Bryan's Blog

Moving my blog location to WordPress

I've moved! My blog continues but at a new address: http://www.bryandelliott.com/

What is the value of SEO?

What is the value of SEO? What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a blend of art and science. It involves the movement of independent variables to get better indexing and placements with search engines. SEO analysis and reporting are great tools to help map your brand with the demand as seen on the search engines. SEO experts will measure and keep track of your site’s keyword density, search engine saturation, link popularity and other metrics of content relevancy. 

Basically, a search engine has three components:

1. a robot spider to crawl the Internet grabbing HTML from servers
2. an internal filtering system to evaluate, organize and rank the HTML for relevance
3. an index where it compiles all its data and arranges it for distribution.

When you create search engine friendly content, the result is intelligent content that delivers the right message to the right people right where they are looking for it.

Keyword development, optimal bid management, rules-based bidding, geographic targeting, A/B testing and segmented categorization are just some of the tactics and techniques used to maximize the typical search engine marketing campaign.

Why your corporate website might be irrelevant

Jeremiah Owyang has written a great post about the relevancy (or the lack thereof) of the corporate website. I recommend reading the full article

Jeremiah writes...

What’s a corporate web site?
It’s the domain they use after every advertisement

But we’re tired of the corporate website and all its happy marketing speak, stock photos of smart looking dudes or minority women crowded around the computer raving about your product, the positive press release, the happy customer testimonials, the row of executive portraits, the donations your corporate made to disaster relief, the one-sided view never ends.

While some of your traffic may be going up on your website, it’s not indicative of how corporate websites are being used. Analytics don’t tell us why people go to your site, and it may not be for the reason you want them to.

[The corporate website is an unbelievable collection of hyperbole, artificial branding, and pro-corporate content. As a result, trusted decisions are being made on other locations on the internet]

Why is your corporate website irrelevant?

Marketing has shifted, it’s no longer on two domains
Many web marketers are under the impression that the battles are only fought within Google search results and on the corporate domain. In reality, marketing has spread to many other areas where conversations occur: social networks, rating sites, chat rooms, and even blogs.

Decisions are made before they go to the corporate website
Yesterday, at lunch with a college student, she told me that her peers get ideas about product decisions on consumer rating sites, and from their peers. They use instant messaging, facebook, (and other social networks) and rarely directly type in a domain name to corporate website. If this holds true, then it’s assumed that prospects make decisions on other websites BEFORE they come to the corporate website to get factual information.

Factual information
Legally, corporations need to disclose product details, this is a strong case for the use of the corporate websites. However in my continued conversation with the Generation Y, she continued to tell me that she used corporate websites to get core feature stats and pricing, but that’s after she made a decision based upon her peer feedback to visit the corporate site.

The future, and how to stay relevant:

Websites are created with customers
This is disruptive, but I predict that the most relevant future websites will have customers building websites alongside employees. The most effective websites will contain a balanced point of view of both the product team and customers –even if they have qualms with the product.

Unfiltered customer testimonials will appear
You’ll no longer only be the only one publishing to your website, customers, prospects, and other members of the community will have direct access to publish on your website. Sure, there will be controls to make sure the content is somewhat factual or reviewed, but it will be obvious to many that the only voice won’t be the marketing one.

Content will have both negative and positive views about your products
This one is hard to swallow, but how do you build the most trust? By being open, authentic, and transparent to the marketplace. We know from research that the highest degree of trust comes from those ‘like me’, a savvy marketer will allow content to appear from peers, customers, and the market. These will not always be a product rave, in fact it may be downright criticism, the goal? To take that feedback, and demonstrate in public how you will improve your offerings in plain view. Case study: Dell has done this with IdeaStorm.

Your website will be a Community Resource
This means that you’ll put your customers first, No Really, I mean it. This means providing analysis of not just yourself but to competitors as well, this means that you’ll link to competitors. Crazy? I did this myself at my previous role as a community manager, I created a wiki for customers that linked to competitors, and it made me more relevant.

