Marty Thornley » Ideas

The Spectrum and Spiral of Social Media

marty — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 20:32:51 +0000

Danny Brown has been a recent find of mine in the social media and PR world and a great addition to my reading. He is a PR consultant who writes some great articles with a very personal approach.

Continuum or Spectrum?

He recently had an interview with Tom Cunniff. The idea was The Continuum of Social Media. Being a physics geek, I had to check out anything with the word Continuum. The basic idea was that there is relationship between the size of the company (and the size of that company’s needed audience) to the percentage of their media being social media vs. traditional paid advertising. Small companies or individuals could benefit from 99% social media and 1% (in some cases, like mine, 0%) paid media. Meanwhile large corporations selling to huge markets would be more like 99% paid advertising to 1% social media. In between there is a whole continuous range of needs and uses of media. Continuum works but I keep coming back to the word spectrum as better representation of something that ranges from one end to the other. A continuum to me would suggest something wraps around on itself with no clear beginning or end.

In one of the responses to his own article, Danny left a comment mentioning the potential for bad word of mouth to spread very quickly. While the article was interesting in and of itself, this comment is what got me to thinking, and to respond with a comment of my own. Briefly, I pointed out that small companies can make use of social media to broadcast and advertise essentially for free like never before. The largest of companies would not benefit from the advertising they get from a few thousand followers on Twitter, since they need an audience of millions. What they do get however, is a chance to respond to the bad word of mouth on a personal basis that they have never had access to and potentially turn around some of that bad word of mouth.

Some New Ideas

After leaving the site, I kept thinking about this because it is the other side of exactly what the original article was talking about. Going back to my math roots, I realized this creates a great inverse relationship between a few things. To make it simpler, let me list the basic concepts:

The smallest of companies (or individuals) can use social media to broadcast and start conversations that greatly help them.
The largest of companies need a mass audience and will not benefit as much, needing to advertise on some level.
The largest of companies will still be at risk of bad word of mouth, which can spread like wild fire now. On the other hand they can make use of social media to engage the consumer on a very personal level and possibly turn that around.
The smallest of companies (or individuals) will still be at risk of bad word of mouth but their reach and their audience is limited. At first I thought this meant the damage would be limited. But now I have reversed that and think the damage could actually be GREATER because their ability to respond is limited.

This last point is the one that struck me. A good comparison would be a contractor who rips someone off. The word of mouth will spread around that customer’s group of friends and relatives, maybe that neighborhood (let’s use the word community), but the reach is limited. The contractor can go to the next community and do the same thing. Of course this kind of behavior will catch up with the contractor eventually but the idea is that they could keep hopping from community to community for a while. Compare that to a large international corporation whose brand could be tarnished forever because their scope is global. They have no next community to go to.

The Spiral

On the other hand, let’s take this into social media and see how things change. A small time individual (maybe a freelance web designer, like me?) could face a serious problem if bad word of mouth spreads. If some type of rumor, bad client experience, or anything negative were to somehow spread, it could very quickly grow beyond the reach of their small social circle. Now when that contractor goes to the next community there is a much better chance that the word has gotten out. Someone’s reputation and branding could be tarnished before they even have one. In addition to all this, they have no ability to take out a full page ad or 30 second TV spot to make sure their side is heard.

Final Thoughts

So we have something like this:

Small companies benefit from Social Media with a better ability to market themselves and start conversations but could risk a limited ability to respond to and change or stop conversations.
Larger companies might not need or even care about the small impact of Social Media on their initial marketing but could find a great way to connect directly to the conversations that are started about them.

Both of these are taking things to the extreme ends of the spectrum and there is a whole range of possibilities in between.

Can anyone add to this or relate some real world examples?

© marty for Marty Thornley, 2009. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: marketing, Resources, SEO, social media, tips

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An Introduction to SEO

marty — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 11:53:10 +0000

The term SEO very simply stands for Search Engine Optimization. Yet most people seem to think it is some magic formula that will drive customers to their site. While the term SEO is still thrown around and still relevant, it is usually misunderstood and I often hear a lot of really outdated and sometimes downright wrong ideas about what SEO is – especially from potential clients. I can’t tell you the number of times someone has asked me how much I charge to add keywords to their site and make them rank #1 on Google. I can tell you that my answer every time has been that it is not as easy as just adding keywords and anyone promising a number one ranking on Google is trying to scam you.

