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 3, 2009

Social Media Press Release Blown Away in Hail of Bullets

This week, I saw an optimized press release blown away by Google News because it was mistaken for a social media press release. It fell under a hail of bullets, an innocent victim of a formatting decision. Before I share this tragic story, let me provide some background.

Two years ago, I asked, "Is the Social Media Press Release a Meatball Sundae?" I had just finished reading Seth Godin's book, Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync?, which defined "meatball sundae" as "the unfortunate result of mixing two good ideas." And I answered my rhetorical question by accusing the "social media press release" alias "social media news release" alias "social media release" of being a meatball sundae.

I said the meatballs were the press releases, which should be optimized for news search engines, and the sundae toppings were the "Technorati tags, Digg buttons, del.icio.us bookmarks and other Web 2.0 features," which should be added to online stories and blog posts.

And I pointed out that adding Technorati tags to your social media press releases doesn't get them into Technorati, submitting social media news releases to social news sites like Digg was social media suicide, and using a jazzy new format that features bullet points and del.icio.us links wasn't going to make bloggers care about your content.

Six months later, I took a second look at the questions I'd raised in a blog post entitled, "Does Social Media 2.0 deserve a second life?" Instead of jumping to conclusions, I said the right approach to Social Media 2.0 was to test it, test it, and test it again.

Many of the new distribution options and PR measurement tools worked. But adding social media elements to press releases didn't. Blogs and other social media enable two-way conversation, but most press releases - even many of ones that use the social media format - are essays, not interviews; broadcasts, not conversations; lectures, not discussions.

One of the things that I didn't test back then was the suggested use of bulleted text in social media press releases, versus the narrative format of traditional press releases. Although I prefered the narrative approach, I figured that it was totally fine use bullets. I mistakenly figured that format isn't content, so it probably didn't matter.

Then, this week I drafted an optimized press release about an iPhone application for a client who shall remain nameless. As a courtesy, my client sent the draft to a third-party firm that had designed and developed the iPhone app. The final approved version came back -- with bullet points listing the key features.

Since it had already taken a month to get Apple's approval to even announce the new iPhone app, I didn't make a big deal about using a list of bullets in the optimized press release. Hey, I'm open minded.

But the next morning, I was shocked, shocked to find that Yahoo! News had indexed the optimized press release, but Google News hadn't. The optimized press release had top rankings for targeted keyword phrases in Yahoo! News, but I couldn't find it -- even when I typed the entire headline into the search box and hit the Search News button.

Now, Google News can be arbitrary, whimisical and capracious when it comes to crawling press release distribution services. For example, its automated system is currently best able to crawl headlines or anchor text links that have 22 words or less.

But, I already knew that. So, I talked with the technical gurus at my press release distribution servce. Then, I went looking to see if anyone else had encountered this phenomenon before, or if it was the result of a recent change to the Google News algorithim.

That's when found a post by Rebecca Corliss on HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog entitled, "Study Shows Social Media Releases Are Less Effective than Traditional Press Releases." In May 2009, Corliss conducted a study comparing the results of social media releases and traditional releases by publishing them across five newswires.

As you can see in the graph to the left, the traditional release format performed much better.

And one of her findings jumped off the page. She said, "Don't use formatting. Many portal sites don't accept it. (For the technical folks, we're talking about XHTML.) Ditch the bullets, the itallics and bold type. It complicates the code and makes it more difficult for your release to be syndicated. "

Corliss added, "Use social media and multimedia elements in your PR strategy, not your press releases."

So, after conferring, conversing and otherwise hobnobbing with my fellow wizards, I decided that it was time to test the narrative format in a second press release versus the bulleted text in the first.

Now, I also made some edits to the headline -- changing "launches iPhone app" to "iPhone app launched by" -- and I revised the subhead and lead paragraph. But, these were just to put a fresh look on the announcement for Yahoo! News users.

The most significant change that I made was to rewrite the bulleted text into the narrative format.

Two days later, I submitted the second press release -- selecting the same news release distribution package -- and found that both Google News and Yahoo! News had indexed it. Oh, and it had top rankings for targeted keyword phrases in both news search engines. So, press release optimization still works.

But, what's the net-net? The excessive use of bullets can kill press releases. The Associate Press doesn't use them -- even for AP News in Brief. And according to Newsknife, the Associated Press was the No. 1 source in Google News for September 2009 as well as for the year to October.

So, write your next press release the same way that AP writes its online stories. Oh, and this isn't some dyed-in-the-wool defense of traditional journalism. Check out the number of YouTube videos from The Associated Press that appear in Google News.

