I had Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” (Amazon affiliate link) as my ear worm today – the title of this post is inspired by it.

This past Thursday’s PubCon keynote was a panel discussion between Topher Konan (CNN.com’s SEO Coordinator), Jeff Preston (SEO Manager for Disney) and Alex Bennert (In-House SEO for the Wall Street Journal). It was quite a lively talk about different issues facing in-house SEOs in large organizations.

One stand out comment was Jeff’s mention that everyone involved in the web efforts need to be at every meeting. His comment was very well received by the people in attendance. I was certainly glad to hear him say it, as that idea is something very important to me. It’s something which I stressed during my In-House SEO presentation on Tuesday. In the context of my talk, it was about the importance of marketers being constantly in touch with their IT counterparts.

What I said was something  like …

“If you treat your IT folks as an afterthought, guess what? They’ll treat you as an afterthought.”

Constant and consistent communication is important for several reasons:

• It helps maintain lines of communication which can otherwise get lost
• It helps build those relationships needed for smooth cooperation
• Both sides of the team learn from each other
• Both sides of the team learn each other’s abilities, strengths and weaknesses
• It makes working life just that much more pleasant

Remember that web marketing success means success for the entire organization. Although you may not see the need to communicate across departments on a consistent basis, that need is there. Keep in contact, even when you don’t feel like it. Make time to talk to those who have a hand in all pieces of your web marketing strategy, no matter how small their role may be. In the long run, everyone wins when you do.

Oh, and this applies to outside contractors, too!

Now is the time for you to learn to fly. You’ve come so far and I hope you’ve been keeping up with your posts and updating your site with new content from time to time. Now comes the last article in this series – and the admonition for you to spread your wings and take off. You’re ready, believe me!

WordPress Thesis Menu Area

The main reason I recommended you get the Thesis theme was because it would allow you to have a platform to learn some PHP and CSS as you went along. I could write tons of articles about those two things, but why totally reinvent the wheel when there are so many great tutorials and books available on those subjects? It’s time for you to spread your wings and fly, and you can’t do that if I’m hanging on to your wings.

There are two files within the Thesis theme which you can use to customize your site: custom.css and custom_functions.php. Both of these files can be edited in the Custom File Editor section of the Thesis controls.

Customize Functionality
Click the dropdown box, select the file you wish to edit and click the “Edit selected file” button. Let’s look at the custom_functions.php first.

Thesis Custom File Editor Window

Thesis uses a concept called “hooks” to allow you to change some functionality of your site. For instance, if you want to move the menu from above your site’s header image to just below it (something I prefer to do) then you simply add the following two lines to custom_functions.php:

remove_action('thesis_hook_before_header', 'thesis_nav_menu');
add_action('thesis_hook_after_header', 'thesis_nav_menu');

The first line removes the menu from its default location, the second line puts the menu after the header. Easy, right?

So, how do you know what hooks are available and how to use them? Easy – it’s all documented on the Thesis web site. Remember what I told you last time – searching online is the best friend you have. It’s likely that whatever you want to do has already been figured out by someone who’s already been there. Learn from them.

There is also an excellent hooks tutorial by Rae Hoffman-Dolan on her Sugarrae site, I highly recommend you check it out: Thesis Tutorial – Hooks for Dummies.

Customize The Look
The other file you can edit for customization is custom.css. This is the custom Cascading Style Sheet. If you haven’t already, check out CSS: The Missing Manual by David McFarland (Amazon Affiliate link). You can also google “CSS Cheat Sheet” and find dozens of very well-made shortcut guides to what you can control using CSS.  There is also an excellent CSS tutorial on the Thesis web site.

Here’s a quick example. On this site, I wanted a black border to set off the footer from the rest of the site. All I had to do was add this to my custom.css file:

.custom #footer{
	border-color: Black;
}

Again, easy, once you know how to do it. Play around, don’t be afraid to fail. Keep trying and adding pieces until you get it working the way you want.

