SEO in Under A Minute A Day from Raleigh Web Developers Atlantic BT is short, frequent tips you can easily do that take about a minute. Our goal is to share sixty SEO In Under A Minute Tips before the end of February. One caveat needs stating. You may spend more time READING about Atlantic BT’s SEO In Under A Minute Tips than actually doing them. Explaining takes more time than doing sometimes especially when distilling more than 20 years of search engine optimization experience (on the Atlantic BT marketing team).

SEO In Under A Minute Tip 1: Don’t Start With SEO
Name five of your company’s core values and ideas. Why does your company, brand or product exist in the world? How, who and why is better because your company is here.

Take these questions as an elevator quiz, a Rorschach test.

If you have trouble firing five company and brand ideas, five core values then we suggest homework. Read these books:

• How: Why how you do everything means everything by Dov Siedman
• Delivering Happiness: Path To Profits, Passion and Purpose by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh
• Grow: How ideas and growth power the world’s largest companies

Your web site is a huge reflecting and amplifying pool. If you have any dissonance, confusion or unresolved, “Who are we,” issues resolve them BEFORE you create a web site or at least before your next email marketing campaign. If your site is a reflecting pool of your company then SEO is a reflecting pool of your site. You can see the trickle down problem. If your brand communication is unclear at the top it gets way to murky by the bottom, by the time you reach SEO land.

Start with brand clarity or as close to clarity as we can get these days or the marketing problem, like a snowball rolling down a steep hill, gets bigger with each roll.

The speed in which your internet marketer identifies wins and losses is vital to your businesses success.  However, in most cases – businesses fail to realize just how important that human element is when it comes to internet marketing.  Web Analytics is an ever changing box of puzzle pieces that define how and why your online presence benefits your businesses success.  As you put the pieces together to create a clearer picture of how your website is doing and what is driving outcomes rather than failures, you will begin to realize any “wasted” time spent on data analysis translates to opportunity cost that could be invested into creating new pieces to yield.  The above situation is a catch-22 though; because on the flipside creating pieces without data analysis leads to overhead when incorrect pieces are made that simply do not fit.

You better be creating a business intelligence dashboard before the deep-dive.

Here are my two conclusions in regards to data analysis versus making marketing moves online.

1. You are damned if you do too much data analysis and you are damned if you don’t do enough data analysis.
2. Let’s make it easier for the internet marketer to see the relevant data that helps them decide which pieces need to be created.  (Custom dashboards!)

There is such a thing of digging your own grave when it comes to data analysis.  Focusing on the wrong metrics and the wrong dimensions can lead to this.

Defining your custom dashboards based off of which business questions and marketing channels you are analyzing will save you lots of time and avoid unnecessary digging.

Here is a scenario I have encountered myself during my tenure at Atlantic Business Technologies.

My rules of thumbs when creating business intelligence dashboards in Google Analytics

Take the time to define which groupings of metrics, segments and dimensions you plan to keep track of a day.  My golden rules for data and dashboards are the following:

1. If you can’t explain how the data affects the bottom line of your business, don’t include it.
2. If you can’t drill deeper into the dashboard, it is most likely too specific of a report to be considered a dashboard.
3. If you don’t have at least one dashboard that focuses on growth opportunities, make one.
4. Grow a habit of using the dashboards frequently.
5. Grow the dashboard as needed.  Adapt.

Some examples of dashboards I’ve created:

Visitor / Client Retention (Customer Lifetime Value)

-# of Visits for returning visitors.

-Bounce Rate

-Traffic Sources of Returning members

-Trend data for Facebook / Twitter for Returning visitors

-Top Content viewed by these individuals

-Days from last visit

Market Channel Performance (focused on new visits / conversions and conversion rate)

-New Visits broken out by marketing channel which includes SEO, PPC, Email, Direct / Branded Searches and Referral traffic

-Conversion Rate by channel

-Total conversions by channel

-Bounce rate by channel

Non-Branded SEO Channel Performance

-Total # of visits

-Top 10 visits by state

-Top 10 goals by state

-Conversions by sport type

-Landing pages compared to bounce rate

-Keywords that did not lead to conversions

-Keywords that lead to conversions

Pay Per Click Channel Performance

-Total # of visits

-Top 10 visits by state

-Top 10 goals by state

-Conversions by sport type

-Landing pages compared to bounce rate

-Keywords that did not lead to conversions

-Keywords that lead to conversions

-Conversions by Campaign

-Total Cost vs. Total Conversions

Market Channel Performance (focused on new visits / conversions and conversion rate)

-New Visits broken out by marketing channel which includes SEO, PPC, Email, Direct / Branded Searches and Referral traffic

-Conversion Rate by channel

-Total conversions by channel

-Bounce rate by channel

My question to you is this, what dashboards would you create for your business and why?

