Content Syndication Is Your Friend
- Posted by Mike McDonald in MAKE MONEY ONLINE, WEBSITE SEO |
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Content duplication has been a buzz topic in SEO for a while now. You can read about it til you puke and never have to leave WebProNews.com. It’s one of the modern webmaster’s favorite things to fret over and has been for at least two years.
Google doesn’t like duplicate content.  We all get that now.  There is still the lingering perception that there is some sort of duplicate content penalty despite repeated assurances from multiple Googlers to the contrary.  Maybe there is no penalty; maybe there is some sort of mechanism at work that webmasters perceive as a penalty… it really matters very little.  At the end of the day, if you aren’t showing up for your own content but somebody else is… you probably aren’t the happiest little webmaster.
As a result, syndication has been quite unfairly vilified. Traditionally speaking, having a site link to your content has always been perceived as a compliment of sorts (Google certainly thought it was a fair indicator of quality). That said, syndicating content… having your great content actually picked up by a larger, more influential site was even better in a lot of ways. The syndicated content was put right in front of a whole new user base without them having to click a thing. Generally you also got a nice link back to your site to boot. If you produced a great piece of content, why not have it show up everywhere you possibly could?
Penalty or not, it is clearly the case that the site where content originates may not always rank best for that content.  Google wants to do their best to make sure they keep the content of their results pages as distinct from one another as they can. In short, Google doesn’t want to have a result page where 4 of the 10 results are all essentially the exact same article.
Here’s the thing though syndication is good.  It can drive traffic to your site.  It can establish your reputation and credibility within a niche and it can generate high quality inbound links.  If you are upset because the larger, more recognized and more popular site’s syndication of your content outranks your own then I’d have to say you might need to rethink that one a little bit.  So what if it does? You are there because you want to be exposed to the larger site’s community.  You want the links, attention, reputation and all the good things that go along with that don’t you?  Of course you do.  So if you do a search and find that the big site is number one on a good search query with your content, you don’t get upset - you say ‘yay’.
Why do you say yay? Because your super great content would never have that top position if not for the fact that Google found it on the larger more authoritative site. Sure, if it’s that good you can probably get a decent ranking but it won’t be as good.  Beyond the ranking, even if your site is #2 and the big site is #3 for the same article, guess which one is likely to get clicked thru more; the link to your site, which is not all that well known? Or the link to a site that somebody has heard of?
If you aren’t a household name or a recognized authority in whatever areas you are covering, the fastest way to build that reputation and credibility is to become associated with the brand that is. What’s the best way to do that? Get your name, your company and your link on their domain. Because at the end of the day the likelihood of you just outranking them on your own for similar subject matter is probably going to be a tough order.
Abby Johnson talked to Eric Enge from Stone Temple Consulting at SES recently about the syndication vs. duplicate content problem.  Eric has some great tips in the video for minimizing the negative aspects of duplication on a syndication model.  Three specific items he talks about are syndicating excerpts, including a no-index tag, and writing ‘alternative’ versions of your content expressly for syndication.  He also talks about how effective a syndication model can be.  One site he’d worked with increased their traffic by over 50% using syndication almost exclusively. 
Google is also working on some stuff to help us help them (isn’t that just awesome of them?).  Read up on their new cross domain canonical tag.  It’s new, none of the other search engines support it yet, and it remains to be seen how effective it will be, but it’s a start.  Whatever you do, don’t throw the proverbial baby (syndication) out with the bathwater (duplicated content worries). There is a lot of upside to an effective syndication strategy.
Related Articles:
> Duplicate Content Owners Catch A Break From Google
> Duplicate Content On Google, Bing, & Yahoo
> 10 Search Topics That Require Further Discussion
Ghost Tweeting: The Real Phantom Menace
- Posted by Mike McDonald in MAKE MONEY ONLINE, WEBSITE SEO |
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One of the coolest parts about about my job is the fact that I am always up to speed on the latest and coolest stuff in the world of search, social media and things of that nature. Over the course of the past decade, there have been no shortage of things to keep my eye on. That’s one of the cool parts of my job. What makes it interesting however is not necessarily the emergence of these new tools and/or technologies but how they end up being used.
I’ll give you an example. A couple of weeks ago at SES Chicago, our own Abby Johnson had a chat with Liana Evans about the concept of ‘ghost tweeting’. Ghost Tweeting is the practice of having multiple people twittering on the same account. Earlier in the year, Guy Kawasaki kind of got the search marketers buzzing about this a little bit at SES New York when he admitted he employs people to post updates on his Twitter account.
