Matthew T Grant

This Sunday past, Richard MacManus published an article on ReadWriteWeb.com entitled, “Content Farms: Why Media, Blogs & Google Should Be Worried.”

MacManus believes that Google et al. should be worried because ranking algorithms use in-bound links as an indicator of authority but, due to the rise of “content farms” such as Demand Media and Answers.com, which can effectively generate links to their own content at scale, the number of in-bound links may indicate little more than the ability for an organization to generate in-bound links.

A conversation that I had with two SEO jedi back in October at the MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer caused a similar thought to haunt the darkened corridors of my tortured mind. That is, it became clear to this novice that building links is, in part, merely a question of resources and effort. If, like the one jedi claimed, you have “guys in India” who can help by Digg-ing content and taking care of directory submissions, you’re gonna rank. If not, good luck.

Thought #1: If link-building is primarily a question of effort, then search results in Google primarily reflect this effort, rather than some quasi-meritocratic invisible hand.

In other words, the problem with this aspect of the link economy is that, in effect, people can print their own money. Now I ask you, how many “real world” economies could survive that kind of devaluation of its currency?

Still curious about the link economy, I hit the Googles and discovered a raging conversation about the value of links being waged from the content producer side. This dispute started with an article by Arnon Mishkin on “The Fallacy of the Link Economy” in which he argued, in effect, that links ARE content so that link aggregators should be paying the sources for these links.

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I once attracted unmitigated ire by openly trumpeting my credentials as a SMexpert.

On account of the ego-bruising I suffered at that time, I very eagerly tuned in yesterday to PJA‘s weekly internet radio show, This Week in Social Media. Not only was the scheduled guest my good friend, Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs, but the topic was, for me, peculiarly hot:

“What is a Social Media Expert?”

The choice of topic was driven in part by a much-shared article in BusinessWeek, “Beware Social Media Snake Oil,” which derided social media’s “self-proclaimed experts” and “wannabes” for asking companies to invest in their services and the super-hyped emerging media without being able to promise results or even prove that they have achieved anything in the past. (Note: I was pleased to see that the “snake oil” in the title was taken from a quote by the appallingly handsome, David Armano. – MTG)

In fairness, the actual gist of the article was, “Social media are powerful tools so don’t let the charlatans turn you off completely,” and this idea was at the center of the conversation between Ann, Mike O’Toole, President of PJA, and show host, Doug Zanger (which can be heard in its entirety here).

Reflecting the shared opinion that the social media expert was not an entirely mythical figure, Mike and Ann sketched out what a true SMexpert might look like.

“We’re leaving the ‘belief’ era, marked by the ubiquity of social media ‘Gurus’ and ‘Evangelists’,” as Mike put it, “and entering the era of ‘get stuff done.'” To whit, while still willing to spend money on social media programs, marketers are, in Mike’s words, “asking harder questions” about forecasts and results.

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Doing some research on content marketing and how companies source or buy content and came across this concise (don’t let the slide count fool you), thorough overview of the steps involved in the creation and management of a solid content strategy:

It was produced by Melissa Rach at Brain Traffic. I like it because it introduces the skimmer to the doable nitty-gritty stuff demanded by the content strategy process while giving the aforementioned skimmer a healthy sense of its (almost) overwhelming complexity.

Good work, comrade!

I launched the incredibly successful Twitternet phenomenon, #onewordwednesday, in May 2009, at least by my reckoning.

The fact that on every subsequent Wednesday (and sometimes earlier) the hashtag has seen action, and not just due to my own fervid zealotry, I consider one of the few real achievements of my adult life.

Nevertheless, I fear that I have been lax to the point of wishi-washiness on what constitutes proper observance of #onewordwednesday. Among other things, my wavering spirit has led some to attempt a #onewordwednesday takeover, albeit it in the interest of your eternal salvation.

Today, however, I’m drawing a line in the sand and stating clearly and definitively, that true, devout observance of #onewordwednesday calls for limiting all Tweets that day to ONE WORD.

“But Matthew T. Grant, what about retweets or the sharing of links?”

