The other day I was over at the great web marketing blog dosh dosh and read an interesting post on marketing your website without search engines. This got me thinking back to my early days on the web when I was in college (Does anyone remember those news updates?).  Basically, I would have to spend about 2 hours hunting and pecking through directories like gopher (named for the University of Minnesota mascot where the protocol was invented) for something that would now take about 10 seconds on google, bing or yahoo today.

I am a fan of kung fu movies–in Enter the Dragon,  Bruce Lee says when talking to one of his pupils: “It’s like a finger pointing a way to the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all the heavenly glory”.





In the context of marketing ourselves online, this quote reminds me of all the things we do to design our websites so that we will be discovered by these search engines. Today, search engines are the finger pointing a way to our websites. If we are not careful, we can almost forget about the fact that the goal of building a website for our businesses  is to get HUMAN BEINGS to read it, understand it,  and take action on our product and service offerings. As Bruce Lee says in the scene above: “We need emotional content”. In other words–we cannot just write for Mr. Googlebot. Now, I understand AND appreciate the revolution that search has brought to our lives. I mean, being able to find the exact wording–heck the actual scene of a Bruce Lee quote from an obscure 1970’s movie in 15 seconds is REMARKABLE.  But, I also think that becoming solely reliant on a search engine to send us traffic is not only not optimal–it is dangerous–what if Google all of a sudden decides that it doesn’t like you anymore??

So, what if search engines didn’t exist? What would people do to find their information? How would they learn about your product or service?  Maki over at dosh dosh put it this way:

Without search engines, people will do what they’ve been doing for thousands of years. They rely on each other. They rely on the community, on the collection of publications known within their geographic location or industry. They rely on word of mouth. And they also rely on getting information from common resources like a public square, library, forum or marketplace.

If you think about it, social media sites like twitter, facebook and LinkedIn are the digital equivalent of a public square. This is why building your social media footprint and helping people share your content online is so important  to really pack the punch that you are looking for from marketing your business online.

Do you remember Stretch Armstrong?  Although I did not have the toy, I certainly found pleasure in trying to destroy it or stretching to its maximum capacity as a kid (and you could).

This reminds me of the current McDonald’s campaign “eat like an Olympian.” Here it is in a nutshell: create a sauce that is only available in the Olympic Village and then create a promotion offering this sauce (for chicken nuggets) at all McDonald’s locations…so you can eat like an Olympian. Does this make you crave McDonald’s?

Would you consider this a stretch of the marketing message?

Absolutely!

Does it fit in with social media marketing?

Definitely!

Is this a bad campaign?

Actually, it’s a good campaign and here’s why.

The “eat like an Olympian” campaign is creating some feedback both positive and negative in the social media space and in the media…so it is getting people talking.  The viral buzz is going on both good and bad so the primary goal of invoking a response has been achieved. I am sure the McDonald’s team that is managing the Twitter stream may disagree but it is getting mind space and it is getting the McDonald’s brand out there. Even through the messaging is a total stretch and was created for the sake of saying “eat like an Olympian”, it is creating third party content by getting people talking online (and offline). Isn’t this the primary goal of social media?

This is a great example of how messaging can be a hit of miss (and here they took a risk). If no one was talking, it would be a miss (which is not the case here). Most companies don’t think this way and tend to create marketing and branding messages that are too insider. Then when it comes to having this translate into social media marketing, it typically becomes a stretch for them to get the messaging right. McDonald’s really stretched what we all consider a valid marketing message (even McDonald’s insiders would agree) but does it matter if the results are there? I guess it is too early to tell if this campaign helped to increase sales at McDonald’s but as for an example of how to stretch your marketing message to invoke a response and to get people talking, this one is good.

I have to admit that I did have McDonald’s last night but I was not motivated to try the special sauce of the McNuggets. I guess I was the one who missed out on eating like an Olympian.

Every online business must have the basics in place when it comes to social media marketing. If you are still not sure ‘if’ social media makes sense for your business, then you might as well delete your website from the Internet. This is not a pitch for using Mint Social. If fact, most companies we work with have some semblance of social media in place. OK, so here is you must do checklist (it is short because this is just the tip of the iceberg).

