5 Reasons the Pillars of SEO Will Never Fall

As someone even remotely related to the SEO industry, you know that trends come and go. Some ways to effectively drive and boost traffic may work one day and fail the next. Some things that attract search engines under one model might be detrimental in the next. You’ve probably also heard SEO as a whole is referred to as a dying trend; something that’s bound to fail.

Sure, certain aspects of the industry may change and evolve into something new altogether, but SEO as a whole is here to stay, regardless of the naysayers who like to stir up controversy by claiming otherwise. Providing you’re willing to adapt, there’s no reason your own business or practice cannot grow in the long term with a solid SEO strategy in place.

In fact, most SEO skepticism is rooted in a futile debate involving ‘black hat vs. white hat’ tactics. Essentially, whenever Google updates their algorithm to crack down on the spam/trickster side of SEO, ripples vibrate throughout the hive-mind and everyone exaggerates the update as the final culling blade.

Ignore the hive-mind. That’s my best piece of advice. Instead, look at what the creator of the largest search engine in the world is sending to our inbox:

 

This was sent on February 13, 2014. Google’s Webmaster Blog is showing us how to differentiate infinite scrolling pages from parallax to allow the Googlebot to crawl pages without getting shortsighted by duplicate content. This is an advanced level SEO recommendation. This alone should be enough proof to dispel any myths of SEO fatality.

Read on to discover five more reasons why the pillars of SEO will never fall:

1.     SEO is a Broad Term

SEO isn’t a single method of driving traffic to a website; instead, it’s a network of activities that work together to accomplish a single end result. Search Engine Land defines search engine optimization as the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” listings on search engines.

It’s not about getting traffic on a single webpage. It’s not about using one single method to increase rankings. It’s something so much more than that. SEO is about doing all that we can to impress search engines. We need to show them:

• Important people respect us (authority links)
• We are very organized (onsite SEO optimization)
• We are timely and relevant (registered as a ‘news’ source + quality content + social signals)
• We are authoritative (mentions + links from .edus, .govs, .orgs)
• We are creative (content marketing)
• We have faces (Google+ authorship)
• We earn traffic and referrals (inbound marketing)
• We offer impressive services/products (rich snippets for ratings/images/descriptions/reviews)

And this is just scratching the surface. There are over 200 ranking factors (via the awesome Brian Dean) and SEO efforts aim to appeal to as many as possible.

2.     Internet Users are Drawn to “Natural” Content

Yes, most high ranking search results are the result of SEO or advertising of some sort, but if people knew that, they’d look at the content differently. Research has shown that users experience a certain level of irritation when they feel like they’re being bombarded with advertisements. It’s why web platforms allow designers to pay to opt out of having to display them and why social networks allow users to hide advertisements in their news streams.

Search engines are no different. Yes, most of the top results have paid advertising behind them in one way or another, but SEO cloaks that advertising appealing to the idea of “natural” content and results. It’s what users want; this means it will not disappear.

3.     The Search is an Essential Aspect of Online Use

People don’t go online solely to access social networks; though it is the number one activity on the web. They also go online to look for answers, news, local businesses, products and services. Because of this, businesses must cater to search engines. The Internet is filled with important information and with people looking for it. This critical aspect of SEO means that it’s a necessary aspect of navigating the online world.

Does the term ‘hierarchy’ ring any bells?

Without proper onsite SEO, eCommerce sites would be like a dingy floating aimlessly. Even small and medium sized businesses can practice onsite SEO with little technical skills. For example:

As a forklift dealer, McCall Handling sticks to proper onsite SEO and eCommerce hierarchy. For any digital store, this is the bread and butter of product organization. Basically, they have categorized all products by level of 2. This means that every product or page is no more than 2 clicks away. If we click through one of the main categories from the homepage, we can go another level deeper.

For Googlebot, this makes crawling and ordering a seamless process – something that would not be possible without SEO.

4.     It Has Become Its Own Industry

People need to be found online. Businesses have an inherent need to drive traffic to their own sites instead of letting it up to chance or to the competition. They’re willing to pay to make this happen. This is a trend based on centuries of research – first “in person” and now “online.”

The life-force of SEO as an industry beats in sync with the life-force of search engines. If you can imagine an internet without search engines, then you might be able to imagine a world without SEO. Though I would counter; an evolved form of SEO would evolve if search engines died off – something along the lines of UX Optimization or legacy web optimization would be the new standard.

But let’s snap back to reality.

There are certain ‘arms’ of a business that indirectly influence SEO. Security, for example, such as SSL certificates make visitors feel safe browsing a website, which may directly increase time-on-site, sales, or referrals. Similar safety measures, such as security compliance ensure another branch of ‘visitor peace of mind’ is achieved. Sending hand-written thank you cards to verified shoppers might encourage them to write a blog post about it. If you see where I’m going with this, you realize there are many marketing/branding/advertising tactics that indirectly impact SEO. As we might assume, they can be done in the name of SEO just as easily (but for a stronger impact).

5.     Content Marketing Cannot Solely Fill the Void

With the rise in authorship tags and authoritative content, many experts argue that quality content will make SEO obsolete. While it sounds good in theory, it’s just not possible. Content marketing cannot fill the void that a lack of SEO would create.