Backups!
Of course, it’s a good idea to make copies of these files in case you really mess up. For instance, it’s possible to completely trash your site if you make a mistake in your custom-functions.php file. Download a backup before you start messing with things in case you need to undo something to get your site running again – not that I’ve ever done that …

Test Domains
Another good idea is to set up a test site for experimentation. If you’re host allows it, set up a subdomain like test.yourdomain.com and install WordPress and Thesis in it. You can export your current content using the “Export” function within WordPress’s tools and you can export your Thesis customizations using the “Download Options” tool in the Thesis “Manage Options” section. Then you can use the import or “upload” pieces on your test site to help you make an exact duplicate of your site on the test domain. This allows you to make mistake and perfect your changes without messing up your “real” site.

Now go and spread your wings. If you ever have questions, please feel free to share them in the comments of any of the posts in this series or use the Contact Form to send in a question.

Some ideas I got from the Stump The Nerds panel at BlogathonATX with Jeremy Arntz, Jackie Dana and Pat Ramsey. They were taking questions on techie topics relating to blogging and other web sites.

• While all blog platforms have great features and are easy to set up, a self-hosted WordPress install gives you many more options, there are a lot more themes to choose from, and you have a lot of control over your site.
• Cloud hosting is good if you want to scale to more memory, disk space and processor power
• Use Akismet is a great plug-in for catching comment spam. It’s worth signing up for a WordPress.com account to get an API key
• Analytics is easy and important. Google Analytics is a good option
• Use Regenerate Thumbnail plugin for WordPress to automatically resize thumbnails when you redesign your site.
• Use a cache plugin to speed up your download times. W3TotalCache is a good option
• Nextgen Gallery is a great plugin if you display a lot of images
• Don’t forget a social media sharing plug in to help readers share your site
• Don’t go crazy downloading plugins, if you get too many plugins your site’s performance will take a hit. Plus, there’s more updates to keep track of and more chances for problems
• A good category structure can benefit your SEO more than tags. Don’t forget the basics like good content and titles, too
• Tags are very handy for plugins that display related stories with a post
• Learning CSS, PHP and HTML are very important. Especially if you try to get help from a developer. You should have a sense of what’s going on – it’ll save you time and money in the long run
• Backups are very important. This is especially true if you try to hack some code yourself. It’s nice to be able to roll back changes if you mess something up
• Don’t install a plugin just because you think it’s cool. Install it only if you have a real need for the functionality it offers
• Is SEO important for the personal blogger? It is if you want people to read your blog. But, not every blog will be successful. If no one is interested in what you right about, all the SEO in the world will help it. Consider tweaking your content or changing your format
• Make sure to delete old plugins and themes you no longer use
• Make sure to use a good strong password. That’s your first line of defense against hacking. Also, avoid using “Admin” for the admin user name. (I wrote a post about creating strong passwords a while back: Four Steps To Better Passwords - you might find it helpful)

I hereby claim I coined the term “Tech Support Custom Code Cop Out.” This is described as a lame excuse used by some tech support people to avoid dealing with a difficult issue a customer has with software or a service they purchased.

This has happened to me a few times – and it’s really annoying. I’m certainly not saying that tech support people should be expected to support someone else’s totally custom application. But, when just a couple of things are changed in a product which is customizable and the person calling for help has clearly documented the changes in their tech support request, this excuse becomes unacceptable.

Here are a couple of examples of what I mean.

Once I was helping a friend who ran an online art gallery. He decided to go full on with an e-commerce site, adding a shopping cart while keeping some list pages organized in categories as he had on his straight HTML site. I recommended a new host for him which had a built-in shopping cart application he could rent. I figured there would be no problem recreating the look of his “old” site (which was working very well for him).  I’d merely put all the products into the shopping cart database with a category flag and then query up the data to put into his list pages.

No problem, that is, until I tried to find information on creating a connection string to the database on the host’s web site. I found nothing. No examples, not even a mention of it. Now keep in mind this is a major shopping cart host, not some rinky dink outfit.