[The corporate website of the future will be a credible source of opinion and fact, authored by both the corporation and community. The result? A true first-stop community resource where information flows for better products and services]

Outcomes
Customers will make your site the first place to go for information, trust will increase, you may be able to build better products and services with real-time customer feedback, and most importantly, you’ll be a community resource that will help you meet your customer needs faster.

Visualize:
We’ll start to see customers help write the corporate newsletter, feeds pulling in industry blogs, media (audio and video) customers rating and ranking and voting for what features they want improved, product teams working directly with customers in real-time, and customers self-supporting each other.

Brand & Web strategy: Must-know info for Twitter

Jeremiah Owyang's post about "What the web strategist should know about Twitter" is awesome. I couldn't say it better so I have imported his article for your reading pleasure. Njoy!

Jeremiah says, If you’re responsible for the direction of your online strategies for your company or organization, you’ve probably been hearing buzz about Twitter, a next-generation instant messaging tool. Even if you’re new to Twitter, this will serve as a guide to educate you, help you make a decision, link to resources, and provide a starting point for your strategy.

[Twitter, a scalable instant messaging service, is being used by early adopters in the tech industry, what is it? and how can it improve my communications?]

Web Strategy Theory to know before you go forward
If you’ve not already figured it out, the corporate website is becoming less relevant, and web marketing (and support) has spread off your domain and google results. You also know that prospects trust the opinions of existing customers (who are ‘like them’) far more than marketers, and Facebook let’s these communities of practice assemble, your brand is decentralized –embrace! If you don’t understand these concepts, it’s hard to move forward.

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Opportunities: Why Twitter?
A tool embraced by the early adopter, Twitter can benefit from: thought leadership, connection to the influencers, additional message reach, access to mobile communicators, real-time communication, but more importantly, the opportunity to build relationships through conversations. Who it’s good for? Media companies, social media savvy brands, those who may already have a blogging strategy, those with frequent updates. High communication individuals may prefer this tool.

Limitations and Challenges: It’s not for everyone
Twitter is not for everyone, here’s a few considerations: due to a high degree of micro information the user will need to self-parse information. Although there is no formal data, I suspect that the audience use is early adopter social media folks, influencers, and an average age of 30-45. Although Obvious (parent company) has recently received funding the product infrastructure is still doing through growth pains, and error messages are common. Twitter, while still in it’s early stages, the full value has not been realized.

There are other competitors in the space, such as Pownce, released by the Kevin Rose of Digg.com, and Zooomr’s Zipline. Expect Twitter like features to emerge in many social networks as a feature.

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What you should know:

History
Twitter began as an experiment inside of Odeo, Inc. by Noah Glass and Jack Dorsey, and debuted in March 2006.

Twitter gained traction at the 2007 SXSW interactive festival. At the conference flat panel displays were located several places at the convention, showing twitter activity of the attendees, this was a defining moment of Twitter.

What is Twitter
A form of text based MicroMedia (term coined by Jeremiah Owyang) Twitter is really much like blogging, just on a miniature scale. The character limits 140 characters (plus room for a URL) that requires users to simplify their message.

Twitter has social network features, so users can add or remove friends, where seeing thought leaders like Chris Messina and others seek ways to segment groups, more features will come.

Twitter is a next-generation instant messaging tool, where users can blast messages to their network, send private messages, or search. When users publish messages they are often called “tweets”.

As a communication platform, Twitter experts data (such as RSS) that can be reused in other interesting ways, such as twitter maps, and other mashups: 10 top Twitter apps, or see this comprehensive list, The Twitter team has since acquired a design team, and has launched “Twitter blocks” which show network activity of a particular user. There are many other mashups to experiment or build.

Remember that Twitter, like blogging, is public, what you say can be used against you as well as for you, see case study of Steve Rubel criticizing his own client and having to retract.

Users
Without access to demographic information, Twitter is for the highly engaged, early-adopter, pro-technology user. This is the ‘influence’ community, meaning they will shape the direction of others in each of their respective lives. It’s highly likely that these users participate in other forms of online publishing and communication like blogging, Facebook, or use mobile activity. In short, it’s the ‘coolkids’ of the webspace, and yes, that includes John Edwards.

