U.K. Internet audience.

“Blogs have become part of the essential fabric of the Internet today,” Herve Le Jouan, Managing Director of comScore Europe said in a press release. “They live and breathe in real-time, helping quench media consumers' thirst for the most up-to-date breaking news, information, and analysis. It should not, therefore, be particularly surprising that they're increasingly displacing traditional media usage and carving out an ever-increasing slice of the online advertising pie,” he added.

Two of the most popular blogs in the U.K. are gadget blogs: Engadget.com, which ranked as the top individual blog in August with 243,000 visitors, and Gizmodo.com, which ranked third with 223,000 visitors. UnrealityTV.co.uk (225,000 visitors), Kotaku.com (210,000 visitors), and Metafilter.com (207,000 visitors) rounded out the top five.

According to the comScore Segment Metrix H/M/L service, which looks at online activity by heavy, medium and light users of the Internet, heavy blog users were 142% more likely than the average Internet user to visit a site in the "humour" category, a testament perhaps to the sharp wit often associated with blogging. They are also likely to be tech savvy, which can be seen by their skew in visiting technology news categories.

I've met a couple of "heavy" blog users in the U.K. -- who weigh 38 stone between them. ;-)

Seriously, blogs are big in old Blighty. If you check out the agenda for SES London 2009, which has already been posted, you'll see there will be a session on Feb. 18, 2009, on "SEO Through Blogs and Feeds." And, who -- you may ask -- is responsible for that?

Search Engine Strategies London 2009 is organized and hosted by world-renowned search authority Mike Grehan. As you can see below, I interviewed Mike back at SES London 2008. And you can detect some of that "humour" and tech savvy that comScore just reported, although there is no way that Mike weighs more than 14 stone. But, of course, I'm just guessing.

Mike Grehan, Acronym, on SES London 2008

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 8:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

September 23, 2008

Technorati Releases State of the Blogosphere 2008 Report

Technorati has started releasing the State of the Blogoshpere 2008 report. It will be a couple of more days before the full report is online.

The previous report was release in April 2007, so a lot has changed in the past year-and-a-half. Here are just some of the highlights:

Blogs are now a pervasive part of our daily lives. While there have been a number of studies conducted that tried to understanding the size of the Blogosphere -- both in terms of the number of blogs and blog readership -- all of these studies agree that blogs are now a global phenomenon that is "mainstream."

Technorati cites the numbers from three of the studies, which vary in the details but generally agree that "blogs are here to stay."

comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008) o Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US o Total internet audience 188.9 million

eMarketer (May 2008) o 94.1 million US blog readers in 2007 (50% of Internet users) o 22.6 million US bloggers in 2007 (12%)

Universal McCann (March 2008) o 184 million have started a blog worldwide, 26.4 million have started a blog in the US o 346 million read blogs worldwide, 60.3 million read blogs in the US o 77% of active Internet users read blogs

Other findings include this: "All blogs are not created equal." There are only 76,000 blogs with a Technorati Authority of 50 or higher.

The majority of bloggers that Technorati surveyed currently have advertising on their blogs. Among those with advertising, the mean annual investment in their blog is $1,800, but it's paying off. The mean annual revenue is $6,000 with $75K+ in revenue for those with 100,000 or more unique visitors per month.

Four in five bloggers post brand or product reviews, with 37% posting them frequently. And one-third of bloggers have been approached to be brand advocates.

There's lots more data -- and some eye-catching charts like the one above. Check out Technorati's State of the Blogosphere 2008 for yourself.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 4:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

September 10, 2008

Rebecca Lieb Interviews Chris Boggs About Effective Blog Strategies

At SES San Jose 2008, Rebecca Lieb, Contributing Editor of ClickZ, interviewed Chris Boggs, Search Engine Watch Expert and Manager of SEO at Brulant, which was recently acquired by Rosetta. Rebecca had moderated the SEO Through Blogs & Feeds session and Chris was one of the speakers on the panel.