So I went through the support forums. I saw lots of people asking the same question, but no answers. I found that strange, but I carried on with my task.

I eventually ended up emailing their support. My request went something like, “Please tell me how to do a connection string to my client’s data on your service. I have the database name, user name and password, I just need the server name  to connect to.”

A couple days later I got a reply, which went something like this: “We’re sorry, that’s custom code. We don’t support custom code.”

That made me go, ‘Hmm.” I replied to that message pointing out there was no custom code yet, because without a connection string I really couldn’t even get started writing the custom code. I didn’t need any help with the data queries or anything like that, I just needed to know how to connect to the database. A database which they, no doubt, already had connection strings for or my customer’s shopping cart wouldn’t work.

The answer back was exactly the same, “Sorry, that’s custom code. We don’t support custom code.”

I went back and forth three or four more times, always with the same answer. No help, no how. Needless to say, I do not recommend that host any more.

More recently, a work colleague and I were troubleshooting the administration piece of another shopping cart. (Coincidence?) My colleague did some major work on the CSS files for this product but just a couple small custom user controls were added to the code in order to display a little extra data on our products display pages.

We tested, and everything worked properly in our test environment. Once we moved the files to our production server, however, the admin piece started failing. We went through troubleshooting ourselves. When we couldn’t find a problem, she went into their help forums and found a couple of possible fixes, but nothing would get us past the error. Finally, when we could do no more ourselves, she opened a support ticket.

The first answer: “You did custom code on your site. We can’t support your installation because of this.”

My colleague replied that the customized parts were not in the admin section, but their reply was the same. She finally documented the changes she made, showing that they had nothing to do with the administrative portion of the software. Still, the reply was the same.

Good news: My colleague found a solution on her own. Still, it’s kind of sad she had to slog through their code for a couple of days before she found the problem. They, likely, could have found it much quicker. And it had nothing to do with any customization she did.

We Have To Do Better
Again, I’m not expecting  a software vendor to support a complete customization unless they wrote it all themselves. But in these two examples I don’t think the requests for support were unreasonable. It looked to me like the support folks were trying to close the tickets as quickly as possible, regardless of whether or not the customer was satisfied. Service after the sale is important – and this ain’t it.

Here’s another thought: If you’re a vendor, what if you had a couple of tech support people on staff who could help customers regardless of their customizations? Now that would be rock start support. Would you have to ask higher prices or perhaps a premium on your maintenance fees? Yes, but I’ll bet a lot of customers would find it worth the extra cost. That could be the one thing to differentiate you from your competitors.

What say you? Have you been a victim of the Tech Support Custom Code Cop Out? What do you think about it? Have you ever been on the other side? I’d love to hear from folks on the support of the issue. Please feel free to share in the comments.

photo credit: Lazurite

In last last installment of this series, I recommended you start a web site in order to learn more about tech. If you haven’t done that yet, please review that article and do the homework listed at the end.

Today we’re going to go over some of the settings in WordPress you’ll need to be familiar with before you start adding content. First off, the menu on left side. Today we want to make sure the “Settings” section is set up for best results. By default, the menu sections are collapsed, click on the main part to expand the selections.

First the General Section:

• Site Title - This is typically the name of your web site. On this one, it’s “The Crossing of Marketing and IT.”
• Tag Line – This is a short description of the site. It’s a good idea to write something descriptive. On this site, it’s “The Crossing of Marketing & IT: Where Marketing and Technology meet – Web + Search + Social Marketing, Teamwork, Leadership & More.”
• WordPress Address (URL) – This is the domain you registered. You can enter it as “http://site.com” or “http://www.site.com” as you see fit. Either way is correct, but you need to refer to your site by that address after it’s set.
• Site Address (URL) – Typically, set the same as the WordPress Address.
• E-mail Address – This is the email address which will receive messages when someone posts a comment. Make sure this is a valid address which you will check often.
• Membership – If you intend your site to be membership driven, then check this box. If you are writing articles for the public, you’ll want to leave this box unchecked.
• New User Default Role – If you left the “Membership” box unchecked, you can ignore this setting. If you checked the box, then select the default role you want new users to have. You’ll likely want to leave this on “Subscriber.”
• Timezone – Select your time zone. This is important if you plan to write articles and schedule them for publication.
• Date Format – Pick how you want dates to appear
• Time Format – Pick how you want times to appear
• Week Starts On – Pick the day on which you’re week begins.

