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Marketing approaches have been transformed by all the recent technological innovations, and society along with it. Businesses that invest efforts in social media have envisioned the value of taking marketing to the next level.

Social media consists of:
• Online newsletters
• Blogs, including microblogs like Twitter
• Community forums
• Online Video (webcasts and podcasts)
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Hosting community forums or posting company blogs, uploading podcasts, and enhancing SEO through search sites like Google can build an organization’s online reputation. These virtual actions can translate into real dollars.

Social Media: Where Your Customers Are

Remember, you want to be where your customers are. Today that’s social media. This is true whether your customers are consumers or other businesses. A business is composed of people, and those people are active in social media.

Customers today want to know you before doing business with you, and many turn to social media to research and ask for opinions. If you’re not there, you’re invisible to a large segment of potential customers.

You May Already be on Social Media

Just because you are not actively participating does not mean you don’t have a social media presence. People talk about their experiences with companies, both good and bad, on Twitter and Facebook. They post opinions on Yelp and other review sites.

You cannot control what they say, but if you participate, you can direct some of the conversation. By opening dialog with posters, both positive and negative, you can create a positive image for your business.

It’s About Reach, Not ROI

Many business owners are reluctant to allocate resources to social media, because the relation between cost/effort and results is not as clear-cut as other marketing avenues. This is the wrong approach. Social media expert Erik Qualman, in a ClickZ post “Social Similar to Search a Decade Ago”, offers a great analogy between the ROIs of social media and your telephone. It’s difficult to quantitatively measure return on either, but you know a phone is a necessary communication tool. So is social media. It’s called social media marketing, but it’s really social media communication. And customers love communication.

The Pay-Offs of Social Media

Visibility
Social media provides the opportunity to bring large-scale brand awareness. Many consumers spend time online and this is where businesses are most likely to be seen. Through this visibility companies can expand their name rapidly and as a result increase probability of growing their customer base.

Customer Interaction
People generally like to be heard and online connections in the social environment allows for more interaction. Social media offers a platform for testimonials and provides the ability to ask customers to make suggestions, ultimately improving the business. A solid way to reach customers is to give them what they want. Isn’t asking them a good way to learn?

Recommendations
Consumers generally turn towards personal recommendations as these are more trustworthy than listening to a biased advertisement. Through social media satisfied consumers can rapidly spread their enthusiasm over a purchase experience to all their social connections.

Be a Marketing Pioneer

Erik Qualman asks the pertinent question “will you be a pioneer and let your social media efforts propel you from good to great?” Businesses that stand by the wayside and watch innovation pass them by miss the initial competitive edge gained by the pioneers.

Social media is the future of marketing, at least in the immediate future. Technology isn’t going to slow down and wait, and businesses that don’t embrace social media will miss the opportunity.

photo courtesy BJN

When a person searches for “Kentucky fried chicken“, Google’s primary goal is to try to understand whether you’re in Kentucky looking for fried chicken or in New Jersey (like I am) looking for the local KFC. In a nutshell, that’s an example of how a searcher’s environment… their associations and place in the world give context to the search that’s taking place.

With that goal firmly in their sights, Google has helped move us from the world where rankings are driven by keyword density to one where context is king. They are looking for cues of what the searcher (you and I) is really looking for when they search for Kentucky fried chicken. Take that same kind of richness of context and apply it to the text itself on your website. It has become increasingly important to ensure your website’s copy not only addresses your visitors’ core search, but their motivations and environment as well. What do I mean? In a simple example, when a person is interested in immigration, they also are likely to have questions or ideas about becoming a citizen, the naturalization process, getting a green card… legally, work in the US, visas, worker status, help and more. For both your user and your search engine rankings, this sort of in-depth understanding of the words and concepts related to your topic is key as we move into 2010 and 2011.

Great, Clay. You’ve proven you’re a nerd and like tangents (like Google does???). How can you put this sort of Latent Semantic Analysis (“LSA”) to work for me? I’ve found LSA is great for rankings but, more practically, it’s great for giving you ideas on where to go with your web content development. If you can tap in to the relationships and concepts associated with your topic, it makes it much easier to produce interesting copy that’s useful to your visitors.

Here’s how you can put LSA to work for you using “motorcycle accidents” as an example. Search for the phrase and note the first web URL they return that has good content on the landing page. Take that URL, copy it, and visit the Google Keyword Tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. Under “How would you like to generate keyword ideas?” select the Website content radio button. Paste the URL into the input box and check the “Include other pages on my site linked from this URL” checkbox. Click to search and Google will go out and gather LSA ideas for you! The results returned include grouped keywords centered around concepts.