Back on June 28, 2009, the YouTube Biz Blog invited any professional news outlet that is already included as one of the 25,000+ sources in Google News to become an official partner on YouTube and more easily share your news videos on both YouTube and Google News.

So, I'm all for innovation -- as long as it works.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

March 28, 2009

NYC Public Relations Firms: Give PR Jobs to CCNY Students

If top NYC public relations firms are smart, they'll give PR jobs or paid internships to The City College of New York (CCNY) students that I met last week. Why? Because most of these kids know something that most of us don't and it is crucial to our survival as an industry.

Let me explain.

I played reverse hooky last Wednesday afternoon. I attended school when I didn't have to.

Professor Philip Ryan invited me to visit his Introduction to Public Relations class at CCNY. He was covering Chapter 13 of Public Relations Strategies and Tactics, (9th Edition) by Dennis L. Wilcox of San Jose State University and Glen T. Cameron of University of Missouri. Published by Allyn & Bacon in February 2008, Chapter 13 is entitled, "New Technologies in Public Relations."

But, as one of the students in Professor Ryan's class pointed out, "There's nothing in our textbook about SEO PR."

So, I asked for a show of hands. "How many of you use Facebook?" Virturally everyone did. "How many of you use YouTube?" Nearly everyone did. "How many of you use Twitter?" Almost everyone did.

So, I observed, "Well, SEO-PR was founded 2003, Facebook in 2004, YouTube in 2005, and Twitter in 2006. So, just because these new technologies aren't covered in your textbook doesn't mean they aren't fundamentally changing public relations as we know it. I'm speaking at Search Engine Strategies New York this week and these new technologies are all on the agenda along with social media and blogging."

Another student observed, "When I Googled the term 'SEO' you weren't ranked #1."

I replied, "Well, that's not one of my target terms. Now, if you Google the term 'SEO PR', you'll see my firm is ranked #1."

The student countered, "But that's the name of your company."

And I responded, "The term 'SEO PR' gets about 320 searches a month. Not bad for a keyword that didn't exist in 2003. But, if you Google 'blog outreach', you'll also see my firm is currently ranked #1. How many of you think blog outreach is an important part of media relations services, especially with 900,000 blog posts every day?"

Then, I added, "Besides, what I really want you to do is conduct a query at Google News for the term 'Online Marketing Summit' and find the optimized press release that we distributed yesterday for ClickZ."

I think that's when they started cutting me a little slack.

Then, Professor Ryan asked, "How is contextual marketing changing public relations as we know it?"

I explained, "Contextual advertising is targeted to a Web page based on the page's content. This means there is the opportunity to create editorial content targeted at the contextual advertising that you want to attract to your news blog or YouTube channel."

Yes, these were tough questions from sophisticated students and their professor.

Which means these CCNY students are exactly the kind of people that NYC public relations firms need to hire if they are going to survive short-term or thrive long-term.

Yes, they are still acquiring the skill of writing a press release. But they already understand that an optimized press release can get a high ranking in news search engines.

Yes, they are still becoming acquainted with the fundamentals of persuasion and communications theory. But they have already mastered how to make friends on Facebook.

Yes, they are still beginning to recognize how PR relates to other fields of marketing. But they're already familiar with how to upload YouTube videos.

Yes, they are still learning the key ethical issues affecting the practice of PR. But they've developed an appreciation for the acceptable use ofand unacceptable abuse of Twitter.

Unfortunately, most NYC public relations firms won't give PR jobs or even paid internships to these CCNY students?

Why? Short term, the recession is the primary excuse. But even if there is an opening, most of the job descriptions in the public relations industry were written back in the 20th Century. So, these square pegs won't fit into the round holes.

For example, is your HR department trying to hire an entry level public relations specialist? Does the job description read: "Prepares and disseminates information regarding an organization through newspapers, periodicals, television and radio and other forms of media. May require a bachelor's degree in a related area and 0-2 years of experience in the field or in a related area. Has knowledge of commonly-used concepts, practices, and procedures within a particular field. Relies on instructions and pre-established guidelines to perform the functions of the job. Primary job functions do not typically require exercising independent judgment. Works under immediate supervision; typically reports to a supervisor or manager."

So, don't blame your HR department if they aren't looking for someone who can prepare and optimize information regarding an organization through news search engines, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

And who is at fault if someone who doesn't have a bachelor's degree gets filtered out during the screening process even through they could have brought knowledge of new concepts, practices and procedures to the table?

And ask yourself, honestly, do you want someone who relies on instructions and pre-established guidelines to perform the ever-changing fuctions of the job? Or do you really need someone who doesn't typically exercise independent judgment in an emerging field that didn't exist when you went to college?