Check it out: http://www.slideshare.net/MarkRiggan/mobile-first-responsive-web-design

I started working for P&G (1981) when phones were on walls at home and webs were something spiders created. Networking was when we met on Fridays to exchange damaged consumer products goods. Everyone, there were salesmen and women from P&G, J&J, Campbell’s Soup, Heinz, Colgate, Crest, Lipton and Clorox was glad when I arrived. Soap was currency. Everyone needed it all the time. Bleach you could live without for a few weeks, soap not so much.

We met in a parking lot, threw our trunks open and traded damaged soap (torn wrappers mostly) for dented soup, smashed dryer sheets and crushed plastic bottles of bleach and detergent. Our early EBay auctions established preference, currency and bids. I got more for Coast than Ivory (like 3 to 1).

The market was open arbitrage. I’ll give you two bars of Coast soap for slightly abused dryer sheets, crushed bleach, and a cut but taped bottle of detergent. The rep next to me would make his offer and he might beat mine or vice versa. Coast was my best currency. I never doubled down using my best selling soap back when soap came in bars and on a rope not ubiquitous liquid.  I would toss in three bars of Ivory sealing the deal. The Johnson & Johnson rep tried to cut a “better” deal using crushed bottles of Tylenol.

The first big tampering case had just happened. No one touched his pre-tamper proof bottles despite his saying, “these are from BEFORE the problem.” We felt for the guy. He’d spent days clearing shelves of his product on the off chance of tampering. Logically we knew he had to send any potentially tampered product back to HQ for accounting and then directly into the flames, but no one would touch the aspirin during my tenure.

Every now and again someone would take pity on the J&J guy. They would throw him something for Q Tips or Petroleum Jelly. Mostly he represented something we feared – strange, random madness, inflated hysteria and disorder. Barter happened on Fridays because grocers didn’t want “reps” in their stores as weekend traffic built. We had paperwork to do. Everyday I filled out a three part “Daily Call Report” that included how many FAPs (field activated promotions) I’d sold, how many calls were made and what was accomplished.

My goal was 12 sales calls a day and Friday was a “day” making our daily sales call goal 15 since Friday it was hard to make a single sales call. Everyone in the trading parking lot had similar daily goals. “Plan your work, work your plan,” P&G taught during orientation. P&G was masters at the sticky metaphor mixed with easy to remember song-like alliteration and report card-like aids. Sales presentations had four parts (Summary, Idea, How Works, Benefits). The sales call had seven distinct “steps” (don’t remember these anymore). There were hieroglyphs for describing store conditions noted inside a large notebook then transposed to our Daily Call Reports.

The Daily Call Report was almost 24 inches from left to right. When a P&G rep returned to their car he or she would pull a long board from the back seat, fit it over the steering wheel, transpose notes taken in the store and then dock the large board with pegs perfectly fitted to the company Malibu back in the backseat. They would look down at the “Daily Plan” sheet hanging from the console, drive to their next store and repeat the process selling grocery store managers displays of Downy, Bounce or Mr. Clean.

Before pitching the store manager we checked the store’s backroom. Some stores were mean about letting sales reps in the backroom. If you replaced a good sales rep there was a note indicating to ask permission before walking in the back. Entering the store we wrote our names in a long ledger probably never looked at or cared about. Once your relationship was built with Store Managers you didn’t have to sign in anymore.

Green sales reps like me in 1982 had to create a consistent rhythm. I always signed in. It seemed courteous and easy. One of my favorite managers, after about a year, said, “Martin you don’t have to sign in anymore.” By then signing in was part of the ballet, part of my process. I heard something else in his statement. I heard how pleased he was that I was following procedure despite our friendship. I continued to sign his and every store’s “call sheet”.

Leaving P&G for M&M/Mars I discovered the value of rhythm, routine, coaching and mentoring. M&M/Mars, like many consumer products companies, hired P&G sales people because they didn’t have to train as much. P&Gers had a consider investment, an investment in process and rhythm that included a week of video taping sales presentations and peer feedback (make a fake presentation, get feedback, make another get more and on like that for a week – see amazing 80′s picture below). I couldn’t wait to attend my first Friday trading. What would damaged M&M’s be worth? If I could barter Coast for enough detergent to not have to buy Tide for a year what could M&M’s get me?