Yes, relevant content can increase page rankings; but there’s a catch. For those page rankings to matter at all, a search has to take place. For a search to take place and to be successful, some form of SEO must be driving the content marketing campaign. The former cannot exist without the latter. The two ideas feed off each other and depend upon one another for results.

While the heated debate over whether SEO is dying or thriving will continue long into the future, when you take a step back to consider these basic pillars of the practice and industry, it becomes apparent that the practice is more elastic than a rubber band. SEOs are trained to be hyper-adaptive, thus SEO as an industry is hyper-adaptive.

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Dressing for Success in Cyberspace: Give Yourself a Digital Make-Over

You pride yourself on your professional appearance and demeanor. You strive to create and maintain a strong identity and reputation within your organization, with your clients and peers, and in your industry. But are you as diligent a custodian of your professional brand in cyberspace as you are in the physical world? If not, you probably need a digital make-over… This post helps you dress for success in cyberspace by providing guidance for critiquing, updating, and maintaining your digital presence to convey a positive professional identity in all aspects of your career.

I continue to be amazed by the number of anemic profiles there are on LinkedIn, how easy it is to access Facebook activity that’s not intended for the public, how many people have no filter and/or no sense of time and place when they post on Twitter, and how uncivil people can be when commenting on news articles and blog posts. Not much surprises me anymore, but the opportunities to wonder “What were they thinking?” seem never-ending…

Given my focus on digital rookies, I’m particularly intrigued by people who are so fastidious about their personal appearance and “real world” reputation but show virtually no regard for their appearance or reputation in cyberspace. They seem oblivious to the fact that they have a digital identity whether they want one or not – and more importantly, that in many respects their digital identity and brand are much more public and powerful than how they’re known and perceived in the physical world.

To drive home the point of how important it is for professionals to take responsibility for their digital presence, I’ve started using analogies like leaving the house without any pants on; wearing torn, stained, disreputable, or inappropriate clothes; being unkempt; and having a hairstyle, glasses, and other accessories that are out of date. And to address the frequent lament of “I don’t have time,” I highlight the time we make to do things that are important to us, like going to a hair stylist or the gym, or shopping for clothes and shoes. The point is that if we can make the time to take care of our physical appearance and put our best foot forward on earth, we should also be able to make the time to take care of our digital appearance and put our best foot forward in the cloud.

In this post I extend those analogies by laying out the basic steps and tasks in a digital make-over. Although the recommendations are primarily targeted to rookies, the suggestions should be useful to people who are more digitally sophisticated and engaged as well. We can all benefit from a little closet cleaning…

Even if you don’t need a digital make-over, you probably know someone who would benefit from these recommendations. : ) Feel free to share!

Here’s a condensed, more visually-oriented version of these tips. You can find more detailed digital engagement guidance in these SMART Resources, as well as these. As always, I welcome your comments and questions. What did I miss? What would you add?

Review and Critique

1. Conduct internet searches on yourself.

What to do:

• Conduct searches via major search engines like Google and Bing.
• Use different combinations of your name and aspects of your professional identity (e.g., organizations you’ve worked for, positions you’ve held, industries you’ve worked in), as well as nicknames you may have used when engaging in digital activity (e.g., sharing or liking an article, commenting on a blog post). It’s also a good idea to include a spouse/partner’s name and to search on particular aspects of your personal life (e.g., political donations, church affiliations).

What to look for:

• Publicly available information and activity you thought was private
• References to and/or information about you shared by others
• Potentially embarrassing or misunderstood images and/or content
• Personal activities, affiliations, and perspectives that may impact your professional life (rightly or wrongly)
• Potential cases of mistaken identity

2. Evaluate your public profile on social media platforms.

What to do:

• Find and review your public profile on networking platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Plus to see how your profile appears to people to whom you’re not connected.
• If you have a Twitter account, a blog, and/or an account/channel on public platforms like YouTube, SlideShare, Box.com, about.me, VisualCV, Quora, Klout (it’s a potentially long list!), access your public profile there too. Don’t forget to look at accounts you don’t use anymore too!

What to look for:

• Content that is incomplete, out of date, and/or inaccurate
• Typos and grammatical errors
• Broken links
• Potentially embarrassing or misunderstood images and/or content,as well as those that could undermine your professional brand
• Publicly-displayed information you’d like to keep private

3. Get someone else to critique specific accounts/activity.

Whom to ask: Identify someone you trust to give you an honest opinion, even if that opinion might make you a bit uncomfortable or hurt your feelings. Finding someone with whom you could do a quid pro quo exchange is not only mutually beneficial, but you’re likely to get a better sense of what you should/shouldn’t do based on your review of their accounts/activity in addition to their feedback on yours.

What to do: Identify the platforms/activity you want them to concentrate on. For most people that would be LinkedIn and Facebook. People who are more digitally engaged may also want to include platforms like Google Plus, Twitter and blogs.

What to look for: Basically they’re going to look for the same things you did in the previous step, only they can be more objective and are likely to spot things you miss. They can also better identify things that might be viewed as questionable by people who don’t know you.