Writing Section- For now, let’s leave this at the default settings.

When talking with marketers who are working on how to improve relations with their IT counterparts, they often ask what they can do to better communicate with those techie types. The easy answer is: become more technical.

Ah, but the easy answer isn’t alway all that easy. Here’s the first tip in what I intend to be a series to help those less technical marketers get a little more technical: Start Your Own Web Site.

Starting your own web site will give you a platform to help you understand more fully how web sites work and the technology behind them. As you learn about how everything fits together, you’ll gain valuable knowledge to help you in consultations with your technical counterparts. Having your own web site also helps build your credibility as a web marketer. It allows you to showcase your skills and demonstrate you know what you’re talking about when it comes to online topics.

Perhaps the easiest type of web site to get up and running is one with a content management system as its back end. For instance, this web site runs on the WordPress platform. WordPress is better known as a blogging tool, but it’s a content management system at its core and can be used to power more than just a blog site.

There are a number of web hosts which make it relatively easy to register a domain, purchase hosting and install the WordPress software, more or less automatically. The two I’ve worked with the most are GoDaddy and HostGator, and I can recommend either one of them.

For the purposes of this project, all you need do is register a domain and get a basic hosting plan for a year. This should cost no more than $150. A small investment which will pay off in huge dividends later on if you use this project to build up your skills.

Some may argue that buying hosting and setting up WordPress with a host providing a semi-automatic install is not all that technical. I agree with that arguement; however, keep in mind this is just the first step of many which we will be taking. You have to start somewhere, and this is probably the least intimidating way to take that first step.

Now, for you marketers out there who shudder at the thought of even attempting this: I recommend you grab one of your IT counterparts and ask for assistance. This will allow you to learn and establish some non-workplace rapport with them. Barring that, you can get lots of help via Google or Bing searches and your selected web hosts’ own help tools.

Homework:

• Consider a theme for your web site. You may just want to go and register your real name – this can come in handy for reputation management. You might also set up a site devoted to a non-work hobby.
• Pick a domain name.
• Go to GoDaddy, HostGator or another host to register your domain and pay for a year of hosting.
• Install WordPress.

Next time we’ll delve into the inner workings of WordPress and get started.

photo credit: Tim Dorr

Last week I read two excellent articles on IT and Marketing working together (or not) which got me thinking quite a bit. The first was “IT + Marketing: Innovation Through Collaboration in B2B Software Companies” by Julie Hunt, the other was “I own the technology, you own the content” by Eric D. Brown.  Go check them out because each writer makes some excellent points.

Let Me Put On My IT Hat
Those of us who read Scott Adams’ “Dilbert” comics are familiar with the character “Mordac, The Preventer of Information Services.” While we can laugh at the silliness of those comic situations, there is a bit of tongue in cheek truth to what is portrayed.

Often, we IT folks are looked at as spoilers and inhibitors. What I often hear and read from those frustrated people is like a line from the old Five Man Electrical Band song: “All we hear is ‘Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the signs?’” In this case the signs come in the form of a policy document or a banner across the monitor screen of someone trying to accomplish their mission. Their frustration goes up and out come the comparisons to Mordac.

Unfortunately, what these people don’t realize is that we’re just doing the job delegated to us. We’re tasked with making sure the enterprise’s network and data remain secure. No one wants to go through the nightmare of a T.J. Maxx or Epsilon security breach. Many IT Departments are understaffed, overworked and looked at as merely a cost center and not a business multiplier. In this type of environment, the easiest way to head off security issues is to raise the shields and plug up any holes found in the perimeter.

