To use Fresh Web Explorer, you do have to be an SEOmoz Pro member. If you have an account, just enter the phrase you want to track mentions of or the URL:

Google Alerts can be buggy, there’s a delay, and there’s often a lot of junk that gets shared. The Fresh Web Explorer (from all of our testing so far) appears to be very accurate. Only in a few instances were mentions not on the page, but these were for low-quality scraper sites that are rotating content frequently.

Q&A with Matthew Brown of SEOmoz

Do you have any pending features you can share with everyone?

Our big features that we’re working on currently: Improving the quality and quantity of feeds, improving the feed modeling, and working on integration in SEOmoz Pro campaign products. There’s some other surprises in store as well ;)

Do you know how the Freshscape index stacks up against other social listening tools? Are you the biggest and best when it comes to feed count?

It’s early to measure ourselves against competitors, either in terms of feed count or quality. We’re seeing a bit of evidence that we’re consistent with services like Google Trends. For example, here’s a search that a user found for ‘Pistorius’: http://i.imgur.com/eMIsuC9.png – It’s tough to measure against Google’s opaque 1-100 score, but the trendlines match up reasonably well. We’d never expect them to completely match, but the timing and spikes should look similar.

What’s the best way for the community to request additional feeds? I know Radian6 allows for a list of other URLs to search for a given dashboard.

We’re already looking at mechanisms with which feeds can be added. It’s high up on the feature list.

When trying to exclude a branded URL, what’s the best route? Tried using something like [seomoz -url:seomoz.org], but this still returns SEOmoz URLs. That’s not the exact query I used, but basically, a client URL wasn’t getting removed from mentions when I tried using “-url:”

That’s high up in the queue. We wanted to get a high-performing beta release out to our customers before adding on features, which will no doubt require extensive testing.

13 Ways to Use Fresh Web Explorer

After poking around the Fresh Web Explorer, here are a few methods I immediately found opportunities for with each of our clients that all online marketers can add to their tool set as well:

1. Reclaim backlinks. Sometimes people link to the wrong URL. It happens! Find those mentions and reach out to request an update on the backlink.
2. Build relationships. Use Fresh Web Explorer to identify bloggers who may have mentioned your product, service, or site organically, and now you can thank them for that mention and start to build a real relationship. Ask them how they found out about your brand and if they have any other experiences with it. Ask them if they have feedback on how to make your site or services stronger. Avoid asking them for a link—that’s rude. Befriend them, then ask for the link!
3. Respond to customer service issues. Customer service doesn’t have to be about something negative, but I found a client mention where the blogger said they were eagerly awaiting the catalog, but hadn’t received it, yet. This is a perfect opportunity to get them a catalog (and fast) with a personal follow-up or note to thank them for the mention. Don’t ask for anything, just go out of your way to be human. I guarantee this will have positive results for SEO as well.
4. Spot trends and seasonal change. Matthew mentioned that the Fresh Web Explorer’s only real competitor might be Google Trends. You can do a phrase search to identify recent seasonal mentions and sources. This is a great opportunity to identify potential ideas for content, too.
5. Conduct a competitive analysis/needs assessment. Just like the trend/seasonal change analysis, you can add competitor URLs and track the number of backlinks and citations they accumulated during a peak busy season such as Valentine’s Day or Spring Break. You can use this to inform your SEO and social media strategies, but most important as a way to demonstrate to your superiors the missed opportunities!
   
6. Build collateral for your brand. Sometimes your customers take better quality pictures of your products than you do. They don’t always take the time to share those with you, but they will share them with their community. Locate amazing reviews of your products online and request to host those pictures on your site as real product shots from customers or as a featured post on your blog.
7. Find customer reviews/testimonials. Just like collateral, customers don’t always share their opinions, especially if it’s positive. Yes, that’s right, your customers will usually only share a life-changing positive experience or a truly awful experience, but they’re not going to go out of their way to share a normal experience. They will however mention to their friends online that they received a sweater in the mail and it was perfect for their new spring wedding dress. Reach out and ask them if you can post their review on your site or blog!
8. Understand social reach. Google Analytics’ new social reports only pick up actual URL shares on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Google+ and even through services like Pocket. Unfortunately, the Fresh Web Explorer doesn’t appear to pull these social mentions, but it will pull mentions from other social sources (i.e. blogs) where content is getting produced as part of a social outreach campaign.
9. Audit brand usage. This can simply be about discovery of brand mentions and how the brand is being used or for the link builders among us… this opens a door to communicate with the blogger/media outlet about the proper usage of the brand. This may actually garner some great backlinks or fixes to a link that might not point to the ideal location.
10. Audit other department/agency activities. Work with/at an enterprise-level organization? You’re probably not the only service provider. Audit outreach strategies of other SEO companies, link builders, PR teams, and social media teams. You might find some really insightful or truly terrifying campaigns.
11. Find paid links. You know what really bugs me? A client who says they no longer engage in paid link activity, but they do! Use the Fresh Web Explorer to identify potential paid links and open the door to a serious conversation about the risk/reward of this method.
12. Audit sponsored posts. Just like paid links, sometimes a particular section of an organization may be engaged in sponsored posts without disclosure or nofollows appended to the URLs. This could seriously hurt your website if Google spots these posts even though they’re just smart branding in the eyes of the campaign manager. Find problems before they become disasters!
13. Find negative SEO. I haven’t seen a ton of this in the wild, but just like paid link identification, you can use the Fresh Web Explorer to find folks who may be building low-quality, high-risk backlinks to your site in the hopes that it will hurt your performance.

Additional reading on the Fresh Web Explorer:

Bookmarklets for url and sd search operators
Getting Low Hanging Links Using Fresh Web Explorer by Bill Sebald

Have questions about the Fresh Web Explorer? Hit up Matthew on Twitter! For real, they want feedback.

I’m frequently running into new prospective clients who’ve embraced the dark side of SEO. It’s like they’ve begun their Jedi training under Lord Vader, instead of Yoda. Then like Anakin Skywalker, they got their arm cut off by a penguin (take another look at Christopher Lee as Count Dooku, and tell me I’m wrong).

So they come to me wary, wanting to ask all the right questions so that their next SEO expert doesn’t cause them to get their other arm lopped off too. But, their understanding of SEO from their previous consultant–master of the Dark Side–has them asking all the wrong questions.

Here’s my list of my 5 least favorite pre-engagement questions from potential clients who are recovering from a past SEO relationship gone bad.

1) “Can you show me an example of an SEO audit you did for another customer?”

Two words: client confidentiality. If you use a real document from a past client, you’re going to have to redact much of it.

You really don’t want to share even a checklist, because if you’re like me, you’ve compiled your list from a number of sources and ideas over the years, and it’s your intellectual property. You can also pretty much guarantee that anything you share with a client prior to an engagement is going to be shared with the other consultants as the client tries to gauge who’s the best (“here’s what this other consultant said…what do YOU think?”).

You can counter this by saying:

Your best practices list is your intellectual property, and the recommendations you made for any other client is their intellectual property. Share with them a testimonial from a client for whom the site audit recommendations had a substantial impact on their site traffic and/or conversions instead.

2) “Do you have a list of keywords you recommend based on your research?”

image courtesy Keith Williamson

Keep in mind where this came from: their last SEO company provided them with a list of the top 3,000 target keywords they should focus on, along with 19 unintelligible metrics for each keyword. And just because they didn’t understand it in the slightest (nor did their last SEO company), this doesn’t mean the sheer weight of the document didn’t impress them.

Keyword research is an important and non-trivial part of any good SEO campaign. It’s more than just the search volumes; it’s the mix of that plus seeing what KINDS of results (organic, local, local universal, shopping, video, image, news, etc.) show for each term, combined with how competitive the term is in each of those kinds of results that figure highly on page one.