In other words, are you giving PR jobs to the people you will need in 2009 and the decade after this? Or, is your HR department rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?

Now, if I were you, I'd find a way to play reverse hooky at CCNY.

Other "guests" to Professor Ryan's class have included Garrett Glaser, a corporate communications consultant and former reporter for CNBC, and Rena L. Lewis, the Director of Brand Management, Industries & Marketing, at KPMG, and will include David Grant, President of LVM Group.

And television journalism icon Dan Rather will deliver the Spring 2009 Samuel Rudin Distinguished Visiting Scholars Lecture at The City College of New York on Thursday, April 2. Mr. Rather, who was anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News from 1981 to 2005, will speak about "Democracy and the 24-Hour News Cycle."

This kind of "higher education" doesn't fit on the normal resume.

That's why it's time to overhaul the job screening process at most NYC public relations firms to ensure that you're giving PR jobs to CCNY students and others like them who are crucial to the survival of the public relations industry.

But, hey, what do I know? I'm not even mentioned in the college textbooks.

Posted by Greg Jarboe at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

March 27, 2008

Social Media Pop Quiz: 3 Questions You'll Never Get Right

If you're following the PEW studies on Internet Life and Campaign '08, then you know the Presidential election will be won or lost online - or by whoever drinks the most wheatjuice on the campaign trail.

The election won't quite be "Go Vote at TNA Wrestling!" or counted by the TNAwrestling.com boys. (Except, maybe, in Florida.)

Politics makes strange bedfellows (Eliot, David, Jim) but nothing makes stranger bedfellows than social media and politics.

We're often asked by readers how they can prepare for a career in search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), and social media optimization (SEO). Well there's one way even we didn't think of: politics.

So here's a quiz you'll never get right without searching online:

1. Which director of social media is the former press secretary to the former Governor of the great state of Florida? (pictured while in office below)

2. Which social media panel is he or she speaking on in the next couple months? (Hint: think Wikipedia)

3. Where and when is the conference? (Hint: $100. off if you register by March 31)

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:59 PM | Permalink

February 11, 2008

CNN Wants News Mojo From the People

CNN wants news mojo from the people -- and will soon launch iReport.com for citizen journalists.

News sharing is a natural next step, because people already send far more videos and images than CNN could ever show online or on air. According to MediaWeek, CNN uses only 10 percent of all contributions through its current iReport functionality.

Today when you upload video to the CNN site, your content is thoroughly vetted. With this News “You Tube” service, both terrific and terrible videos will get shared there.

Susan Grant, EVP of CNN News Services, welcomes all the noise. CNN will allow all content to be shared, but remove objectionable items when they feel it's necessary.

Unfortunately, CNN won't get the most mojo! They decided to launch a new iReport destination, and even spent $750k to secure two domain names. There could be many reasons for doing this, but traffic didn't enter into this decision.

From a search marketing perspective, it's baffling that CNN isn't able to leverage their brand, authority, link love and traffic within the mother domain. My sympathies are extended to CNN's online marketers and techies, who are figuring out all possible ways to optimize this new destination. It's a lot more work.

To me, it would be far better if CNN tried to create a nice, big searchable world of professional and user-generated news content. If CNN really wants mojo, then they should open up directly to people -- at least on a branded CNN sub-domain. Take a calculated risk here.

Posted by at 10:40 PM | Permalink

February 1, 2008

The Other Side of the MS/Yahoo Deal

It's pretty obvious that this is all about the ad dollars. But they only get those dollars because we all go online to find news and information.

Eyetrack studies have shown us that many more people look at and click on organic search results than ads or sponsored links. So what would this merger mean in term of a search experience, organic results and news content?

comScore Media Metrix latest figures show Google now controls nearly 60% of the U.S. search market, and has been widening its lead, despite concerted efforts by both second-place Yahoo and third-place Microsoft. By combining, Microsoft and Yahoo would have close to 30% of the U.S. search market.

Speaking at the announcement early this morning Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect at MS, said "Social platform will become a new entry point," and called Yahoo pioneers in this field. "We can further accelerate the transformation to a more social web."

Sounds promising. Perhaps Yahoo's innovative thinking and social media smarts combined with Microsoft's deep pockets might give us a better search experience in the long run. . In terms of news search Yahoo is top of the list with over 30 million readers and Google is only at at #7 with just under 10 million. (Could this have been one factor in Google's decision to feature news on their web SERP's?)

How this merger will affect our organic search experience and the online news audience remains to be seen. Since they want the ad dollars they will have to draw the users and to do that they need to up their game and improve the organic search function.