Digital Make-Over

1. Delete risky content when/where you can.

• If it’s something you can control (e.g., a blog comment made via Disqus or using your Twitter account, or a photo you uploaded to Facebook), access the content and delete it.
• If it’s not something you can control (e.g., a Flickr photo in which you’re tagged, or a reference to you in a blog post), contact the person who created the content and ask them to either remove the content or unlink it from your identity.
• In some cases (e.g., reports on contributions to political candidates, newsletter articles) you won’t be able to delete the content or unlink it from your identity, but at least you’ll be aware of what is publicly available and can be prepared to discuss it if necessary.

2. Board up digital properties you no longer use.

• If you don’t plan to ever use a specific platform again, shut down your account. Check with the provider to see if your public data will still be available, or if it effectively disappears from cyberspace. If you can’t completely erase it, try to add information that redirects people to a new platform/account.
• If you think you may use the platform again, clean up your account and add some kind of a “we’ll be back” sign. You may also want to redirect folks to a new platform/account.

3. Lock the doors that need to be locked.

• If you don’t want everyone to see certain Facebook albums or wall posts, change the settings on those items. Do the same with activity you consider private on other platforms like blogs, Flickr, and YouTube.
• Similarly, you may want to cull through your friends, connections, and followers on various platforms and disconnect from people with whom you don’t want to be connected/engaged on that platform (e.g., unfriending work colleagues and/or people you don’t know very well).

4. Make sure your front porches are presentable. Update your public profiles to address all the problems you identified during your review.

5. Direct people to the “right” you, and make yourself easy to find. Designate a hub or home base for your digital identity (e.g., your LI profile or a website). Make sure that hub includes current contact information (i.e., email address and/or phone number) and links to all your relevant digital presences.

Maintenance

1. Think before you tweet, comment, update, blog, etc. The best way to manage a strong positive digital reputation is to not put anything out there that you will later regret. And the best way to do that is to be mindful of what you share and where you share it, to choose words and images carefully, and to remember that even though most digital activity is fleeting, it’s also permanent.

2. Set up internet search alerts at regular intervals. Using an engine like Google, set up regular alerts using the same criteria you used in your initial review.  This way, you’ll be notified whenever some cyber activity is connected to your identity. Keep in mind, though, that these automatic searches aren’t perfect, so you should plan to supplement them with periodic manual searches.

3. Keep a current inventory of your digital properties. Create a list of all the places you have accounts and update it whenever you join a new platform. This list may not be necessary for the accounts you use all the time, but it is vital in helping you remember the accounts you set up but never return to or stop using. It’s amazing how many digital stakes you can put in the ground and then forget about…

4. Review and clean up your digital inventory periodically. At least once a year, determine whether you want to continue to maintain specific accounts, especially those you rarely/never use. Doing so will minimize the digital detritus you leave behind.

5. Review and update your public profiles. Even if your professional circumstances haven’t changed, it’s worthwhile to take a look at your public profiles at least once a year to make sure you continue to be satisfied with how you’re presenting yourself in cyberspace – and to take appropriate action when you’re not.

6. Choose your friends wisely. We all have different rules about whom we connect with, but it behooves us all to be discriminating about the company we keep in cyberspace. Develop a set of connection rules and adhere to them consistently.

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Importance of Social Spam Removal

You’ve worked hard to get the Facebook page for your business looking awesome, your website streamlined, and your Twitter follower count into the stratosphere. Will you let it all fall apart because of lack of maintenance?

Imagine building a home. With the right crew and good weather, you might be able to get it built and finished within three or four months. How long would it take to tear down with a few hand grenades and a flamethrower? A few hours at most. Destroying things is always quicker and easier than creating them, and a few hand-grenade-spam posts or a vindictive online flamethrower can burn your social reputation to the ground before you know what’s going on. If you let them.

Don’t Stop Me, Even if You’ve Heard This One Before

Just like thunder in the never-ending weather patterns, I’m back to remind you once again that maintaining your social media accounts on a daily basis is an absolute requirement, not a suggestion, to become and remain successful in the space. Sorry to beat a dead horse, but truth is truth.

I don’t know about you, but I almost always read the comments at the end of any article to see what the general public has to say about the matter. I often find additional insight from commenters that will make the information that much more clear or interesting. It’s extremely annoying when you are reading comments and come to what is obviously a spammy ad for something else. They’ll mention something about the article and then try to get you to follow their link for “better” information, or sometimes they don’t even put in that much time.

Incendiary Posts are Often Spam

A post or comment doesn’t have to be an ad or a spammy link to be considered spam. There are plenty of trolls out there who get their jollies by trying to defame or denigrate people and businesses by randomly posting negative comments on their blogs, posts, or feeds. Sometimes they are even paid by your competitors to do so.

These spammy and/or negative comments are grenades thrown into your building, but they don’t have to do any damage. Grenades always have a time frame that they can be removed before they go off and blow things up, even if it’s a short one. The attacking posts on your pages can also be removed before they do much damage, but the longer they remain the more they do.

The Fine Line

The line you don’t want to cross is removing legitimate complaints or issues from real customers. It’s sometimes hard to tell the difference, but usually a social media manager with experience can spot the spammers and trolls a mile away. Of course, that doesn’t matter if don’t use one, which is one good reason you should.