There was a problem. M&M’s was less organized, less regimented. Paperwork at M&M’s took Friday, some of Saturday and Sunday (on many weeks). P&G’s systems were constraining, you had to do it THEIR way. M&M’s lack of systems turned out to be more constraining. How, I wondered, could I free up my Fridays so I could attend barter town again?

Reading something or hearing something about “personal computers” I bought an Apple II. It whirled, beeped and was fun to pick through. Learning how computers worked became my second job. From 8 to about 11 almost every night after wrapping my M&M work I picked my way through Lotus, early word processing and databases.

It was fun and differentiating. I became the “computer guy” who was always “playing” with his computer. Attending training at M&M’s national office in Hackettstown, New Jersey I brought my Apple along. During a lunch break I shared what I was doing. I was smart enough to bring the computer, but doubt I planned positioning myself as “the computer guy”. Fire was the result. Once my story was out a group form up after training to see “the computer”.

I remember several, “WOWs” as people gathered close in an attempt to get close to something heard about more than seen (remember this is now 1984 the year of the famous Apple Big Brother commercial). Word of what I was doing, unbeknownst to me, traveled across the street to the “national office”. At that time an M&M’s plant and a boiler room of desks arranged begrudgingly for sales and marketing all with phones with the loudest ring tones you’ve ever heard and this is WAY before iPods).

I’d created my first meme. A meme is a sticky cultural idea that is easily passed around, easily buzzed via word-of-mouth. The personal computer meme and I fused at M&M’s national office. A very special man named Wolfgang Pfiefer called me two days later. “Martin,” Wolfgang said with the most amazing German accent, “My name is Wolfgang Pfiefer, I work in the Sales Information Group in Hackettstown and I hear you are using a computer. How are you using it?”

After a long pause I remember sharing my love for long nights huddled over spreadsheets, seeing my first graph on a monochrome dull grey monitor and how my buyer’s bought more from print outs on dot matrix printers than anything created by hand. “It is like they think my pitch is more legitimate because it is from a computer,” I explained to Wolfgang (those were the days).

“Wait there,” is what I thought Wolfgang said over the phone. “What,” I remember saying into the line. I was about to hang up and then I heard Wolfgang talking to Debbie Putz asking for a morning flight to Buffalo. “Martin,” I will be in Buffalo around 4:00 tomorrow,” Wolfgang said as I could hear Debbie speaking in the background,” can you pick me up? “Sure,” I’d said into the phone confused and unsure. “Tomorrow” was Saturday and Wolfgang didn’t say anything about my boss or his boss. “Do I need to tell Stuart,” I asked after Stuart Brownstein (my boss). “Oh….yeah and I will give him a call too,” Wolfgang said before asking me to write his flight information down.

It is rare you know when your life is about to change. This was one of those moments. I sensed momentous change within seconds of its happening. Stuart and his boss Region Director Bernie Lee were curious about my “playing” with computers and supportive as long as it didn’t interfere with my sales goals. Bernie became President of Ethel M, possibly the best chocolate made in America, a Mars subsidiary.

Within weeks of Wolfgang’s visit I was offered a job as a “Project Manager” in the Sales Information department at M&M/Mars in Hackettstown. After a year of using a primitive SQL query language called Ramis creating ad hoc information to the sales and marketing team I was working on the Sales, Management, Analysis and Tracking (SMART) system – the first laptop based sales information system communicating call sheets across dial up lines using a Toshiba T1100+. Change sense became change realized. I learned my first lesson in Internet marketing (long before there was much of an Internet). My first lesson continues to be instructive:

• Going Early and Ugly Beats Later and Perfect
• Being First Beats Being Second
• Create Sticky, Well Timed Memes
• Web Sites Are Equal To My Old trusted Apple II (necessary and capable but out gunned now see Platforms Beat Websites)
• Blue Oceans, unique ideas, are out there and even more valuable now than then (because harder to find)
• If A Guy Named Wolfgang Wants To Meet On Saturday, Always Take The Meeting

Have a great weekend.

Martin

—
Director Marketing
Martin(dot)Smith(at)AtlanticBT(dot)com

If you attended P&G training in Cincinnati 1981 / 1982 and are in this picture, please claim your spot (if not too embarrassing).

Last night I attempted to purchase some toys from ToysRUs.com.  The inventory was rapidly changing in front of my eyes, only certain items were available for in-store pickup, etc.  When I actually placed my order, the “find the store nearest you” feature was dead in the ajax waters of no return.  In short they were getting slammed!  Good for them.  Bad for me.