Posted by at 2:23 PM | Permalink

January 23, 2008

Interview: Craig Newmark on Online Real Estate Part 2

Craig Newmark is famous for more than Craigslist. I first heard him speak at Brad Inman's real estate conference in New York the year Zillow launched.

He promised the audience he wouldn't sell out or sell Craigslist. Recently, Rajan Sodhi of the big marketing for small business blog heard him make the same promise.

So far, Craig hasn't disappointed anyone. He's kept his promises.

As a competitor, it's tough to get on Craig's radar. Even eBay doesn't scare him.

Here's Part 2 of Promediacorp CEO Avi Wilensky's one-on-one with Craig Newmark on online real estate. Part 1, here.

The Interview Part 2

Avi Wilensky: Do you have a problem with people using Craigslist to promote their sites using search engine optimization?

Craig Newmark: If they break guidelines and spam us, big problem, and I'm escalating our investigations.

AW: What are your thoughts on the SEO community in general?

CN: I think it's important to get the word out about search engine optimization. SEO is more ethical and less obtrusive than many other online marketing methods. In comparison to many other marketing tactics, SEO is appropriate and not spammy, and it uses sites in a positive way. With time, people get a lot smarter about SEO.

AW: Is link spam a huge Craigslist problem?

CN: It's not a huge problem, but it is significant and annoying.

AW: You are heavily focused on entrusting the community with the ability to police spam. How does it work? While self-policing is fair, how would you deal with those who intentionally attempt to flag legitimate listings as spam?

CN: If you see anything wrong, spam or otherwise, please flag. If enough people flag, the ad is removed automatically. We do have people who try to game the system, and have some protection regarding that, improving continuously. However, our system does have flaws. Like some guy said, democracy is a lousy system, but it's better than anything else we've tried. (I don't think he's doing much these days.)

AW: In real estate, I'll often run into real estate agents who spam their Craigslist postings with every single city they provide services in, even if the listing they've created is not related to that city. Ultimately, this creates a poor user experience, especially if a person is performing a search for "New York" but not Queens ("New York -Queens"). What actions, if any, have you taken to prevent this kind of exposure?

CN: People flag them away a lot. We need more of that, and people can email me the occasional link or posting ID and I'll dig in.

AW: Do you feel there are any threats to Craigslist at all? Which online properties do you perceive as a threat?

CN: Probably our only real threat would be to grow complacent. Sometimes people indulge in mythology regarding our effects on newspaper revenues, greatly exaggerating. That's always annoying.

AW: Do you have a problem with the competition in the space?

CN: We don't think about competition, it's only a distraction

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 5:09 PM | Permalink

January 22, 2008

Interview: Craig Newmark on Online Real Estate

How did Craig become craig of craigslist fame? At Pubcon, Craig Newmark told the audience how he and Craigslist became famous enough to get tips on how to flush out Al Qaeda. In 1994, while still working as a web developer at Charles Schwab, he began using computer network communications systems such as Usenet, a technology developed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University. But he didn't find them very efficient at combating spam. Instead of utilizing Usenet, Newmark opted to start his own mailing list using Pine.

The mailing list was intended to inform people of everyday events in San Francisco. Word of mouth led to more and more people requesting invitations to join the list.

Eventually Pine emerged as a list that not only announced San Francisco happenings but extended to buying, selling, and swapping; free job hunting, personals, and help wanted ads; plus more gimme shelter options: housing, roommates, apartment sales and rentals.

When Pine proved unable to handle the huge number of subscribers, Craig extended the list to a majordomo mailing list. Eventually a Perl script that could process the mailing list into a Web page enabled the full-fledged craigslist Web site to launch.

In 1997, Craigslist hit three milestones: 1 million page views per month; an offer from Microsoft to advertise on the site (Craig declined), and volunteers who offered to turn Craigslist into a social community. In the end, the volunteer operation didn't become a success but two years later, Craigslist became a company.

Since then, there have been a few tweaks of the code but not much else has changed in the past eight years or so.

SEW real estate guru Avi Wilensky sat down with Craig Newmark at the Real Estate Connect NYC 2008 conference in NYC and learned a bit more about Craigslist, social media, and Newmark's views on SEO.

The Interview

Avi Wilensky: What's your favorite social media site and why?

Craig Newmark: I don't use social media sites. However, I do have a Facebook account. I've had close to 1,000 people who have opted to friend me.

Although I don't actively participate on Facebook at this time, I plan on using Facebook to promote my charities. I'm currently planning on promoting IAVA.org, a veterans' rights site. While I can do this on Craigslist, I think it causes confusion and is a conflict of interest, so Facebook would be a better venue for this type of marketing.