The first URL returned is http://accident-law.freeadvice.com/auto/motorcycle_accident_statistics.htm. Analysis shows related concepts like personal injury, motorcycle helmets, safety, learning to ride, head on crash, motor bike crashes, etc. Note those LSA keywords.

Move on to another top URL returned by Google: http://www.vtwinmama.com/accident_survivors.htm. Using the Google Keyword Tool on this URL, we get more keyword concepts like Harley Davidson, motorcycle safety, leather motorcycle jacket, motorcycle class and more. Each URL you research will return variants that are often useful. Of course, there is a lot of repetition of concepts like motorcycle accident attorneys and motorcycle safety but there are always gems in the results.

Thoughts?

I haven’t seen it on TV yet, but the SearchEngineWatch Blog has put up notice that there’s a new Yahoo! television ad spot that’s supposed to start running soon. Here’s the video:

Did it excite you? *Yawn* was my reaction. Will this move the needle for Yahoo! search like Bing’s recent ad campaign?

One of the major changes in Google over the past few months is the increased implementation of customized search results. Publicized in July 2008 on the Official Google Blog, customized or personalized search results deliver website listings according to the searcher’s location, past & recent history. As Google states in some of their search results’ fine print,

When possible, Google will customize your search results based on location and/or recent search activity. Additionally, when you’re signed in to your Google Account, you may see even more relevant, useful results based on your web history.

This means that, if you search for securities lawyers, it will likely return lawyers within what Google determines to be your location. Another example would be that if you have searched for Philadelphia car accident lawyer in the past, visited a site and quickly returned to Google, it’s likely your quick abandonment of that site in the past will result in its demotion within your Google results in the future.

“Ok,” you say, “but everyone pretty well already knows that Google is customizing search results.” You’re right. There’s been a lot of chatter (1, 2, 3) about the issue for some time now. The extent to which they harvest & connect information is still to be determined but one thing is for sure: the idea of a “universal” set of search results is quickly becoming antiquated. SEO professionals have been talking about the use and uselessness of ranking reports for some time now, but the increased customization of search engine ranking pages now forces clients (like lawyers) to recognize that rankings vary, so website traffic and conversion of that traffic into a phone call or contact form submission is a much better, more quantifiable marker of success. As Mark Jackson with Search Engine Watch says,

“The best thing you can do now is to start focusing on a different measurement of success. Don’t focus on search engine rankings. Focus on ROI, conversions, and overall traffic.”

Since a lot my day centers around what attorney is found for what keyword, this issue is extremely important to me and SEO agencies like the one I work in. Most law firms are still absolutely focused on rankings and what they show up for. The SEO Ranking Report is a standard, expected part of legal and almost any other type of SEO services. Most agencies are prepared to deliver the traffic and conversion metrics, but the client conversations to re-set ranking display expectations will be very difficult. Imagine trying to explain to a client that they’re not showing up when they search Google because they (themselves) have searched it too much without clicking on their own listing?

Anyone with any thoughts? Oh, and what am I, as a user of the Bruce Clay SEOToolSet, supposed to think about their dedication to the quality of their ranking report product when Bruce Clay himself is reporting the imminent demise of the ranking report?

A question that I sometimes encounter: “Is my site optimized for the ______ (Firefox, Opera, etc.) web browser? ” Now, with Google’s Chrome browser entering the fray, it’s bound to spawn a whole new round of the same question. This kind of browser optimization should always be checked but, before you invest hours into re-coding your site to work correctly in Firefox or Chrome, you should know the market share to balance your consideration.

StatCounter.com is a wonderful, free web analytics program that is highly recommended. Who knew they had a blog? Well they do and, in it, they’ve revealed the latest stats on Global Browser Market Share, as it has been claimed by Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and “Other” top browsers (Flock, Opera, etc.):

IE FireFox Safari Chrome Other

Aug 28, 2008 68.17% 24.66% 2.83% N/A 4.33%
Aug 29, 2008 67.81% 24.78% 2.84% N/A 4.57%
Aug 30, 2008 65.41% 26.38% 3.04% N/A 5.17%
Aug 31, 2008 64.49% 26.91% 3.06% N/A 5.56%
Sep 01, 2008 66.92% 25.26% 2.99% N/A 4.84%
Sep 02, 2008 67.58% 24.36% 2.91% N/A 5.06%
Sep 03, 2008 67.81% 23.54% 2.70% 1.11% 4.87%
Sep 04, 2008 70.87% 21.26% 2.48% 1.15% 4.25%

Very interesting that it’s Firefox and “other” users who presumably compose the 1.15% now claimed by Google Chrome. To me, it indicates first adopters are the only ones using Chrome so far. The numbers for Firefox (at 21.26% on September 4, 2008) are more intriguing… there may be some “techie” skew in the sample set but not much. Chrome’s numbers show us that. At approximately 20% of market share, Firefox has nearly doubled its user base since my recollection of one year ago.