1. Blog – We like self-hosted Wordpress. Not sure you need a blog, skip down to 2-5 below.
2. LinkedIn (business account and personal account) – Most people have a linkedIn account but we am always surprised when businesses have not taken the time to create a business profile and RSS in their posts from their blog. LinkedIn profiles are usually in the top 10 in Google when doing a name search (if setup correctly). As for your personal profile, you can RSS in your blog posts, SlideShare documents, Twitter account and much more. LinkedIn profiles will become the first or second place people look for making hiring decisions and buying decisions.
3. Facebook (fan page and maybe ads) – Fan pages are valuable because Google sees them and loves them. You can create a fan base and you can RSS in content from your blog, Twitter and other places. This blog feeds our Facebook fan page and I try to keep my personal profile more personal than business but it ends up being a blend of both.
4. Google Account – If you do not have a Google account, you are missing out Big Time. Get a Gmail account and start using it for all your social media emails.  It is a great way to filter your email but it also gives you access to must have Google tools. Want to show up in the maps area in a Google search? Get you business on Google Maps. Google profiles are another way to promote you and your business and auto populate your profile via RSS. It goes without saying that Analytics, Alerts and Webmaster Tools are essential to have  GOOG-411, Talk and Voice are fun to have. Insider Tip: Google Maps is where your customers can give your business reviews. The more reviews you have, the more likely you will show up in the top spot in Google.
5. Merchantcircle.com – This is another business profile account that is great for geographically targeted keyword marketing. It is also has a great blog and is another place for your customers to write reviews.
6. Tools for the overworked business – Social media gets a back rap because it is time consuming and does not have an immediate ROI (learn more about ROI and Social Media). If you agree with this or are too busy to Twitter and Blog, here are the last things you should do.
   1. Secure your personal name and business name in Twitter (you can thank us later) and use HootSuite to feed your blog to Twitter or find data feeds using HootSuite that can auto-populate your account. Personal and business reputation management is important and Twitter is a great tool for this.
   2. Pandora.com – Being too busy does not mean you can not have some fun while working. Maybe you do not have a killer play list on your iPod or need a change with the tunes you listen to. Setup a Pandora account, pick your favorite band and listen to streaming music 24/7 of this band and the music that influenced then while your overworked body is hacking away at the computer.

About 2 months ago, Pepsi announced that it would not be advertising in the Superbowl for the first time in 23 years. Why, after so long, would Pepsi concede that large of a customer mindshare to rival Coca-cola? Their answer is, in my opinion the canary in the coal mine for a television dominated media and it should make you, as a small to medium sized business owner very excited.  A Time magazine article on Yahoo News puts it very well:

To Pepsi, and to companies around the world, the days when mass-market media is the sole vehicle to reach an audience are officially over. Instead of pouring millions of dollars into a Super Bowl commercial, Pepsi has started a social-media campaign to promote its “Pepsi Refresh” initiative. Pepsi plans to give away $20 million in grant money to fund projects in six categories: health, arts and culture, food and shelter, the planet, neighborhoods and education. People can go to the Pepsi website refresheverything.com – which can also be accessed through Facebook and Twitter – to both submit ideas and vote on others they find appealing.

As a social media marketing company, our answer was “about time”. We have long held the notion that social media can drive just as many eyeballs as mass media and it can do so over a longer period of time. In other words,  once you put something out on the internet, it is out there for anyone to find (AND discuss). This is in direct contrast to  a TV commercial that is 30 seconds and done. Sure, there can be some residual “water cooler buzz” but this too eventually fades from consciousness. Also, because social media is a dialogue rather than a monologue, we are able to participate in shaping how we want companies (like Pepsi) to behave and interact with us as consumers. The feedback is faster and more direct which can allow even big brands to adjust messaging quickly to the general sentiment of their actions. While many Television networks and companies are frightened of this sudden and dramatic shift, it is my opinion that these new media should be seen as an asset by these folks rather than something to “deal with”. NYU Professor Clay Shirky discussed this very well at the Web 2.o conference a few years ago:

The biggest opportunity for businesses of all sizes  in this new media is the ability to inject themselves into the dialogue right alongside large mega-companies such as pepsi and be put on a level playing field with them. Cost of eyeballs–at least in the digital arena as a barrier to entry is no longer there if you can solve the content problem and leverage the conversation that is happening regardless of if you are there or not. As a business, it will greatly behoove you to jump in and participate in your area of expertise.

Earlier this week,  Apple launched their long anticipated new device called the iPad with the usual media fanfare.   While they set up a micro site to deliver the details of the product, a comment on our post about duplicate content vs. content syndication by Greg Head of New Avenue really highlighted what Mint Social has been preaching to our clients for the past couple of years:

I am seeing more and more examples of how search engine activities and clicks are moving off of commercial websites to where the content and conversation is. After Apple’s iPad introduction yesterday, I read 20 articles on the iPad and checked the Twitter stream for more opinions – I never went the Apple.com website at all. My time was 90% content reading and 10% conversation reading. It’s a content game for sure.