AW: What are your thoughts on social media beyond Facebook?

CN: My guess is that they'll evolve into normal and usual ways people connect, but I intuit that no one's found quite the way to do it.

AW: Do you find that social news sites like Digg (which often promote your Best of Craigslist content) help your traffic or user involvement at all?

CN: We don't have the stats for referrers, so no real clue, but I'd guess they don't help significantly.

After the jump, Craig Newmark on his plans for Craigslist Web 2.0, the most popular Craigslist cities in the world, and what happened in Vegas that he wished stayed in Vegas.

AW: Do you intend to make Craigslist a bit more "social" and less "web 1.0" in the future, or do you intend to keep it the same?

CN: We're more like Web 0.1. We make incremental improvements, but we've gotta stay simple, usable, and fast.

AW: What are your most popular US cities?

CN: US cities: SF Bay Area, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland OR.

AW: What about international?

CN: International: London, Manila, Paris, Tokyo, Amsterdam

AW: What were your thoughts on Pubcon Vegas where were you the keynote speaker?

CN: Well, I wish the PA system worked better because the people in the back of the room couldn't hear me.

Tomorrow: Craig on search engine optimization, SEOs and the SEO community, and who his biggest competitors are in online real estate.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:55 PM | Permalink

December 27, 2007

Facebook Search Engine: Livin' the Vida Local Online

When a global VP of marketing for a multinational company gives me advice, I listen. Brand equity Search Engine Watch Expert Erik Qualman told me the Facebook search engine has reached the tipping point for global brand building online. The reason? Facebook's open API that CMOs can leverage to great effect.

Erik's Google-powered TripAdvisor facebook app (pictured here) shows just one way anyone can start building a global brand and connecting with other professionals, influencers, and global companies via social search. For details on how Facebook stacks up against the competition and how SEMs and VPs of Marketing can benefit, read it and reap.

So this year, with the help of social search experts, I'll be living local online. Facebooking for the first time; Twittering my time away; experimenting with search engines with a social twist. http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3627928

I'm a skeptic -- going in with an open mind -- and the hypothesis that living online in the social search world will be a massive waste of time.

What do you think? Will Facebook die in 2008? Is the social search second life just another Second Life? Or will social search redefine vertical search and transform Google, Yahoo, Live Search and Ask?

First up -- I'll tap Techipedia founder Tamar Weinberg to help me transition my small LinkedIn network to Facebook.

Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:20 AM | Permalink

November 7, 2007

Content is Dead, Community is King?

These days, every web publisher wrestles with finding the right balance between producing their own content versus relying on contributions from visitors. It's almost magical when visitors return to your site just because they can find appropriate experts or like-minded people there. A combination of both professional and user generated content can also increase organic traffic and create more ad inventory.

One major dependency for user content is the quality of the actively participating community. At last week's Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) brown-bag session, experts in "how to grow" communities for major brands were on hand. Their advice and approach seems worth sharing, to help optimize your site.

Define Community

According to the experts, a community forms when two or more people share common interests. It gets further refined down to people with common purposes, such as business professionals who need to share practices or make decisions. To the bigger marketers, it's far more than a group of friends or colleagues -- although that's a start.

For publishers of all stripes, who joins their respective communities matter because these joiners drive loyalty and repeat visits. There can be controlled access or permission required to join into conversations, which creates a defined group of experts. Or, there can be more open, serendipitous environments where consumer experiences are shared.

Plan Ahead

Experts suggest that you set your community goals clearly. What's important is thinking about the nature of your visitors and what you really want from them. Do you want a broader, less engaged base? Do you want to appeal to more involved people who can carry your message? Do you really have a narrow group to whom you can differentiate your community?

Of course, it's not possible to create communities in a vacuum. The experts also encourage you to consider how your goals will play out against your own expertise or reputation. For online publishers, this means considering these community-building criteria:

* Look at subject matter. The current popularity of some topics can work for or against your efforts. Another Britney site won't draw active participants unless you have a special twist to compete with others. A specialized "long tail" subject might work better, particularly if it's dynamic and worth sharing and discussing with others.

* Think about participants. There's plenty of social glue among certain types of people. Clear examples include parents sharing stories and angst with one another, patients or caregivers discussing medical conditions, and business managers based on their industries or functional roles. So define your targets beforehand -- though you may end being surprised about who bonds.

* Examine your competition. Are there many social outlets already? Even with passion-provoking topics, not all sites will be able to attract communities. In many cases, potential joiners might be loyal to other places already. Or, there might be others who chose not to join active communities. Figure out how to appeal to prospects, with unique offerings.