Switch To The Marketing Hat
What marketers really need are flexible systems which allow them to reach out to customers wherever they are.  They need to be able to reach out via email, web sites and social media spaces. While IT development shops dabble in Agile Development, marketing shops need and want to get into what Scott Binker calls Agile Marketing. When we run into what looks like an IT roadblock, we get frustrated and don’t feel protected or secure. We just want to get our mission accomplished.

Can’t We All Just Get Along?
So, how do we get going in the right direction? Is there any skipping along arm in arm down the yellow brick road? I think there can be. It’ll take some work and a whole lot of communication, but it is possible for all sides to accomplish their individual missions while still working together to bring about success for the overall organization.

Department Ambassadors
I once worked in an organization where work was divided into different “shops.” Each shop had its own mission, leadership and way of doing things. Work was supposed to flow from front to middle to back. The front and back offices were supposed to react to priorities based on guidance from the home office while the middle shop had a supporting role in helping the work flow between all three shops. In reality, though, this rarely worked out. What usually ended up happening was the front and back shops argued over what the home office meant by priorities while the middle shop sat back out of the fray and waited for the dust to settle.

The leadership of the front and back shops decided to smooth things out. Instead of two committees of people interpreting home office directives each shop appointed a liaison to work with the other office. All communication was funneled between these two. They made the decisions how home office directives were to be interpreted and those decisions could only be overridden by the managers of their respective shops.

To be sure, it took a little time to work out the kinks in this system. After a few weeks of working things out, though, work flowed much more smoothly. Production went up and arguments went way down. Everyone benefited from this arrangement – even the home office took notice.

There is a lesson to be learned. I propose those IT and Marketing departments who find themselves in disagreement consider having an in-house technology summit. At this meeting, sit down and discuss the challenges each side faces in an open and honest way. At the end, with guidance and direction in hand, appoint a person from each side to be the liaison who will be empowered to communicate and help make decisions on behalf of their department. Let those two work out the priorities and permissions and bring the results to their respective departments.

Oh, and don’t pick the new person to do this. The one tasked with this job needs to be taken seriously. Appoint your best and brightest so the job will get done right.

And don’t forget: You’re all on the same team. In the end, overall success of the organization benefits everyone.

What about you? How do you smooth out communication between departments. Do you think a “Department Ambassador” program will work at your shop? Please feel free to share in the comments.

I won an iPad earlier this year from the great folks at Trackur. It was a gadget I really wanted, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to part with the cash to purchase one. I’m glad I got one, though, because it is really a handy tool. Now that I’ve been using it for a few months, I can’t imagine not having one.

To be sure, I play games on it. I play Words with Friends, Chess with Friends, Monopoly, Angry Birds, etc. But I also use it as a tool to make my life easier and more productive. For instance: I play bass with the band at church. Since getting the iPad, I’ve been converting my music binder from paper sheets to PDFs. Carrying the iPad is quite a bit easier than toting around a ten-pound binder full of paper. It’s easy to copy the PDFs to the “Books” section of iTunes and let them sync to the device.

Another way I use the iPad is taking notes. I bring it to meetings and jot down notes using the Notes app and then email the document to myself and anyone else with whom I might want to share. This is much more efficient for me than taking notes on paper and then typing them into an electronic document.

At the recent PubCon South, I used the iPad to build my summaries for the blog. Just for this purpose, I purchased the Apple Wireless Keyboard (Bluetooth – Amazon Affiliate link) because I found I couldn’t type fast enough with the on-screen keyboard. At each session, I set up my iPad and took notes in the CleanWriter app. At the end of the day, I copied the notes and pasted them into my blog using the BlogPress app. BlogPress is not a WYSIWYG editor, so I did have to code some HTML to put the notes in unordered lists. Still, using copy and paste didn’t take very long. I think it worked out pretty well.