Chrome and Firefox share the same Mozilla browser core, so there shouldn’t be any major difference in the way they render your pages. The message is clear, though, if you have an error in Firefox, you should invest the time and labor to fix it for the sake of 20% of market. If a Chrome-specific error arises, explore what browser optimization would be necessary to fix the issue, but take a wait and see approach for the next few weeks.

Ultimately, if you’re not able to correct a browser-specific issue, a USER-AGENT browser redirect will be necessary with different landing pages for different browser versions.

[Full Global Browser Market Share stats]

It’s July 4th, so I was out in my garage working on my car, listening to WABC 770. A radio ad for search engine optimization (SEO) came on, believe it or not. This post isn’t about the permeation of SEO into the fabric of B2B but, rather, about the guarantee offered in the ad. (I really thought these guarantees had gone away a long time ago.) The provider’s SEO guarantee was this: if they don’t get top 10 rankings for you you don’t pay again until they do. Sounds good, right? This pitch has been around for at least 8 years – when I first encountered it. What’s the trick?

The firm guarantees that you pay them and, if after 90 days, they don’t have top 10 rankings for X of your keywords on the top search engines, you don’t pay until they do. The SEO guarantee “trick” lies within the small print.

Let’s say you have 100 keywords. They’ll guarantee 10, maybe 20 top ten rankings. Ok, so count on them being the worst keywords on your list. But even that’s not so bad. The big payoff (for them) is in the definition of “top search engines”: you think Google, Yahoo and MSN. They will define the group as something like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Looksmart, Lycos, Dogpile and other lesser engines. The problem(s):

1. the “B level” search engines included easily give the SEO firm the rankings they need to satisfy the guarantee… with little value to the site owner
2. even #3 search engine MSN can easily show rankings in 90 days, but it delivers less traffic volume than will satisfy most site owners
3. there is often the ability for the SEO firm to simply pay for sponsored search “rankings” to satisfy the guarantee

So buyer beware…

I’m sure not all SEO guarantees are a rip off… although Google recommends that you reject them, clearly stating “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings…” And we won’t even get into how SEO is about more than rankings (it’s about ROI). But I wanted to make lawyers and other search engine optimization service consumers aware of how guaranteeing rankings should be a warning sign, not reassurance.

Have a happy 4th of July!

[tags]SEO[/tags]

It’s the day before Christmas, so I thought I’d post something entertaining: the SEOmoz Unusual SearchTerms from the Month of November. Hilarious… take a look if you’re a search nerd like me.

Have a happy new year.

We’re all guilty of “ego surfing” every once and a while (searching your name in Google and seeing what comes up). For some, it’s scary to see how much of your life is documented online. For others, it’s a nice ego boost to see your name “up in lights” within Google’s search engine results pages. Either way, a quick search of your name will turn up who’s saying what about you online.

Turning my attention to attorneys – is it hard to imagine an attorney would be interested to see what others are saying about him/her? Well, sure. But let’s take this a step further and learn a few things from ego surfing. How about a few recommendations on getting the most out of your profiles online:

• In your initial search, make sure you put your name in quotes (eg “Your Namehere”) to specifically return results for you and not a mixture of your first and/or last name. Do the same for your law firm’s name, if different from your own.
• Once you’ve pulled up the search results, my next tip is to make sure that the first page of information that’s returned contains correct information. No, you can’t change others’ opinions about you, but double check that the address and phone information printed along with your name will actually reach you or your office.
• If you don’t see too much online about you, your practice or your cases, there are a few sites that should be high on your list for building your name online. Yes, you are effectively “brand-building” your name and, thereby, your firm’s visibility.
• Lawyers.com – you should get a listing.
• FindLaw.com – you should (probably) get a listing.
• LinkedIn.com – you should set up a profile
• Jigsaw.com - you should set up a profile for your firm
• Naymz.com – you should set up a profile
• Finally, if you’re the type that’s interested in actively TELLING THE WORLD about what you’re up to, top options include:
• Start a blog at a site like Blogger.com or WordPress.com
• Wink.com is a good place to aggregate your information (as is Naymz.com)
• Sign up for Twitter.com (ugh, waaay too much detail for me)
• Sign up for all the social bookmarking accounts you can… and use them!

Yes, there are those who love to document the minutia of their lives for their mothers to read… but there are also those that carefully manage their name and “reputation” online to maximize the impact of search in client development. Whether you’re an old timer who’s still scared of what’s being said online or on the cutting edge, it’s important to learn from what you see when ego surfing and take action as necessary.

[tags]ego surfing, search engines[/tags]