So an announcement quickly appeared on their home page that they were extending their deals to Tuesday.  A really solid business move on their part and good indicator that they can react well to crisis.  I logged on today and when I went to purchase an item one item (that was on sale that was supposed to be in-stock) was not available.  It was pulled off my order and my discount evaporated through the ether.

So I placed a phone call to customer service and the representative was able to make sure that when the order was in-stock I would get the discounted price.  A notice to all merchants: as Gary Vaynerchuk warned us all at the Internet Summit #ISum11 that service and engagement with your customers is what will allow you to survive.

All it took was awareness of their own performance issues, empathy and a little Christmas Spirit.

Helpful tips for ToysRUs:

1. Get rid of the phone maze, I want to talk to someone
2. Real time inventory is a must now for a chain your size
3. Give customer service reps the power to make things right and you will keep customers who had tough on-line experiences

Follow Lisa on Twitter (@LisaSorg)

Use #abtmeetup in Search.Twitter.com to see stream from meeting.

Will blog about Lisa’s fascinating talk soon.

How is a print publication thriving in our digital times?

The Independent Weekly and IndyWeek.com editor Lisa Sorg is speaking at our second Raleigh Internet Marketing Meetup Wednesday (tomorrow) 11.30 at 6:30. Lisa will share how, when large print publications are faltering, a niche arts print publication from Durham (one we all love) is thriving by embracing the web, Internet marketing and the strange relativity we all know and love.

Please join us the Atlantic BT Center for a special presentation by a beloved Triangle arts institution.

Not a member of Internet Marketing Relativity Meetup? Join Here

What to know more? Learn More

Why? Learn marketing and niche publication secrets so we are better Internet marketers.

When: 6:30 on Wednesday 11.30

Where: Atlantic BT Offices (across from Macy’s Crabtree Valley Mall, 4509 Creedmoor, Raleigh, NC 27612)

Dinner? Yes, Atlantic BT will be buying dinner for attendees

Parking? Yes in front of the building and behind (if front is full)

Host: Atlantic BT Director Marketing Martin Smith aka @ScentTrail (Martin.Smith(at)Atlanticbt.com)

Hope to see you Wednesday night at the building across from Macy’s with the big, beautiful blue marble.

Martin

http://bit.ly/kStOny

I created Content Marketing Networks, a short slideshare PowerPoint that has been riding on top of the term in Google since 2009 thanks to Slideshare’s SEO strength and possibly being first on an idea about to explode. Those 2009 content marketing network slides tried to explain how Internet marketing is an interdependent world of links, connections and virtual cycles (positive or negative).

My content marketing network thoughts became richer and deeper thanks to a friend and a book. The book my friend recommended was Linked: Why Everything Is Connected To Everything Else by Notre Dame network researcher Albert-laszlo Barabasi. Linked explains the organic life of networks, what happens naturally behind the the wizard’s curtain.

As a Director of Ecommerce I’d observed how hubs formed bending the fabric of networked space and time sometimes in my site’s favor sometimes against. Hubs bend the fabric of network/time in their favor because they become self sustainably bigger displacing more Google winning more traffic faster and faster.

My Internet marketing team and I could watch a hub form on the horizon (in our web analytics) almost like a thunderstorm. Dark clouds formed in the distance. Traffic moved there in ever increasing numbers. If the “traffic storm” was on keywords we cared about suddenly our site was less competitive, received less traffic and, for no fault of our own OTHER than not being as well linked or ready, the storm built moving traffic, conversions and money away.

Sometimes traffic storms built and quickly blew out. Storms from ephemera didn’t last long. Ephemera such as a single great email offer or a mention on a hot site creates quick traffic showers. Other storms, such as the use of free shipping on all orders for a full year, gathered into permanent traffic and share loss for the ecommerce site I managed because we weren’t willing to match the offer. The key content marketing network idea is not about a particular offer, but the capacity for a competitor to become more of a “hub” based on a bold and uncovered Internet marketing actions (the unmatched free shipping offer). When the smoke cleared a competitor way back in the rankings ranked higher than the good guys (my site ).

“Scale Free” networks (such as the Internet) have certain natural innate characteristics. Hub formation is a “natural” content network marketing characteristic. I think about content network hubs like Einstein thought of planets and gravity. Hubs bend the Internet’s “fabric” creating a gravitational force where links, traffic and commerce flow downhill (toward the hub) in at ever-increasing rate.

“An ever increasing rate,” is another way of saying a positive virtual cycle. Positive “virtual cycles” are when good things happen faster and faster with less and less effort (push). Barabasi defines this self-reinforcing positive cycle as, “The Rich Get Richer.”