If you’re going do it for free as part of your quote, you’re either a fool, or you probably haven’t done enough research. And don’t think you can provide that for free up front and make it up in the overall bid. I’ve had multiple clients take another company’s keyword research from their quote and hand it to me, telling me they don’t need me to do that bit because they’ve already got it… here you go. I’d redo it anyway, because I don’t trust that the other company looks at all the factors I look at.

Your answer, then?

Keyword Research is a critical part of any SEO analysis, and it should be beyond the scope of what can be done in an initial quote. It’s worth explaining a bit about the importance of competitive analysis when choosing your targets.

3) “Can you give me a quote for monthly SEO services that guarantee top rankings for the most highly searched terms for our industry?”

Guarantee: the 4-letter word of the SEO industry.

First, there’s no reasonable guarantee in this business; there’s always a competitor or two (or ten) out there who’s hired someone as good as you to do the same thing for their client.

Second, the client here has been taught the wrong goal: rankings are a FACTOR for online success, but there is more to rankings than that:

• Conversion–Is your presence in the SERPs translating to traffic? Is what’s showing in your headline (i.e. page title) and excerpt (i.e. meta description) compelling?
• Do you have rich snippets appearing?
• Are you getting the author’s photo to appear via rel=author? This is worth an increase in click-through rate of 30% to as much as 150% or more
• Once the user clicks through, do they convert into a customer? Or bounce back to the SERPs and click on your competitor?

Third, the opportunity for the client might not be in getting traffic from the most highly-searched terms: their opportunity for more traffic, conversions, etc. might be in the long-tail. For instance, by tuning their templates that generate their 10,000 product pages, instead of their home page, they could increase traffic. The question the client SHOULD be asking is more along the lines of something like this:

“What would it cost to grow my online sales by x%, and how long do you think it would take to get there?”

You’re not going to be able to guarantee anything, but a quick look at their link profile, the search volumes for a few obvious terms, and the link profiles of those companies in the top spots on page one today is enough to give you an idea whether their goal is realistic (easy or hard). This will also tell you if their goals are achievable by quick on-page fixes or a long-term online marketing and link building grind.

I actually had a client who came to me, ready to spend a respectable amount on search marketing, but every single term I could come up with for their product came up with virtually no measurable search volume AND the competition was intense. The client was up against big-box stores with a physical presence. It seems that while it was a reasonably common and popular product, it wasn’t one people were buying or even researching online. It was something people buy in-person, where they can touch and feel it. I had to advise them NOT to use my SEO services (or anyone else’s), but to spend their money on more traditional marketing and presence in brick-and-mortar retailers. Perhaps I missed some brilliant off-the-wall search term… and if some other SEO consultant discovers it and leads them to success, well, certainly they deserve the “win” and I should hang my tail in shame.

4) “How many links are you going to build for me per month and what will it cost per link?”

To paraphrase Obi Wan Kenobi: These are not the links you’re looking for.

And if this is how you’re going to measure your SEO success, I can tell you what it’s going to cost you–80% of your traffic from a Penguin penalty. When it comes to Google spotting buckets of cheap, easy-to-get links, let’s just say this: the Death Star is fully operational.

A better question might be:

“What kinds of links are you going to get for me, and what’s the cost in time and money like for each of those kinds of links?”

Your answer will involve different kinds of outreach, content-creation effort, sponsorships/donations to charities, a real PR campaign that inspires real reporters/bloggers to write about specific important things the client has done, etc.

In fact, any question that starts with “Can you guarantee…”–well, this is like asking a quarterback if he can guarantee that they’ll win the Super Bowl before signing his contract. You can’t guarantee anything. The client’s competitors are engaging with other search marketers, and some of them may be even more talented than you are.

When faced with this question, I like to respond that I’ll guarantee to do my best to grow their business at a reasonable cost, and like the quarterback, I can point to my past successes as a likely indicator of success with my new “team.”

So, to answer this:

Of course, you can price your services any way you’d like. The key is to get the client to understand that a more meaningful way to measure your impact is going to be in things like new customers, revenue, and traffic. Most importantly you want them to understand that rankings are merely one factor in a much bigger equation.

5) “Do you do pay-for-performance? We want to structure the contract in such a way that we only pay if we get results.”

In principle, this isn’t unreasonable or really all that problematic, but we all know that in general it takes a fair bit of time to see results for most of the SEO tactics we employ. Occasionally we’ll have a client with a rockin’ backlink profile, and all we have to do is tweak some page titles and some internal anchor text here and there, and within a month we’re golden. For the majority of sites, the results are going to come from things that take months: content generation that THEN needs to be promoted, and THEN develops links that will start taking effect a month after that.

If your cash flow allows it, offering the client a 10-20% holdback on the invoices until traffic rises X% from the start of the project is a way to give that client an assurance that you’re confident in your abilities, and have some skin in the game. Be aware of the risks here though. Anything from an algorithm change by Google, or significant progress by their competitors, or a late effect of some shady link building by their last SEO company could bite you back there in that dark place under your Jedi robes.

If you offer a hold-back based on performance, you need to be prepared to lose that portion of the invoice for factors that are truly beyond your control. As Yoda says: “Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.”

Stepping Back A Bit

As you deal with questions like this from prospective clients, you need to remember that the clients have been CONDITIONED by their past experiences. They’re used to easy wins from (relatively) cheap tricks. And, they’re probably thinking that they’ve just been burned by someone with the same job title you have. You may very well be in a situation where you’re never going to make them really happy, and the job is more trouble and stress for you and your team than it’s worth.

The question of female speakers and gender diversity within the SEO industry has always been a hot topic. Even among women it’s been widely debated because many don’t see an issue, simply don’t want to speak for a variety of reasons, or feel the bias against us so strongly that it becomes demoralizing to speak or even unsafe.

To understand whether search marketing conferences were adequately representing gender diversity, aimClear conducted their study and found that on average, only 25.3% of conference speakers/coordinators were women. The last time I checked we have a majority share of the world’s population, so there’s still a lot of work to do if we want to give women an equal voice. This extends to women wanting to speak, which again, many don’t.

As a female in the industry, and arguably a leader in the space, I want it known that I’m comfortably positioned on the side of more diversity is needed (not just gender). However, I’m also of the opinion that we need less empty rants in the blogosphere–we need to actually do something about it! It’s disheartening (and sometimes I contribute) when women are approached to speak or share their professional thoughts and they simply don’t respond. This speaks to one of my favorite quotes that I picked up after watching Miss Representation (it’s excellent—go watch it!):

“You can’t be what you can’t see.” – Marian Wright Edelman

If we don’t like what we’re seeing, we have to actively work to fix it. This isn’t as easy as it sounds though.

My completely anecdotal opinion is that for a woman to have a family and a career, we take on so much that we have less time than our male counterparts, and how we allocate that time becomes a series of sacrifices and prioritization. This isn’t unique from many men with families or other priorities, but let’s get real here–if a woman wants to start a family and run a business (I’m currently five months pregnant, so this is top of mind), there is a huge commitment of time, energy, and physical constraints. This naturally sets women back for a few months, so how we spend our time becomes a precious balancing act. And, the few months we’re “set back” requires a lot of preparation, especially in an SEO agency like Outspoken Media or a startup where everyone is already maxed out. Fortunately, most women have nine months to get ready and have already been setting things in motion long before the actual pregnancy. This has been the silver lining of my pregnancy–forced business planning, process development, team training and empowerment, etc. We still have work to do, but we’re getting there and it’s going to position us for long-term growth, not just a short-term bandaid.

I don’t want to agree with posts like The Myth of Having it All and Why Women Still Can’t Have it All. I want to be the exception, but it’s hard—physically, emotionally, and mentally. While Outspoken Media is thriving more than ever, I’m dropping the ball on incredible personal (and brand) opportunities like starting a column on Search Engine Watch, contributing a post to Smashing Magazine, or getting back to Entrepreneur.com about those interview questions.

