• Introverts as Entrepreneurs: I love this article so much that I want to start handing it out to all the shy kids who think they can’t be awesome just because they’re introverts. The truth is introverts make awesome entrepreneurs. I know because I am one. Well, introverted. The awesome thing is probably up for debate.
• Homeless man lives off hotel points from former life: Less than two years ago he had a six figure job and a sense of security most people only wish for.  Now the job’s gone and he’s redeeming hotel points to get by.  Lessons here for all.
• David Pogue’s iPhone Song: This almost makes the iPhone likable. Almost. I’d still never get one, of course.
• This Happens To Me Every F—king Single Day: Because sometimes its nice to know you’re not the only one sitting there with your headphones in your ear listening to complete silence. Idiots unite!
• Pick Two: This explains why I keep dating emotionally unstable boys. I pick the wrong two.
• Police: Couple nurtured virtual child while real baby starve: I’m not sure what’s sadder: the story itself or that CNN felt the need to mention the state of broadband connections in South Korea. Cause, you know, that matters.
• Toyota Hybrid Horror Hoax: Interesting look at a person’s needs to be a victim and the general public’s skepticism in believing them. Oh, and Toyota.
• Dunkin Donuts – Free Coffee Every Monday In March: Huzzah! Thanks to the power of Dunkin Donuts, Mondays were just made magically more delicious. Like Lucky Charms.
• Man Marries Pillow: Suddenly my two cats don’t look so pathetic now, do they?  That’s what I thought. Thank you, Lee Jin-gyu. I salute you and your pillow wife.
• Trampoline Dog: A chick flick for the Internet. I know, I’m sorry. You guys should just pretty much expect one of these in every post. They make the world go round, even if you all make fun of me for including them.

Those are some of the highlights I stumbled across this week.  Feels like I’m a little light on stuff. What made you stop, think or even laugh? Share it in the comments.

Heh.

So I’ve been doing a bit of guest blogging lately and I think some people may have started to notice. ;) I’m a really big fan of using guest blogging as a marketing tactic for your business and I think it’s one that is entirely underutilized by bloggers. A good post on the right blog can expose your brand to new communities; bring additional links, traffic and comments your way; build strategic partnerships; get you away your incestuous bubble; and, frankly, introduce you to a whole lot of fun!

But how do you find those worthwhile guest blogging opportunities? Here’s a look at how I hunt out fun guest blogging gigs for both Outspoken Media and our awesome clients.

Get Off Your Stoop

Listen. Your blog may be your home base on the Web, but you need to get off your own damn island to start really driving people to it. The content you produce OFF your site is just as important, if not more, than the content you produce ON your site. If you don’t leave your site, you’re missing an entire world that lives outside of your immediate community. One of the perks of guest blogging is that it forces you to seek out these other islands and to set up shop there, at least for a little while. Yeah, there’s value in blogging for the well known industry blogs already in your niche to build up some authority, but don’t get stuck there. Get off your front stoop.

For example, one reason I was really excited to be part of Duct Tape Marketing’s Make a Referral Week [here’s my post on how to use surprise marketing] was because it put Outspoken Media in front of a whole new audience. Posting on Copyblogger helped put me in front of a more writing-centric community, which I don’t always get to do through my day job. It’s fun to get out there and spread your wings. Don’t be scared.

[Fine. I’m telling you not to be scared but it took me four months to get Brian Clark my Copyblogger post out of pure fear and intimidation. But that won't happen to you. You’re all way smarter than me.]

Do Your Research

One reason many people stick to the same industry blogs is because they’ve closed themselves off and have no idea what else is out there. The truth is there are lots of ways to do some research and track down bigger opportunities.

Here are some ways I’ve been known to track down relevant blogs. Remember, you’re looking for communities that may be interested in who you are, but also that you think you can bring value to, as well.