So you have Twitter, growing like crazy, immensely popular… then you have marketers like Kawasaki doing something a little differently with it. What happens? Well, it doesn’t take long before people start to point and say things like; ‘he’s doing it wrong’ or ‘that isn’t how you’re supposed to use it’ and when folks really want to climb up and stick a flag in that moral high ground, they question the ethics. They’ll call it unethical. They’ll call it amoral. Why, I have no doubt that a few of them will even say it’s contributing to global warming. The nerve of this guy… um, Guy. Twittering in such a way. It’s unnatural.
Do you think ghost tweeting is a problem or a bad thing?  Let us know in the comments.
Now on the one hand, I can’t argue the rationale used when critics will say: it has his name on the account. It has his picture on the account. Therefore people assume that he is actually doing the talking. True, true and true… but so what? If you follow Guy, do you follow Guy because, gosh, he’s just so awesome and having a look at what he’s thinking every hour or so is just the high point of your day? Or, do you follow Guy because you like the articles, ideas and links he posts? I suppose if your Guy following is a product of the former, then, yes, you might reasonably be expected to feel somewhat disillusioned to learn that his hand may not be directly on the wheel of some of those updates. Then again, if this is the case, I would submit that you might need to talk to someone about adjusting your meds. Here’s a little revelation for you: the people you follow on Twitter are not your real ‘friends’. They are people who feel like they have something interesting (or not) to say and that somewhere someone might find what they have to say interesting enough to read it. That’s it.
Twitter ethics? Please. Morally responsible Tweets? I mean really people. I follow Kawasaki myself and have no problem suggesting you do too because he frequently has updates I find interesting for some reason or another. Does it matter that he isn’t personally typing or finding the updates? Not to me. Not even a little. He is employing people to Twitter things on his behalf and I assume, if nothing else, if they were Twittering things he didn’t agree with, like, or find interesting himself… well, he’d go get somebody else to do it. If the updates weren’t interesting, I would just stop reading them… or unfollow him altogether. Being upset because you find out Guy isn’t personally typing updates into his Twitter account is akin to seeing Michael Jordan out somewhere and being upset because he’s wearing something other than Hanes and drinking something other than Gatorade.
Was Twitter originally designed for marketers? No probably not. Again, so what? The Internet was created as a communications tool for the military. Was it designed for people to be able to order stuff from Amazon and play farm town? Was email designed for newsletters? Was video designed for porn? Ok, I’ll give you the porn thing maybe, but the rest of it? No, I don’t think so. The best internet tools are the tools with the broadest range of applications. If you have a good tool, invariably someone will use it in a way that was previously not considered or maybe even intended. Does that make the new application somehow wrong or evil?
As for ghost tweeting, I suppose it comes down to basically what Liana is saying in the video. It’s about the expectations of your followers. If they are following you because you are ‘you’ and ‘you’ are Tweeting about you (which is just creepy)… you may need to do your own updates. Otherwise, if the people following your account seem to be engaged and interested in what you are putting up there, then what in the world difference does it make as to who pushed the update button?
So where do you stand on this whole ‘ghost tweeting’ thing?  Sound off in the comments.
Related Articles:
> Twitter Takes SMS Tweeting To Australia
> Twitter Gets Hacked By "Iranian Cyber Army"
> Most Influential Twitter Users Named
Forget the TV, Now the Revolution Will Be Twittered
- Posted by Mike McDonald in MAKE MONEY ONLINE, WEBSITE SEO |
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Assuming haven’t spent the past 5 years under a rock, you can’t help but be aware of how much our social interaction and communications habits are changing. As a matter of fact, it’s getting to the point that hiding under a rock is less and less of an option. Most rocks these days are in 3G coverage areas and the few that aren’t will be shortly.
Communication has never been so easy, widespread, or cheap in the history of our species. The social web and the proliferation of mobile devices with access to it, has given ‘‘everyman’ unprecedented access to ‘everyotherman’. The traditional gatekeepers of information - what we used to call mass media (TV, newspapers and print media) have become at best, just another signal source and at worst irrelevant and unnecessary.
We are texting, Twittering, Facebooking - hell, I think there are still a few people MySpacing. We are doing all of this and we’re doing it pretty much everywhere and anywhere we go. We use our PC’s we use our laptops, netbooks and phones - our access options get more diverse and available every day it seems like.
