Archive for September, 2009
Design Trends: The Single Purpose Homepage
Posted by randfish
It’s been a long time since I last blogged on design topics, but I think it’s time to break that streak. This post focuses on a design style that’s both retro (it’s been around a long time) and emerging (the popularity, at least to me, feels like it’s on the rise) - the single-purpose homepage.
First, a brief example:
In the above design, Spokeo has just one, singular, all-consuming goal – get your email address so they can show you how their product works. There may be a few secondary links for registered users to login, access to the blog and about pages, and some logos to help improve credibility, but basically, we’re looking at remarkably driven intent behind the design.
Five Reasons I Like the Single-Purpose Homepage:
- It Gets the Message Across Quickly
With only a single headline and call to action, visitors quickly parse the critical message you’re attempting to push. In longer, more complex pages, designers and marketers constantly have to worry about the percentage of people who are actually exposed (in any meaningful way) to the intended triggers.
_ - It Forces Simplicity in Communication
This singularity of messaging also means that the language, words and images chosen have to communicate simply or risk failure. Simplicity in web design has proven itself over and over again as a driver of success, and simple messages are the easiest to understand and to transmit virally – a marketer’s dream.
_ - It Reveals What Matters (and Obscures What Doesn’t)
When external forces compel us, we tend to find our greatest strength is all that remains. That principle is in clear effect with these designs, as the unecessary is completely stripped away, leaving only those items (graphics, font, layout, links and messaging) that serve the singular purpose of the page. If you’ve ever fought over which ten things to put on the homepage, get ready to trade that in for which ten words can express the entirity of your business (not necessarily an enviable trade, but it can be a net positive).
_ - It Sorts the Visitor Wheat from the Chaff
Visitors who reach this page will instantly know whether the product is for them or not. The uninterested are immediately disengaged, leaving only true potential candidates for marketing and targeting. This means every piece of data you can collect and refine about your remaining audience is precious — but it does remove the "noise" that’s often mixed in with an unfocused audience.
_ - It Makes it Easy to Optimize the Funnel
If you’re doing lots of A/B and multivariate testing (and if this doesn’t convince you that you should, abandon all hope), the simplicity of having only a few input boxes, links and headlines is a miracle. Tests run faster, produce more compelling results and give you the focus you need to improve click-through and conversion rates efficiently. Tiny changes in these percents are frequently responsible for millions of dollars of revenue (which is generally a good thing).
Is It Good for SEO?
It depends… If you have the type of site that’s very product focused and single-purpose in nature, this can be an ideal page type. Even if you run a blog, promote articles, or have other types of secondary content, you can always embed links to them in smaller, more background-style fonts and retain crawlability and good information architecture.
The only real trouble may come from the homepage’s loss in ability to send traffic to more viral, less product-specific parts of the site (which will then cost links, which will in turn cost SEO opportunity). If this is a danger, it may be a viable reason not to implement this style of design. You also definitely shouldn’t be using this style if it doesn’t fit with your strategic goals – publishers, blogs, newspapers and most retailers probably don’t want to go this direction (though taking cues from it in deeper, more focused pages is probably very wise).
Eight Examples of Single-Purpose Homepages in Action:
The URL shortening service j.mp (run by Bit.ly) is remarkably focused on helping provide their product with little surrounding clutter. I particularly like the approach of stretching the URL bar so it’s always the dominant focus – and once you use j.mp, you’ll never go to any other service (part of the reason they can focus so heavily on getting the product used in the first 5 seconds of the first visit).
Tumblr‘s message "the easiest way to blog" is made credible by the fantastically simple signup process. They’ve also smartly broken the "single purpose" literal interpretation by having a callout in the green box of "21 Reasons Why You’ll Love Tumblr." Just for the record – even though I’m an advocate of this style for the right type of site, I do strongly encourage testing often and early. The beautiful part is how easy pages like this are to test (in comparison to their portal-entry-like peers)
Shopify employs simplicity and text-based callouts to highlight its messaging. I like the layout visually, but I wonder if they’ve done extensive testing about the impact of the three text boxes.