I also use the iPad to read my Kindle books, go through my email, and surf the web. It has really enhanced my productivity in many ways.

If you’re thinking about getting an iPad (or any other tablet device) and are afraid that it’s not much more than a toy I say “Get it!” People may look at you askance, but they don’t know what they are missing.

What about you? Do you an iPad or similar device. How do you use it to be more productive. Please share in the comments.

Another great PubCon is underway in Austin, Texas. I had the privilege of speaking during the In-House SEO session with Carolyn Shelby and Peter Leshaw. Here are summaries of the sessions I attended on Day 1:

Keynote – Jeffrey Eisenberg

Social Media and Conversion: The Yellow Brick Road

• Social media is a big deal. Over 70% check several times a week.
• $56.8 billion will be spent this year on generating website traffic, but only 2%-3% will convert.
• Companies spend $92 to bring a customer to their site, but only $1 to convert them.
• Principle: Transparency is NOT your choice, AUTHENTICITY is.
• Advertising only accelerates the inevitable … if your business is bad, it will fail faster.
• For years, marketers spent most of their time telling promises the business had no intention of keeping. It took a while for people to catch on. Now, information spreads so fast that marketing messages can’t keep up with “real” opinions.
• Now user-generated content shows up on store shelves and packaging. People expect it now.
• Word-of-mouth is triggered when your customer experiences something far beyond what was expected, for better or worse. Slightly exceeding their expectations just won’t do it.
• We should do a lot more listening than speaking, and we should be listening for opportunities to be helpful.
• When communicating with people, it has to be about “them” and not about “us.”
• When humans shop, there’s no “task.” You really can’t flow chart humans shopping for something.
• Keep in mind different contexts for your ads. I.E. Facebook ads last about 2 weeks before people get sick of seeing them and they stop converting.
• “For you to acheive your goals, your customer must acheive theirs.”
• Think of every hyperlink as a contract you have to fulfill.
• Online, you don’t persuade me, I persuade myself as I go through consuming the content on your site(s).
• Sales is not a numbers game, it’s a performance game.
• Try to get some persuasive momentum for social media efforts.

In-House SEO and In-House SEO Education

From Dashboards to Success – Peter Leshaw

• In-House “Team Sheen” – Core: Webmaster, Copy Writer, SEO Specialist, Social Media Manager. Also consider: Pay-Per-Click Specialist and a Project Manager
• Services which you should consider outsourcing: Call Tracking, Direct Response, Campaign Testing, Affliliate Management, and Consultants to assist with usability, media buying & planning, PPC Maintenance, Training, Lead Generation, Staffing, Data Aggregation.
• A dashboard helps you keep the decision-makers informed with good information to help them make better decisions.
• Show that your SEO efforts are paying off, effecting the company positively on the bottom line.
• In the dashboard, tie in relevant information from web analytics, phone call sources, chat stats, leads & conversions.
• Having the right information available helps your organization make good, quick decisions. You can beat out your competitors if you can be more flexible than them.

Innovative Ways of Pulling Off SEO “Optimization – Whether They Like It Or Not” – Carolyn Shelby

• Learn to overcome the politics of “who owns the web site.” We all play for the same team.
• With IT stuff, there are a million and two ways to skin a cat.
• Someone has to “be the boss.” Coordination is very important so things don’t get lost.
• Teamwork lets all decisions be considered from all angles.
• Consultants can be good to bounce ideas off or to double-check vendor pitches. They can help you ask the right questions before spending a lot of money on a big mistake.
• Build inter-departmental coalition.
• Be patient. Sometimes you can’t just drag people kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
• Educate Others: Don’t operate in a vacuum. The more everyone understands the logic behind the business request the better the project runs.
• Look at web sites & the business holistically.

Local Search, Places & Mobile – Moderated by Joe Laratro

Presentation by David Rodecker

Local Search, Places, and Mobile – Brian MacDonald

• Merge your place page and business page on Facebook.
• Claim all the “random” pages which are about your business so you can manage them. Keep your “real” place page separate until you merge all the other pages together. Merge this page last so it will be your authoritative page.