But is this a good thing?
Like anything else, there is plenty of good and bad here. The biggest and most obvious benefit of this communication and access is that we can be updated and informed 24/7/365. We can chat from pretty much anywhere anytime. Many of us can work from pretty much anywhere anytime.
It’s the golden age of ‘anywhere anytime’ information and contact. Of course it’s simultaneously the biggest downside too. Trouble is, having the ability to work, chat and stay updated any time is that you end up doing all of the above all of the time. To put it bluntly, there is no escape here.
Sure, you can turn it off. You don’t though, do you?
Do you feel like you need a break from the ‘network’? Sound off in the comments.
What about the art of conversation? Some would argue it’s being lost in the shuffle, I think a more apt assessment is that it is simply evolving and suffering some growing pains in the process. We get our news and give our views, for the most part, about 140 characters at a time. That means we talk a whole lot, but we don’t say much when we do. We don’t have the time or space for details anymore.  The news is the headline and vice versa.
Not ideal, maybe, but the upside is we are at least participating in the news. We aren’t just having it spoon fed to us by ‘old media’ editors and interests. So we are a little light on the details. It’s a decent trade off I think and you never know, we may get a little more into the details as we move along.
Another big plus is the fact that our collective horizons are being broadened. A lot of people criticize Twitter as a platform for some rather mundane details. I have frequently heard comments like; ‘do I really care or need to know what Terrell Owens is doing RIGHT NOW?’.  Well no, maybe you don’t.  At the same time, I think that’s a fairly narrow minded take on Twitter.
Twitter updates, even the mundane ones, often give you some insight or perspective into how people in other parts of the world or in different social circles ‘see’ things on a daily basis. I’m not saying that insight is always good or positive. However, becoming more conscious of larger society or world views would seem to me to make us somewhat less disposed to or at least more aware of local or regional biases. I don’t see that as a bad thing at all.
I do have one major gripe with all of this though. Cell phone etiquette was already bad 10 years ago.  It’s getting much much worse now. Updating your Twitter, checking your Facebook and all that is fine and good…  but not if that attention is being diverted from someone sitting right next to you.
Do you think it’s rude when people you are with spend their time texting? What’s your take?
It’s not dissimilar to one of the classic rules of retail.  If you are with a customer in your store, and the phone rings, you never ever leave that customer to take a phone call.  Likewise, if you are out with family, friends or especially a client or customer, you should always give precedence to the people sitting in front of you over your contact list. We’ve all been on both ends of that and we all know it’s rude.
Beyond being just plain rude, it’s also more than a little weird. I have seen whole tables of people clicking on their phones, barely acknowledging each other.  Ironically enough, if you ask them, they are often working on getting some more people to join them. The sound of ‘social’ is the muted click of a rubberized keypad and no, I don’t think that’s cool at all.
Hopefully though, we can get the physically social reconciled a little bit with the digitally social. The Brave New World of communication is happening right now at Twitter-speed and while the abilities of our toys has somewhat outstripped our ability to use them appropriately, I think the benefits far outweigh the negatives.  It’s an exciting time to be alive really, as long as your batteries hold up.
Netbooks: Moving in Right Next Door to Useless
- Posted by Mike McDonald in MAKE MONEY ONLINE, WEBSITE SEO |
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Netbooks are apparently surging in popularity.  Some of the more recent data suggests that some 30 million netbooks will be sold this year.  That’s a fair amount of hardware.  Clearly, people are hot for netbooks. I just don’t see why.
Netbooks are like like a regular laptop except they are smaller. Kind of like the iPhone or one of the 20 Android phones coming out. They aren’t as powerful as a regular laptop, but you can do basic web surfing, texting and Twittering. Kind of like iPhones or one of the 20 Android phones coming out. They are a smaller form factor and easier to lug around than a full fledged laptop. Also kind of like the iPhone or one of the 20 Android phones coming out.
So, what the heck is a netbook? Is it a phone with a bigger screen or a laptop with a little brain? Either way, is there a real reason why I am supposed to want to drag yet another gadget around with me everywhere? What am I missing here?  Where’s the draw?  I can check my email on my phone. I web surf on my phone. I can update Twitter, catch up on sports scores and read articles all just fine on my phone — and my phone sucks (I am upgrading soon). What do I need a netbook for?