So what can this teach you about marketing your business online? Well, it means that you need to get your message out to where the conversation is happening on the internet. Your website, while important as the central publishing hub of your businesse’s content is really just the beginning. Nobody really cares about your website. In fact, as we have said before,  traffic to websites like yours  only accounts for about 25% of all internet activity. A whopping 75% of  activity on the internet is done on social networks and bookmarking sites.  You NEED to be pushing your message out as far as you can as quickly as you can to the places on the internet that people are having these discussions–I call it the iWaterCooler (Take that Steve Jobs ) Now many people think that this means merely reposting your blog post on Facebook and Twitter and 3 or 4 other social networks. While this is better than nothing, it is only a small fraction of the picture.  It is  what we at Mint Social describe as content duplication.  You want to syndicate your content–not duplicate it.  Content syndication is where you take that one blog post and blast it out to 50+ spots on the web that are looking for content like yours. It is the difference between being a parrot or a printing press.

While this may seem like a daunting task, there are tools that can make this a whole lot easier.  We will discuss that in upcoming posts. Stay tuned!

In having developed websites and in being in the online marketing business for over 12 years, it is interesting to note that  lack of content is always the point when website projects come to a screeching halt. Why is content so damn difficult?

Just about every company overlooks the fact that there is content passing them by every day that are opportunities to promote their business. Businesses do not seem to realize what is content and, a lot of times, consider it a quantity game versus a quality game (this is where most businesses give up… thinking quality content is too difficult to create).

We have been testing the difference between quantity and quality content for many years and we have found that there is a truism,

“good content can be tough to come by.”

Therefore, it only makes sense to better leverage good quality content when you have it to maximize the marketing opportunity. The last post I wrote talked about duplicate content verses content syndication and this post is a continuation of this thought. It is all about good quality content. We know that. So how do businesses solve the content problem because we know marketing and being found in Google is a content game? <Insert Content Engine>

If content opportunities are staring every business right in the face, having a content engine makes a lot of sense. The fuel for your content engine is videos, articles, photos, audio and so on. My last blog post and all future blog post are going to utilize a metrics of three. Blog posts will be converted into a podcast and market through Podcast channels (using Google Voice) as well as being recreated as articles and marketed through article syndication channels (in addition to blog syndication). Yes, this takes a little bit more work but after all, but if content is tough to come by, why not leverage content in as many different formats as possible. When time permits, we may add a fourth dimension by creating videos or rich documents like PowerPoints with this same content. Wow, now we have a factor of four and if we syndicate these various forms of content out to 100s of the most relevant marketing channels, we are really leverage our overall online marketing effect. We call this the visibility multiplier effect.

The visibility multiplier effect is quite simple. We are increasing your footprint in the Internet world, we call this your social media footprint, by creating all types of content and delivering it to where 75% of the Internet is (on web 2.0 websites). Therefore, you can simply take one form of content, like a blog post, and create 2 or 3 other content formats and syndicate them to the most relevant marketing channels online. Think of this as portfolio diversification with your investments.

If arguably 75% of all Internet traffic ends up in a social network, (Flicker for photos, YouTube for video to articles, press releases, audio, you name it) then it really is a Content Game. So how do you win the content game online? This always bring to mind the thing with have heard forever and ever from all the SEO experts and that is  that duplicate content is bad. I would tend to agree. However, there is a new angle that you have to consider.

First, if you’re not sure about universal search in Google, pick any random term that you want to search, for instance, Social Media Marketing and see what it shows up in the top ten results. In order to own those spots you need to have a website, a blog, audio, video, photos, a press release, an article and it goes on and on). So, what about duplicate content and how is this relevant?

It goes back to how do we get our content found where 75% of all the traffic on the Internet is (and not on your website). Essentially, you need to bring your content to where the people are. But, if you duplicate the same content (say an article) all over the Internet, isn’t this duplicate content? This is where the lesson regarding duplicate content versus syndicated content must be learned.

I had the pleasure of seeing Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz.com, at the last AZIMA event and asked him this pointed question about duplicate content. He explained it like this. SEOmoz.com is a content rich site that licenses it’s content. So, if SEOmoz licenses an article to the Washington Post, they can essentially outrank SEOmoz for the same article. However, if they license the same article to 40 other websites or more and require all of them to link back to the original article on SEOmoz, we now have article syndication and SEOmoz will outrank all the other articles. Why?