If you’ve seen the dozens of popular weather sites around the web, you know how horrifyingly cluttered they can be. UmbrellaToday breaks with tradition and provides possibly the dead-simplest method for getting solid weather reports. I’m a fan of the clever name and branding, too – I love personality in startups 
Although Silverback‘s homepage is a bit long-form vertically, the message is singular – convey what the app does and why you need it, then get a click on that download link. I’m not sure if they have tested it, but I’d love to see a version that puts the "What does Silverback do?" graphic in the text bubble spoken by the Gorilla.
Popular travel site Kayak technically has multiple foci, but the strength of the homepage’s conviction that you want to find airline pricing and their ability to stick with it for so many years (and probably through hundreds of rounds of testing) illustrates the single-purpose homepage brilliantly. It’s also in sharp contrast to their competitors in the travel market, who insist on promoting specials, deals, partnerships, news, reviews and a thousand other disparate items that distract from the intended goal of both website and visitor.
When I first visited Resumator, I wasn’t sure it belonged on this list. However, after spending ~9 seconds actually reading the copy on the page, I was impressed. I instantly knew what they did and actually considered sending it over to some folks inside SEOmoz for consideration (since we’re going to be on the hunt for new hires soon). Single message – check. Delivered quickly – check. Focused direction to one action – check. All that, and it looks pretty useful
Gist plugs your email in with the web’s social features to help give context and content around your inbox and contacts. It’s a pretty spiffy piece of software, particularly for those in sales, and the homepage does a good job of conveying the value proposition quickly and simply.
You’ve probably never heard of this tiny, Mountain View, CA company, but apparently, they do pretty well
Your thoughts?
Books – How to Expand your Blog #2
See the full sized version of this video at YouTube – Expand Your Blog By Adding a Book.
A couple of weeks back I introduced a brainstorming exercise that gets bloggers to think about how to expand their blog. I followed that post up with an exploration of adding a forum to a blog as one good way to expand your blog.
Today In this video I continue this exploration of how to expand a blog by looking at adding a book to a blog. In it we look at the example of PostSecret and their new book PostSecret: Confessions on Life, Death and God.
By ‘book’ I’m talking about ‘real’ or ‘hard cover’ books rather than ‘e-books’ (which I’ll cover later in the series).
As I mention in the video publishing a book is not going to be something most bloggers starting out can realistically achieve (although I’ve chatted to one quite new blogger recently who tells me that he’s just landed a publishing deal just a few months in) – however I do think it is something to keep in the back of your mind as you develop your blog.
Also mentioned in the video were the books by Photojojo and Lifehacker.
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
Books – How to Expand your Blog #2
How To Not Get Sick While Traveling
I can’t imagine we are only 2 days away from the Elite Retreat conference. I was packing over the weekend and was thinking back to our 2008 event in San Francisco. I was so sick. It really was a miserable time for me.
At the Elite Retreat I get the best leaders I know in the industry to help the attendees but its my show and I want to solve peoples goals. I size everyone up as fast as possible and the whole time I am focused on solving their problems and helping them get to where they want to.
Just a month back I was at the affiliate summit and was sick also. Being sick sucks in general but at a conference when you are “working” it really sucks.
Both of these times I got sick on the first day I arrived at the conference. I usually get there a day or two early so the cold/flu hits me hardest when I need my strength the most.
Here are my tips for not getting sick while traveling:
Pre-emptive measures
- Flu shot/mist – Every year you should get a flu shot. I used to not get these until I had kids. The flu shot helps you build an immunity to the flu. The flu mist is a new deal that gives you longer coverage and covers more types of flu. You can read more about them here.
- Vitamin C – I take 2000mg of Vitamin C a day. This super bumps up your immune system.