Gosh darn it! OK. Fine. As Buffy Saint-Marie once sang, “I was an oak, now I’m a willow, now I can bend.”

• You may retweet other contributions to the #onewordwednesday experience until the 140 character limit has been achieved.
• You may also share links if and only if the Tweet consists of nothing more than one word and a shortened URL.

Look, I’m not asking that everyone across the Twitterverse adhere to this standard of observance. I simply want to provide those interested in truth, purity, and righteousness a guiding light and a clear sign that they may better find their way on the path to (#)one(wordwednesday)ness.

Peace.

Litl launched the litl (though Wired seems to think it’s called “the Webbook”– clarification guys?) yesterday and they invited folks to check it out at the local Starbucks (here’s some photographic proof that I was in attendance).

Given my years of ingrained computer-user habits, I did not find litl’s card-metaphor desktop, novel controllers (buttons, rollers, etc.), and unique capabilities (bend-over-backwards easel mode) intuitively usable, though the friendly litl people happily walked me through it and one beta-tester told me that, while she had the same experience at first, after a while she found herself missing some of the litl features when she was back in her “native” computer environment.

Similarly, the head of one beta-tester family (he, his wife, and his three children all test-drove the litl) told me he found that the younger the user, the quicker the adoption of litl. As he put it, his middle child had enough computer experience to complain about missing or “different” features, while his youngest took to it like a duck to water.

Of course, the main point of the litl is this difference. It looks like a laptop, but it’s different; it sounds like it’s a netbook, but it’s different; it acts like a traditional computer, but it’s different. This emphasis on difference is both litl’s strength – it is really a new kind of thing – but also its greatest vulnerability.

I told the litl folk that what they are attempting is bold and, for that reason, fraught with entrepreneurial peril, in part because the device doesn’t ask people to do one thing differently, it asks them to do a lot of things differently (store all your data in the cloud, rely on web-based apps instead of software, think in terms of “cards” rather than pages or docs or whatever). And no matter how much we celebrate diversity or shout “Vive la différence,” getting people to do things differently is frickin’ hard.

Innovation by definition means doing things in a new way, but there is a limit to how much “new” people can handle, particularly when they don’t see the clear advantage or the critical difference.

I believe that this “difference limit,” and not just the $700 price tag, is the most daunting hurdle facing the litl team. Getting around it will probably involve partnerships with companies that have the reach and sway to influence technology buying behaviors, or an aggressive “seeding” program that gets litl webbooks into the hands of the 7-and-under crowd (kind of like Apple did by getting Macs into the hands of college-age kids making the leap from typewriter to word processor back in the 1980s).

Of course, knowing the people involved as I do, I’m sure they’ll come up with something completely different.

Image Courtesy of lucky_lucas.

A bunch of folks I’ve known for a while have today introduced a “webbook” called the “litl.” As I understand it, what differentiates a “webbook” from a “netbook” is that the former has no hard-drive and all of your stuff lives in the cloud.

Aside from a bunch of techie stuff like running a Linux-based OS and eschewing traditional things like software, what further differentiates the litl from other laptop-ish devices is that you can set it up like an easel to watch movies or check the weather while shaving (as illustrated above).

I was around when the concept was being germinated and have watched the development of this device from afar, but have never really seen the machine in action, which I’ll get a chance to do so this morning.

Reviews are rolling in and they range from the skeptical (Gizmodo) to the intrigued (Xconomy) to the bemused (engadget). I’ll toss in my 2¢ as soon as I’ve found them.

Note: I’m cross-posting this on the MarketingProfs Daily Fix blog, but they have an elaborate and painful approval process so I wanted to get it up here in the interest of time. – Matt.

It’s a week ago today that I departed Boston for Chicago in order to attend, and blog upon, Marketingprofs’ Digital Mixer.

While I live-blogged a number of sessions – on creating effective webinar programs; on developing corporate social media policies; on using Facebook for brand recognition; on deepening customer relationships with Twitter; on SEO plus Social Media; and on the exceedingly clear thoughts of Dr. BJ Fogg – I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight some of the grander themes or gaudier threads that I noticed running through the event.