Removing legitimate complaints can have worse implications than leaving spam in your posts. If your real customers start to think that you don’t care about your customers problems, they’ll drop you like a hot potato. Always try to diffuse situations with legitimate complaints, and only remove the comments if they become worse or cannot be satisfied through reaching out.

Spam, on the other hand, should be removed within seconds if possible, hours at the most. Moderating comments is one way to avoid this issue, but unless you post the legitimate complaints as well you’re back to the previous problem of losing trust. This isn’t a hard lesson to learn, but it can be a costly one if not learned quickly. For the least hassles and the best results, it’s always recommended to let a professional handle your accounts under your oversight.

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5 Reasons to Use Whatever You Want to Build a Website

Aspiring web site owners of the world, please allow me to release you from your fears!

When you start looking at your options for building your first web site, you'll soon find yourself inundated with ads from Weebly, WordPress, Wix, Drupal, Squarespace, Joomla, and dozens of other unfamiliar software and company names that all insist that they offer the best solution for everyone. The truth is that all of these systems have their advantages, and there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution to building a web site. In the infographic below, I've broken them down into the products and services most often mentioned by my potential clients. For purposes of this comparison, I'll define the two sets of options this way:

CMS: stands for Content Management System. The CMS options in this infographic are software packages that can be installed on almost any web hosting plan and are "open source." (You can read about open-source content management in another of my blog posts.) The software is free, but you'll still need to pay a web host for the space on their server.

SAAS: stands for Software As A Service. Technically, lots of different kinds of software fit this definition -- even the software that sits on the servers at those companies that allow you to make your own photo books from photos you upload is SAAS. It just means that the software that runs and the server it runs on are inseparable. In this infographic, I'm referring to SAAS solutions for building web sites, where you pay for hosting that comes with a built-in CMS. That CMS is owned, developed, and locked down by the web host.

So, without further ado, a side-by-side comparison of the benefits of both options:

Want some help deciding which solution is right for you? We can meet with you to talk it through. Just shoot us an email, or reach out on Facebook or Twitter.

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How to Create Human Relations with Your Online Community

You can’t create a community without strong, cohesive human relations (regardless of whether these are online or offline). If you don’t have an emotional tie, forget about creating a community; people just won’t show up!

Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen overnight. As you must already be aware, community-building takes time, and it requires creating solid relationships. Relationships are based on trust, and such trust must be believable, valuable and loyal.

Adding value can take many shapes. You need to learn how your audience views the world, what they like, how they think, what they don’t like, how they perceive you and much more. Value could come in the shape of social objects: videos, photos, graphic work, and so forth. There are endless ways in which we can add value in the connected economy in which we’re living: answering questions, speaking of the people who’re doing a great job, returning influence to those who deserve it (those under you). Remember, your words and actions can lead to great change in those people.

Think of your audience, take care of them, listen to them and then do something. Create human relations.

Transparency

Say who you are and why you’re here. Establish a purpose and communicate it to your audience. Even if you’re here to sell something, we want to know your true intentions. Otherwise, we won’t come near you! No relationship is possible without honesty. People populating every community are increasingly smarter; so, be careful: they’ll smell you out like a rat!

Consistency

You need consistent communication and marketing; not only from you but from anyone in your company who may be in contact with your social media sphere. There’s no break here; you’re under the spotlight every day, consistently. Alignment is a key concept: you can’t talk about one promotion in a newsletter and a different one on Twitter. Keep things simple and don’t confuse people!

Don’t Sell Blatantly

Resist the temptation of endlessly posting about your products or talking to your community about everything you do, how great you are, the great results you’ve achieved, the excellence of your products, how great your company is and all the good things they’re missing. We’re sure that’s the case but there are other options out there that aren’t you. You’re here to share experiences, to connect and resonate and to create interactions that will hopefully lead to people discovering all of the abovementioned. Give them something they didn’t have.

You’re marketing products, not people.

Appreciate the Attention

Attention is scarce. Whether you’re creating a Pinterest board about your brand, writing a review in a post, recording a video testimonial or sharing pictures, you should understand that your audience has more important things to do than to talk about you. Gain people’s attention by telling stories that can help them, improve them or stories they can benefit from. That will make them interested in your brand and that means getting their attention.

Do Something

This never fails: don’t wait for your community to do something (as Seth Godin says) for you; do something for them first. That will set the difference because, basically, no one’s doing it. We all wait for a recommendation, a post that talks about us or a video-homage. Keep waiting!

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Content Marketing Minds: Why Insomniacs Love Your Blog

Melatonin. New age music. An aromatic bath. Chamomile tea. Nyquil.

What’s your get-to-sleep-in-a-jif trick? You might try reading some business blogs.

They’re mostly horrific. And they don’t support your business objectives. But the reason is probably not what you think. It’s not because they don’t contain useful content. Generally, they do. What’s missing is personality.  

Did God say, “Let there be predictability?” 

No blogging bible I’ve ever read said, “Thou shalt be boring.”