- Airborne Myth – There is a product called Airborne that used to make claims that it would help you to not contract illness while flying on planes. 30+ million dollars later in FTC fines and consumer settlements its now marketed as a simple dietary supplement. Don’t fall for this one! WASTE OF MONEY!
Things you should avoid but are kind of unavoidable
- Don’t shake hands Many people have written about hand shaking and what a barbaric method of greeting it is. There are tons of great alternatives I wish we would embrace. Shaking hands is one best way to pass germs person to person. I would rather shake hands then create the awkwardness of leaving someone hanging. But that is where the hand sanitizer comes in.
- Sit in a isle seat on the airplane – lots of times people will rest against the window area and breathe/sneeze all over it.
- Don’t use the bathroom in the airplane – This is by far the easiest place to contract a cold or flu. Most airplanes only have cold water that do not really kill bacteria and suck for hand washing. Badness all over in airplane bathrooms.
- Don’t Smoke – Smoking irritates your throat and weakens your immune system. I am a conference smoker and usually smoke 2 a day or so when I drink. IM WORKING ON IT!
- wash wash wash wash wash your hands.
Must have items to prevent getting sick
- Keep a mask in your carry on. I am not talking about one of those surgical masks. Surgical masks are made to keep the wearer from preventing spreading their germs if they cough. You need to get a Pandemic Mask like this. If you have to sit bitch on your plane or anywhere near a child bust that sucker out.
- Use Alcohol-based hand sanitizers or gels or antibacterial wipes – I always keep hand sanitizer gel in my carry on and use it frequently throughout my trip.
Hopefully these tips will help you not to get sick while traveling.
If you have any to contribute fire away!
This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog
How To Not Get Sick While Traveling
10 Tips To Make More Money with Sponsored Tweets
You’ve signed up for Sponsored Tweets and now you’re waiting for the advertisers to order some paid tweets from you so you can start making the $300 to $7,500 an hour I talked about in the easiest way to make money with Twitter post. However, you haven’t gotten one single offers. What’s going on? Here are ten tips to increase your chances of getting a sponsored tweet.
1 – Experience Counts
If you’re brand new to Twitter, then your chances of an advertiser ordering a paid tweet from you is slim to none. Your Twitter account should be at least 120 days old before applying to Sponsored Tweets as most advertisers simply will not buy tweets from any accounts that are younger than that.
The account age is valuable for advertisers to filter out spammers and low value Tweeters. If someone has a high number of followers and just recently created an account it may be reason for suspicion. If your Twitter account is brand new, don’t apply.
2 – Have a Complete Twitter Profile
Advertisers like to know who they’re advertising with. If your Twitter profile is incomplete and still running the default background, don’t expect many orders. You don’t have to get a custom Twitter background like what I used but you should make sure all your information is filled out. Make sure you upload your photo or custom avatar as well.
3 – Add Sponsored Tweets To Your Advertise Page
If you’re going to accept Sponsored Tweets, then you might as well tell your advertisers about it. You can use your advertise page to list the benefits of using your Twitter account to help get the advertiser’s message out. Then you can link to the Sponsored Tweets website so they can order.
4 – Show Some Tweet Click Stats
If you use Hootsuite as your Twitter client (and you should if you’re not) then you can take advantage of its built in stat tracking feature. This is a great way to show advertisers that your followers click on the links you send out.
5 – Turn On ClickWatch
ClickWatch is a program designed to provide a level of protection for advertisers who engage Tweeters in the Sponsored Tweets marketplace. When a Tweeter participating in ClickWatch makes a sponsored tweet the system checks the click performance of that tweet after 48 hours. If the cost per click (CPC) for that tweet is above $1.50 the system will automatically schedule another tweet. The system will check performance again after another 48 hours and make a 3rd tweet if necessary.
Advertisers are lot more likely to order paid tweets from a Tweeter who has ClickWatch on rather than someone who has it off. You can tun on ClickWatch in your Sponsored Tweets control panel.