1. It’s the humans, stupid

Again and again I heard people talking about “personalizing” or “humanizing” social media efforts, which makes sense to me since I’ve always viewed blogs and such as “personal genres.” This humanization needs to take place both at the organizational level, by creating social media policies which encourage participation on the part of employees and other stakeholders, as well as on the tactical level. There needs to be a living person behind your blog or Twitter stream or what-have-you who will take the time to listen and respond to folks looking to interact with your brand or organization.

2. Personal Brand vs. Professional Brand

Of course, if you are asking people to put themselves into social media efforts, there is always the possibility that they will develop relationships with customers or recognition within a community that begins to outshine the connection to the brand. While many people raised questions concerning the proper mix of personal and professional in brand-related social media activities, the bigger fear seemed to be about retention. Specifically, they asked, “What happens when someone becomes so associated with the brand via social media that their departure leaves a gaping hole in your company’s online presence?”

3. Social Media is Growing Up

There was a palpable dearth of 101-type sessions on social media and its application to business. Instead, we were treated to a lot of pithy studies describing what real companies – Best Buy, Intel, Hansen’s Natural Soda, Pitney Bowes, SAS, etc. – have really done with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Slideshare, blogs, podcasts, etc. Yes, Dell, Comcast, and Zappos all got mentioned, but it was clear that emerging social media technologies have not only entered the cultural mainstream but have become a permanent and rapidly maturing part of the commercial landscape.

4. SEO = Great Content + Grunt Work.

I got into a rather lively conversation by asserting in a loud, boorish tone that “SEO is a scam,” a conversation in which I was duly schooled but which also clarified my understanding of how optimization happens. In fairness to me, there were plenty of folks who were warning attendees against “SEO snake oil,” but they contrasted such efforts with the legit, white-hat things that people can, should, and must do to optimize their content for, as Liana E. Evans sagely pointed out, “Optimized content is king.”

That being said, I discovered that there are certain link-building activities – directory submissions, Digg-ing, even blogging – that approach data entry in terms of complexity (ie., “not very) and labor intensivity (i.e, “very”). Hiring an intern or “some guys in India” to do this for you isn’t scammy, at the end of the day, but it’s not brain surgery either and reminded me that search engine rank not only reflects quality of content but also quantity of effort.

5. States Rights

Finally. while discussing the assassination of President Lincoln with Apogee’s Bill Leake, I considered for the first time the effect that the 17th Amendment had on states’ rights. This amendment “… restates the first paragraph of Article I, section 3 of the Constitution and provides for the election of senators by replacing the phrase ‘chosen by the Legislature thereof’ with ‘elected by the people thereof.'” (read more). The result of this shift, which made senators beholden to their constituents rather than state governments, was the further consolidation of federal power at the expense of the states insofar as senators no longer needed to concern themselves with pleasing their respective state legislatures and could focus on perpetuating their own careers through the maintenance of voting blocks representing diverse local and private interests.

I never really thought about that before. But then again, I’m a damn Yankee.

Image Courtesy of MarketingProfs Live.

I write this with very mixed feelings (and a slightly upset stomach).

I’m at the last session of the Mixer and the Mixologists are laying on us a bunch of idears that folks can take back to their real lives and implement. I’m trying to listen, but tears choke my ears. Still, I’m going to be strong and share with you what I’m hearing….

Note: I started writing this one way, but it was too scattered, fragmented, and incoherent. So I started again. If you’d like to read the first attempt, please scroll down.

Here’s by hyper-boiled down version of the boiled down takeaways offered up by the Mixologists:

– HUMANIZE! The social media are personal genres. Make your efforts personal. Let your people speak and participate. As Michael said of Dell’s Twitter stream, “To me, Richard Binhammer is the brand.”

– ORGANIZE! You need to structure your company internally in a way that will allow you to do what you want to do externally. Don’t create barriers in your organization that prevent you from maximizing the potential of emerging technologies and,  more importantly, emerging behaviors on the part of your audience or customers.

– TRY & TEST! Whatever you are doing, don’t assume that you know what is going to work and what won’t work. Try stuff and test, test, test.