• Google Web Searches: Performing some quick Google searches is a really easy way to scout out some relevant blogs that may be open to guest blogging opportunities. Searches like [keyword + blog], [keyword + guest post], [keyword + guest blogger] are super simple but can open your eyes to blogs you may not have known existed. They’ll also help you pick out the blogs that have a history of being friendly to guest posters.
• Technorati: Another great site to perform keyword searches on. I’d also recommend using Technorati’s blog directory to hone in on particular interests and see what blogs are already out there. Once you select a category, not only can you search it, but Technorati will also give you the names of other categories that fall under the same umbrella. This is often really useful in finding elated areas you wouldn’t have thought off. And because blogs are ranked by Technorati’s authority score, you can also get an idea where certain blogs fall in the mix and which are Rising or Falling. You don’t necessarily need to go after the most authoritative blogs, but it gives you a nice overview.
• AllTop: As much as I hate to say it, AllTop is maybe my favorite resource for finding new blogs. I know, it kills me to give Guy Kawasaki props like that, but it’s true. He’s created a great aggregator that tells you ‘what’s happening’ in virtually every subject area you can imagine, from adoption to zoology to whatever falls in between. It’s a great service. And now I need a shower for recommending it. Thanks.
• Twitter: Use sites like Twellow, WeFollow and Listorious to help you identify people who are interested in what you do or areas related to you. Once you know, follow them and check out the blogs that they’re sharing, the ones that they really like or maybe the blogs they write themselves. If you see lots of people tweeting about a certain blog, it’s a good sign it’s a trusted resource for that community and maybe you should get to know it a little better.
• Listen: Often bloggers will hint (meaning to or not) that they’d be open to accepting a guest post. If your favorite blogger mentions they’re about to go on vacation, offer to fill in while they’re away. If you’ve noticed they’ve slowed down posting a bit, offer to help out. Did they tweet about just having a baby, buying a new house or how they’ll be going offline for a bit? This may be a great opportunity for you to hop in. Don’t wait for the personalized invite that may never come.

Really, Really Do Your Research

Knowing that the blog exists is one thing, knowing what that blog and community responds to is an entirely different animal. Before you reach out to the blogger or submit a post, get to know what that blog is really about. Ask yourself:

• Who is the audience?
• What topics are the most well received?
• What is the voice like?
• What content holes could you fill?
• What level is the blog written for?
• What is the overall feel of the community?
• Who is this blog in the blogosphere?

Every community on the Web has its own feel and your post should try to bridge that feel with your own identity. For example, I wouldn’t write a post for Top Rank in same tone that I would write it for Outspoken Media or Techipeda. I understand that the audiences, while perhaps related, are still pretty different and they’ve come to expect different things. The stronger you can target your content, the more value you’re going to give that blogger’s readers and the better received your post will be.

Start Creating The Relationship

Once you know the blogs you’d really like to write for, start creating relationships with the bloggers who write or manage them. Essentially, you need to woo the hell out of them. Follow them on Twitter, engage them in conversation and pass on their content when it deserves it. Leave comments on their blog to add value to the community and help them become comfortable with your name. Maybe drop an email to give kudos on a post or to offer an alternative viewpoint.

For me, it’s really important to create relationships with bloggers before I go in asking for something. There are way too many people on the Web looking to get something for nothing. Show them that you’re different by providing value first, asking for value second.

Write The Post

In a perfect world, A-list bloggers would immediately know how smart you are and ask you to contribute a guest post to their blog. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen without quite a bit of previous exposure. While you’re waiting for that golden ticket to come, you’re going to have to bite the self promotion bullet and ‘pitch’ the blogger you want a chance with. It may sound like a risky move or a wasted time investment if the blogger decides to pass on it, but if you’re producing something of value there’s really very little chance that someone is going to turn down free content. Bloggers are always strapped for content. Sending them a relevant post that is already written, properly formatted and that includes images is like tempting a pit bull with a steak. I suggest you put it down slowly and then get the hell out of the way. Of course, if the blogger does turn it down, you can always post it on your own blog or offer it to someone else.

Hopefully, everything mentioned above will help you get your foot in the door. Of course, it doesn’t stop there.  Once you land that perfect guest blogging gig you’ll have to worry about engaging with the community, responding to comments, and promoting the post to help you steal readers and traffic. If you have some extra time, Glen Allsopp did a fantastic job explaining much of the latter in his own ultimate guest blogging guide. I recommend you give that post a read and then go out and create a list of places you want your brand to appear over the next few months and a plan for how you’re going to make contact. It’s actually not a bad way to spend a weekend. Or you could spend it on the couch.  Whatever.