The article is first published on SEOmoz.com. Then all the other article publishers are promoting this same article on their website while linking it back to be original source. In the eyes of Google, this mass incidence of the same article with links back to the original source is a textbook example for how article syndication works vs. duplicate content where the article is on just a few other sites looking like duplicate content.

Here is another tip: leverage your partner’s content (and experts you agree with) on topics you want to promote on your blog. It does not always need to be about you and/or your company. Make your blog a contributor network like HelpingThePoor.org.

Following up on my blog post on “How to create a blog post with Google Voice and more out of frustration with the poor voice recognition on Google Voice, I added another component, thanks to a recommendation from Andrew Greess (Qspray.com), called Vlingo. This is a better voice recognition service. I am using this service for my Blackberry and this is the ultimate in a time saving tool that is essential for Blackberry users for voice commands and dictating memos, emails, for calling people and voice recognition for browsing on the web and it is ideal with Bluetooth devices (testing the quality with this post…we will see).

However, I did want be able to use the Google Voice to add audio files to blog posts so I start with dictation to Vlingo, clean it up and then create a Google voice file to create the lazy option on blog posts for those that just want images and listen vs. reading the text. (Note, also testing Bluetooth with Google Voice…let me know what you think). So this technology tandem should help increase blog posting frequency and hopefully quality as well. Let’s see how long I can keep this New Year’s resolution going.

I had the distinct honor and pleasure of presenting on Social Media and the Law of Attraction at The Bob Proctor Matrixx event this past weekend. What a first class operation this is that attracts top level businesses from all over the world to get together for 6 days to learn and strategize on how to grow personally and professionally.

If you are familiar with The Secret, than you are familiar with Bob Proctor and The Law of Attraction. It is interesting how social media and the law of attraction are so similar. Afterall, social media is all about attracting like minded individuals and businesses to build your network. I think the misconception is that social media is more about personal interests than business interests. This is where the law of attraction kicks in. If you think social media is all about personal interests, than you will most likely treat it this way and your social media efforts will yield results that are more personal…based on your interests. However, if you want to leverage social media to grow your business, than this is excatly what will result.

It all comes back to one simple principle; the content you publish will attract the audience you are trying to reach. If you want to talk about what you ate and where you are, there are people online that not only care about this, but will also want to connect with you. Isn’t that cool? Well, since social media is our business, we are more about business tactics and strategies for promoting businesses online and it does go back to your content…good content for the good of the people (offer solutions to questions and problems without being too pitchy about your business). However, the law of attraction does kick in again, in that, you will attract more business the better your content is for helping out others. Be a giver and the fruits of your efforts will come back tenfold.

There’s a lot of talk about social media and the need for individuals and businesses to get engaged with the conversation or relinquish control. Is this too harsh of a statement? Social media is a time commitment and keeping up with creating fresh content can be challenging. So here is social proof that with the right tools and a good foundation (we call it your Social Media Footprint), it can be easy, efficient and effective.

So what is Google Voice and is it a tool that can help simplify your life…especially as it relates to social media? The idea here is to leave a voicemail on your Google Voice account and have Google translate the voicemail into text which you can then use as a blog post. Sounds simple so I tested it out. I will use this as the basis of my blog post.

So how does it work? Go to www.google.com/voice and if you have a gmail account,  you can simply just sign in to your gmail or whatever Google account you have and type in the URL. Here is the link to get an invitation to join (it is by invite only while they are in beta): https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/. Give your name, your email address and it’s about 4 days to get the be access email to sign up and start your account.

Does it work for creating blog posts?  The first time was a little rough since thinking and talking out a blog post is something I need to refine my skills at but I love it. I think the time limit for voice messages is 3 minutes and 18 seconds. Certainly long enough for a blog post. You can use your current cell number or get a new one however you get a new number as a byproduct so now sure how this plays out. Call your cell phone, leave a message and then you get your voice message sent to you in text and in a audio file that is embeddable, uploadable, etc. You can also setup your account to send you an IM too. I still think my Blackberry Storm’s visual voicemail is more convenient when you want to hear the voice message…my Storm is not working correctly to play the voice message on my phone but it could be me (more likely a flaw with the software).

Overall, it still took me about 45 minutes to create this blog post from using Google Voice but it is my first time around and I can only get more efficient. Also, here is the audio file that was the basis of this post. Cool stuff!