What To Do

While all of this sounds pretty logical, we are living in a social sharing era: Set up sharing tools or blogs and your traffic problems are cured! Open up a MySpace page and create more link love! Act now.

These are common tactics that appear on "must do" search engine optimization lists, but it's not a cookie-cutter world. At the SES Travel conference earlier this year, it's worth noting that even travel competitors had different ideas about what level of social functionality belonged on (or off) their domains.

With your unique community goals in mind, you should be able to create a comfortable balance between content and community. Decide which social tactics you want to try out. Like all optimization efforts, there's a mix of art, science and testing ahead.

Posted by at 1:30 AM | Permalink

October 15, 2007

Twitter and Search

In my recent inverview with Twitter's Jack Dorsey we talked for a while about the integration of search into Twitter. The obvious notion is to integrate some type of people search functionality.

Twitter has already launched funtionality that allows you to search profiles and find people of related interests, or whom are near you. But more than that is possible. Twitter is actively working on adding text based search as well. Here is what Jack had to say about it:

Another big aspect is text-based search. That's next, where you will be able to search through any of our updates and search for activities like search for who is reading right now, or who is walking right now, or who is eating right now, who is in San Francisco right now, etc. It really opens up some very interesting possibilities of how this system benefits you, what you can do with it, when you know that five people in your general radius are eating Mexican food right now. It's a different world.

The idea gives a whole new meaning to the concept of "site search". Now we are talking about a custom search application designed to process a dynamic data stream in real time.

Posted by at 9:00 AM | Permalink

May 29, 2007

SEW Experts: Using a Corporate Blog for CRM

In today's au Natural column, "Using a Corporate Blog for CRM," Mark Jackson examines how corporate blogging can be used for customer relationship management (CRM).

Many times, a customer will visit your Web site and look for answers or a way to share their input. If none is found, they will look elsewhere. This is your window of opportunity to nurture positive comments, or nip negative ones in the bud.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:07 AM | Permalink

May 22, 2007

SEW Experts: Blog Your Way to the Top

In today's au Natural column, "Blog Your Way to the Top," Mark Jackson takes a look at the benefits of blogging on a corporate Web site. Besides the SEO-related benefit of adding fresh content to usually static sites, corporate blogs can also provide a good way to interact with customers and potential customers, and to establish thought leadership in your industry.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 10:42 AM | Permalink

May 16, 2007

Why Wiki?

Wikipedia is not a search engine, and links from Wikipedia no longer count towards increasing your link equity – so why should SEOs care about Wikipedia? At the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York last month, a panel of experts shared their reasons why Wikipedia is still relevant to search marketers. We share them with you in today's SearchDay, Should SEOs Care About Wikipedia?

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 11:15 PM | Permalink

February 8, 2007

Jason Calacanis Hates SEOs, But Loves What SEOs Do

Jason Calacanis is back stirring the pot and bad-mouthing the SEO industry. As he did during his SES Chicago keynote, Calacanis is once again sharing his belief that "SEO is bull$#!t," and that all that is necessary to rank in search engines is to "make a clean page, good content—that should be enough."

This time, on his blog, Calacanis took offense to a video of a social media optimization firm, which Muhammed Saleem highlighted on his Pronet Advertising blog as the reason why social media sites hate SEOs, or at least their perception of SEOs.

Danny Sullivan has already made an attempt to explain things to Calacanis in his post, "Why The SEO Folks Were Mad At You, Jason," but I wanted to add our voice to the mix as well.

SEO, like any other industry, is going to have people enter it with the specific goal of taking advantage of client ignorance and making a quick buck. It happens everywhere. To say that that type of shady character is typical of the vast majority of ethical, hard-working practitioners is irresponsible for a person in Jason's position.

Jason took umbrage to the video, which is not surprising, since that was the point of Saleem's post. He pointed it out as an example of the shady side of the business, which encourages worst practices, and gives everyone else a bad name. "The Digg community doesn't have an irrational vendetta against SEO-related sites, it's just that people like the gentleman in the video above, cause the community to generalize about SEOs and thus label all of them has having the same mentality and using the same tactics," Saleem writes.

Aside from the differences between SEO and SMO (social media optimization), which is another discussion altogether, Jason is misguided when he writes, "There are some whitehat SEO firms out there I know, but frankly the whitehat SEO companies are simply doing solid web design so I don't consider them SEO at all. SEO is a tainted term and it means 'gaming the system' to 90% of us. Now, if you make great content, keep your page design clean, and stick with it you're gonna do just fine in the rankings."