With some much talk about all the different location-based services, I thought it may be interesting to provide a rundown of some of the biggest players. And, of course, I’d like your opinion: Who do you think will take the show?

Gowalla

Who cares: Gowalla established a loyal user base hitting early on the location-awareness scene. What differentiates Gowalla from its closest competitor is that it’s based around exploration and discovering new places. FourSquare is about checking in, Gowalla is about finding what’s near you and proving it by picking up left objects. There’s no cheating going on here. [Looking at you, FourSquarers.]

What’s new: A lot. It sounds like Gowalla will be bringing its A-game to SXSW. They’ve rolled out a new Web site that hails a prettier UI and new features like the streaming Live on Gowalla, updated profile pages and an area for Featured spots. They’ll also have a new iPhone app out in time for the big show that boasts new features like the ability to add pictures and comments to check ins. Robert Scoble recently sat down with Gowalla CEO Josh Williams to talk about what’s coming. It’s clear that Gowalla has heard FourSquare’s cry and they’re not backing down. Gowalla will be throwing a big party during SXSW…which coincidentally falls on the exact same night as FourSquare. Place nice, Ladies.

FourSquare

Who cares: FourSquare’s done a fairly good job establishing itself as The One To Watch in the world of location-based apps. Users can hop around their town checking into their Favorite locations to earn badges, honors and bragging rights for their trouble. Many users are partial to FourSquare because of the neighborhood tips they offer and because its user base is on the quick rise.

What’s new: Again, a lot. FourSquare has secured partnerships with outlets like Bravo, HBO and The New York Times to offer special badges for users who “check in” at specific locations. They’ve increased real business appeal with the adoption of new analytics tools to help SMB owners track behavior. They have the aforementioned SXSW party to look forward to, new categories, (reportedly) a brand new iPhone app, new badges for SXSW goers to collect and they’ll be throwing surprise events on the street. If marketing plays any role in app dominance, Foursquare is certainly on it.

Booyah

Who cares: MyTown from Booyah takes the ‘game’ aspect of Gowalla and FourSquare and ups it about ten notches. It borders more on an augmented reality game than a location-based app (IMO). In MyTown, users earn points by checking in at real-world locations and can purchase the many shops located in MyTown. Once they own the buildings, they can charge rent and use the money earned to buy more shops or all sorts of other virtual goods. My gamer background is pretty limited (sorry), but I’d say it’s a nice mix of Second Life meets Monopoly.

What’s new: From the outside it looks a little silly, but the truth is Booyah may just be ahead of its time. With virtual goods on track to reach $1.6 billion in revenue this year, Booyah is tapping into what could be a smart model. They’ve already partnered with companies like H&M and Zone Nutrition bars and you have to wonder if they won’t partner with Loopt to further up the advertising opportunities. During one of her SMX presentations, Cindy Krum spoke a bit about augmented reality apps and opened my eyes to a world that I never knew existed. There are loyal communities on these sites and those that love the gaming aspect of location have found a hit with Booyah. I don’t know that SXSW will be what it needs to break it big, but it’s definitely one to watch down the road.

Facebook

Who cares: The 400 million users who currently have a Facebook account.

What’s new: Next month Facebook will launch its own location-based features that will allow users to (of course) check in to locations and share that information with friends. According to Inside Facebook, the site won’t be attempting to “kill FourSquare”, however, by adding a check in feature to their 400 million user empire, they’re certainly taking away incentive for users to set up shop elsewhere. Facebook is also making itself more attractive to local business and advertisers, with its recent partnership with eventbrite. If users can tell their friends where they are and businesses can use that information to track behavior and then monetize events and offers directly on Facebook… that’s powerful.

Twitter

Who cares: Everyone who has contributed to the 10 billion tweets that have been sent out to date.