More to the point, what does ANYbody need a netbook for? Today’s phones do a pretty good job with the web. Over the next 2 or 3 years, assuming technology progresses like it always has, they will get even better. I guess I just need somebody to explain to me the netbook’s ‘niche’ here because to this point, I see no ‘need’ for their existence whatsoever.
Hardware and service providers are definitely on board.  Most telecom providers have announced or already launched some sort of subsidized netbook program. Your telecom providers love subsidy programs.  They typically involve lengthy contract extensions. Maybe there’s more to it here… I just don’t see it.
Google has even announced a new Netbook oriented open source OS. MS has invaded Google’s search turf with Bing.  So, it’s only natural for Google to want to fire a shot across Microsoft’s bow and announce an open source OS for netbooks.  Of course, this new open source OS isn’t due until late next year which is pretty ‘forward looking’ even for Google. 
I’m not saying anything, but some people might think this announcement had as much to do with Bing’s impressive (early) numbers than anything else. I don’t think Google really believes they are going to be snatching much of Microsoft’s OS business with this thing for netbooks, but it probably gives the hardware vendors the semblance of some bargaining chip with Redmond for a price break. I hope that isn’t the rationale for the 10 month advance notice for the Chrome OS though, because that just sounds desperate.
But back to the actual gadgets. Somebody explain to me how these things aren’t the the epitome of a useless ‘tweener’ device. Not quite a laptop, not quite a phone but still apparently considered desirable by some 30 million people. Basically so they can do stuff they were already doing with their phones and laptops.
Do you think a netbook is a ‘needful’ thing or just a redundant gadget?  Weigh in in the comments.
I have used these things a little bit too, so telling me how the screens are bigger and the keyboards are nicer is only going to get you so far. We have one of these things floating around the office. The Sony P-Series even, one of the best you can buy. It’s not even a ‘real’ netbook because it has laptop-ish specs. Guess what? The screen is still too small and it’s sitting here somewhere collecting dust. Why? Even though it would be easy to carry around if you needed to, nobody needs to carry it around.
A Nobel Peace Prize for Twitter?
- Posted by Mike McDonald in MAKE MONEY ONLINE, WEBSITE SEO |
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I have been covering Internet business and webmaster news for nearly 10 years now. If I have learned anything over the course of the past decade it is that you just never know what you can expect to see in Internet news every day.  Most recent case in point, Twitter’s consideration for a Nobel Peace prize.
That’s right. A Nobel Peace Prize. For Twitter. Mark Pfeifle at the Christian Science Monitor writes; “Without Twitter, the people of Iran would not have felt empowered and confident to stand up for freedom and democracy.” As impressive as that sounds, I am left feeling a little suspect about the validity of the claim. Call me jaded, but I just really have a hard time thinking that proponents of democracy in the Middle East looked at Twitter and thought to themselves “Now’s our chance!”.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Twitter. I use it all the time, but let’s not get too carried away here folks. Does anybody really think Twitter is going to bring peace and democracy to the Middle East? Hey, I hope I’m wrong and it does, then it can move right on to ending hunger and curing cancer… 
Beyond the fact that I believe the reasoning behind Twitter’s Nobel Prize qualification is a tad specious. There is also the fact that Twitter isn’t a person…  it’s a platform.  Do we really want to start awarding Nobel Prizes to things? Where are we going to draw that line? If you want to credit Twitter with enabling the fight for democracy in Iran, then by the same line of reasoning, why wouldn’t we want to also nominate iPhones (or whatever device the Iranians used to do their Tweeting). 
Then again, maybe singling out the iPhone or any one device would be unfair too. I doubt all of the Iranian Twitterers were sporting the same hardware. So, maybe by that rationale, we would need to nominate ‘Cell Phones’ for the Nobel Peace prize. That doesn’t work though, does it?  Not all cell phones even have web access so we can’t really credit them for enabling the fight for democracy in Iran.
Well, how about just ‘The Internet’ then? Twitter is part of the Internet.  You can’t have a Twitter without the web can you?  But who do we give an award to? Tim Berners-Lee?  Vint Cerf?  Al Gore?
I just don’t think much of the idea.  If you wanted to talk about the Twitter founders maybe being deserving of a nomination I guess that would have been a little better. Although, I don’t think too many folks in Iran could come up with Jack Dorsey’s name if they had to.  I could be wrong about Jack, I have never met the man, but I doubt he has spent a lot of time in the Middle East. 