The fundamental problem here is the definition of SEO. Calacanis extols the value of clean page design, great content, and solid Web design. Guess what? So does every reputable SEO firm. Those are all elements of a successful SEO strategy. There are many Web design firms out there without a clue about designing a page in a way that makes the quality content on the site most easily indexable to search engines. That's SEO. There are, of course, many designers out there who have those skills, and I'd bet that they themselves define those skills as SEO skills, and market them to their clients in that way.

The same fundamentally flawed definition is at least partially at the root of the whole "Rocket Science" debate. Interestingly, Mr. Pasternack weighs in at Calacanis' site, to give support to a kindred soul, but also to question the statistics behind his comment that "90% of the SEO market is made up of snake oil salesman."

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 5:31 PM | Permalink

January 18, 2007

Linkbait in 2007

Over at Search Engine Land, guest blogger Nick Wilson offers up a 2007 Guide To Linkbaiting. He outlines the risk/reward potential of three types of linkbait: textual, site-based and software; and widgets.

"The linkbait way of link building is a mindset. To do it well, you need to put thoughts of manipulating the system to one side and focus entirely on providing value to your clients users and making that value easy to link to," Wilson writes.

Wilson, who resigned from Performancing earlier this month shortly after a deal with Performancing fell through, has just announced his plans to launch a new social media marketing agency, ClickInfluence.

"There's a huge opportunity in the gap that exists between companies and the conversations people are having about them. And as a way to build traffic, social media marketing is what SEO should have been from the start," he writes.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 1:55 PM | Permalink

December 15, 2006

Jaxtr Providing Phone Links To Social Networks

Jaxtr launched a phone application that connects people at social networks and blogs without needing to download a desktop application. Basically you put in your phone number and the application links you with the number they have on record of the blogger or other social networker.

An example can be seen on the Jaxtr blog.

LinkedIn co-founder Konstantin Guericke has joined the Jaxtr team. Guericke was vice president of marketing at the social-networking site for professionals, and his experience in the space should prove invaluable to Jaxtr.

People connect by clicking on Jaxtr application on profiles at LinkedIn or any of a large number of social networking sites that are adopting the application. Jaxtr supports MySpace, LinkedIn, Tagged, Friendster, Hi5, Tagged, Xanga, and Blogger.

Users click on a Jaxtr link, enter a phone number, and the two Jaxtr users will be connected through a special number assigned by Jaxtr.

I tried it at their blog and was forwarded to a voicemail at Jaxtr. It could be a very handy tool.

Posted by Frank Watson at 4:02 PM | Permalink

November 30, 2006

How The Digg Editorial Process Differs From Search Engine Editorial Process

Todd Malicoat has a write up called The Search Marketer's Guide to Digg, where he explains the difference between the Digg.com editorial process and search engines editorial process. It all comes down to the "human editorial authority," and I quote;

While most the search engines DO have human intervention - they haven't accepted and embraced it. One of the beauties of digg is if there is CRAP in the index - you know exactly who to blame for it.

As always, both human and algorithmic methods of intervention have their faults. I am sure Danny will go into a bigger write up on the pros and cons of each at a later point.

Postscript From Danny: I may write-up more on this in the future, and I talked about it on a recent Daily SearchCast episode. The short story is that it's been amazing to watch Digg effectively go through the same type of spam fighting evolution that the search engines have done.

Consider from Digg:

Digg is a user driven social content website. Ok, so what the heck does that mean? Well, everything on digg is submitted by the digg user community (that would be you). After you submit content, other digg users read your submission and digg what they like best. If your story rocks and receives enough diggs, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of digg visitors to see.

The overall idea is that the community does everything. In reality, there is a lot of backend editing and changes done by moderators. That's because the community, if left to itself, will have a small number of people who try to manipulate Digg for their own benefit.

It's an old story. Consider from Google:

PageRank performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages by solving an equation of more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Instead of counting direct links, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page's importance by the number of votes it receives.

Except it's far more complicated than that. Links have to be weighted, not trusted and entire sites removed because of spam and manipulation.

Both Digg and Google (and the search engines before it) started out in what I'd call "trusted mode," where you are optimistic that a community (people submitting; a collection of pages) can be trusted. Along the way, they shift to "mistrust mode" where you realize you need to be initially dubious about everything that flows in.

If I had more time, I'd go through and do a long compare-and-contrast on how recent Digg changes have exact counterparts in the crawler-based search engine world. Honestly, there are times when I could do a search and replace for the word Google to the word Digg in an article on spam fighting and the description would be the same.