What’s new: As of yesterday afternoon, Twitter has officially switched on its geolocation feature to allow users to tag their tweets with their exact location. Twitter’s geolocation feature works by showing a map overlay on tweets to show place names and your location. Not exactly a revolutionary adoption, but one that makes sense and does take the steam out of other location-based applications that don’t have Twitter’s large, active user base. Twitter also released Twitter Local Trends back in January to help users find relevant localized content and other cool stuff. Twitter’s conquered the celebrities and the rest of the world, now they’re coming after your town.

Yelp

Who cares: Yelp drew 29 million visitors in January and is a dominate player in the market when it comes to anything labeled “review”. The community is fiercely loyal and the mobile apps have done a great job of encouraging users to take Yelp out into the streets.

What’s new: Their $500 million Google snub and the ability for users to check in at locations. I haven’t seen too much recent news from Yelp, but with 29 million users they’re certainly in the position to bump out someone like FourSquare if they start getting smart.

Google Buzz

Who cares: I’m honestly not sure.
What’s new: Everything. Month-old Buzz is still trying to prove its value and convince us that it’s not creepy. There’s a strong location-aware element that is tied into Google Maps to help determine your location and graph where you are, however, because it’s built into GChat, it’s a bit cumbersome. But with Google’s massive audience, it can be a bit cumbersome and still topple the other players. Not that I think it will. TechCrunch had a nice post on how Google Buzz could dominate local. I can’t feign interest nearly as well as they can. Sorry, Buzz.

Geolocation is what’s hot in 2010. Users like the ability to find what’s near them and participate in their real life communities in new ways. And for advertisers, localization means the ability to target and track users like never before. It’s no surprise we’re seeing a gold rush right now with everyone fighting to claim dominance. Who’s your favorite in these location wars?

Who I do think will win? FourSquare.
Who would I like to win? Gowalla.

Obviously, people had some opinions about this. After all, social media is about authenticity and transparency and all those wonderful things. How the heck can you provide that if you’re not giving people your full, true self? How will they ever get to know the real you? I think in order to best serve your audience you have to create a superhero persona.

Here’s why. Feel free to tell me I’m doing it wrong.

You Amplify What Makes You Great

There are certain traits about me that make me perfectly suited for blogging and community building. Things like:

• I’m vocal about the things I’m passionate about.
• I have no problem calling a spade a spade.
• I’m highly social.
• I like to help others and lighten their load when I can.
• I can be witty within the confines of 140 characters.

All of these things make me good at my job. They are personality traits that I hold and that are very natural to me. However, they’re all magnified on the Web. I don’t manufacture who I am, but it’d be naïve to assume that I am this person 24 hours a day. If I lived my life like my Twitter account I would dead within a week. It would be too exhausting. So, to maintain that, the Web gets a very specific version of me. It’s the version that helps us to attract the audience that we’re looking for and the version that best allows me to do my job. We all have multiple personalities. Part of creating your superhero self means knowing how and when to use them.

It Gives You Superpowers

One thing I learned in my Lurker vs Participant post is that insecurity runs rampant on the Web. I was blown away by the number of people who lurk instead of participating simply because they assume that everyone is smarter than them or that speaking up will make them look dumb. When you create a character of yourself, you get to remove that fear. You are no longer controlled by other people’s perceptions of you because you get to be the best version of yourself. You know that version of you who can walk on water, the one that is super funny, and is also a really good dancer? Yeah, the person you become when you’re drunk? Being a superhero means you get to be that person all the time (without the falling over parts). And those are the kinds of personas that people are attracted to. Because it’s who they secretly wish they could be – unmoved by fear and strong enough to be true to themselves. You get to be that.  It’s like being handing superpowers.

Your Cape Shields You From Harm

According to the rules of social media, we’re all supposed to get naked. We’re supposed to strip it all down and present the world with a bare, honest version of ourselves. And that sounds great. It sounds great up until the moment someone starts pelting you with rocks and you start feeling the welts forming from leaving yourself totally exposed. Creating a character that is based on who you are lets YOU decide how naked you want to get and which angles you want to show people. It gives you a very thin barrier of protection you can use to deflect the dings. And trust me, you’re probably going to need it. I broke character on Saturday when someone emailed me very upset over our liveblogging coverage and, as a result, didn’t handle the email the best that I could have. Had I remained in character (and not been overtired from a 12 hour flight), I would have been able to approach the situation differently and do a better job for the brand. That’s the shield your cape gives you. It helps you separate yourself from the situation.