We all have the same amount of time in the day and my family, my team, my clients, and then my health comes first (yes, my health has had to be better with the pregnancy, don’t worry about that, baby is fine). Those incredible opportunities may not be there in another six months, but I know that I’m positioning the Outspoken Media brand for growth and that WILL be here in six months. I know where our leads come from and it’s about consistently doing great work for our clients, word of mouth referrals, industry connections (like you!), and speaking opportunities. Those media opportunities drive links and some leads, but they never convert as well as the referrals. Also, we’ve seen an immense amount of new business generation simply by retaining our clients and expanding services. They’re now generating new business for us by selling us to other divisions or properties owned by their parent company. That’s success!

While I’m focused on what’s going to drive long-term success, I’m also speaking aggressively this Winter/Spring along with Sean, because we know that this will drive more leads and authority for the brand. Yes, I’m pregnant (and I’ve spoken to MANY women lately who are terrified to tell a business contact this or even admit to having children–seriously!), but I’m doing what’s right for my business and in the process, I’d like to think that I’m helping increase gender diversity at these conferences.

Want to hear more from Sean and me? I promise I won’t rant about women’s rights (though I will talk endlessly about babies if you ask), but I will be happy to discuss the future of SEO, social media analytics, reputation management, and organic link development. Sexy, huh? I think so, which makes it feel less like a job despite the hours of uncomfortable, pregnant travel to get there. I can’t wait to speak, because it’s building a future for my business, my team, and my family. I hope this helps empower more women to put themselves out there regardless of the industry’s lack of gender diversity and knowledge that women score consistently less favorably than men. We are the change that needs to happen. I’ll see you at:

Upcoming National Events

February 14, 2013 – Patch.com’s Main Street U Summit

Happy Valentine’s Day! Catch Sean Stahlman speaking on The Misconceptions of SEO and Small Business SEO.

February 22, 2013 – SearchFest 2013

I’ll be speaking on Social Media Analytics: Discovery and Attribution with Mike Pantoliano.

March 11-13, 2013 – SMX West 2013

I’ll be coordinating and speaking on the Essential SEO Analytics: The Performance Metrics That Truly Count session with Jon Henshaw, Will Scott, and Rob Bucci, and I can’t say this enough times—do not miss this session! It’s going to be an important conversation on the future of SEO performance metrics, and packed with both actionable advice and advanced theory. Don’t believe me? The speakers keep saying how excited they are to not just be on the panel, but how much they wish they could just sit in the back of the room and listen. Um, yeah, it’s going to be epic.

I’ll also be speaking on the How To Groove To The Google Dance (Yes, It’s Back) session with Danny Sullivan, Mitul Gandhi, and Marcus Tober. We’ll be prepping for this panel soon and I expect it to be equally epic with so many Google updates happening and new tools like MozCast launching just to make sense of it all.

March 20-21, 2013 – Internet Marketing Conference

I’ll be speaking on the SEO Panel–SEOs Role in Online Marketing with Jim Hedger, Barbara Coll, and Benj Arriola.

March 26, 2013 – SEOmoz webinar

I’ll be presenting a webinar over at SEOmoz on a topic that is still in development, but we’re honing in on something really unique, compelling, and personal. Stay tuned! In the meantime, check out my previous webinar on Online Reputation Management: Branding for SERP Domination.

Upcoming Local Events

April 9, 2013 – Women@Work Connect

I’ll be speaking with two other women from the Capital District on How to Manage Your Personal Brand Through Social Media for their breakfast series.

Date TBD – Social Media Breakfast Tech Valley

I won’t be speaking at the next breakfast, but as an organizer along with Pearl and several other local professionals, I wanted to get this on the radar for March. The topic will be on The Mechanics of Social Media and we’re excited to get technical with local area experts! Stay tuned.

Does that feel like a lot? It does to me, but I’m just a pregnant woman who can’t have it all! For those worried, I’ll be done traveling by the 7-month cut off, so all is good and yes, traveling while pregnant requires a different set of planning (e.g. locating nearby hospitals for worst-case scenarios, packing snacks, finding professional clothes that even fit, planning bathroom breaks, etc.). Regardless, I’ll see you at the conferences and if our paths don’t cross in-person, contact us. I’d love to chat about new business, partnerships, or just how you manage to balance everything.

Are you a woman who has it “all?” I’d love to hear your story, especially if you decided to compromise. Are you a man who has had to sacrifice for your family? Share! Have something that you just need to get off your chest? Go for it. It’s a hot topic, because it’s REAL.

Here at Outspoken Media we love seeing the data behind those epic tweets, but we recognize that this kind of genius happens because of people–teams built on trust with open collaboration. We wanted to find out how these brands were able to cut through the red tape and let their personalities shine, so we went straight to the source at Audi. Big thanks to Amanda Orson for pointing us to Andy White, the Senior Social Media Manager for Audi who has been trailblazing social media success for the brand for years now.

You can learn more about Andy’s incredible social media accomplishments here, but let’s dive into the questions, which are truly inspiring for both in-house and agency marketers alike! Seriously, I had a grin plastered on my face for hours after reading his responses and I haven’t stopped strategizing since.

Q: From prior interviews you’ve given, it’s clear that Audi understands that marketing during an event like the Super Bowl isn’t about directing viewers to a URL or trying to sell them on a car, it’s about (in your own words) “engaging in naturally forming dialogues that arise from a thought starter.” This seems like a huge evolution from traditional marketing schools of thought, even many digital marketer’s! What had to happen internally to drive this understanding and acceptance within Audi? Who needed to be involved in the early stages of strategy development? Did you have any standout hurdles and/or advocates early on?

A: It helped immensely that a car purchase is so long-tail that there wasn’t that immediate need to get dollars and cents raining down from a bit of linkbait. Once you establish that you’re looking to establish relationships, build awareness, and cultivate ideas among fans and aspirationals, that automatically frees the social marketer to be much more etherial with his goals. Our first ever Super Bowl hashtag, #ProgressIs, set the tone early on for where we were going with this. The next generation of this way of thinking is to react in real-time to unforeseen events, such as we did yesterday during the SB blackout. Twitter is a constantly evolving cultural touchstone and zeitgeist unlike any other social network, and it demands full and total freedom from its SM teams to be used effectively.

Q: You’ve been managing social media for Audi for years with great success. Many probably assume you’re in-house at Audi (I know I did at first), but you’re actually with M80 a social media agency that cultivates social campaigns for brands like Audi, IKEA and AT&T, is that right? To manage the social media efforts of a brand as large as Audi, this has to take a lot of coordination and man power. What does the management and communication side typically look like between you, the M80 team, and Audi?

A: Yes I am with M80, but I have been 100% Audi social media for the past two and something years. I personally started out working embedded in Audi’s HQ in Washington, DC before moving to LA. This practice continues today with other members of my team, and we found it invaluable to build relationships with the client, which has in turn enabled our team to have an amazing amount of autonomy and creative freedom with both our grassroots social and our campaigns.

This is the secret sauce to everything that comes before and after, and it’s so simple: Most social touchpoints your audience will have with your product or brand or whatever is not the bells and whistles campaigns you put together at great expense, but rather the day-to-day social management of all your channels. That’s how they meet you, and that’s where they come to thank you, and it’s where they are going to voice their discontent. So be there for them, take care of them, and give them what they came to you for in the first place.

Q: During Super Bowl XLVII Audi aired the #braverywins commercial, which had a very positive reception, but what captured as much attention was the blackout response:

The trust that has to be in place for an agency to represent a brand online and respond in real-time must be immense. Many brands try to mitigate potential reputation problems by setting up a strict approval process or brand guidelines, but that means they can’t adapt like you’ve been able to. What do you attribute the success of the relationship between M80 and Audi to? Was there much prep work leading up to the Super Bowl? Were there set goals and if so, how were those tracked?