6 – Monitor The Competition
Wondering if your paid tweet price is too high or too low? You can find out by checking out your competition. Sponsored Tweets maintain a list of tweeters and how much it cost to advertise with them. You don’t have to be an advertiser to view the list.
I’ve made three price adjustments to my tweet price since signing up with Sponsored Tweets. These adjustments help to maintain my competitiveness. Sponsored Tweets gives you a recommend price when you first sign up. However, you don’t have to take it. The best way to set the price is to see what the competition is charging and then charge accordingly.
7 – Maintain a Good Followers to Friends Ratio
When an advertiser views your Sponsored Tweets profile, they’re presented with some key information about you. One piece of info is the Ratio. This show the number of people you’re following vs. the number of people following you. A Ratio of 1 means you follow the same number of people as the number of people following you. It can also mean you’re using auto following programs to inflate your follower count.
From an advertiser standpoint, the higher the Ratio number, the better. It tells the advertisers that your followers are following you because they want to hear what you have to say and not because you will auto follow them back.
8 – Sign Up for a Klout Account
Another stat Sponsored Tweets advertisers see is your Klout score. The Klout Score is a numerical representation of the size and strength of your sphere of influence on Twitter. The size of your sphere of influence is calculated by measuring true reach (engaged followers and friends vs. spam bots, dead accounts, etc).
The strength of influence is the likelihood that someone will listen or act upon any specific message and is measured by looking at interactions across the social graph. The scores range from 1-100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Here’s the key. Unless you sign up for a Klout account, your score shows up as zero in the Sponsored Tweets page.
9 – Build Real Influence
If you thought that the way to make money with Sponsored Tweets was to build a big list by auto following and unfollowing thousands of people, think again. Advertisers are not dumb. They know how that game works. They’re looking for Tweeters with real influence. That means you actually have to work to build up your Twitter profile instead of letting a program do it. It means you have to get people to follow you because they want to follow you and not because you’ll auto follow them back. When you have real influence, you’ll have a lot of more offers, you’ll command a higher price per tweet and you’ll be able to do step 10.
10 – Apply for Celebrity Status
When advertisers search for tweeters to advertise with, Sponsored Tweets list the stars and web celebrities first. It goes without saying that being listed on the first page will give you a lot more exposure and therefore a lot more offers.
Sponsored Tweets monitors new Tweeters as they sign up. If they recognize your name they will automatically upgrade you to Internet Celebrity. If not you will need to fill out a form. Pass along things like your Wikipedia page, Blog, YouTube Channel or other relevant sites. Having a bunch of followers on Twitter does not automatically make you a Web Celeb. Acceptance into the program requires influence, visibility and marketability.
If you can’t get celebrity status, then asked to be a “staff pick” as they’re listed right after web celebrities.
Poll: Do You Prefer to Use Paypal or Credit Card to Buy Online?
I believe pretty much all of you have purchased at least one thing online in the past, right? And most of you probably purchase online regularly, be it goods on eBay, ebooks and courses or web hosting.
The question that I wanted to ask is: Do you prefer to use Paypal or credit card for those online purchases?
I know that one can also pay with a credit card via Paypal, but for this poll I am asking about using the funds on your Paypal account for the payment versus using your credit card directly in the payment form provided by the merchant on his website. Which one do you prefer?
Both options have pros and cons. Paypal is easier and quicker when you get the hang of it, and it also protects your credit card information. However, there are many people who complain about Paypal’s interface and people who had problems with their accounts over time.
Paying with a credit card enables you to charge back if you don’t get what you expected, and usually credit card companies offer good fraud protection. However, exposing your credit card information online has some risks as we all know.
Have your say in our poll, and do leave a comment if you want to share your experience or opinion on one of these payment methods.
Do You Prefer to Use Paypal or Credit Card to Buy Online?(answers)
Grab Your Copy of the Make Money Blogging eBook
Original Post: Poll: Do You Prefer to Use Paypal or Credit Card to Buy Online?