I guess at the end of the day, I have two main problems with nominating Twitter for a Nobel peace prize.  First, it isn’t a person. Twitter is a platform. To me that’s like nominating McDonald’s french fries for a pulitzer because so many writers enjoy them. Second ‘it’ didn’t ‘do’ anything.  Twitter didn’t do anything in Iran. Twitter never marched, Twitter made no signs, Twitter itself didn’t do a single thing in Iran. The Iranians did. To be perfectly honest, I rather think nominating ‘Twitter’ for a peace prize because of what somebody else did with it borders on an insult to the people that did the tweeting.
 
Putting Twitter into Perspective
- Posted by Mike McDonald in MAKE MONEY ONLINE, WEBSITE SEO |
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Brett Tabke was among the speakers on the ‘Mega Panel’ at SMX Advanced this year. This session essentially consists of a panel of established industry experts fielding questions from the crowd of conference attendees. It never takes long in these type of sessions to get a feel for what’s on everybody’s mind. This year, to the surprise of exactly no one, it was all things social media and Twitter that dominating the Q & A.
I caught Brett Tabke, founder of WebmasterWorld, shortly after the session to get his take on some of the high points of the discussion. It looks like this social media thing is doing nothing but growing and it’s impact is being felt across the board in ways most of us never imagined.
Realtime Search:
Realtime search is one of the biggest concepts to talk about in terms of social media. Brett brought up the example of the French airliner that crashed in South America recently. Information about the incident was available instantly through Twitter.
More significantly, this information wasn’t simply in the form of Tweets about the crash, there was new content being created and linked to in Tweets. This new content, created on the fly and accessed in real time, wasn’t available through Google, Bing or Yahoo yet, but it was in Twitter.
The concept of content discovery in realtime hasn’t really been done (at least not very well) to this point. This is why you’ve been reading weekly rumors of this company or that company being interested in purchasing Twitter.
Marketing:
Social media marketing is entering a whole new level. Business interest in social media started out a lot like business interest started in blogs. When blogs were first coming into vogue, businesses were, for the most part, looking at blogging from a public relations/reputation management standpoint. Of course, as blogs became more and more prevalent businesses increasingly incorporated them into their marketing mix.
The same thing is happening with social media, just a little faster. Take a look at BestBuy and their ‘Twelpforce’ Twitter strategy. They have over 500 people signed up, scouring Twitter looking for folks with questions about plasma TVs and various gadgets.
Social media, particularly Twitter, is moving more and more out of the realm of the ‘optional’ for business. Managing your identity in social media is becoming just as important, if not more, than managing your .com domain. GoDaddy is even going ahead and registering your Twitter accounts along with your domains now.
Just like with your domains, if you aren’t ‘you’ then somebody else is apt to become ‘you’. Twitter registration has evolved to the point that account creation there is just another step in responsible brand management.
Evolution of Twitter:
Now that Twitter has become too big to be ignored and (for many) too important not to use, what comes next? Just as with anything else new on the web, it hasn’t taken spammers long to get into the mix. Spammers have hit Twitter like 7 year locusts. Anyone who has been using the service of a significant amount of time can tell you that the peddlers of porn, mortgage ‘deals’ and pharmaceuticals have arrived en force.
Twitter by nature is completely opt-in so you would think that the spammers would have a hard time with getting much done. Fortunately for the spammers however people are, by nature, just greedy. The currency of Twitter is (for the most part) your follower count. Whether it’s to increase the effectiveness and reach of your tweets or just to stroke the ego, for many, the Twitter game is largely about growing the follower number.
This has given rise to countless "add 500 followers per day" schemes and mechanisms in order to game the system. The rationale being, if you find somebody with 3000 followers, you are apt to think, "hey, this guy must have something cool to say". It’s logical enough but unfortunately not necessarily the case.
So, how can you tell if somebody is worth following? That’s a question a lot of people are asking. What is authority? How can you tell if someone is an authority? How do you know the person you are following is even who they claim to be?
Twitter has started verifying accounts for some of the A list set. Celebrities are finding their way onto Twitter in increasing numbers. Prompted in large part by a lawsuit filed by Tony LaRussa, Twitter has started a program of verifying the accounts of celebrities. It’s a step in the right direction which will likely make it’s way from celebrities to businesses soon enough but it’s really just a start. 