A: I think I just scratched the surface of that trust we had between agency and client. A lot of the kudos here has to go to a man at Audi called Doug Clark, for he had the guts to put this way of thinking in place with the huge entity that is Audi of America, and it was from that directive nearly three years ago we were able to succeed at the Super Bowl 2013.

Meet Doug Clark:

Agencies love to bandy around self-aggrandizing terms such as ‘mission control center’, and it sounds grandiose because it is, but it implies a lot of monitors and suits and high-powered executives rushing around to get approval on messaging. Now I assume that does happen, but our approach during these live events is unique in that it’s pure touch and feel (to prove it, refer to my timeline for photos of our ‘command center’).

Another look at that Audi ‘mission control center’. Look close, far left, center sofa. twitter.com/white/status/2…

— Andy White (@white) February 4, 2013

Sitting there, on Super Bowl Sunday, that trust had evolved into complete creative freedom, the only boundaries being my own innate knowledge of Audi brand voice and what would and would not work with the audience I have breathed in and out for 700 days.

Nobody knows what’s going to work until the time comes, and don’t let them tell you otherwise, so a lot of pre-planning for these live events outside of laying the groundwork is going to get in the way of what needs to happen on the day itself. Get the right people in the right places and roll with it. This is an art, right? So time to start treating it like one. I had a budget for Twitter ads to create campaigns on the fly as and when I saw a need to pump a flagging term, or roll on a BMW conquesting bit for a fan-created parody video riffing on our own that just happened to pop, and this all supplemented our own engagement in real-time. Two minutes after the lights went dark at the Superdome, Audi tweeted about it in a way that resonated with our fanbase and beyond like never before. It happened that fast, and the rest is history.

Q: You’ve talked a lot about simplicity as a critical part of the brand’s social media success, especially when discussing the 18-month long #WantAnR8 campaign. What does your creative process look like for developing a social media campaign? What’s the criteria for choosing what works?

A: The best campaigns we have produced have evolved either organically – #WantAnR8 – or have come together through a 1,000-mile high remit from the client – ‘Make connection between skiing and Audi for recreational skiers’ – which in turn evolved into our foursquare campaign with the US Ski Team. We’re at the point where there needs to be pushback against those cynical asks to add a social media component to something undeserving at the last minute. We spend months and years cultivating and curating our audience to trust us, to love us, and it’s a respect that needs to go both ways. How many times will agencies push out the ‘Like this if/Share this if’ garbage before we get turned off – permanently?

Q: You’ve mentioned in the past that Tweetdeck is your tool of choice. Is this still the case? What are your other must-have tools for social media management, tracking, or social listening?

A: For real-time response and monitoring, I still use Classic Tweetdeck (not the program Twitter issued post buy-out), and that’s what I used exclusively throughout the Super Bowl. However, I am now a big proponent of Social Flow for management of evergreen content, for content that doesn’t immediately need to go out. We’ve seen engagement increase through its ability to post at optimal times (after examining your account history), and its usage at this point has become something of a no-brainer for me. It’s something I definitely will look to take with me to my next account.

Thank you Andy for taking the time to share your insight and love for the Audi brand. It’s infectious and we hope we can all find ways to keep our campaigns simple, connect honestly, and listen to our communities.

When looking for an authoritative list of CEOs and brands, where better to start than Forbes? Every year they put together a series of lists that document the top performing CEOs, companies, richest Americans, world’s billionaires, etc. I decided to take a closer look at those top 10 highest earning CEOs to see what kinds of reputation management insights we could learn from these powerful individuals.

For this post I’m focusing entirely on their Google autocomplete suggestions broken down by “type” and “keyword.” Google autocomplete suggestions are driven by search behavior–the frequency of searches for a particular or related keyword, the content discovered by Google for that keyword, personalization based on the searcher’s behavior and location, and any recent news for the particular keyword.

The top 10 highest earnings CEOs in America in 2012 were:

In analyzing the Google autocomplete suggestions for our top 10 CEOs by the “type” of information searched on, I found the following breakdown:

The most shocking discovery is that a search for each of their names returned no obviously negative autocomplete suggestions though one CEO’s email address was being searched for by consumers who wanted to submit a customer service complaint. What I mean by no obviously negative suggestions is that at no point did anyone’s name appear beside the keywords of “scandal,” “fraud,” “scam,” “affair,” “arrest,” “lawsuit,” “doping,” “doping evidence,” etc. The latter two did however appear for a certain cyclist. You don’t get to the top without causing a stir at some point, but once you’re at the top, there is so much newsworthy content (in the case of our top earning CEOs, positive content) that it’s difficult for a single negative review or blogger to overtake the empire you’ve built–unless news of Oprah-worthy proportions breaks.

Notable observations of Google’s autocomplete suggestions by type:

• Searchers are obsessed with the biographical and financial information of CEOs. We want to know how they got to where they are and what they’re making/worth.
• The “brand” category looks like a larger percent than it truly is because of Ralph Lauren. He is the only CEO who named his company after himself, which means his autocomplete suggestions are weighted entirely to the brand versus the individual. While I haven’t dug into the individual search results of each CEO, yet, this appears to be a very smart move for online reputation management though it extends to much larger considerations for the brand itself. The only difficulty Ralph Lauren might have with his search results is getting users to find information relevant to him versus the company itself.
  
  Here’s a breakdown of the results:
  ralph lauren outlet
  ralph lauren rugby
  ralph lauren home
  ralph lauren bedding
  ralph lauren coupon code
  ralph lauren paint
  ralph lauren outlet lake george*
  ralph lauren boots

  We can see that all of the mentions are a division of the parent company or a location search such as the mention of “outlet” and “outlet Lake George,” which is a personalized suggestion based on my location in upstate New York. Likely, the Ralph Lauren store nearest you is being suggested as well.

• Being on the Forbes list generates autocomplete suggestions for the Forbes list. Once you’re on the list, buzz follows and in several instances, which were grouped as “profile” the CEO’s name appeared next to a search for “Forbes” simply due to the notoriety of the list and curiosity of where they might fall.
• Charity work only appeared for one person, which was a foundation named after the CEO himself–The Kinder Foundation. I personally found this shocking and would hope that all of the CEOs are actively involved in non-profit work though they may not have named their contributions/foundations after themselves, which explains why these aren’t appearing as highly searched keywords for the CEO’s name.
• Priceline CEO, Jeffery H. Boyd’s suggestions were (like Ralph Lauren) unnaturally weighting the contact information keywords. There were several searches for his contact info and email address. This appears to be fueled by consumer complaint sites who want to reach out to the CEO directly about a concern.
• Gilead Sciences’ CEO, John C. Martin is brilliant. Like Ralph Lauren and Jeffery H. Boyd, he held down the “notable works” type entirely on his own thanks to his book, “Introduction to Languages and the Theory of Computation.” I love this. It demonstrates that as a CEO you don’t have to just invest in the development of your company, you can keep producing your own unique research or perhaps a book or documentary that drives positive searches and credibility within your industry. I learned the most from Mr. Martin.
• Political contributions–we want to know where those top earning CEO’s dollars are going and it’s publicly available, so why not look it up? This no doubt informs many business decisions and news stories.

Let’s take a closer look at the bio category to see what searchers specifically wanted to find:

Notable observations of Google’s autocomplete suggestions for “bio” keywords:

• “Mr.” appeared often as a suggested modification of a CEO’s name. Apparently Google wants us to be proper when searching for the highest earning American CEOs.
• Education appears for a couple of the CEOs. I’ve always encouraged our clients with a strong tie to their educational background to reach out as an alumni and do their part for the future of America. That sounds quite lofty, but in being a role model for the school, you help promote future attendance, inspire new generations, and positively sculpt your search results.
• There was only one search for the CEO’s board memberships.
• “Wiki” appears to be as commonly searched as “bio” or “biography” so for the CEOs of the world who are scared of Wikipedia, it’s time to accept that this has embedded itself in our vernacular.