Local Search: How, Why, Where – William Leake

Social Media Customer Service Management & Measurement – Moderated by Joe Laratro

Social Media Customer Service,Management, and Measurement – Kat Mandelstein

• According to Gartner, Smartphones will outpace PCs by 2012
• Social Networking accounts for 22% of online time.
• Social enables busienss processes. Build relationships in marketing, crowdsourcing ideas.
• A social business is engaging, transparent and nimble.
• For internal and public communities trust is facilitated by “tippers.” Tippers engage more and can help convert top casual observers. There are a lot more lurkers than creators.
• IBM has a “Blue IQ” team of volunteers who help others learn about how to use social in their jobs. This isn’t their “regular” day job, but something they do to help the whole enterprise.
• Social can be a great tool to recruit and retain top talent – it’s more than just about customers.
• Think about sharing information. IBM saves $700K per month in travel. Travel can be focused on customer meetings instead of internal business meetings.
• Consider using a social media aggregator on your web site to show tweets, videos, images from various sources.

Social Business – Adam Proehl

• A Right Now & Harris polled customers who wrote negative reviews. Of those who received a response from a brand, 68% went back and wrote a positive review and some even deleted the original negative review.
• Geotwt.com is a geo-location tweet measuring tool. This can be very handy for small/local businesses.
• GoMockingBird is a tool which can be used for crowdsourcing market research and ideas. Probably not a good idea if you want to keep furture products and ideas a secret.
• www.uservoice.com – $5-$35 per month to help you interact with your customers.
• Say “thank you” to every customer who mentions you positively and reach out to those who are having trouble.
• Make a soft pitch offering a link to an info page if you find a tweet complaining about a competitor.
• You don’t have to spend a lot of money, use HootSuite or TweetDesk to monitor your brand on twitter.
• Embrace Reviews: it’s highly measurable and a great opportunity for interaction. It’s also an SEO booster.
• www.websitegrager.com from HubSpot is a quick audit tool.
• www.heardable.com is a paid service but also has a free version.

Location-Based Marketing – Aaron Strout

• Location based marketing is the art of engaging your customers and prospects using services like foursquare, Facebook Places, Yelp, Gowalla and Whrrl to drive loyalty, word of mouth marketing and referrals.
  1. Stake your claim to places pages in every system – or as many as you can find. Don’t be afraid to try more than one.
  2. Connect with mayors, ambassadors, leaders, duchesses, chiefs, poobahs and sherrifs.
  3. Test, learn and optimize – especially while costs are low and return potential high.
  4. Follow the Ben & Jerry’s Rule. Make offers for everyone, not just for mayors. Offer bigger rewards for more checkins, but have something available to everyone.
  5. Be creative and build your own thing using an API
• 1 of 4 page views in the U.S. are Facebook. http://bit.ly/gGNjV3

Presentation by Brad Pierce

• Plaster your social media info everywhere.
• Use FREE!/Discounts/Giveaways
• Build a positive customer base quickly before complainers show up.
• Timing is Everything
  1. Passive monitoring vs. dedicated job function
  2. Social media is a bank account for your reputation
  3. Track, monitor, and report
• Respond to everyone with the same priority – whether positive or negative. Don’t delay responses. Empower people to make decisions quickly. This can turn a negative interactiion into a positive one just by responding quickly.
• If you’re on SM and ask a customer to call in, give them a tracking number so they know they aren’t just getting fobbed off on a call center.
• Tracking is very important. Watch what’s going on with your responses so you know what is going well and what you need to improve.

SEO for E-Commerce Web Sites – Rob Snell

• Don’t forget the basics.
• Prioritize your keywords by revenue, not just by traffic.
• Add buy modifiers to your keywords. Words like “buy,” “cheap” etc. convert well. Get them from your analytics. What works for one site won’t work for others.
• Find the two most relevant pages for your top 100 revenue pages
• Link to your top 100 converting pages from your home page.
• Set up your top 100 products on a “Best Sellers” page so those items will get indexed faster.
• If you can do one thing, develop some compelling content for your home page. Add some text to your categories page.