What if you want to find twitter people to follow within niche industries, or within your local area?
Finding people to follow is easy enough. We have Twellow and Twellowhood (shameless plug alert) just in the way of examples of sites you can use to find interesting people. How do you tell who is worth following though once you’ve found them?
Brett and I talked about this a bit in the interview. We are starting to see some sites and services pop up to ‘grade’ Twitterers in an attempt to assign some sort of authority or rank to accounts.  Sound familiar? It should. This is essentially what search engines have spent years trying to figure out for websites.
Personally, I think there is something a little unsettling about the concept of having rank or some arbitrary authority assigned to Twitter accounts, but I suppose it’s probably inevitable to some extent. You can check Klout.net for an example of such a service. Here you will find an algorithmic number value assigned to Twitter accounts.  The ingredients and factors of the algo are (of course) secretive and mysterious, but we’re all used to that by now aren’t we?
So in some regards, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. There’s still a lot of ground to cover with this whole social/Twitter thing.  Remember search? How many search engines did we go through before we got Google? How many Google-killers have come and gone since then?
Social Media is still an area very much in it’s development. There will no doubt be plenty of twists and turns as we move along. However, there is one thing you can absolutely take to the bank: if aren’t in it, you need to get there. For better or worse, "wait and see" strategists have no place in this world.
Google and the Economy
- Posted by Mike McDonald in MAKE MONEY ONLINE, WEBSITE SEO |
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Google releases their Q2 earnings today.  It will be interesting to see how their results will be received on Wall St. for a number of reasons. Google is one of those companies that people measure the economy as a whole against to some extent. As such, today has sort of a groundhog day kind of feel to me.  I don’t typically spend a lot of time watching economic news - even in good times, but i’ll be paying a little more attention to it today.
Google is expected to report their second consecutive quarter of single digit revenue gains.  Now, the economy being what it is, a lot of folks would be plenty thrilled with an any-digit gain.  Google isn’t most however.  Google stockholders are more accustomed to quarterly growth of 30% or better.  So, while single digit growth for a second consecutive quarter would be pretty good news for some, it ain’t so hot for Google.
The fact that revenue growth was relatively flat again leads us to the all important ‘why’ question. Has Bing been a factor? Is this as bad as it is going to get for Google? When will they get back to ‘normal’?
First lets look at Bing. Microsoft has actually managed to make some waves in the search space for the first time in as long as I can remember. Bing was launched with a big marketing budget ($100 million buys a lot of ads), some really slick commercials, and most importantly a search product that was distinctive, effective and extremely consumer-centric. In short, Bing was pretty cool. As a matter of fact, they snagged almost a full half percent of search market share. The problem here is they most likely picked up the lion’s share of that gain from the company they need to buy (Yahoo) instead of the company they need to compete with (Google).
Google is so far out in front of both Bing and Yahoo in terms of market share it’s hard to imagine either one of them catching up.  Certainly not going to happen separately and even combined it would take a LOT of movement.  Google still owns 64% of search.  Yahoo has around 20% and that $100 million dollar marketing campaign and a cool new Bing has taken Microsoft from 8% to a whopping 8.5%.  In short, if the question is whether or not Bing had a lot to do with Googles flat revenue earnings, I’m no expert, but I’d have to say probably not much.
The second question; ‘Is this as bad as it gets for Google’ is certainly going to be asked a lot over the next few weeks. As far as I’m concerned this is largely not even up to Google.  I think it is reasonable to look at Google as a barometer of sorts for the larger economic issues facing us today.
If you’ve been watching economic news for optimism lately though, you will know that there isn’t a lot of it floating around.  The Federal Government owns controlling interest in General Motors for crying out loud.  The best solutions we seem to be able to come up with for our problems so far seem to be raising taxes and socializing banks and industries.  Is the worst over?  Who knows. With Google, 2 quarters of single digit revenue growth is pretty bad.  I hope it doesn’t get any worse for them because if it does, what is everybody else going to be looking like?
As for Google getting back to ‘normal’ - meaning 30% + growth quarters, I think this is the more interesting Google-related, search industry type of question.  Google’s revenue growth is is large part due to the huge lead in market share they have over everybody else in the space. 
So far, Bing’s growth, while measurable, hasn’t been overly threatening.  Things change fast in this world though.  There are certainly possibilities wherein Bing continues to gain market.  Maybe they finally do buy Yahoo, maybe they do something else. Maybe Yahoo is somehow magically rejuvenated and starts closing ground - anything is possible. 