You might be knocking it out of the park with understanding your readers’ needs, developing your topics, and optimizing your posts for search. However, this will only get readers to your blog. It won’t get them into it. It won’t inspire them to opt-in, come back for more, or tell their friends. If you want these things to happen you have to inject your personality into your blog.

My headline could have been boring. 

What if the headline for this post was “Why Effective Blogs Have Personality.” It’s not bad. Google would have caught the keywords: “effective blogs” and “personality.” And you would have got the gist of it. You may have clicked through to the story. 

But I believe a little psychological warning is sounded that suggests the post will be dry. The point I'm trying to make may be more obvious if I used examples of posts about really popular topics. For example:

• How to Get More Twitter Followers
• 7 Ways to Schedule Your Workday for Higher Productivity
• Lessons on Leadership

Snoozers, no? Good topics? Yes. But these are predictable approaches to popular subjects, so they blend in with the pack. If I were to read these posts, I’d be very surprised to find the copy entertaining.

I wrote, “Why Insomniacs Love Your Blog.” You got the idea. You’ll be reading about a topic that interests you—your blog. You get the notion the story will deal with a nasty problem: putting readers to sleep. However, I chose strong words that invoke emotions: “insomniacs” and “love.” I hope to have accomplished something even more powerful than arousing your curiosity. I hope to have suggested you’re in for a little entertainment.

Give your readers something they can’t get anywhere else.

Are you going to make me tell you what that something is? Will do. It’s YOU.

I suspect this is not the first, nor will it be the last article you read about becoming a better blogger. But here’s the special sauce: it’s by me. For better or worse, I’m the only one who can give you an article by me.

You get my style. My point of view. My personality. You get a little window to my world. 

Check this out. A ridiculously cute, and very tired miniature poodle by the name of Rio is curled up at my feet. I think he just tooted. I’m up past midnight writing to you though I’m enjoying myself. The one and only Paul Simon is oozing from my MacBook Air, courtesy of Spotify. “You know the nearer your destination the more you’re slip-sliding away.” My back hurts.

I was just looking at a few email newsletters of the curation variety where the publisher sent me long lists of stories they think I should read. I didn’t read any of them. They sounded boring.

And now back to you—and your blog. 

Here’s a healthy dose of special personality enhancement tips.

You read that right. You have arrived at the world’s HQ for SPET, special personality enhancement tips. Take these with plenty of water. In clinical trials, SPET has been known to cause dehydration. 

Think different. (I could swear I’ve heard that somewhere before.) How can you say something less predictably? I gave you a lesson on this when I wrote about writing the headline for this post. You could tweet this post with something like “Interesting take on writing with personality” or you could challenge yourself to come up with something different, say, “@feldmancreative thinks you write like lightly toasted white bread.”

Colorize your copy. Scour your first draft looking for a mundane passage. Say, for instance, “Writing with more powerful words.” Give it an edge. Make it unforgettable and quotable, such as, “Stabbing mediocrity to death with pencils and pens.”  (I grabbed that example from a slide deck I wrote. Check it out.)

Stabbing Mediocrity to Death from Barry Feldman

I’m not saying your copy must be violent, but it can be. I’m saying, go for it. Colorize your content. Purple is ordinary. The color of a badass bruise is colorful, like you. You’re colorful.

Exaggerate. Cross the line. Change the line. Obliterate the line. Who needs a line? Lines are boring. Make yours a ziggidy-zaggedy path to the peak of Mount Monumental. Imagine telling your reader you have a good tip on singing. Ho hum. Now imagine telling your readers you can teach them to sing like the love child of Josh Groban and Barbara Streisand. (Eew.) 

Breathe. When we talk, we take breaths. We pause for effect. We ask questions, right? Do these things when you write. Use commas and periods—em dashes: maybe a colon.

Hit return and… 

…put a little space in there. A one-word sentence could work. Sometimes. Ask rhetorical questions. You know what I mean? 

86 the BS. You know damn well you inadvertently snuck some BS in your post. You used a cognitively challenging word or phrase when a familiar one would have done the trick. You trekked down Buzzword Blvd. Or you tried showing off your unequaled intelligence with jargon. Or you called on one too many clichés. Boo. Hiss. Dial it down into everyday English.

Flunk writing. What the flunk?All those years of school, higher learning, and writing classes were a waste? Yep. Sorry. It’s time to unlearn what Professor Bisbee taught. You write gooder when you nix the formalities and break the rules of English class. A killer blog post can be delightfully messy.Have a conversation with your reader. If it gets redlined, good.

Cheese, please. Do you like metaphors? I wrote a post titled, “Your Website is Your Mousetrap and Your Content is the Cheese.” Guess what? It wasn’t really about cheese. But cheese is tastier than bait, right? Using metaphors and figures of speech are great ways to make your stuff more fun.

Have an opinion. Blogging and reporting aren’t the same thing. If you insist on thinking of yourself as a journalist, fine, but be the author of an opinion column. You’re much more likely to poke at me when you have a point of view. 

No selling, slick.The winner for “most boring blog” goes to Selly Sally. When I want to read about your product, I’m pretty sure I know where to do that. And if you hook me with your blog, I probably will.

Use examples. All throughout this post, I’ve tossed examples at you. They’re helping get my messages across, I hope. 