Now let’s breakdown the financial type keywords, which were the second largest bucket:

Notable observations of Google’s autocomplete suggestions for “financial” keywords:

• I’m not sure there was anything surprising here. We all want to know what the richest and most powerful people in the world make–their net worth and their salary. There are also many websites that provide this content for politicians, celebrities, and executives, which only fuels those autocomplete results further. Google can’t display what it can’t find!

The most shocking discovery from this exercise was that the only “negative” appeared to be a mention of the Priceline CEO’s email address. While a negative, I want to look deeper at his (and the rest of the top earning CEO’s) search results to determine whether the brand has turned this negative into a positive. Do they own the search results for this query? Are they aware enough to leverage this as a customer service win? I would think that as a CEO it’s a no brainer–your users are telling you what they want. Turn this into a Southwest-style opportunity and capitalize on your values and message as a company. The same could be said for all of the keywords mentioned.

We’ll look closer in future posts and I hope this helped spark some creative PR, leadership, or online reputation management ideas for you as well.

In my spare time, I review children’s books. I swear that I can read at an adult level, it’s just that sometimes I prefer to curl up with a fantasy YA novel. I’ll spare you any long-winded explanation on why I think it’s important to invest time and energy into a genre that most of my peers stopped reading decades ago, but I will tell you that I have more picture books than your average family of four. What does this have to do with SEO? At first glance, nothing at all. It’s not like reading Where the Wild Things Are is going to give you some secret link building tactics, and yet, on closer examination, the process of judging quality is uniform across industry, genre, and subject.

As I’ve settled into the practices of organic link building at Outspoken Media, I’ve realized that although I didn’t start my work with the same SEO background as my peers, I do have a background in reviewing quality that serves me well. Every industry has its metrics for quality– when I review a book, I have a tangible scale that I use to judge each book. In the SEO industry, we have a lot of tools at our disposal, possibly too many, that allow us to assign a value to links whether that be ACRank, PageRank, MozRank, Alexa Rank, etc.  Although I’m a huge fan of tools, I’m also an advocate for the human end of evaluation.

As marketers, link builders, and savvy Internet users we are constantly judging the quality of the sites we encounter, and we rely on something a lot more uniform than any formal link evaluation process– our intuition and experience.

I realize that a website and a book are not perfectly analogous, but they aren’t apples and oranges either. Beyond the obvious comparison, that a book has a cover, and a website has a landing page, and each only has a few moments (like it or not) to dazzle, there are many ways that trust, authority, and likability are built in subtle ways with a user or reader. As Internet marketers and SEO consultants, we need to look beyond our tools and think about quality in a more intuitive way.

Presentation

When I look at a book my first impression is crafted by many small elements that might not seem like much, but all together they tell a story about the care with which the book was put together. When we look at a website as SEO’s, a lot of those same elements should influence how we judge its quality.

• The Cover I’m not advocating judging a book by its cover, but I also think that it’s naïve to think that first impressions don’t matter. When I look at a cover, I’m looking at the illustration, the font choices, the way that space and color are used. Each of these elements should entice the reader. I’m deciding if the book is doing a good job of making me want to read it.
• The Construction If the book is a hardcover, I’m going to pull back the dust jacket (whoo!) and see what’s underneath. I’m going to look at the binding and see if it’s sewn, glued, or stapled. I’m going to look at the quality of the materials in the paper, and in the cover. I’m looking to see if the book was cheaply put together, or if the publisher put care into its creation.
• The Design Inside the pages I’m looking at how the book was designed; if it’s a picture book I’m looking at the interaction of illustration and text. If it’s a novel, I’m looking at fonts, how the text wraps, and any other design elements the book designer may have added.

At its best, a good presentation elevates a book and makes it a cohesive whole. Each of these presentation elements gives the reader information about what kind of book she is going to read before she’s even made it to the first paragraph or word. A website has its own set of presentation elements that convey similar information. When we approach a website to evaluate we are going to use tools to get information about Trust Flow, Citation Flow, or PageRank, but we are also already making judgments about the quality of a site the second the page loads. So are the prospective users of that site.

A website may not have the same tactile qualities that a book has, but its landing page, navigation, layout, and design all work to present the website in a certain manner.

• The Landing Page On the landing page, the way the interplay of text and image, as well as color and space work, should make the user want to engage. A good landing page should have a clear call to action. It should use image and text to convey trust. In the same way that a book makes you want to read it, a landing page should make you want to convert.
• The Navigation With a website, the construction is all about navigation and user experience. What information is easily available, and is it the information a user will likely be looking for? Does the site have intuitive navigation?
• The Design Just as a stapled binding and poorly designed cover may turn a reader off, stock photos, or ad heavy content may instantly turn a user away from a site. Similarly, just as a hardcover book with thick cotton pages is going to have a certain appeal, so is a site with responsive design, or a well thought out user experience.

One of my favorite books from the last few years, Emily Gravett’s Wolves, does such a good job of tying together the book’s content and its presentation, that the reader has the wonderful experience of briefly believing they are part of the book. The book follows the journey of a rabbit who takes a book on wolves (a book that mimics perfectly the look of Gravett’s picture book) out of the library, and is hunted by one of its subjects.

It’s a book that you can’t resist reading, and the pinnacle of what any good book or site should do–draw you in instantly. To stay in a theme, a site that accomplishes the same task (with a little less predator/prey relationship) is The Strand. The landing page instantly engages with colorful design, and well thought out extras like events, staff-picks, and 2012 Notable Books. It draws you in, in ways you may not have anticipated, which means more time on site, and possibly more items in the shopping cart.

Audience

When reviewing a children’s book, the question of audience is a tricky thing. Every book has its intended audience, from picture books with just a few words intended for babies and toddlers, to YA novels intended for teens (and lately middle aged moms). The practice of writing for an audience that you aren’t a member of is what makes it so interesting. Most authors of children’s books are adults, and so much of the time the process of writing for their audience requires an imaginative approach. As a reviewer I have to judge not just whether or not I enjoyed the book, but how the intended audience might.

For example, Sandra Boynton’s Hippos Go Berserk! has a clear intended audience, and it delivers appropriate content for that audience. It engages with bright cheerful illustrations, and fun action based text meant for young children. If instead of going berserk, the hippos had a lengthy conversation on feeling alienated by their peers, or boys they had crushes on, Boynton would have missed the mark.

A website’s audience doesn’t work in exactly the same way, but it is something that we should look to when judging the quality of a site. The core question in judging audience engagement is not just, who is it meant for? but are they responding? A site should have content that’s engaging for its intended audience, whether that audience is moms, lawyers, college professors, or tech enthusiasts. For example, if your company has two completely different audiences you are trying to target, you may need two different sites.

PBS has some great offerings for both adults and kids, and they also understand that those audiences are looking for two entirely different things. Each user requires a different layout, navigation, and design. You just can’t mix Downton Abbey and Clifford the Big Red Dog.

PBS Kids

PBS

Beyond appropriate content, a quick look at audience engagement will show you whether or not the site is successful in its intent. If there is no engagement, be it comments, shares, or other social media interactions, then the audience is not there. The website is writing to an empty room.

When we talk about metrics, concrete tools and measurements come to mind. If we are being honest about the way that we look at quality though, instant and lasting impressions matter too. We need to treat the sites we are judging as an experience, the way that we would judge a book.

Traditional on-site expertise remains important, but I’m talking from a link building perspective here. Our industry is now less about gaming the system and more about creating creative content that fosters organic “link-earning.” Whether you like it or not, I think it’s time to get on the content train before it leaves you behind.