Point being, if another property or properties manages to close that gap in market share on Google, they may not realistically be able to expect to get back to the 40% growth quarters - barring some new plans of their own - at all. That certainly wouldn’t mean they were doomed or anything, but I can certainly see a future wherein their dominance may not be quite so pronounced.
 
Tweeting Harry Potter
- Posted by Mike McDonald in MAKE MONEY ONLINE, WEBSITE SEO |
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Every time I’m ready to write off the the Internet, it (almost) always redeems itself. The absurdity of nominating ‘Twitter’ for a Nobel Peace prize left me shaking my head.  However just a few days later the Twitterverse, in a shocking display of good taste, collectively panned Bruno, essentially restoring my faith in social media and humanity in general.
Now we are about to see the Twitter monster flex it’s muscle once again as Harry Potter hits theaters tonight at midnight. I expect we’ll see pretty much the exact opposite of the Bruno effect with Harry Potter on Twitter.  Now, I have not read the book, nor have I seen the movie yet. But I am fairly confident that so long as it isn’t 90 minutes of tasteless satire and homoerotic visual gaffes, Twitter hype will be an overall positive for Harry.
I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the trending topics are dominated by Potter references on a scale we haven’t seen since MJ died. There are fan sites across the web already motivating their bases to dominate the social spaces.  The Dumbledore Twitter Challenge for example is requesting that Potter fans add a #dumbledore to their Twittering in a 36 hour campaign to make #dumbledore the most Tweeted word on Twitter. 
Harry Potter is hardly a franchise that needs a lot of help in the hype department, but it’s going to get it nonetheless. There could also very well be an uptick of Twitter registrations as Potter fans create accounts for the sole purpose of connecting with each other.  That will be interesting to see too, so we’ll keep our eyes on that and let you know what we turn up.
Google Voice: The New Coolest Thing Ever
- Posted by Mike McDonald in MAKE MONEY ONLINE, WEBSITE SEO |
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What would you say if a company asked you if you’d like to have all of your home, work and cell phone calls, all your text messages, all your conference calls, all your voicemail — pretty much anything you say or type into a phone — ALL of it — go thru their 3rd party service? You, like me, would probably say; Thanks but no thanks.
But wait. What if they were going to give you a bunch of really cool features and capabilities in the process?  For free? Oh, and what if the company were Google?  Now you might be saying; Oh yeah?  Well… what kind of cool features?  I would.
Are you Interested in Google Voice? Let us know in the comments.
Google Voice is the new ‘Coolest Thing Ever’ coming out of Google.  Basically, what they are doing is allowing you to centralize your multiple phone numbers (work/home/cell etc).  In the process they have come up with all kinds of handy tools and features that give endusers more control over their telecom than they have ever had before.
Essentially, here’s how it goes down.  You get a new Google assigned phone number.  Then, you route all of your other phone numbers thru that number.  So, your office phone, your work phone, your home phone - whatever. Google voice will allow your calls to selectively ring thru to any of the destination handsets you choose.  It really is a handy idea in concept.
Beyond that, Voice adds all kinds of cool little bonus features for example:
- You can selectively ring calls thru to multiple destinations.
- You can selectively block and screen calls
- You can send, receive forward and store SMS text messages
- Check your voicemail online, read it via email or text (you can even forward it)
- You can create personalized voicemail messages per contact
- You can group your contacts and manage their preferences on a group level
- Conference calling, call recording, call switching, 411 info — all that kind of thing is in there.
Now, rephrase my original question and substitute Google for ‘a company’. Do you still flatly refuse? I’m thinking a lot of people will just say “Oh, it’s Google” and after that, “Well sure, that sounds fantastic! Wow. Man, Google is cool aren’t they?” So, my question is: why is that?
Yes, Google Voice is cool.  Yes, I have signed up. Yes, I realize using it means everything I use it for becomes more data for Google to ‘organize’.  But I might do it anyway and I won’t be alone.
The way I see it, Google Voice users will be made up of three groups of people:
Group 1: Realize how much data the service gives Google access to, but trusts Google enough that it isn’t a concern.  These folks also elected Obama and only eat tuna clearly labeled dolphin safe. 
Group 2: Realize the data issue but don’t care, because they realize their ‘data’ is all over the place anyway - Google might as well have some (more) too. These are also the  people who told their classmates about Santa in the 3rd grade.