Tell stories. This may be the 922^nd time you read that tip. If you’re still ignoring it, you may be taking it too literally. Everything you write need not be a story, but your little micro-stories will connect better than facts and figures and give your reader something to remember you by.

So, sure, you can teach me how to get more likes on my Facebook fan page, but I’m far more likely to remember your little anecdote about how your new Facebook friend from Belgium sent you a box of Belgian Chocolates. Hello? Any Belgians out there? I like chocolate.   

Join your reader. And have your reader join you. Tell your reader you’re in this together. Let ‘em know you share something. Like this: you and I are both bloggers. Let’s talk about how we can avoid comatose readers. 

Welcome to my world. I’m in bed now. T-shirt. Undies. Socks. (It’s a bit cold tonight.) Rio followed me to bed. I just took a sip of water. This is good stuff, eh? No, really, you don’t have to bring your readers to bed with you, but I strongly recommend you let them into your home. And heart.

Now get out of here and don’t have a nice day.

While you’re at, don’t have a “good time” either. If you learned something from this article, I hope you now understand how mind-numbingly generic “good time” and “nice day” are. Have a raging party. Have a day of colossal grins and giggles.

I quote the quirky Ash Ambirge here, author of “The Middle Finger Project,” who inspired me with her post, “3 (Top Secret Ultra James Bond) Ways to Add More Personality to Your Writing.”

Personality is the difference between loved vs. liked, iconic vs. ordinary. 

Pour that peculiar personality of yours into your blog. And smear your greasy fingerprints all over my monitor. 

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Yelp's Algorithm Will Be Its Downfall

It goes without saying that reviews tend to skew negative, right? Far more people run to TripAdvisor or Amazon after a terrible experience than an amazing, or even satisfactory, one. Can we also safely say that people are far more brazen with their negative reviews when their anonymity is being guaranteed by the law? Great, glad we can all agree on that. Now let's take a look at the toxic environment that Yelp has created for itself that compounds this problem exponentially, thanks to the super-secret algorithm that they pride themselves on:

Scenario: A small business gets two bad ratings. Now, even though we've all already established that negative reviews often represent the views of the minority, these reviews definitely reflect poorly on the business. This is partly because consumers are always extra nervous and cautious and also because Yelp has so much clout with Google that ratings and reviews pop up at the top of every search. At this point the business has two options:

Option 1: Pay for fake reviews. Sorry if this ruins your faith in humanity, but it happens. People cheat, lie, and yes, pay for fake reviews, despite Yelp's best efforts to cut down on this practice.

Option 2: Ask their consumers to write them a good review. This is the more obvious and ethical route, but certainly not the easier one. How come, you ask? Let's consult the Yelp FAQ:

" Does Yelp publish every review from every user?

No. We get millions of reviews from our users, and our job is to showcase the ones that best reflect the opinions of the Yelp community. These recommended reviews comprise about three quarters of the reviews we get. The remaining reviews are accessible from a link at the bottom of each business’s profile page, but they don’t factor into a business’s overall star rating or review count.

Note that this approach is very different from other sites that tend to feature every single negative rant and positive rave. We do our best to nurture a community of users who actively contribute reliable and useful content."

Translation: Remember that algorithm I mentioned? It decides whether or not it thinks your review is worthy of being shown and/or counting toward the business's rating.

So, keeping that in mind, who do you think has a better reputation with the Yelp super-computer: a brand new real consumer leaving their first review, or a fake reviewer with hundreds of reviews and engagements under their belt? Right, so now we're back to fake reviews. But let's say, for argument's sake, that a consumer of yours loved your business SO much and was determined to get his review published to your page. What does he do next? If you guessed, "Go around and publish a bunch of other fake reviews to beef up his reputation," you are absolutely correct. So you see, Yelp is really just muddying their own waters with their approach that is "very different from other sites that tend to feature every single negative rant and positive rave." They have created a toxic environment that perpetuates a vicious cycle of fake reviews.

Unfortunately for Yelp, they have some pretty heavy competition in the reviews space. Not only doGoogle+ and Facebook have 2x and 10x the number of monthly active users (respectively) than Yelp, but they both also publish any and all reviews to their business' pages. This makes it easier for users to get an honest feel for a brand's rating, easier for businesses to self-correct for one-off bad experiences, and cleans up the overall environment by eliminating the need for superusers who post fake reviews or real users to bump up their clout with fake reviews. And last but certainly not least: The reviews aren't anonymous. They guarantee transparency and also protect the business from trolls.

If Yelp's algorithm isn't the textbook definition of hubris, I'm not sure what is. Do you agree or disagree? What experiences have you had with Yelp's algorithm and the way it filters reviews?  

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Social Media's Big Change and How Your Business Should Prepare

Social media has changed dramatically in a short period of time, and a recent post on Social Media Today by Brian Kramer on how ‘There Is No More B2B or B2C: There Is Only Human to Human (H2H)’ has really nailed why, in my opinion.

Social media has been a catalyst for change, however not everyone has jumped on board the new way of doing business – well not just yet anyhow.