You Draw Your Own Lines

When you look at your online brand as a character, it allows you to create natural boundaries that make it easier to decide what you will or will not share about yourself. Recently Chris Garrett spoke about drawing the line at what you do or do not share, which is something we all have to think about. I think I let a lot hang out in my personal brand. I’m pretty comfortable getting naked because I feel like I’m forced to live my real life like that anyway. But that said, over the last six months I’ve become a lot more aware of what I’m putting out there. I don’t think I filter myself, per se, but there are aspects of my life I’ve chosen not to share. Not because they’re particularly scandalous or interesting, but because I’ve learned that sometimes it’s best to hold close the things and people most important to you. Leaving everything about you open for public consumption gives you nothing to turn to when you need that break or time out from the Web. It also leaves them naked, whether or not they wanted to be.

While I see the importance of being authentic and transparent in your actions, I don’t think you need to expose your whole self to your audience. People don’t need to know everything about you or everything that is personal to you. They just have to feel like they do. And that means presenting them with the version of you that best portrays what they’re looking for. Creating your naked superhero self isn’t difficult. It requires three things.

1. Know who you are and why you’re unique
2. Know what your audience wants
3. Know which traits to magnify to blend 1 and 2.

Do that and you’ll not only be able to create a personal brand that people want to interact and engage with, but you’ll also keep a little security blanket to protect you from the cold and errant rocks.

The Case For Reputation Management

Why should you care about reputation management:

• The Google OneBox: This doesn’t look social at first, but you notice it is once you click through. That’s when you start to see reviews from all sorts of sites. Local results show up at the top of the SERPs, so you want to make sure you have favorable reviews here.
• Universal Search: Puts video, images and news results in the SERPs.
• SideWiki: She had a hard time finding anything that had a SideWiki. Everyone who was using it was an SEO. Google just went ahead and killed this anyway. Thank God.
• Real-time search: Putting real-time updates right into the search results. Anyone saying anything about Tiger Woods will appear in the real-time results.

Some social stats:

• 40 percent of adults 30 and older use the social sites in the fall of 2009.
• 73 percent of adult profile owners use Facebook, 48 percent have a profile on MySpace and 14 percent use LinkedIn
• 37 percent of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.

I guess that means social stuff is important or something.  Rhea is going to use Tiger as the basis for the rest of her chat.

What Sources Can You Use For ORM?

• Your Web site: Are you using your own site to promote your other properties. Tiger has Tigerwoods.com and also has a bunch of subdomains. If you are going to use subdomains, do it effectively.
• Site Links & Indented Results: This can help push negative stuff below the fold when you’re just trying to fill the page.
• Wikipedia: Very powerful. Not everyone deserves a Wikipedia page. Tiger Woods certainly does and its ranking. Some pages are locked. Be cautious as a business, you should not be creating your page by yourself… from your own IP address. [Rhea!]
• Get In Front Of The News: The easiest way to replace bad news is with good news. If there are lots of bad news articles ranking, do some interviews to get that stuff pushed down and replaced with other content.
• Profiles to Rank: Make sure you have profiles like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Indeed, Better Business Bureau, CrunchBase, Hoovers, etc. She says to use knowem to claim and register your brand name across dozens of sites.
• Get Social: Create linkbait. Include your name in it. And then promote it will press releases

Brand Monitoring: Use services like Whos Talkin, Trackur, Radian6 or ScoutLabs

We also have an online reputation management guide you may find useful.

Next up is Tarla Cummings.

What is Search Reputation Management? Keeping the first search engine results pages free and clear of negative results for branded terms.

Examples of negative results: RipOff Report, ComplaintBoards,com, Yelp, [brand]sucks.com, ConsumerWarningNetwork.com, ConsumerReports.com, Anti-Facebook profiles, and all negative news stories or press releases.

What do I do about it? Create positive assets to outrank the negative results.

Where do you create it?