Traffic is Internet marketing’s compound interest. When, through great Internet marketing or sheer luck, you bend the web’s fabric in your favor and so create a self-reinforcing hub life is good. Faster and faster with less and less effort means profit margins go up and costs go down. Profit going up as costs go down mean your site (or business or company) is in the middle of a network effect – perhaps the most magical Internet marketing storm.

Google’s role is crucial. Google is a leading and trailing indicator. Google doesn’t create the web’s weather, but it can amplify or significantly change Internet marketing storms. If a traffic storm seems “spammy” or illegitimate Google’s magic math cuts credit and reduces storm force, power and longevity. If magic math is in favor of the storm, meaning traffic is sticking, high value links are increasing (link love in from high PageRank sites) and bounce rates are low Google shifts more traffic to the storm blowing it up. Google plays leading indicator with spam and trailing indicator when blowing a medium storm into a larger one.

Time’s role in Internet marketing is easy to forget. Time is the great equalizer and why sudden unexplained storms appear spammy. Trends do brew up suddenly usually in response to some unanticipated news event such as Michael Jackson’s unanticipated demise, a great sports victory or a new cool thing, but most traffic storms appear, build into a bell curve and then fade.

As News Jacking author David Meerman Scott points out, traffic storms are increasing even as their longevity is decreasing in our ADD “always on” culture. Scott’s sense of immediacy changes artist Andy Warhol’s infamous “15 minutes of fame” quote.  Meerman Scott’s Internet marketing as arbitrage changes Warhol’s quote to, “Everyone will be famous fifteen times for one minute at a time”. Can the need for your business, brand or product to recognize, feed and “jack” such precious moments be overstated?

Experiencing a positive traffic storm makes you want it to happen again, and again, and again. When Oprah’s O magazine included hand made place settings (dishes for the men reading this) created by an upstate New York potter represented by FoundObjects.com, the specialty gift site I co-founded in 1999, we were off to the races selling $10,000 in a matter of hours (and melting down a server). At that time, almost twelve years ago now, we didn’t think or know how to feed Oprah’s traffic storm with blog posts, widgets and social network support. Social networks twelve years ago weren’t what they are now.

Linked defines our jobs as Internet marketers differently. We are in the business of bending the web’s space/time fabric to create self-reinforcing hubs. Creating self-reinforcing hubs can start in a few ways, but almost all include:

• Related Archived Evergreen Content
• Related Relevant NOW Content
• Related Link Love
• An Ever Increasingly Fast Content Creation Cycle
• An Ever Increasingly Fast And Growing Amount of Link Love

Related Archived Evergreen Content
One day Oprah discussed a topic out of the blue. The site I manged at the time had content on Oprah’s doctor, the one who appeared as the expert. We had content on the products discussed. We didn’t have content on doctor and products together. We scrambled to create content to match Oprah’s lead.

There is a problem. No matter how fast NEW content is created it is too late for maximum impact. Evergreen content has to cook inside Google for weeks, months or years. Evergreen content must live in the archive for some time before being deployed in response to an event for maximum return. It was a good idea to create new content pages combining doctor and products, but we wouldn’t reach Amazon-like penetration on related keywords.  Amazon is powerful because, as it moves toward being the first site with a billion pages indexed in Google, it is already cooking pages on just about any topic.

Some of Amazon’s evergreen content lives out in Anderson’s long tail for years. Suddenly a traffic storm gathers and Amazon has everything it needs to deploy new content and content fully baked in Google for years. Evergreen content’s value, when so deployed, is immense. Your site’s “trusted authority” status deepens when current storm matches NOW content (the mix of doctor and product pages we rushed to create) AND evergreen’s fully cooked content. Google’s coveted “authority” status is awarded to sites capable of creating content on the fly in response to an event combined with fully baked related evergreen content because relevance increases while traffic bounces decrease (what Google cares about).

Amazon creates content “at an ever increasing rate”. “Ever increasing rate” is another way of saying Amazon is constantly creating a network effect. Amazon is the most powerful hub outside of Google. Facebook is discussed as a Google competitor. Few understand how Amazon is Google’s Siamese twin – connected at the hip and impossible to remove.

Facebook arbitrages content and traffic trying to figure out the money. Amazon has Internet marketing money figured out. Despite Jeff Bezos’ seeming “B” status, the massive Internet marketing arbitrage implied by Google and fully executed by Amazon may be the most revolutionary change to commerce and our lives. I love my Macbooks, iPhone and iPad, but the world’s traffic arbitrage market is more Google and Bezos than Jobs. Amazon is Google’s cash register a role both are happy the other plays.