There have been a lot of posts on creating this kind of great link worthy content, and I think a lot of them can boil down to something I heard Dave Snyder say a couple weeks ago. Content is only really successful if it elicits an emotional response of some kind. Whether that emotion is joy, sorrow, fear, or anger, it is that knee jerk reaction that triggers the action you are looking for: a share, response, like, etc.

Producing creative content that accomplishes this type of response is something that I’m working hard to achieve, so I wanted to share five ways I’ve learned to help myself and others cultivate this kind of creativity.

1) Efficient Brainstorming

Brainstorming sessions can be a team’s best friend or worst nightmare. If conducted properly, brainstorming is an effective technique that will help produce creative concepts. While there are many steps involved in a proper brainstorming session, I wanted to highlight just a few that I think are often overlooked.

• Setting parameters is a key difference that separates a brainstorming session from a time wasting session. Before a group session begins, project goals and roadblocks should be addressed to create clear constraints for idea generation.
• Make sure these constraints are noted somewhere to save the group from later having to sort through irrelevant ideas. Personally, I’m not very good at coming up with ideas “on-the-spot” which is why I like knowing these constraints ahead of the group session (days ahead if possible!). This time allows me to passively think up concepts or ideas as I go about my daily life. You never know when hearing or doing something may trigger an idea.
• Another major requirement in brainstorming is to eliminate all negativity. Not only do people not want to be around a negative person, but negative or judgmental comments have the ability to cripple someone’s confidence and creativity, thus undermining his/her effectiveness. Always remember that the creation phase of a brainstorming session is not to vet every idea for its practicality or feasibility.

2) Cross Client Ideation & Collection

Just because an idea doesn’t pan out for a certain project, this doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a bad idea; perhaps it can be reformatted or altered to fit another client’s goal. The thought behind this is that brain power and creative ideas are valuable resources that we shouldn’t waste.

In a practical sense, I think groups should keep a collection of unused creative ideas and what inspired those ideas. Often these ideas will come from effective brainstorming sessions, but other times they will just be a random thought passing through somebody’s mind. Consider creating a shared document or bulletin board of some kind to house all these ideas, my boss Rhea wrote of some good tools for idea collection earlier this year in her Blog Inspiration Series. Try using Springpad, a private Pinterest board, or whatever collaboration tool you may use internally, to begin this collection. Add ideas, pictures, quotes, stats, and anything else that is relevant. Then add to it as you see fit.

I like to think of this idea collection as a place I can always visit for inspiration and creativity. I remember watching Canon’s Long Live Imagination campaign with Ron Howard and thinking to myself how cool it would be to have a room filled with amazing photo’s to pull inspiration from. Maybe one day I will have something similar, but for now I’ll stick to using an app and a computer screen.

3) Personality Awareness

It’s important to understand that in order to foster a creative group culture, we have to all be aware of, and respect, the different personality types in our organization. A personality misunderstanding can often be an underlying hindrance to group cohesiveness and communication. Working with a MBTI or DISC certified assessor will help shed light on what personality types are in the group and how to most effectively work together. I know as an extrovert I often have to spitball ideas with someone just to clear my head of all the drivel or unfinished ideas floating around. I would never come up with anything meaningful if I was told to just think alone at my desk. Knowing how people think and work is a powerful tool to get the most creative out.

4) Reliance on Others

I don’t believe a group can rely on one superstar to lead a team to success (think Cavaliers–Leron James era). Input and collaboration from team members is vital for creating the best results. Hopefully your organization, like Outspoken Media, is more about team wins than personal highlights. An organization like this eliminates any fear of sharing ideas due to a “he/she will steal my idea–and therefore they will look better than me” scenario. While a creative spark may come from just one individual, I think Spy Hop phrased it best in that “creative sparks must be nurtured, invested in, and shared with the world” and this cannot happen without the support of others.

Whether it’s to show me a different perspective, add a different aspect, or to point out an unseen fatal flaw, I am consistently relying on my peers.

5) Open your Mind

I believe there is no greater inhibitor to creativity than a closed mind. I follow the notion that creativity and inspiration are drawn from all of my combined experiences. The more different and unique experiences I can draw from, the more creative my mind will be. For this reason I am always trying to learn and experience new things. I love to travel, learn languages, read different magazines, and watch foreign films. I do these things not only because they give me pleasure, but because I know they are ultimately helping my creativity.

Creativity is not like riding a bike. Neither is it easily quantifiable. While there is research going on to identify exactly what is going on in your brain, nothing has been conclusively determined, so until then, I am going to follow the old adage that “the more you practice, the better you are.” Oatmeal said it best–creativity is a river, not a pool.

With that said, I think its only natural to employ these techniques and consistently think in the mindset of “how can I do it differently.” If this industry is going to continue to push us towards more content-based marketing and outreach, we might as well be producing the most creative, emotion-triggering pieces of content we possibly can.

There are so many other things that inspire me to try and be creative, but I would love to hear some things that inspire YOUR creativity.

The elephant in the room for any SEO firm or individual consultant is that SEO has a massive reputation problem. The issue is part lack of regulation, part scale, and part perception. As an industry we can’t hunt down every person who claims they’re an SEO who will get you “first in the search engines, guaranteed!” We can’t stop the mountains of spam that fall into small business owner’s email inboxes daily. The Internet is a very large place, with a lot of hidey-holes.

One of the few things that we can control as an individual or company is how we talk about ourselves, how we speak to our clients, and how we speak to other industry professionals. When your industry is the Internet, nothing is private; the only face that we have is our public one.

Allow me to step on the soapbox here, just a little bit, and say–as someone who has studied the English language extensively–what you say and how you say it matters. “RCS” or “link juice” may be a term that will catch a person’s ear and become “buzzworthy”, but it is not a term that will leave potential clients impressed with your authority, knowledge, or business acumen. We need to elevate our language as well as bridge the disconnect between Internet and traditional marketing.

Here are a few ways to sound like the more mature SEO industry we’ve become:

• Black hat, white hat, gray hat, and everything in between: Let’s stop talking about hats and instead discuss risk tolerance. Are you using high-risk link SEO tactics, low-risk or something in the middle? Hats make us sound like evil villains not savvy marketers.
• Link juice: This term has made me wince since I started in the industry. Link “juice” is the associative authority of a link. Call it link authority, or call it passed link value. We want to explain our industry and how it works while still sounding professional.
• Link condom: I hadn’t actually heard this before until Rhea mentioned it when I was initially brainstorming–a link condom is the rel=”nofollow” attribute, which as SEOs know, kills any passed link value. (See, look at me, following my own advice!) We don’t need sexual connotations to get attention, SEO is an established enough industry that (most) people listen to us without the shock and awe routine.
• Link love: Quite the opposite of a link condom, a “loved” link is a link to an external site that is fully followed. While this is a term I use internally with my co-workers, I would say a more appropriate term to whomever you’re reporting to would be “citation” or “co-citation.”
• Linksploitation: (from SEO-Theory)This is targeting links in a “formulaic process according to precise criteria.” Don’t use made up words! A more appropriate term would be “targeted link building.”
• RCS (Real Company Stuff or Real Company S**t): While it may have been a trending hashtag on Twitter during Mozcon and it’s easy to throw around the virtual water cooler, RCS is a very industry specific term. It’s more than fine to use internally, but when walking into a Fortune 100 boardroom “RCS” is tough to explain quickly. Use marketing terms that resonate better like an integrated marketing campaign. Avoid unnecessary barriers to understanding when you’re speaking with a client or potential client.
• Splog: Can we stop word mashing? Especially random words with blog? “Vlog” should be avoided, too. A splog is a spam blog. Someone who doesn’t know what “splog” is will probably go somewhere at least vaguely sexual. Even the impression of derogatory language comes off as unprofessional. Clean up the connotations and call it a low-quality blog.
• Linkerati: This is an old school SEO term that few new marketers hear anymore. The linkerati are the people who control web properties that you want to get links from. Today the majority of us just say, “link prospects” or “potential contacts” and let’s keep it that way.
• Blacklisted or penalty: Neither of these terms are inherently wrong, but they’re used incorrectly everyday. Let’s be more cautious when talking about what may be happening with a site. Blacklisted means the site is literally out of the index. A penalty may be manual or algorithmic and causes a noticeable drop in rankings. Not every site that experiences a loss has been blacklisted or penalized.