5 Social Media Lessons I Learned from Working with a Hollywood Actress
Can social media make you famous?
Come on, you know you’ve thought about it. Who can resist dreaming about a post going viral and getting hundreds of thousands of visitors? Or having tens of thousands of followers on Twitter who follow your every move? Or checking your email and having hundreds of messages from your adoring fans?
It can happen. I know, because I helped make it happen for my friend Brea Grant.
In 2008, Brea called to tell me she had just been offered a major role on the third season of the mega-popular NBC show Heroes, and she wanted me to help her leverage the opportunity. I’d previously created a website to help her connect with casting directors, but now we both realized she was going to need a strategy to connect with fans.
A crash course in connection
Over the next few months, I gave Brea a crash course in social media. She learned how to use Twitter and Facebook, YouTube and Ustream. We also launched a blog.
The purpose of each tool wasn’t just to tell everyone what she was doing or what she thought about something. It was to help her connect directly with her fans and build a relationship with them.
It worked. Or, I should say she worked. Brea did everything I asked her to do and more, and the result is that she’s created a fan base that followed her beyond her character’s untimely demise on Heroes. The contacts she made online also led to the creation and contract with IDW to publish her first comic book We Will Bury You, due in early 2010.
And me? It’s safe to say I learned a ton.
How this applies to you
After his success launching a consulting service here at Copyblogger, Jon Morrow asked me to share some of the lessons I’ve picked up from working with Brea.
Through my work with my own clients, I’ve found that these are universal truths that work for small businesses, professional bloggers, hobby bloggers, and anyone who just wants to raise their online profile.
I hope you enjoy them . . . and be sure to read to the end to see how this applies to you, not just celebrities.
Lesson #1: Find your blog’s core purpose
Here’s a question that never seems to go away: what is a blog?
Is it a public journal? An online magazine? An extended way to connect with friends and family?
And the answer is . . . a blog is whatever your audience needs it to be.
People visit Brea’s blog to experience a personal connection with Brea. Visitors might receive this from chatting with her on Twitter, listening to the same music she listens to, or just getting a glimpse of her day-to-day life.
Whatever your topic, you need to get crystal clear on why people are there.
Is it to read the hilarious details of your personal life? Watch detailed how-to videos on watercolor painting? Hear your latest celebrity rant?
It doesn’t matter what it is, only that you know it and ruthlessly eliminate anything that gets in the way.
Lesson #2: Ditch the distractions
As Brea’s fame has increased, we’ve received countless offers to add bells and whistles that “polish” her site and social media presence. Many of these tools are very cool and cutting edge but would ultimately get in the way of our core purpose: a personal connection with Brea.
So we turned them all down.
I’ve seen lots of my other clients struggle with this problem too, although usually on a smaller scale. If you’re starting a blog, for instance, you might get distracted by polishing and re-polishing your blog design, learning about ad networks, or experimenting with dozens of the latest WordPress plug-ins. More likely than not though, all of those things are just distractions for both you and your audience.
Before you do anything online, always ask yourself: is this in line with the core purpose of what I’m trying to accomplish?
If it’s not, then ditch it. Too many useless bells and whistles don’t increase your fame. They just make it look like you have something to hide.
Lesson #3: Streamline your social networking
One day Brea called me and said, “You know I shut down my Facebook account, right?”
Well NO, I didn’t know, and she is supposed to ask me about these things first! But I agreed that it was the right move.
Why? Because Facebook had become an unmanageable beast rather than a fun place to connect with her fans.
I’m not saying to ditch social media if it’s confusing, because . . . well . . . it’s always confusing. But if you’ve made a genuine attempt to learn the culture of a site and engage with it and it just ain’t doin’ it for you, try something else.
Maybe your tribe isn’t there, or maybe it just makes you cranky. Either way, it’s not going to be effective. Move on.