Related NOW Content
Our combination of content in response to Oprah’s show is a form of “News Jacking”. News Jacking defined by author David Meerman Scott sees and surfs traffic storms (or PR “waves”). Like Bezos, Meerman Scott’s Wall Street career prepared him for the traffic arbitrage Internet marketing is becoming. Creating unique content, content capable of several updates over the course of a storm, is a good idea. See the wave, surf the wave makes sense even if such a reaction is only half as good as NOW + evergreen.

Related Link Love (Or Facebook Shares, Likes and Links)
Back in the day (two years ago) your web site needed link love from high PageRank sites with proper anchor text. It isn’t surprising Facebook shares; likes and links are replacing such hard to achieve and rare “link love”. Getting links wasn’t “rare”. Getting links with proper anchor text with related keywords was almost impossible. Those with the knowledge to build proper links did so for MONEY not LOVE. Amazon may have ecommerce down, but Facebook has reputation economics down to an evolving new science. Facebook’s sharable LIKE widget is pure Internet marketing genius.

When there are a billion people inside your network you create weather. Figuring out how to PROJECT your vast community’s influence across the flexible fabric of the web’s space/time makes Facebook the wizard behind the curtain. Inside the Facebook firewall you are half as powerful as what can be projected beyond the wall. The Like, Share and Comment widgets project search engine optimization (SEO) power across the Internet. If you work at PowerReviews or Bazaar Voice you must be smacking your head thinking, “why didn’t we think of that”.

An Ever Increasingly Fast Content Creation Cycle
No matter how much content you are creating it isn’t enough by half AND creation is too slow. Being competitive NOW means understanding how the Internet marketing game is changing. Change is the only true constant. Noticed how noisy the web is becoming?

The web is noisy because its value is clear and beyond ROI question. Debate continues about social network marketing ROI, mobile marketing and other things we will look back on in five years and wonder what we were debating, but there is no question all companies must swim in an increasingly crowded red ocean (an ocean made red with the blood from fierce competition).

Some like Etsy.com and Amazon understand the importance of an ever increasingly fast content creation cycle. Some understand platforms beat websites. You can’t go it alone is the most important realization. You and your team, no matter how large, can’t create content fast enough to be competitive. User generated content (UGC) is a must. You must tap mob power to become a hub, to thrive and become the rich getting richer.

An Ever Increasing And Growing Amount Of Link Love
The international fashion site Zara has 10,000,000 Facebook likes. Using Marketing Profs Facebook fan value of $136.38 (seeing the full article requires sharing your email, but it is worth it) means Zara’s Facebook community is worth over a billion dollars. I can hear the scoffs now. “That’s total nonsense,” some will say. “How do they know what a Facebook Fan is worth?”

I could defend Marketing Profs numbers. They may be low actually.  The costs of trying to recreate such a community jacks the value sky high. How fast do your Facebook likes grow? Let’s not get lost in a stupid debate because it doesn’t matter what a Facebook fan is worth.

What matters is how much Google juice 10 million supporters displace. Answer: A Ton. If, like REI, you don’t have Facebook LIKES, shares and comments throughout your site it will be harder to become a hub. If your competitors understand the importance of Facebook first you may NEVER become a hub. When your competitor becomes a hub an ever-increasing amount of traffic, link love and money will move away from your site pulled by your competitor’s hub-like gravitational force.  The real frustration is you will work three times as hard for less result (than your hubbed competitor). Hubs rule the web, so rule or be ruled.

Importance Of Togetherness
Atlantic Business Technologies grew from 30 to 54 employees last year. We could grow to more than 70 this year (2012). 54 people as connected as the technical crowd at Atlantic BT is the start of a powerful content marketing network. In six steps 54 people can reach 2.5 million:

In today’s Internet marketing we are as strong as the network links we create. We can’t JUST link to each other since doing so is spam. We can link to each other and the products we create as a natural part of our Internet marketing conversations. Every now and again we may all point to the same thing by chance OR we can be more purposeful and aware using network power to create a hub, a self-sustaining hub where we do less and less to achieve more and more.

I have no idea how planets formed out of the cosmic dust of the Big Bang, but hubs form when you create great content and share it with 2.5 million people. Atlantic BT’s employees is our first content network step. We will include our customers and former customers next (Phase II), then vendors (Phase III) and finally open up the network to public participation and use.

What about competition? I can hear some readers thinking. Competition provides important and welcomed participation. What if competition wins business via Atlantic BT’s content network? Then we will learn from the experience and do better next time. No business is lost or gained because we occupy the high ground created from a content network hub. Competition wins business because we didn’t communicate our value proposition or, and this can be hard to realize, there was a better fit with someone else.