SEO is a maturing industry, and our language should mature along with it. While I have no inherent objections to most of this terminology (expect for “link juice”) the industry reputation is what it is partially because all of this SEO jargon alienates those who want to educate themselves. Satire has its place, but we seriously need to re-vamp our communication habits. While so many of us are advocating the importance of understanding a client’s brand message and aligning our work with other departments, we are helping to create and establish the divide between SEO and traditional marketers when we use the expressions that we do.

We need to present a uniform front, eat a slice of humble pie, and acknowledge the inheritance of the SEO industry. We are marketers. Marketing was around long before the Internet was a glimmer of an idea. Why are we not using marketing language with more frequency? To really move forward, SEO needs to speak the language of traditional marketing and branding, not the other way around.

As the landscape has changed from recent algorithmic updates, so did the model of how agencies and clients interacted. Some engagements have shifted from full-blown promotion to damage control, cleaning up fallout from past engagements, establishing new baselines, and auditing internal client activities.

It’s difficult to establish trust

With each new engagement we have to earn a client’s trust, and it’s not getting any easier. This is often the result of a campaign gone awry or past tactics done without full disclosure that resulted in a negative performance. Regardless of a client’s past relationship with a search marketing partner, trust is a necessity. We are tasked with marketing digital properties in constant flux due to algorithmic updates, and are expected to not only stay afloat, but increase performance, which can make for a variety of difficult situations and decisions. And, clients are putting their neck on the line for us to increase growth in an uncontrolled environment.

That’s a heck of a lot of trust on both sides!

Half of the battle with building trust boils down to setting expectations. Clients need results, and as an agency we are tasked with providing recommendations, strategies and efforts within a pre-defined scope of hours or cost. Getting these expectations nailed down at the start of discussions is essential. How do you effectively set client expectations?

Start with the pitch

While Outspoken Media grows a majority of our business through referrals from existing clients; pitching new business through phone calls, meet and greets, presentations and RFP’s is all part of the process. That shiny proposal or presentation with ranking, traffic, and conversion projections is a necessity–clients ask for it, procurement demands it.

Search marketers, consultants and agencies are used to promoting, validating and defending our expertise. How else can a client pick the agency that best fits their needs? When the expectations you set get inflated, this is when relationships hit trouble. Trust goes both ways; let’s not kick off our relationship with one of us cheating on the other.

This is the first step in building trust–setting the stage for what is achievable even if it goes against what clients think can happen (or think they deserve) within a given timeframe. This is also the timeframe for setting your expectations on what the client will be responsible for internally. Implementation delays of recommendations and legal approvals can wreak havoc on delivering results in a timely manner. Getting these issues ironed out before a formal statement of work is signed or within the project kickoff will ensure both parties are held accountable. Knowing who is responsible for each piece throughout the delivery and approval process will help expedite any roadblocks.

Get to the point

Clients often don’t have the time to address internal questions about search performance, algorithmic updates, or why certain campaigns aren’t working as fast as some would expect. That’s our job. They are busy wearing multiple hats, managing numerous digital properties, and trying to get internal resources allocated to make their efforts a success. This is where pushback and campaign lulls set it.

The key is to not to take this as a burden, but an opportunity to support your clients. Take the necessary steps to make them aware their investment in your agency was worthwhile and that you can be tapped to support their findings, or answer questions that are out of their comfort zone. Probably one of the most valuable and least addressed areas of an engagement is proactive education.

Investing in client education can help make them the internal champion, an added proponent for the benefits of search marketing and the value behind your work. I’m not talking about training clients, but rather weekly updates about changes in the search landscape and how those changes could impact their business. Find out when they have internal meetings or 1:1’s with their direct reports and arm them with updates about search and recent wins. Identify areas of importance or topics that resonate well with their internal teams, provide information that makes your client an expert within their organization and bring some added insight they may not be aware of.

Knowing the internal hurdles they face on a daily basis and aligning the recommendations to back their strategy can have immense success.

Trust and success are built upon small wins

Search marketers love finding silver bullets–that core set of recommendations, glitches or missed opportunities that can have a profound impact on the success of your client. Getting those core issues resolved is another hurdle all together, especially if you haven’t built relationships with the individuals or teams responsible for resolving them. Without trust, or at least an introduction on how you can help, you are just another consultant adding to someone’s increasing workload.

One of my past e-commerce clients had a dedicated person responsible for managing the site’s robots.txt and XML sitemap. This individual was organizationally segregated from the digital marketing team. A five minute fix involved a written functional requirement document, three meetings and a handful of internal approvals. It was an uphill battle for a simple fix that would also curb an increasing amount of errors that were getting indexed that the client’s technical team didn’t know about.

Rather than following the established chain of command that wasn’t resulting in any progress, we found out who was responsible for making the changes and gave them a call. We communicated that implementing our request would also resolve a few critical issues caused by a web application and that one fix would be mutually beneficial. In the end we gained trust, and recommendations that didn’t require more than 16 hours of development resourcing were given the green light. We learned we could build trust by framing the conversation through the lens of wanting to help, as opposed to highlighting a bunch of problems and parading them through the IT department. Ultimately, providing the client’s team with education and insight on fixing a critical issues put them in a good light.

When clients don’t trust your recommendations you feel defeated, so you need to establish that trust right away. Lobbing recommendation after recommendation over the proverbial fence rarely has much benefit, and the tone in which you make suggestions can cause delays. Your value and expertise spans more than an audit or strategy deck. Talk to your clients, find out what can help them in their role, and most importantly, be honest about what realistically needs to happen to meet their short and long-term goals.

Very few of us use social media to the point that we are so mentally and physically exhausted that we can’t go on. I get fatigued from pregnancy, because I’m growing a human being! I get fatigued from growing a business, because I have to provide for my team and my client’s teams. I get fatigued from exercise, because my frail ginger body only has so much strength.

We all have life events that leave us truly fatigued–social media isn’t one of them. Social media doesn’t cause fatigue, it causes an emotional block about how we prioritize our time and the success we are or aren’t having with it. At least that’s my non-expert, anecdotal opinion. After hours of calls, coffees, and emails exchanged with folks recounting their trouble with social media, that has to count for something.

Last week I spoke during an early morning roundtable with our local AMA chapter on “How to Avoid Social Media Fatigue.” When I arrived, Mary Darcy, of All Over Albany and Cathy Herman, who was coordinating the roundtable, greeted me and we spoke about how we were going to present. Here’s the thing–I didn’t know what the heck I was going to talk about! Mary didn’t either, so we went back and forth for a minute about who should speak first. When it came time for our introductions, we finally decided that I would go first and set the stage.

I started with an apology for being a couple minutes late, but noted that because of social media, the organizers knew I was not still in bed. I also apologized for being short of breath, I’ve found that being pregnant and speaking at length, with the speed I’m accustomed to, results in heavy panting. Then I said something that I realized later felt very profound and it’s the impetus for this post. What I said was just that:

social media fatigue is really about fear and disappointment.