Lesson #4: Focus on your talents
Brea loves Twitter. She likes the short updates, ease of use, and how easy it is to get into one-on-one dialogue with fans. She also loves blogging, especially sharing the music she’s listening to and books that she’s reading.
Surprisingly, she’d much rather write than video blog. Being yourself on camera is quite different than playing someone else!
You might love podcasts, or video blogging, or writing blog posts. Whatever your flavor, you’re going to shine in a space when you pick the one that is best suited to your natural abilities.
This is NOT a get-out-of-jail-free card for learning new skills! You’ll never know whether or not you thrive in a medium until you practice and get comfortable with it. The point is that you don’t have to do everything. Try it all, and then stick with whatever works best.
Lesson #5: Take advantage of your opportunities
Okay, let’s be honest. Did social media make Brea Grant famous? Or was it all about being on a mega-popular TV show like Heroes?
The honest answer: both.
Lots of actors land a role on a popular show, fail to capitalize on it, and then disappear forever. Lots of aspiring actors also try to build a following with social media and never make it.
To a large extent, success online (or in life in general) is about doing both. You have to work hard until the right opportunity shows up, and then you have to make sure you leverage it to its maximum potential.
Social media can help get other people talking about you, but first you have to do something worth talking about.
Want to learn how?
I’m guessing you’ve figured out that I have a course on how to use social media to generate buzz around your career or business. It’s called Creating Fame, and it builds on my experience in helping clients do exactly that.
But how about some free videos first?
In Creating Fame, I talk about the importance of giving away high-quality free content to create a greater connection with your audience, and that’s exactly what I’d like to do here.
Take a look at my Creating Fans Out Of Thin Air Video. If it looks like something you’re interested in, just leave your name and email address for more than two hours of additional free content, including a video from Brea.
Whether or not you’re interested in the course, I think you’ll learn a lot from the free videos. Click here to check them out.
About the Author: Laura Roeder is a social media consultant and the founder of Creating Fame.
Future of Search, Universal Search and a Brands Responsibility to SERPs
Aaron Wall just posted “SEO, Where is it going?”. Coming from one of the spearheads of the industry, the question alone was enough to encourage me to read the piece.
One of the lines that made me really think was “As if there is ever one “right” answer.” This was pretty much in direct response to a Tech Crunch Interview by Eric Schmidt, to quote a quote:
So I don’t know how to characterize the next 10 years except to say that we’ll get to the point – the long-term goal is to be able to give you one answer, which is exactly the right answer over time.
Aaron went on to suggest how the various Google SERPs properties such as rich snippets may over time discourage users to click through to the content creators site. This is where I branch off. I don’t know the long term future of SEO, what it will be and how it will change. And I don’t really want to speculate. It’s an unfolding drama that I am willing to wait out.
But, I am interested in the right here and right now. What is SEO right now? Is it about ranking? For set keywords at the highest possible positions? I think not. It’s about a blend of strategies, and one of the most important ones Brands should be really focussing on is page share. The writing has been on the wall from the first time Marissa Mayer blogged about it.
Currently a range of ranking positions exist on the first page of SERPs, including but not limited to:
- Video Results
- Image Results
- News Stories
- Blog Results
- Book Results
- Map Results
These are further enhanced by the use of Rich Snippets, Site Links, Search in Search Box, Inline links, related searches, to name a few. Add to the mix Adwords, Adwords Enhanced site links and Google Base results.
Where does that leave a brand?
I recall a few years ago I attended SMX and was in a session presented by Jon Myers, who discussed the use of Search Engine Results Pages as a brands landing page. This was in late 2007, the same year Google introduced more results in SERPs. Its late 2009, and google isn’t letting up. More recently we were treated to Photo layers in Map results.
In a very short and unsatisfactory way, I conclude, SEO right now, at least at the Brand level, is about delivering all the brands content on the brand query, with the maximum possible page share.