Building a Social Media Plan That Gets Results – Krista Neher

• Social media is not just another sales channel. If you just look at it that way, you’ll just bore and offend everyone. Meet the needs of your audience without being obtrusive.
• You can’t “just be nice to people” and expect results. You have to plan for results to get results. Most social media efforts fail because the people running it fail to plan.
  1. Listen – this is #1 most important.
  2. Marketing Strategies – what are you trying to achieve and who are you trying to reach? Choose strategies that are right for your business. Don’t just do what everyone else is doing.
  3. Know Your Target Audience – if you try to talk to anyone, you really talk to know one. Don’t be afraid to narrow down your audience a bit.
  4. Create Compelling Content – go for unique, expert content.
  5. Tools – Most folks start here, but this is really in the middle of the process. Sites fit into categories of publishing, sharing, social networks, microblogs, co-creation, discussion & review, public relations, & mobile. Look for where your customers already are and start there. It’s not about creating accounts, it’s what you do with them.
  6. Implementation – plan for measuring results as part of this.
  7. Measure
  8. Adjust

Web Marketing and the Brain – Roger Dooley

• This was an interesting discussion of Neuromarketing
• Not talking about mind reading, “super-ads,” nor is there a “buy button” in the brain.
• The mind is a lot like an ice berg – just about 95% of brain function is subconscious.
• The brain responds to subliminal images. Like the old “popcorn” hidden ads as the theater do respond. fMRIs show this to be true.
• Social interaction can influence “deal making” between individuals. This can apply to web marketing.
• An image of an attractive woman can influence men to make quicker, less rational decisions. A study in South Africa proved having an image of an attractive woman in an ad for loans resulted in men choosing offers with interest rates up to 4% higher.
• Simple fonts convince because people think they are easier and faster. Short descriptions and simple fonts are more effective. The exception to this is if you have a high-ticket item; where a more complicated description and font can be more effective.
• Instead of asking for personal information before giving up a white paper or e-book, consider giving the content first and then ask for the personal information afterwards. Studies show conversion can be up to 50% higher. It’s worth testing to see how your audience responds.
• On product list pages, consider listing the items you want to push or that you think your customers would be most happy with first.
• 2 Reasons Why Your Website Shouldn’t Suck
  1. User stress goes up 50% if a web site is hard to use.
  2. People form an impression of your web site in less than 1 second. Make sure your site is not clunky or ugly.

Everything You Need to Know About SEO – Adam Alter

• Many SEO methods work better than others in different scenarios. If something is working for you, keep doing it.
• Consider alternative keywords for similar, but competing products. For instance, if you’re looking to optimize for “Laser Hair Removal” also optimize for “Hair Waxing.”
• Comscore reports 88% of clicks are organic while only 12% are PPC.
• Make sure to use user-friendly, keyword rich names for your images. Product numbers are not helpful to SEO.
• Consider disallowing privacy, legal, and other common pages which don’t really add to content quality.
• Consider naming
  tags with keyword descriptions. This can help developers, too.

PubCon South starts today in Austin.

The PubCon Masters Group training starts today at 8:00 am. I attended the inaugural Masters Group Training last year and it was excellent. If you’re looking to spend some quality time learning about SEO or Social Media, you should definitely consider the Masters Group Training.

This evening, the main PubCon event kicks off at 6:00 pm with the Kick Off Classic. this is a great time to meet other attendees and learn about what others are doing in web marketing. One of the best things about PubCon is that everyone is eager to learn and teach.

I’ll be presenting tomorrow morning during the In-House SEO & In-House SEO Education session with Topher Kohan and Peter Leshaw and moderated by Carolyn Shelby. If you’re attending, please stop by Salon A and say “hi.”

Look for my session summaries through the week.