I know, that doesn’t sound terribly profound, we’ve all probably felt this before, but let’s go deeper. We’re all given the same amount of time in our day and how we choose to spend our time is shaped by our experiences and drive. Unfortunately, there always seems to be someone who has more time, more focus, and more success. The attendees wanted validation (and you may as well) that we aren’t alone in feeling defeated by social media at times–defeated by someone with a bigger set of followers, a more compelling blog post, or a punchier tone that makes every regulated industry marketer jealous. This is why we attend breakfast roundtables, listen to webinars, take a class, or read blogs to learn how to be better at some aspect of this strange new channel.

Last Thursday, the roundtable attendees specifically wanted to learn how to avoid social media fatigue, because there are days when the last thing any of us wants to look at is Facebook. Maybe we even dream of deleting our account (good luck with that). For the enlightened marketer though, we recognize that if we slack off in our social media usage, the short attention spans of our followers might wain or be stolen by a new shiny object.

Having been an early adopter of Twitter and champion for social media, my use of the each social network has evolved and sometimes devolved. What I wanted the attendees (and now you) to get is that social media fatigue happens when we feel like we aren’t getting the results we want from our usage or perhaps we are, but we recognize how it’s sucking the life out of us. Remember, we only have so many hours, and I doubt any of us imagined ourselves glued to Instagram on the weekends or maniacally checking LinkedIn throughout the work day in fear that we might miss something vital to our future success in life.

Social Media Fear

Social media fatigue due to fear comes from the unknown. We fear what we think may or may not happen, so instead of doing, we lay dormant and hope no one notices us. If we do get noticed we can pretend like we were too busy being busy to care about something as silly as this new, innovative form of communication that others are taking advantage of in incredibly profitable ways. It’s easy to say, “yeah, I could do that, but I choose not to right now.”

Social Media Disappointment

Disappointment with social media comes from failure. We tried and we failed, which means we now have evidence to support our insecurities and we’re put back into the social media fear bucket. Rather than test a new method, recognize where we failed, or grow from the experience, we let an ugly, negative seed of self-doubt sit in our chests.

This is heavy stuff!

We’re just talking about social media, but it feels like we need to bring in a psychologist to discuss our family issues and feelings of self-worth. That’s what this is though. Social media is about putting yourself out “there” into the great unknown where anyone and everyone can see you. I should rephrase that as “see the version of you that you choose to share.”

It’s easy to pretend like we don’t care what others think of us and justify our fear and disappointment. The truth is, we do care. Maybe not about everyone, but we all have an audience who is important to us. They’re probably the motivation behind everything we do. I care most about what my family, my employees, my clients, and my mentors think of me. I don’t want to disappoint them or say anything stupid on social media that will make them question something about my character, work, or values. That’s why it’s so much easier to not even try. You can’t have negative consequences if you don’t act, so we let fear and disappointment produce “social media fatigue.”

Now, I don’t want to leave you feeling down, that’s not the point of this post. I want to give you mini cures to help prevent and overcome the silly emotional hangups about social media that each of us has at some point. These are taken from the advice both Mary and I shared during the AMA event, let me know what works or doesn’t work for you!

How to Combat Social Media Fear:

1. Be clear about roles and expectations – Learning anxiety strikes when we feel unprepared for a new responsibility. Develop a clear, attainable plan for yourself or your team. What are the responsibilities of each team member? Be clear–ambiguity leads to uncertainty, doubt, and fear.
2. Set reasonable goals. – Now that you have clear roles and responsibilities, set yourself or your team up for success through reasonable goal setting. There’s nothing more demoralizing than not hitting an arbitrary goal, so develop achievable goals that set the organization and your team up for success. Don’t borrow your competitor’s goals, they’re very rarely in the same position as you and their business model is likely very different as well.
3. Have an editorial calendar. – Just like your blog, social media has different seasons, timezones, usage trends, etc. Observe, test, and develop a calendar that makes sense for you.
4. Develop a pattern. – Your pattern may be very clear or more sporadic like mine. I like to say I’m “burst-y,” because I’m at the whim of end of month calls, clients, and the needs of my team. I’ll go days without much heavy social media usage and then have a burst of activity. You know what? People don’t disappear on me, you’re still here! With that said, look at your audience’s patterns and make sure you’re promoting your content or message when they’re available.
5. Listen more than you broadcast. – Start by listening and then don’t stop. We feel like there’s nothing to say, because we’re so caught up in our own world that we haven’t taken a minute to see what’s going on in the real world. As soon as you step outside of your bubble, you’ll discover all sorts of inspiration. Over the weekend, I got inspired by watching Ira Glass talk about the elements of storytelling.
6. Understand the value you bring. – More often than not, “fatigue” sets in because you don’t recognize you’re own value. You have value! Don’t make me get all psychologist again. Feel like you aren’t a “thought leader?” Listen and share more. Connect others. Answer questions. There are a lot of new SEOs popping up on my radar, because they do exactly that and as a boss, I’m paying attention, because I want to hire folks who aren’t scared to promote themselves (this means they can handle link building).
7. Don’t spread yourself too thin. – Trying to manage too many channels at once will quickly lead to true social media fatigue. You don’t have to spend equal time on Quora, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Google+, email, calls, and real life (whew!). If you do, you’re probably neglecting your family, friends, and health, or have a whole team helping you. Pick a couple networks and start there.

How to Combat Social Media Disappointment:

1. Mix it up. – If you tried and failed in the past, change your approach! Try a new medium (photos or videos versus just status updates), try a new social media network, alter your messaging (length and tone), etc. In other words–test! We should always be testing to see what works best.
2. Establish tracking. – Having accurate data will make it easier to demonstrate a return for your efforts, which motivates us to keep going. Check out Google Analytics social reports, event tracking, Bit.ly, and other tools to track performance metrics.
3. Make sure you have something to say. – This speaks to several of the social media fear tips. Once you’ve got an editorial calendar, understand the value you bring, and spend time listening and reading as much as you promote, you’ll find it easy to meet your social media quota.
4. Give yourself permission to have lulls. – Recently, Outspoken Media was off-the-radar while we took care of several major projects. We had no time to say anything, so we had to go silent, but we gave ourselves permission to do so and our community didn’t leave. You’re reading this now! Everyone has moments when we have to focus on other priorities, that’s ok, in fact it’s human. Involve your community in what you have happening and be clear about when you’ll be back.
5. Reinforce realistic expectations. – I already brought this up in social media fear, but it’s vital that we reinforce realistic expectations. Some content doesn’t elicit a strong response, especially if all anyone might say is, “great post!” This doesn’t mean the content doesn’t add value, especially if it’s instructional. Base your performance metrics in goals that really matter–new business, not the number of shares or likes you get.
6. Promote yourself. – This is by far my most uncomfortable area–self-promotion. It comes easy to some, but for the vast majority of us, we cringe at the thought of asking our next door neighbor if they’ll buy delicious Girl Scout cookies, much less share our recent blog post. No one is going to discover or share your content unless you make it happen though. We’re marketers–we can do this!
7. Don’t do it all alone. – Do you feel like you’re the only person carrying the torch? As an independent consultant, there may be nothing to do about that, but for organizations with a large team, you shouldn’t be the only one. Spread the love and educate internal team members about the importance of active involvement. For me, it’s important that the Outspoken Media team use social media to help strengthen our knowledge, quality, and values. Without fail the team will often find amazing new tools, techniques, or messages that help everyone. Understand WHY you use social media and it’ll be easy to get buy-in from executives and your team.

That’s it! This post was originally much larger, but I wanted to not fatigue you too badly. Am I totally off-base with the tips and psychology of social media fatigue? Tell me what you think and I’ll add a revision and credit for any new tips you share.

Revisions
Rick of eBizROI mentions below a few other tips:

• Make sure your social interactions reflect your business’ core competencies.
• Give more than you get.
• Avoid engaging in posts on politics and religion.
• Have fun and celebrate victories, those of your staff, clients and personal victories.