Rather than get into the scam aspects here, I will just point out this article on ‘Black Hat’ vs ‘White Hat’ SEO techniques. Let’s just say that buying your way to the top through illegitimate means can get you BANNED from Google – the exact opposite of what you were trying to achieve.

Brief History of SEO and Keywords

I am going to greatly simplify here for the sake of keeping things short. If you think back to the early days of the Internet, so much was different. Sites were static and simple. Google was just starting to crawl the web. In these early days, it was fairly easy to add a few keywords to the site’s code and jump up in the search rankings.

The problem now is that the Internet has grown. There are millions of sites and those sites are much more complex and dynamic, constantly changing and pumping new content into the search engines. Google has grown to the top search engine (by far) in large part do to the programming it uses to dissect and rank sites. This search algorithm is extremely intelligent and uses a number of factors in determining how your page ranks in searches.

But to keep it simple, you need to do two things:

1) Make your site RELEVANT.
2) Make your site VISIBLE.

Basic SEO Practices

This article does a great job of outlining some of the major factors in optimizing your site for search engines. Most of it involves working with the HTML and other coding languages involved, so it gets a little tech heavy. But if you work with a web designer, they should be aware of this stuff. The main point is that a search engine reads your site. Not the way we see it, but through the code, looking specifically for a few things: the content, the metadata (fancy word for the keywords), how the site is linked to itself (internal links) and how it is linked to from other sites (external links).

Making Your Site Relevant

To be relevant, the site needs optimized content. This means information that readers will find useful and/or interesting. It means up to date and recently posted content.

But to the search engines, it needs a few more things that are a little more complex. Search engines want Headings that use important keywords and links that refer to other sections of the site. It also means that lots of other ‘relevant’ sites have linked to you and that when they link to you, the use important ‘anchor text’ for the links. For example, if Joe from down the street (who has no visitors) links to me with the words ‘CLICK HERE’, it means next to nothing. If the biggest web design site on the Internet links to me with the words ‘GREAT WEB DESIGNER’ that means a lot and the relevance of my site just went up.

The actual content of your site, though is purely up to you. Add as much fresh and relevant content as you can, as often as you can. There are countless ways to improve your writing and that is too broad of a topic to get into here, but the key is to be relevant and recent.

Making Your Site Visible

SEO is actually just the beginning of the process in making your site visible. I have outlined a few examples of other ways to drive traffic to your site in my article ‘Why SEO is Not Enough‘ , so I won’t repeat it here. With the expansion of social networking there are plenty of ways to get the word of mouth machine moving without ever showing up in the searches. Try this post from webdevlounge.com about using social media to market your blog or this one from Duct Tape Marketing for a more detailed explanation of ways to use all the social media options in concert with each other.

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Why SEO is Not Enough

marty — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 11:50:38 +0000

The biggest problem with all this craziness over SEO is that it gets confused with the real goal, which is simply to increase traffic to your site. If you could get meaningful traffic to your site without search engines, would SEO even matter? To take it to another level – think of this: increased traffic eventually leads to a better page ranking, so one of the ways to improve your sites SEO is to get traffic there. But isn’t that why we want SEO? So where do we start?

The Real Goal

Let’s start with our actual goal, which is not to rank #1 on Google, but to get more meaningful traffic to our site. Using SEO to rank higher in searches is merely one way of doing that. There are countless others. For example when I go to Geico.com, it is because I saw a TV commerical with a talking lizard, not because I searched for insurance in a search engine. When I first heard of GoDaddy.com it was because they had a memorable Super Bowl commercial with a hot spokeswoman, not because I found them online. I am not suggesting spending millions on a TV campaign, simply pointing out that there are other ways.

Before I get into solutions, let me relate an experience that will point out one of the major problems with basic SEO.