• LinkedIn: Encourage all your employees to connect with it. Add content and applications. You can put an RSS feed to your blog on it. Engage with the community and answer questions.
• Wikipedia: Name your profile correctly, monitor changes and follow best practices when editing.
• Twitter: Choose a branded handle, use brand terms in bio, engage in the community, use branded terms in tweets, provide compelling content, build up followers base, use hashtags.
• YouTube: She hasn’t seen the YouTube channels rank, but the videos do. Include brand terms in the video tags. Promote the videos and engage in the community. You really want to get people to comment because that’s going to help them rank more than just a million views.
• Flickr: Brand your profile and each picture that you upload. Continually upload photos and include brand terms when you’re tagging pictures.
• Blog: Brand the domain, the blog name and tactfully include the brand name in occasional posts. Keep up posting frequency.
• Branded Domains: They bought up 30 branded domains with things like [brand]info.com, [brand]videos.com, [brand]news.com and build them out so they’d rank. She also put lead gen forms on them and directed them back to the main site so she wasn’t take away from the main page.

Link up your Assets: Cross promote your social media profiles on your Web site and through the social profiles. Use SEO tactics to increase SERP positions for all assets.

Track your results: Regularly monitor all branded search queries for both positive and negative results.

Next up is Matt Tuens.

If you’re proactive in your brand management and connect with your audience, you can create it so you’re friends with them and they’ll be more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt should something come up. He calls this, ironically enough, proactive reputation management. Being proactive increases the benefits ten-fold. When your audience knows you, they become more invested in you and are more likely to be on your side when things go wrong. You’re creating relationships with people.

A reactive approach prepares your reputation. A proactive approach builds it.

PROACTIVE Reputation Management Benefits

Being proactive helps you to:

• Connect with your audience and create a relationship.
• Open the lines of communication
• Establishes the ongoing conversation
• Displays an openness, honest.
• Builds and increases trust
• Creates a stronger relationship and bond with your customers.

When you create a better relationship with your audience, you learn more. It helps you to react to changes fasters and better. It gives you an established foundation, makes management more effective and builds an army of vocal supporters.

If all the media outlets have when something goes wrong is the bad stuff, then that’s all they’re going to write about. But if you have a lot of other stuff out there, you have an information history that the media can grab from. Even media about what goes wrong can have positive aspects about it so they can help further your message.

How do you do it? Write content. Lots of content.

Make your site the authority of information in your industry. Your site needs to be the strong foundation where everyhthing else is built. Your goal should be to make your site the biggest authority on your topic. If people find one site that answers all their questions, that’s what they’re really looking for. You can transfer that thinking into any vertical.

What is good content? Tons of articles that are really helpful to give them real information that answers their questions. Providing it is going to make them trust you more. You’re informing, not selling. [Matt just summoned Steve Ballmer, I think.] It’s vital to the perception of your brand.

By being proactive, you’re setting yourself up to be the company that’s the most on top of the industry, the most knowledgeable, the most open, the most trustworthy, the go-to business. This reputation builds a strength that is hard to break when something goes wrong. You’ll incur fewer problems in the future.

Include social aspects on your site.

• Have at least one blog.
• Have a forum.
• Social networking functionality.
• Constant feedback.
• Encourage comments, openness and candor.

Use Facebook:

• Be active, proactive and open
• Create conversation and interaction
• Customer the look and functionality of your page
• Create multiple accounts if advantageous
• Launch products, updates and specials
• Publicize new content.

Next up is Conrad Saam.

There is no such thing as bad PR when it comes to SEO. When you rate lawyers (like his company does), you get sued. That’s what happened to them. They were sued at launch and had this huge PR campaign already going for them when all the news outlets began covering it. Heh. Everyone wants to write about a fight. Joe Consumer likes the drama. They got lots of links for being sued.

You have to engage most of the time when you’re dealing with online reputation management. They build it into client reviews so attorney’s can engage. When you engage, don’t be a jerk. When you’re a jerk, especially when you’re a jerk online, everyone knows you’re a jerk. When you search for the lawyer that sued him, his Avvo entry pops up that says he’s been cited for professional misconduct. He calls it the Streisand Effect.