Simon Sinek’s TED Talk

If you ever watch TED Talks, you may have viewed an extremely interesting one by a gentleman known as Simon Sinek. He actually has a few on there, but we’re going to focus on his piece on ‘How Great Leaders Inspire Action’.

In essence, the talk discusses how game changing businesses focus on the reason something is done (the why), rather than the product or the service (the what). Sinek talks about this in depth, informing the audience as to why a human mind has evolved to resonate more-so with the ‘why’ factor over the ‘what’ factor. This mindset drives consumers to behave in a certain way and as an example he claims that this is the reason for Apple’s popularity.

The Law of Diffusion of Innovation

Sinek then discusses The Law of Diffusion of Innovation. To us laypeople, this notion essentially describes the speed a new idea or an innovation spreads through a culture.

Within this law, the adoption rate is split into five groups – these include innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. Each one of these groups is larger than the last, with a larger number of people adopting the idea as it has been previously adopted by others. Sinek discusses a point in the graph (later on in the early majority stage) where an idea reaches critical mass and is widely adopted by all in a society.

The reason we’ve discussed this TED Talk is simply because in business this H2H customer service and interaction is now well within the ‘early majority stage’.

Innovative businesses are increasingly moving away from the traditional model. For example, look at the growth of employee advocates – where employees leverage the brand they work for with friends via social media. How often do you now see brands responding on Twitter with an avatar of the individual you’re talking to rather than a logo? What we’re seeing is the rise of bespoke H2H social media and the replacement of the generic, off the peg option.

It’s Human2Human Stupid

When Bill Clinton was elected President of the USA, it happened because he could relate to people and they could to him.

Clinton blew George Bush Sr. out of the water on TV by simply talking to people on their terms – ‘it’s the economy stupid’ – and having a good time, playing saxophone on the TV. He just showed himself to be a human being and not some manner of political robot. Clinton triumphed thanks to his ability to talk to people on a one-to-one level and have a bit of fun. Political robots have tried to be human ever since.

Businesses can learn a lot from Clinton’s impact on the way politicians run for election. When social media came about a decade or so ago, no one would have envisaged this H2H notion. However, in no time at all I’m quite sure we’ll see critical mass and those that have adapted early will reap the rewards.

Now is the time to be part of the early majority, so adopt this new innovation, create a community around your company, treat consumers as individuals and get ahead of the curve. As they say, the only certainty in life is change.

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5 Tips to Help You Write More Quickly

Content is king, right? We’ve all heard that cliché because we’re working in the era of blogging and thought leadership, where every position and department in the workplace is being asked to produce more content. But it doesn’t write itself. HR professionals, developers, salespeople, and other employees with no writing background are increasingly expected to create good content, and to do it quickly. That’s not an easy task.

To help you hone your skill, here are 5 tips on how to write faster.

Skip the Introduction

The first paragraph, known as the “lead,” is a very important part of any piece of writing. Knowing that, people often agonize over this section, spending more time on their lead than any other part of the text.

Your lead should captivate the reader, giving them no choice but to read on while also offering a snapshot of what the entire text contains. Considering it almost acts as a summary to the text, why would you write it before knowing exactly what the content will look like?

Fast writers often skip their introduction. This allows them to write the piece without trying to fit it into the constraints of a lead they laboured over in advance.

The blank page is your worst enemy. It doesn’t matter if you delete a paragraph as soon as you’ve written it; you have to prime the pump before the ideas start flowing. Skipping the lead also gives you more time to soak in the rest of your content and mull it over. You’ll get familiar with the content that stand out, which will likely form the basis of your introduction.

Note: The same thinking applies to the headline—it should be the last thing you write.

Don’t Get Caught Up In the Wording

“What’s a better way to say…?” “How can I make this sound better?” “What word can I use instead of…? These types of questions keep many writers up at night, when they really shouldn’t.

When you get caught up in your wording, you’re liable to spend tons of time on thesaurus.com or asking coworkers what to say. Don’t fall into this trap. You’re not Barack Obama’s speech writer. (Or, if you’re reading this Mr. Favreau, please share some of your own tips in the comments.) The odds of a single word significantly impacting how people respond to your blog post is very small.

If you get stuck on a word or sentence, move on. Just leave a placeholder (newspaper reporters traditionally use “TK” because it’s easy to spot in the text) and keep going. Writing quickly is about getting into a rhythm and staying with it. Momentum is more important than the perfect word. It’s always easier to go back and fill in the blanks later, when your ideas are more fully formed.

Keep Your Research In the Document

As soon as you leave the page you’re writing on, the chances of you coming back right away and continuing to write are substantially reduced. We’ve all been there: you go to your email for a piece of information, see another email, open it, start a new thread, open a new document, work on something else, etc.

The best way to avoid these distractions is to not leave your writing document at all. If you have information, quotes or statistics you’ll be referencing or using in your writing, copy it onto the bottom of your document before you start. Put a big line across the page (or my favourite, a -30-) so you can quickly distinguish between notes and your own writing. Then have at it.

Reducing your distractions will make you a faster blog writer for obvious reasons. But this technique also gives me the sense that I’ve included all the information I wanted to included before I started writing. Every time I reference a piece of information, I highlight it or cut it out of the doc altogether. When the notes section disappears, you know you haven’t left anything out, and you can focus instead on tying everything together with your own thoughts.