After all, there isn’t, one correct answer to a brand query. But there is room to guide the searcher to the right content.
You worry about your sites landing pages, ever wonder what you are losing to Universal search properties that aren’t under your control?
Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for Search engine optimisation
Future of Search, Universal Search and a Brands Responsibility to SERPs
Five People You Should Hire for Your Business Blog
Before we began this search, I spent some time trying to answer a very basic question: What type of person is required to create a successful business blog — at HubSpot or any other company?
My answer? It’s simple. You need to hire these five people:
Ernest Hemingway (A Great Writer) — Great writing makes great blogs. Sure, you don’t need to be Hemingway (and if you’re not it certainly shouldn’t stop you from blogging), but life is a lot easier if the person in charge of the blog can crank out ideas, edited copy and new posts without overheating his or her engines.
Steve Jobs (A Product Visionary) — If you’re running a business blog, you need to understand your business. Traditional journalists can get away with a focus exclusively on content. Business bloggers can’t. Business bloggers need an analytical streak and a fixation on figuring out which type of articles are ranking in search engines, building reach and producing leads and sales.
Ashton Kutcher (A New Media Promoter) — Ashton Kutcher used Twitter, photos and videos to vault onto Hollywood’s A-List. He understands the value of content, the way it moves across social networks and the ways to use these forces to advance his own celebrity. Bloggers need to expand reach and engagement with their content. Posting an article and going home is not an option; successful bloggers post, share and engage.
Esther Dyson (A Thought Leader) — A great blog adds great value. Value doesn’t come from rehashing old ideas. It comes from challenging the way people think, and introducing new ways of doing business. If people don’t learn from your blog — if it doesn’t add clarity to their view of the world — they won’t read it.
Michelangelo (A Cathedral Builder) — You have to think big. Michelangelo wasn’t doing drawings for a church in Rome, he was building St Peter’s Basilica. If you think your blog is going to stay small, it will. If you think it could change your industry and improve people’s lives, it might.
Of course, you can’t actually hire these people — and most small businesses can’t devote somebody to blogging full-time. But when you’re writing your blog, or you’re thinking about who in your organization is the best person to lead the blog, these are the people to keep in mind.
So what do you think? Is there anybody else you’d add to this list? Let us know in the comments.
And one last thing: If you’re a remarkable mix all these people, we’d like to hear from you.
Photos: Wikipedia
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Focus on Your Core Community
by Eric Brown
So, You have a Company Blog, are your getting the results you expected?
And, what about when your company blog is NOT about your core product.
Perhaps a company blog that has nothing to do with your Core Product,
but everything to do with your Core Community is the best choice.
Your Core Community
That is the approach we took with our company blog, the Urbane Life Blog, Focus on the Core Community. Our blog posts have nothing to do with our apartment business, Urbane Apartments. In just over a year of blogging, we have doubled our web site traffic. And, despite a down economy, and operating in Michigan, the highest state in the union for unemployment, our year over year rental traffic and our net rentals have over doubled.
Pretty significant return considering not one of the over 360 posts, and 1,501 comments has ever been about our core product offering.
How Is This For a Page One Google Ranking
So what impact do you think we have with potential customers when looking for an Apartment in Birmingham MI, and the Urbane Life Blog Posts come up on Page One of a Google Search, and hold the first seven spots, which is the first third of the Google Page.
After all, it isn’t, in this case our web site, it is our blog site (as
designed) that comes up. The prospect has yet to get to the actual web
site, you are really spreading thick your Brand Awareness.
Prospects Are Looking For Much More Than Your Product
We
believe that prospects are looking for much more than just an
apartment. They are staking out what they will be doing, where they
will be doing it, and what type of life can they expect for the next
year or so. Frankly, the apartment itself may well be far down on the
list of priorities when selecting a new place to call home.