Eckart Tolle taught a valuable Internet marketing lesson when he wrote, “whatever is happening is exactly what is supposed to be happening” in The Power of Now (I think). This helpful truth eliminates wasted energy. When SEO/SEM helps wins business Tolle’s statement helps. When SEO/SEM loses business it is what was supposed to happen so find out why and test something new. We Internet marketers build sand castles and Google’s tide is inevitable.

There will always be more business than we can comfortably handle in Internet marketing in our lifetime. Online commerce is less than 10% of total retail gaining rapidly but still less than 10%. There is much work to be done and plenty of work as long as insanely great is our mission, innovation our guide and togetherness our rule. We, and this is the royal we, are more powerful together than apart by an order of magnitude (100x).

PS. Hardware
Waking up this morning to finish this article I realized a missing point. If you ever wonder why it is important to hire real network support creating a content marketing network is why. If pieces of your empire are too easily self referential you will end up in Facebook, Twitter and Google jail. Getting out of jail isn’t easy, it takes time and costs money.

You need right brainers (marketing types) to figure out your blended curation plan, blended between promotion and curation. You need left brainers (network pros) to plumb your systems to appeal to Google (fast, non-spammy). Your left brain can eliminate all your right brain work and vice versa. You CAN buy a $500 web site hosted for $50 a month. I have one of those, built in half a day with a template (visit MartinMartySmith.com), but my MartinMarty site will NEVER win a keyword battle in Google. Winning Google battles isn’t always important (though I’m hard pressed to find an example in my life when I wouldn’t want to win traffic and conversions).

If winning keyword battles in Google IS important then you need pros on the right and left side of the brain. Even if you think you know how Google works trust me you don’t (only they do really). Google may be the most beautiful living art ever created so complex complete understanding is impossible. Do you “understand” or feel great art? A: Feel. Anyone tells you they will get you a page one listing on X keyword is lying and a snake oil salesman. Stick with Internet marketers who freely admit not knowing what they don’t know, are willing to share what they do know and can easily tell five stories of SEO loss and learnings (they may call it “testing” depending on how geeky they are).

No matter who you decide to receive Internet marketing help from YOU and your company, your company’s friends, vendors and even competitors are stronger together than apart.

Martin

—
Martin Smith
Director Marketing
Atlantic Business Technology
Martin(dot)Smith(at)AtlanticBT(dot)com

.

What is it worth to be viewed as human, caring, flawed, brave and responsive? Your presence in social media is you or your company’s first step in an important subjective and objective journey; your customers’ idea of you as COMPANY or BRAND and so impenetrably non-human is changed by mere presence in social media marketing.

Walking in the door of social media marketing means you are ready, willing and able to listen and learn. Listening, listening as our COO Mark Foulkrod likes to say with “intent”, may be the most prized and hardest to find COMPANY or BRAND skill in a flat, furious and quickly evolving Internet marketing time.

Few things in our current marketing ecommerce or retailing world are truly free. Having customers see your COMPANY, BRAND, PRODUCT or SERVICE as more human and so able to be loved is something you get free with your first Tweet, Facebook page, Paper.li or Scoop.it.

Can initial social media value, the one you get for free just walking in the social media marketing door, be offset by stupidity, ignorance and greed? Sure, but poor performance by some doesn’t change truth. Soon winning customer hearts and minds will require, mandate and insist upon robust social media marketing presence. No Facebook page = no COMPANY or BRAND (or no viable company or brand, no trusted company or brand, no sustainable company or brand).

Count, measure, slide rule, spreadsheet and P&L your social media marketing. The subjective truth of social media marketing’s value doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bean count the heck out of it. No, the truth of social media marketing’s main benefit, that social media makes it possible, as Faith Popcorn so famously declared, to “join” your COMPANY or BRAND doesn’t change your business need for understandable profit.

Don’t count the wrong things in the wrong ways. Profit and Return On Investment (ROI) aren’t the most important ideas or values behind social media marketing’s curtain. Backstage social media’s most important contributions come from your company’s human struggle to survive matter and contribute (change the world) in meaningful ways.

Connecting customers to your company’s inner and universal human truths is not a new idea. Customer service, company mission, values and philosophy have, as Jim Collins pointed out so convincingly in Good To Great, always been important initial ideas and predictors of eventual success. Social media marketing means what used to be private is now much more public. Social media, blogs and Google killed your company’s ability to keep secrets, so don’t.