Ranking High with The Wrong Keywords Is Meaningless

I was once contacted by a potential client who wanted me to give a quote on SEO for his site. I looked over his site, put together a little proposal on a number of things I might be able to do and I also explained that SEO is actually a very complex and ongoing process. The problem is that this client was being told by someone else that adding some keywords would cost $250 per site and would guarantee #1 ranking on Google. Even after I explained that his site already HAD keywords, that it would take me all of 30 seconds to change or update those keywords and that anyone promising a #1 ranking on Google (for $250, no less!) is a scam, he decided the promise of a #1 ranking was too enticing.

Let’s look at this #1 ranking promise. There are several ways in which this little scam works. One is fairly harmless and you lose whatever money you paid. The other can actually be very harmful to the point of being BANNED from Google and you lose your money. Going by some of the estimates I have heard that go along with #1 promises, it could be a lot of money, too.

The harmful way involves illegal or at least dishonest, cloaked methods of basically spamming the search engines to think that your site is extremely popular and relevant. There is only one problem. Your site is not popular OR relevant and Google is extremely smart about this kind of thing. Once they discover it, your site is done and won’t show up in the searches at all. Let’s hope you haven’t gone that route.

The less harmful way is still a waste of time. Let’s say you get promised a #1 ranking but they fail to mention which keywords you will be ranked for. If your name is John Smith and you are a carpenter from Los Angeles, it would be ideal if you listed well when someone searches for ‘Los Angeles carpenter’ or maybe ‘Los Angeles contractor’. What if you rank #1 for ‘Los Angeles John Smith’? No one is searchng for that when they need a capenter. What is you rank #1 for ‘Las Vegas carpenter’? That is also meaningless, since you don’t live in Las Vegas. While this is not harmful to your site, it also not very helpful.

So let’s move onto solutions…

I am going to to outline a few quick examples of quick, easy ways to get some word-of-mouth flowing about your site and use some real-world examples of how they have worked or me.

COMMENTING ON BLOGS

There are many great reasons to comment on blogs.

Last week, I found an interesting article and commented on it. A while later, I was asked to write a guest blog post for the site, which will allow me to post back to my own site, sending people back to whatever page I send them to in the link. It took me all of two or three minutes to read that article and write a quick comment. I have yet to see the real results of this venture (since the guest post is not up yet) but I would like to pass along a similar experience from HowtoMakeMyBlog.com .He does a great job of spelling out how and why traffic was driven to his blog when he did a guest post.

If you spend time reading blogs (and since you’re here, I’m guessing you do), take the time to leave a comment when you find something helpful and expecially when it is a site that is relevant to what you do. If you remember from my post on SEO Basics, I mentioned the importance of having sites link back to you. Well, adding a comment is also leaving a link back to your site. While not every site allows search engines to follow the links in comments, many do. Even if the search engines don’t find you, all the people who read that post have the chance of following to your site. Just make sure you leave an added useful comment.

SOCIAL NETWORKING

A great starting point is this post from webdevlounge.com about using social media to market your blog. But there are countless social networking sites now, all of which can kick start a conversation about you and your site. The biggest right now by far are Twitter and Facebook, which can also be linked so that your Tweets show up in Facebook but those are just the beginning. One of the best posts I have seen on how to harness all of the social service together was from Duct Tape Marketing.

Alternative Search/Listing Services

A great resource for those with services that cater to local clients, webdesignfromscratch.com has put together a great list of places to list your site, all of which focus on local listings:

Read the full article here: 10 Ways to Promote a Business. I would also add Yelp to this list. Check out Yelp and if no one has listed your business yet, list yourself and get some friends (or even better – clients) to give you reviews just to get the ball rolling.

This is not even close to an exhaustive resource for marketing resources online, but it is a start. Any other suggestions or sites that I missed?

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Blog Tips

marty — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 02:24:29 +0000

Eventually I will be sharing RSS feeds that I update when I find articles I think are useful. But for now, I’m just putting up some links from my shared Google Reader folders.

Here is my feed of tips about Using, Designing and Promoting blogs.

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