– MEASURE! Along the same lines, look for measurable results in what you are doing, which generally means: have a concrete goal and be ready to say whether you achieved that goal or not.

– OPTIMIZE! Yes, content has to be killer and you have to be “offering something of value,” but you need to be as savvy and informed as possible about making sure that people can actually find what you want them to find where you want them to find it.

This is what I wrote at first:

I just heard Stephanie Miller say something about “using down-funnel data,” I’m sure she was quoting Bill Leake of Apogee, but I’m not entirely sure what that means. I must focus. FOCUS!

Jason Baer sez it has to be about passion first, and position second when it comes to recruiting people internally to produce content or represent you on social media. Jason’s main takeaways were summed up by Stephanie as, “We as marketers need to market our marketing.”

Michael Brito sez that his track, “Engaging with Customers,” rocked. People relate to people, not to logos or companies, so the main way to be engaging in your marketing activities is to lead with your humans.

He echoed what Jason said about getting the passionate people involved in social media marketing and community engagement, rather than “celebrities in the organization.”

Similar themes were sounded by Beth Harte when reporting on the Peer-to-peer sessions: Make your business blog/social media presence personal: hand over control of community to the members of the community; don’t hesitate to educate your organization and its leadership – they want you to do this.

Gonna make this quick.

1. Placing hot triggers in the path of users is the key to changing behavior.

2. Humans are fairly predictable so you can use a systematic approach to thinking about persuasion and behavioral change.

2a. Effective persuasion involves: Motivation – Ability – Trigger.

2b. You increase ability by simplifying, not by training.

3. Everything big started small. If you want to innovate, start with something small/light weight. If it works, build on it. If it doesn’t, try something else.

3a. Everything that started big, complicated, and feature-rich, has failed.

4. The winning rituals of today become the platforms of tomorrow.

4a. You can attach your behaviors to somebody else’s rituals.

What did I miss?

SEO has become a recurring theme for me at this conference so I was very curious to check out Li Evans of Serengeti Communications’ presentation on search and social. I’m glad I did. Here’s what I learned. I hope you find it helpful.

First learning: Search is not JUST about text. Current Google search results, for “charleston dance,” for example, include images, video, etc. as well as static, text-based pages. “It’s not just your ten blue links.” This also means that Google is giving you access to content within the search results themselves.

I asked a follow-up question around this because, while Google will not only return text-based results, search is still driven by spiders which do better with text (meta tags, content, etc.) than with pictures. In other words, from a machine perspective, search is still text.

Li said, “Sort of. Spiders are very infantile. They won’t go past things that they don’t understand (Flash, Javascript pop-ups). They can’t see what’s in a picture or a video, yet, but they are getting there.”

Second learning: Search is not just taking place on search engines. People search on YouTube (beating out Yahoo!), craigslist, eBay, and so on.

Third learning: Google is using the Google Toolbar and Chrome in order to gather ever more data about your online habits and behaviors and this data increasingly influences search (while also providing good content fodder if you follow the trends and create content accordingly).

Fourth learning: SEO isn’t just for the few, it’s for everyone and it’s not magic. There are very specific, knowable things that you can do to optimize your content for search. “Content is not king, OPTIMIZED content is king.”

Fifth learning: Google knows you through your accounts and will show you results based on your behaviors, your location, etc. NO ONE can guarantee you a top 10 ranking because Google is personalizing results to fit YOU.

Sixth learning: THEREFORE, you need to understand your audience and optimize towards that. How do they search (which engines, what devices, etc.)? How do they consume media? What lingo (vernacular) do they use (i.e., do they say “commode,” “john,” or “toilet”)? How do they prefer their content served (video, audio, maps, etc.)? Are they national? Local? Global?

Seventh learning: It’s not about the technology, the engine, the platform, or any of that. It’s about being found. To get found, you need to optimize around keywords, the way people really search for you, and the way they are talking about the things that are relevant and valuable to them.

Eighth learning: “Other people make it easier to find you, not just search engines.” Make your content valuable, shareable, and actively engage with the online community that plays where you play.