Humans are funny. The longer I live the more clear it is – high school never really ends. We stamp our feet, exclude those not “like” us and generally act foolish and immature about half the time. Does social media marketing expose COMPANY and BRAND immaturity?

At times being social does expose cracks because, and this can be a hard idea to fully grasp, social marketing can only EVER reflect character you, your company, brands and products already have. Social media is a giant, amplifying, reflecting pool. Social marketing doesn’t create values. Adding social media marketing only confirms values already present. Does social media marketing on Facebook or Twitter make COMPANIES and BRANDS look bad? At times it does. Is having those mistakes made so large and public the most important thing any COMPANY or BRAND can do? Without a doubt.

Customers will forgive, guide and understand failure. Soon no existing or potential customer will forgive social absence.

Social media marketing absence is an arrogance no company can afford. “But we don’t know the ROI of social media,” I hear owners and CFOs saying after I share that last sentence in meetings. Companies like Argyle Social and Spring Metrics are creating tools to measure the strange, chaotic and confusing multi-touch world that is Internet marketing. Just as in the beginning of Google’s Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, I purchased my first keywords in 1999, social media’s value is in advance of tools needed to validate social’s true positive influence on COMPANY and BRAND bottom lines.

If I can convince you of one thing today let’s hope it is this – the greatest value, the greatest return on your social media marketing investment, comes from making your COMPANY and BRAND feel true, flawed, real and therefore able to be loved. We don’t love Greek Gods we read about them. We don’t love despots we depose them. We don’t love uncaring companies or brands we oppose them and, in so doing, try to help them find their, and by extension our, humanity.

Create and invest in a social media marketing plan because you must. Bean count it to within an inch of its life, but never forget your COMPANY and BRAND is social because there is, in the end, no other sustainable choice.

Martin

—
Martin Smith
Director Marketing

Martin(dot)Smith(at)Atlanticbt.com

Marshall Brain (@brainstuffHSW) from HowStuffWorks.com took the stage to kick off day 2 of the Internet Summit in Raleigh and threw down a great argument for why we should care less about design and more about function.  Now design matters of course and I would be thrown to the lions if I said that if it didn’t. (Working for a firm that cares a great deal about design that we should take design and shove it is crazy talk)

My goal here is do give an overview of what he talked about, why some of it is valid and what I think the true balance is. (Full disclosure – I am a developer and my User Interfaces look like crap without our design team).

His examples though were quite compelling: Google Search Results, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Reddit.  The content is what is truly driving customers back to these sites over and over again.  Now I would argue that the experience is what matters and how quickly one can access content, FOR these examples is what makes them hugely successful.

Now for us in the industry we can all be fairly certain that a great collaboration occurred to create Google’s new search results:

User Experience Improvements in Google Search Results

My point is that these are elements of design!  Now what they really could be is a great collaboration between UX and designer. Check out the Search menu is in red and it knows my location.  Savy? Also it is subtle, but changing the top search button blue is a great choice that draws attention to it.  But I argue that was indeed a design choice.

Now Marshall’s real point was that in start-up mode don’t really waste your time pushing pixels around and making things perfect.  If you create great content your followers will come and they will use your product.

He said, “I shop at Walmart.  Fonts and colors go over my head and I don’t even see them.”

His point was here that most of the regular everyday people out there that don’t care about design and if you are trying to get investors they don’t either, they want to know how much traffic you are getting and whether or not you are “converting”.

Now it is tough to argue with this point, but again, I go back to the fact design, form, and function are all required.  So I nuance his point slightly and say perhaps spend a little more that he is abdicating for so you can make your site accessible for all, usable for all, and create an experience with content that tells a story brings you back for more.

His other great point was that great content tells a story and if you tell a great story it will resonate with people (and I add then share it with all your friends @darylhemeon ha!).   Marshall also outlined his major issues with sinking too much design time up front:

1. It is expensive
2. time consuming
3. It is never done – fashion is always changing
4. browser compatibility issues
5. distraction from what is important

Marshall’s points are well taken. All I am saying is that is our jobs in this industry to find the right balance for every customer.  What he did say rang true though about the top three most important features are the Content (Content is King #ISUM11), Navigation is simple and functional and SPEED.  If your site is a dog, no one will run with it.

I do understand that what he was trying to do was stir people up on the morning and I started this conversation first thing at my office and people started to wig out!  Which personally I think is great because what it does is make us think about what matters for our customers and that is what is truly important.

Marshall Brain, thanks for a great talk, thanks for stirring the pot and thanks for recommending WordPress…by the way, this blog uses that too.