Group 3: No idea or thought paid to the matter of their data and who sees it. This the reality TV set.  As long as the Bachelorette is still on Monday night… they’re good to go.
Add those guys up and Google Voice will do just fine.  Even some of the people that refuse to use over privacy issues will trickle in after a while.  Peer pressure and the whole, ‘man I wish my phone did that’ factor is not to be lightly discounted (just ask Apple).
Google Voice does lots of neat stuff…  Sure you give up a little in the way of data privacy, but hey… selective call block?  How cool is that? I can go to the lake and have my office line ring to my cell?  Well that certainly has it’s practical applications.  We are, most of us, used to trading a little bad for a little good. So what’s it going to be for you? Are you Pro or Con on the Google Voice thing?  If you are, which of my groups do you fit into, or are you a group unto your own? 
Marketing and Measuring Social Media
- Posted by Mike McDonald in MAKE MONEY ONLINE, WEBSITE SEO |
- 0 Comments
Social media is huge.  That’s right; you heard it here first. Big news flash, huh? Everybody knows that anything ‘social’ is all the rage right now and it looks like it isn’t going to slow down anytime soon.  So, obviously, we all want to be ‘doing social’.. the problem is: what exactly does that entail? Beyond that, how do we answer the dreaded ‘what do we get out of it’ question to the accounting types?
During SMX Advanced we talked with several experts about social media marketing.  Tarla Cummings is a Social Media Manager from Location3 Media. She discussed the acronym ‘M.O.M.’ (Monitor Outreach Measure) for looking at your social media campaigns.
-Monitor: Pretty straightforward…  you need to keep an eye out for who is saying what and where.  Know where your company is being discussed across blogs, wikis, forums, Tweets, and places like that. 
We used to refer to this practice more in terms of reputation management than we did marketing.  However, if there is one major takeaway about social media here, it’s that marketing and reputation management are getting closer and closer to being synonymous. 
Do you actively monitor social sites/networks for your company? Tell us about it in the comments.
-Outreach: Once you have identified the places where conversations are taking place, get in there.  Identify the unhappy people and make an effort to win them over - or at least make a public attempt at doing so. 
Of course there will be cases where you cannot win over someone who no longer likes your company or brand.  That’s fine and to be expected. 
However, if you have made a genuine public attempt to address whatever issue they have, you have dramatically diminished the negative impact of the bad review/negative comments. 
Instead of subsequent users seeing your company in a bad light, the complainer can actually be perceived as the unreasonable party to subsequent users. After all, you have tried to make things good. Which looks better? A bash on your company followed up by people thanking the reviewer for ‘warning them’ or a bash on your company followed up by a response from your company?
You will lose far fewer future  clients in the latter scenario. It’s also important that you don’t just outreach to the squeaky wheels exclusively.  Look for the folks already evangelizing your company.  Find the people that say nice things about their experience with you and let them know you appreciate their support.  You might be surprised how far a little acknowledgement will go in this regard.  You can quite easily convert a casual fan into a very vocal proponent of you.
-Measure: This is where the rubber meets the road.  How do you measure all of this stuff?  The corporate types and accounting people are just now getting their mind around all of this analytics/paid search/conversion metric stuff and now we have to explain to them that this kind of internet marketing isn’t as exactly measurable in the same way as banners.
It’s an unenviable task, but a necessary one.  Think of it this way, you are laying the groundwork for your chat about mobile search marketing because it’s conceptually similar in this regard.  By the way, I wouldn’t bring it up in the same meeting.
Social isn’t quite as slippery to measure as it’s made out to be though. Your analytics packages will still give you a good idea about where your juice is coming from.  Some measurement metrics may necessitate a little more creativity on your part, but this isn’t a problem.  Simply make sure everybody is on the same page about your goals for these campaigns before you get things rolling. 
You know what your traffic rates are, you know what your conversion rates are.  You have YTD reports.  There are, in other words, plenty of things you can check to look for the impact of your social marketing efforts. 
One of the most important things to do however (as Ben Straley points out in this interview) is have clear objectives.  Do you want to see sign ups? Are you looking to increase unique visits? Are you looking to sell more Blue Beach Widgets?  Once everyone has this settled you can effectively measure - and more importantly - start attaching some dollar values to your social media campaigns.
Do you have clear cut objectives for social media? Share a few in the comments.