Rebecca asked Chris about blogs and domain strategy. Chris discussed where a blog should be hosted, in particular, on a root domain, for purposes of search engine optimization. He also talks about appropriate blog protocol.

You can watch and listen in below.

Effective Blog protocol and domain strategy

The SEO Through Blogs & Feeds session will also be held at SES Chicago 2008, which will be held Dec. 8-11 at the Chicago Hilton. As I mentioned a few days ago, if you register before Sept. 26, you can save up to $600 by taking advantage of the "recession special."

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 23, 2008

15% of Fortune 500 companies have blogs

PRWeek reports that a new study conducted by Burson-Marsteller has found that 15% of Fortune 500 companies communicate with consumers via blogs.

The survey, conducted in February and March this year, found that 74 Fortune 500 companies actively maintain blogs, many of them technology-related corporations. The top four industries with blogs were: Computers and Office Equipment (IBM, Dell, etc.); Network and Other Communications Equipment (Motorola, Lucent Technologies, etc.); Semiconductors and Other Electrical Components (Intel, AMD, etc.); and Internet Services and Retailing (Amazon, Google, etc.).

Of course, the next step is learning how to optimize your blog. For that, may I recommend that representatives of Fortune 500 companies attend the "SEO Through Blogs & Feeds" session on Wednesday, Aug. 20, at SES San Jose. The session will be moderated by Rebecca Lieb, Contributing Editor, ClickZ, and the speakers are: * Chris Boggs, Search Engine Watch Expert & Manager, SEO, Brulant, Inc. * Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing * Amanda Watlington, Owner, Searching for Profit * Daron Babin, CEO, Webmaster Radio

Check out the session to learn more about the unique advantages that optimized blogs and RSS feeds offer to companies large and small.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

June 16, 2008

Associated Press Wants To Set Rules For Blog Usage

Seems the Associated Press wants to meet with members of the blogging community to set rules for how their content is used online, following the 'interaction' between AP and the Drudge Retort over usage.

AP had sent a letter to the Drudge Retort - part of the larger Drudge Report group - demanding that they take down 7 stories that heavily referenced AP stories. On saturday AP sent a follow up letter dropping the request and apologizing for the "heavy handed" letter.

The New York Times reported:

Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The A.P., said in an interview that the news organization had decided that its letter to the Drudge Retort was “heavy-handed” and that The A.P. was going to rethink its policies toward bloggers.

The quick about-face came, he said, because a number of well-known bloggers started criticizing its policy, claiming it would undercut the active discussion of the news that rages on sites, big and small, across the Internet.

Since then AP has reported it will hold a meeting with bloggers - specifically "to meet Thursday with Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association, as part of an effort to create standards for online use of AP stories by bloggers that would protect AP content without discouraging bloggers from legitimately quoting from it."

Criticism of the original action of restricting use of AP stories has been extensive in the blogosphere - do a blog search.

Everyone should be on the side of the Drudge Retort on this one - especially given they link out to news sources and track comment numbers that give people an idea of the popularity of various stories.

The fact that AP is now 'meeting' with bloggers - well the Media Bloggers Association - whose site seems motivated: "The Media Bloggers Association is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to promoting, protecting and educating its members; supporting the development of "blogging" or "citizen journalism" as a distinct form of media; and helping to extend the power of the press, with all the rights and responsibilities that entails, to every citizen."

Shows they want to control how their information is used - understandable given they are paid by newspapers and other sources for providing that news that bloggers grab for free.

Short passage quotes with attribution have always been a standard use of other sources of news even in the print medium - especially in editorials.

What AP is missing is that most of the users are giving links back to their source and thus giving more authority to them as a permanent web news reference. Hope that gets tabled by the bloggers they speak with.

As the print industry continues to shrink there are many stories of their efforts to reach out to the online world, guess AP is a little slow on reading their own articles.

Maybe they read some of the blog posts about the controversy and decided it was time to reach out. The growth of Google News as a source could have had an impact.