Gathering all these notes into the same place is also an effective way to identify the most important content. When building your “scratch document” or notes, you don’t need to think about things like structure and style—you’re just building a body of raw material to work with. Once you’ve got everything in one place, your strongest points and best evidence will be more obvious.

Write What You’ve Got

You know you want to write “4 tips about XYZ” but you can only think of 2. So you spend hours thinking and researching to try and find a new idea to add to the story. Don’t waste your time, just write what you’ve got.

First of all, as I mentioned above, don’t get locked into a headline or a concept in advance. These elements should come together after you’ve put all of your research and ideas on paper. Usually if you have to look hard for extra information to add, the content probably isn’t that important to the core idea anyways. When you try to force it, it will show in the writing.

Also, in the era of short attention spans, being concise is more effective anyways. Writing 20 tips for anything probably won’t get you the same amount of attention as writing 5 tips. People want to read — and learn — quickly, and move on. Make that easy for them to do.

Talk It Out

If you absolutely do need more content, you’re better off dealing with that in advance. Before you even start writing, ask a trusted colleague what they think about hackathons, or Pinterest, or golf or whatever it is you’re writing about. Maybe you won’t use anything they say, but often they’ll provide a new perspective you hadn’t thought of. You don’t have to interview them like a reporter, just casually ask them for their thoughts. The entire process should take a few minutes (unless you’re writing about the meaning of life, or something) and can have a big impact on your finished product.

The ability to write quickly can mean the difference between 100 blog views and 10,000 blog views, especially when you’re trying to capitalize on a new trend or announcement. Use these tips to speed up the process, and make writing a positive part of your workday.

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Google May Soon Launch a New Search Results Design

Google is known to keep its tests secret, but SEO marketers and bloggers always seem to get a heads up when something is cooking. While majority of the tests or changes from the search giant have been related to SEO, there are hundreds of other tests that are usually not caught until much later because they do not generate as much interest as SEO tests. This seems to be the case with UI tests.

Over the past few months, Google has been testing the search results user interface. The new tests involve making the screen easier for users to read the results by increasing the spacing between individual search results and removing underlines for the hyperlinked content.

A number of users have been commenting on these changes on social media sites. It is interesting to see Google testing the UI results just a few months after they redesigned their logo to make it much smoother. Analysts do not see these changes having any impact on business owners at this moment. The major beneficiaries of the new changes will be users that search for information on smartphones, tablets and other devices. A less congested and cleaner UI is bound to increase search activity among mobile users.

Why UI Changes at this Time?
While we do not know what Google is up to with the update on the UI, we can only speculate the company is trying to improve the user experience for users that use devices to browse the Internet. With smartphone sales having outstripped PC sales in the US, it makes sense for Google to start paying attention to mobile users.

However, like is expected of any changes, some users are already saying they are not happy with the new UIs. On a discussion at Search Engine Land blog, one of the visitors said he thought his browser was missing the stylesheet when he noticed the hyperlinks were not underlined.

The impact of the new UI design is yet to be seen. In the coming months, we will have a clearer picture on how users will react to the changes.

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Relationship Building as a Key to New Customer Acquisition

Social media platforms have transformed the way we conduct business and build relations. While branding and promoting your business on any social media platform, you have to realize that these connections form an invaluable and integral part of business development. Although great content on social media platform that capture the attention of consumers, you have to build relationships for driving sales of any brand. Podcasters are the biggest influencers in building relations and marketing. Podcasters are actually termed as “power users.”

Relationships form the fundamental currency of any business

Social media channels have transformed the way we communicate and build relations. You can reach out to people all over the world from the comfort of your home. Now, marketing and business promotions are no longer restricted to meetings and events. Social media platforms have immensely helped people in branding their goods and services. However, marketers need to know that large number of likes and followers on social media platforms may not actually lead to huge sales and profits.

Attend conferences for branding and promoting business

One of the best platforms for building business relations is through business conferences. Here, you get an opportunity to showcase your talents and forge connections with real people. Business conferences help you in creating an impact on influential people in the business community. Try having conversations with the speakers for the purpose of networking. You make an impact in these business conferences by asking meaningful questions. Attend many marketing and branding events as these are platforms where you get to have face-to-face encounters with consumers.

How to measure Return on Relationship

For the purpose of expanding business, marketers need to understand that connections build on social media platforms should be transformed into real connect. This would help you in realizing “return on relationship.” Marketing forms the crux of any business and transforming social media connections into sales helps people in expanding their business. With social media platforms, you can connect and engage with millions of consumers all over the world. The sales driven through social media platforms are termed as “return on relationship.”

How brand advocates help in digital marketing
In the era of digital marketing and sales, relationship building has been transformed by leaps and bounds. Note that, recommendations and comments made by people on social media platforms help you in understanding the needs of consumers. The most successful brands are the ones that listen to the needs of consumers. Recommendations made by people on social media have a much greater impact than any review. Employees could be considered as the best assets for digital marketing. When employees of a company make a personal brand of themselves on social media, they actually engage and drive attention of their company’s products and services to millions of people.

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