The answer, by the way, is simple. Machines that the search engines depend on are imperfect (in particular, rankings can be manipulated more broadly), as is the human model Digg uses (in particular, humans can miss a lot of things). The combination of the two is much stronger. Some more thoughts on this from me:

• More On Query Refinement, The Human Scale Problem & Creating The Search Dialog
• MSN's Hand Crafted Results (Fake? - Shame On Me!)
• In The Election Results Race, Yahoo's The Winner
• Case Study: Digg Versus Google News Traffic

And here are a bunch of related stories from across the web that we've included in our headlines recently:

• Banned From Digg, John Chow dot Com;
• Akismet, Could They Ban Kevin Rose?, Dave Naylor;
• Kevin Rose & Digg on Moderation*, Google Blogoscoped;
• Kevin Rose Admitting Digg Has Moderators, The Mu Life;
• How Not To Get Your URL Banned From Digg, Pronet Advertising;
• Forbes Video Interview With Digg CEO, TechCrunch
• Three reasons why Digg gets its numbers wrong, Valleywag;
• The Privacy Implications Of Social Media, The Mu Life
• Spike The Vote, Will Get You Banned from Digg, Now for Sale, Marketing Shift;
• Digg Issues Cease and Desist to Diggdot.us, Micro Persuasion
• Shoveling on Digg, BusinessWeek

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:19 AM | Permalink

October 3, 2006

How To Game Digg & Why You Shouldn't

Peter Da Vanzo shows how you can pay someone to Digg your content for a fee. SEO Blackhat reveals a guaranteed way to get your content on the front page of Digg. But after-all, is it worth gaming the Digg system or any social networking type of site's system to get that exposure? Rand explores the pros and cons of gaming Digg - it may not all be positive.

Posted by at 9:17 AM | Permalink

August 29, 2006

Social Media Optimization: It's Like SEO, For Social Sites

One of the coolest things about the rise of social networking and sharing sites like MySpace and YouTube are the new opportunities they offer to marketers, even to search marketers. Into that space seems to have come a new term, SMO -- social media optimization.

5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO) from Rohit Bhargava to my understanding is the first use of this new term. In it, Rohit expresses how SMO and SEO can work together:

The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.

In other words, many who do search engine optimization have learned to build search engine friendly sites. Do that, and the search engines often will naturally reward you with traffic. But is your site social media friendly? Have you added the things that will get you into the new fertile ground of SMO?

It's worth considering. Conceptually, some of this stuff isn't new. For example, we long had people taking about ways to help others bookmark your web site. But today's new wave of social media sites can operate as a magnifying glass. Get that one person to bookmark you to del.icio.us and in turn you might tap into many other links. And those links, of course, flow back into helping with search rankings.

Rohit's got tips in his post above. If those aren't enough, check out Cameron Olthuis's Introduction to Social Media Optimization, which provides further tips. Loren Baker then goes on with further ones in Social Media Optimization : 13 Rules of SMO, recapping those from Cameron and Rohit and adding his own. For yet more, Lee Odden offers some up on New Rules for Social Media Optimization. Need still more? You can't go wrong keeping up with post from SEOmoz. Rand Fishkin's never happier than when he's offering some SMO advice. And someday I'm going to sit Dax Herrera down and debrief him on the many sharing sites that I've him frequent with the ease of a native. The sale of his mustache, while not technically on a sharing site, was still a classic of working another site (eBay) to drive traffic to your own.

For me, that's one of the biggest adjustments coming from the SEO world and into SMO, understanding that your presence can be in multiple places without being harmful.

Here's what I mean. Generally in SEO, it's good advice to have one single web site that you point to. Build traffic to a common domain, rather than divide it among various places. Sure, as you mature in SEO, you learn the advantages to having multiple sites. A corporate blog and a corporate web site can equate to double the representation in top search results. But there are limits, and you're still basically driving traffic to places you own.

With SMO, the adjustment is understanding that you have multiple places that while you don't own them still can be valuable to you. A Flickr profile can get you traffic in the Flickr space. Similarly, your del.icio.us bookmarks while on the del.icio.us site still might drive traffic. And have you gotten a MySpace profile yet? Go now, because you might decide you want it to drive traffic from MySpacers down the line.

Matt Cutts didn't -- and now someone else owns his valuable Matt Cutts persona over there. Meanwhile, I might never flow into MySpace the way my 16 year old niece does. But should I decide to do more there, I'm sure I'll wish that I hadn't let this Danny Sullivan get the name I wish I'd had. Still, at least I've staked my claim -- and Tom's even my friend. Except Tom's NOT my friend, of course.

Want to discuss more? We've got two good threads going in the Search Engine Watch Forums, Here Come's Social Media Optimization? and What Is Social Search?

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 3:00 PM | Permalink

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