Posted by Frank Watson at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

April 23, 2008

Turning Sensationalized Content into a Resource

Over the past couple of weeks, I've talked in-depth about types of blog content, and types of social media content.

One interesting observation was that on generic social media sites such as Digg and Reddit, Resource/Educational content typically doesn't perform as well as Sensational/Entertainment type content does.

On the other hand, after the initial burst of traffic to Sensationalized/Entertainment pieces via social media, traffic typically declines to very low levels, while Resource/Educational based content tends to maintain much more stamina over prolonged periods of time.

Of course, Resource/Educational posts typically take much more time to create, often to the point of seeming prohibitive to many small and medium sized businesses.

Solution: Launch with a fun News or Sensationalized/Entertainment type post to attract lots of traffic initially, and recruit the readers gained through the social media success of this post to add much more content ... hopefully to the point where the post becomes a resource.

Sometimes this is possible organically, but other times an incentive must be given. Incentives not always need be financial either. Some additional ideas are: a. limited recognition (acknowledge their contribution) b. links (link to the contributor's blog or site) c. coupons (offer coupons for products d. interviews with the person (if the reader appears very knowledgeable, perhaps award an interview)

Wouldn't it be great if we could transition a post from a Sensational piece to a Resource piece using little of our own time. Well, it can be done, and here's how.

At the end of your Sensationalized piece, ask the readers for more examples on the same topic (you may find that you want to reward people to do so). In any case, as social media readers contribute and add more resources, the piece becomes more of a resource. Ultimately, if it was a top 10 list to begin, and ends with 100 ... it has now become a tremendous resource.

Posted by at 7:00 AM | Permalink

January 30, 2008

Who Are The Real Online Influencers?

The prominent players in our space may not have the impact they think they have, if you follow the ideas explored in Guy Kawasaki's recent blog post.

Having read the article and the stories it links out to, I have to say that the dynamic of the web may have changed who and what has sway and how things become popular in the internet age. With the myriad of social networks and fun interactive tools everyone has access to these days, is it any wonder that authority is a fleeting thing and the power of influence can fall in the hands of flip teenagers and cranky seniors who can turn a creative phrase.

Trendsetters may no longer be the term of the new millennium - maybe hip is giving way to hap - as in happenstance. I am waiting for my 15 year-old to use that term - "he is so hap" and I will know I am on to something.

I read a lot of different blogs and occasionally read Guy's - but it was so 'hap' that I found this one today.....

Posted by Frank Watson at 10:56 AM | Permalink

November 8, 2007

Getting a Blog's Benefits, Without a Blog

Don't want to put a blog on your B2B site? You can still get some of the benefits of blogging by doing as the bloggers do. In today's SearchDay, "Corporate America Can Learn a Lot from Bloggers," Bill Hartzer outlines some alternatives that can still help you drive qualified traffic and leads to your corporate Web site, as a blog might, and to get the search engine ranking benefits a blog might bring.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 4:26 PM | Permalink

September 10, 2007

Online PR roundtable finds identifying online influencers is key

E-consultancy has just posted its latest roundtable briefing about Online PR and it tackles the tough challenge of identifying online influencers. One of the key points of the briefing is: "There is an important difference between popularity and influence online. There is a tendency for people to over-value popularity and under-value influence."

The roundtable briefing also reconfirms something that was said during the "SEO Through Blogs & Feeds" session at SES San Jose: "It's very difficult to listen to every conversation which is going on about you online."

The e-consultancy briefing also looks at measurement of online PR benefits and success. It says, "To a certain extent, the value of online PR can be understood in terms of how search engine rankings are improved." But, it adds, "A lot of online PR is measured in terms of how many people you have reached or how much traffic you have driven to your website."

Finally, the September 2007 briefing also contains this news nugget: "Online PR budgets are typically coming from e-commerce rather than from PR." While this is based on market trends in the UK, I've seen similar trends on this side of the pond.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 9:24 AM | Permalink

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