Content
With a limit of 140 characters, users are publishing the following types of content

1) Presence information: Users will shout out information related to them, from “eating with Joe” or “heading to the office”, or even questions “has anyone seen the Transformers movie?

2) Responses to others: Members within a connected network (they must be friends) can respond to each other using the reply symbol “@”. Responses could be “@Transformers was a great movie” or other variations.

3) URLs: In either of these content types, they may include URLs which are automatically shortened by the Twitter application. (Tip: Consider 130 characters if publishing a link. The system will have enough space to convert your URL to a TinyURL, and will use some of your characters)

Notable Brands
There are several brands that are deployed in Twitter, from Carnival Cruise lines, Intel Software, Adaptive Path, PodTech Network, and even John Edwards. Some publishers use it as a announcement feed, as Robert Scoble publishers his shared link feed called Scoble’s Link Blog from his Google reader –all automated. Most recently, the famed Marketing Profs media company has launched their Twitter account.

How to get more search engine traffic to your blog or site

Problogger has a great article today on getting search engine traffic to your blog or site. Click this link to see the full article- I highly recommend it!

In summary, Problogger (which also produced this image below) suggests a balanced mix of search, social media, community and content.

Check out the complete article and let me know what you think.

The benefits of SEM (search engine marketing)

What is SEM? SEM is search engine marketing, or the strategic process of trying to optimize and improve search results by manipulating natural and paid search options. SEM includes SEO (search engine optimization), paid placement, and paid inclusion.

Why do it?

Search Engine Marketing is influenced by an average of 12 billion US searches (as of August '08) performed each month in the US, and reports say that 90% of searchers click on one of the first three result pages. As the main driver of traffic to your Web site, eighty percent (80%) of search engine traffic comes from the organic (natural) listings.

Marketing (SEM), or pay per click (PPC) advertising, is a rapidly growing interactive channel. SEM is a highly effective media in attracting potential browsers, buyers or leads that have self-selected themselves as "in the market".  Whether you want to target a particular segment of your audience or promote an upcoming product launch or special, search engine marketing helps you reach people who are searching for what you have to offer.

Keyword development, optimal bid management, rules-based bidding, geographic targeting, A/B testing and segmented categorization are just some of the tactics and techniques you can use to maximize a search engine marketing campaign.These tactics will help search engines index and then rank your web pages in the first result page.

Facebook tips and applications

Mari Smith, one of the leading experts on Facebook and who was also nice enough to add me as her Facebook and Twitter friend, has a great site that is a must-read.

Take a look at what Mari has written about how to improve your Facebook page, profile, fan page and more.

http://WhyFacebook.com
http://twitter.com/marismith

Finding a specialist

I have a general rule whenever I go out to eat. Order something from the menu that the restaurant is known for. In other words, if you want authentic Mexican food would you go to McDonald's? Hopefully not. Seth Godin wrote his take on this in his article about being the hammer. 

I've spent most of my professional life on the client side, but now that I'm an agency guy, I can really see the benefits of hiring a specialist for certain things. It's fine to have an AOR, but how well do they do interactive? Most big shops have figured out that Interactive is a must-have business unit, but some just say they have it and farm it out. Others have scrambled to hire smart folks but it still feels like a bolt-on extremity--not a natural or seemless part of the organization.

And, if you have an interactive shop doing your web dev, how well to they actually do SEO, PPC and media? I've seen a lot of Interactive shops that are really good a making pretty pictures but don't really know how to do anything else. 

My suggestion is to do the research and find a specialist.

Upsides and downsides to using Facebook for business and personal?

Are you using Facebook for business and personal? I'd like to hear from you. What are the upsides and downsides?

Just updated my profile, you're welcome to add me as a friend:

http://www.facebook.com/people/Bryan_Elliott/1315857472

The lazy river of marketing

Have you ever been to one of those water parks with a lazy river? It's actually pretty great because all you have to do is sit in your inner tube and float as the current takes you down the lazy river. No effort required. But for brands and marketing campaigns doing the same old stuff year after year is like floating in the current of the lazy river.

Mix it up. Do something different. Strive for better results. Strive for any results at all. Get out of the lazy river and into the open water. Or at least into a current where your customers are swimming.