Does Your Product Matter
Of
course your product offering matters, sort of. We all get grouped
pretty quickly into silos with similar product offerings as seen by the
prospect, but what else can you do to separate you from the pack, Focus on Your Core Community.
Check out our small business news site.
Online Reputation Tips – My Ad:Tech London 2009 Presentation
Posted by willcritchlow
I am in the middle of a crazy couple of months of seminars, conferences and other assorted presentations. If you’re interested in seeing any of them, my speaking schedule is online.
Last week I spent Wednesday at ad:tech in London where I spoke about advanced analytics and online reputation management. In my analytics presentation, I was refining ideas for what I’m going to talk about at our own advanced SEO seminar so I’m not putting that one online just yet, but I thought the online reputation stuff would make a good Monday morning post. The audience was mainly brand and advertising people so I didn’t assume too much knowledge of SEO or ORM, but instead ran through why you would want to monitor for your brand, how to determine if something is going to be a problem and some tips and tricks we’ve picked up along the way.
For those of you who haven’t seen me speak, my slides are not always the most self-explanatory things so although I have included them here, I am also going to run through the key themes and tips:
Ad:Tech 2009 Online Reputation – Will Critchlow, Distilled
Who’s talking about your brand?
- London Fashion Week: I wanted to start with something topical so I used some examples from London Fashion Week (including brands and models) to demonstrate the impact of news events (interestingly, I found no significant correlation between spikes in search volume for the brands or models during fashion week). Out of this came two kinds of worked example, however:
- The power of news stories and official websites such as londonfashionweek.co.uk – both of which were ranking for big brand names throughout the week
- A look at an example set of negative search results – for a model who has no official website ranking, has wikipedia at #1 for her name and has a story about a sex tape on the first page
- How to tell if something’s a problem: although most of this will be obvious to anyone with an SEO background, I presented some ways to tell whether a new story you find while monitoring for your name or brand is likely to end up ranking for your name. The factors I encouraged people to look out for were:
- Is the keyword in the title / URL
- Is the keyword in the headline and copy
- How powerful is the domain (noting that most new stories won’t have gathered many links of their own yet so we have to make assumptions based on the power of the domain)
- Of course I recommended people install the mozbar to get easy access to all these factors
- The pyramid of pain: the stories you are looking out for especially hard are the negative ones which include the keyword prominently and which reside on a powerful domain. Not only are people very likely to be reading and sharing the story, but it’s highly likely to end up ranking
- Tips and tricks: through our work for a variety of clients, we have been lucky(?) enough to have encountered at least our fair share of gotchas. I thought the least I could do was share a few tips:
- Have a plan in advance of bad stuff happening – mid-crisis is not the time to be wondering whose job it is to check the wheelnuts
- We have found the most valuable part of our daily / weekly reports to be the forecast – trying to "write tomorrow’s executive summary today"
- When emailing busy executives with critical reputation information make sure your subject line gives them the first thing they need to know, and by the time they’ve read the first sentence on the preview pane of their iphone they are fully up to speed
- Know who to speak to out of hours. What happens if you discover something critical during monitoring and you can’t reach your normal contact? Make sure you have a plan. I illustrated this with a true story about some monitoring we were doing for a client (not Tesco) and discovered a credible threat against Tesco employees and property. I had to cold-call them and try to get through to the right person without sounding like a bomb-threat nutter. To their credit, I got a quick call back from the head of security, but whenever it’s your client, you shouldn’t have to take that risk
I hope there’s some tips in there for everyone. If it raises any questions, feel free to drop me a line or leave them in the comments.
My next presentations
There are a few tickets left for the PRO SEO seminar but we are expecting it to sell out this week.
On Wednesday, at 4.30pm UK time (8.30am PST / 11.30am EST) I am hosting a free conference call entitled How to be an Excel Ninja (and how it helps your SEO) where I will be slicing and dicing Linkscape data among other things. If you’d like to join the call or get the recording afterwards, you can sign up here.
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online reputation, orm, adtech, presentation