There are lots of nut jobs online. You want to engage with everyone, in general. Most people are normal, but then you have the crazy people – who either love you or hate you. He says to associate with NEITHER of these groups. Ha. Don’t engage the wackados or the pigs. Pigs are people who don’t like you because they have an invested interest in not liking you. It doesn’t matter what you do.

Embrace raving fans – he has at least 200 lawyers that he can call on to stand up for them.

Dealing With Threats

When you’re dealing with threats:

1. Always respond
2. Don’t go into detail
3. Be polite

Go Public

When you’re dealing with really strong negative issues and people are being mean and nasty, you can do the public approach.

He talks about Mint. It’s an online personal finance site. It was founded in 2007. In Feb 2009, they get a cease and desis lawyer from Quicken saying they’re making up their numbers. The next day, TechCrunch obtains a copy of the letter. This goes round and round, everyone’s talking about Mint. 6 months later, Intuit buys Mint for $170 million dollars.

And after some crazy computer issues, WE ARE DONE!  Hope you enjoyed the coverage. I’m grabbing a beer.

Stay with us, folks! Only two more sessions and SMX West will be one for the record books. The next session is always a fun one because it’s straight Q&A with some of the best and most trusted minds in the field.   This time around Danny Sullivan will be moderating an all-star panel with Greg Boser, Bruce Clay, Vanessa Fox, Todd Friesen, Aaron Wall, and Jill Whalen. Rand Fishkin is also up on stage pinch hitting for Rae, who had to pull out of the show for personal reasons.  Rand’s almost like Rae. But without the swearing or testosterone.

Danny lets us know that Matt Cutts is being interviewed in the hall right now so they’re trying to get the spammy stuff out of the way before he gets back. So naturally they’re starting with Jill Whalen.  We all do intros and Bruce tells everyone to go visit his site. Just like he does every time he’s introduced.   He could use some new material.

We hop right into the Q&A.

Any problems with using rel=canonical globally as a safeguard against rogue programmers?

Vanessa: It can be a good idea as long as you make sure the URL matches the pages. But if you’re able to implement it globally so that it’s matched to the right page, it can be helpful.

They’re all using it globally these days.

What’s the best way to handle pagination in response to PR?

Vanessa: Ask if you need all those pages to rank. If you do, then you need them to all have unique titles, etc.   Do you want page 8 of the pagination to rank and if so, what for?  It depends what your goal is.

Bruce: They had a case where a client was doing Ajax and the IT team decided to break them into different URLs and they copied over the original URLs. The engines dropped ALL the pages as duplicate content because they all had the same titles. It’s critical to have all unique titles.

Rand: He likes going deeper with more subcategories to eliminate the need for pagination.

Todd: It’s just a user experience thing. [OMG, Oilman is talking about user experience? Someone hold me!] Why would you have 10-12 pages of the same thing?

What are some good free training resources for SEO newbies?

Jill: Her newsletter and her forums.

Rand: Bruce Clay, SEOBook, 9 By Blue

Vanessa: SEOmoz, Search Engine Land

Greg: He’ll have a blog on Monday on GregBoser.com.

Todd: He has a blog but he only blogs with 1-2 times a year.

[well, that was nice that everyone got a chance to whore one another, isn't it? ]

Danny: Read Google’s guide. You should know what they’re telling their people about SEO. It’s important to know what they’re explicitly telling you.

Todd: When you’re just trying stuff do NOT try it on your company Web site. Go try it on one of your sites. You don’t want to be the guy that gets your company kicked out of Google.  Make sure you know what you’re doing so you don’t take the site down.

Aaron: If you read Google’s public guides, if you added “in an ideal world” that would be the lens through which that’s written. [HAHA!] They also have guides for their remote quality raters.

Does Google appreciate that an entire site is dedicated to a particular topic vs a single page on a much broader site?

Aaron: There’s lots of ways to match up with the algorithm. If you go the small site route, you’ll be able to align all your anchor text but some of the large sites can just rank on authority. You want to look at the results and see what’s working to use it as a baseline.

Greg: If you have authority, a single page or sub directory can do really well. If you don’t, you won’t rank for competitive phrases.

Bruce: Siloing! [everyone drink]  They’ve been able to get 40 makes/300 categories from one site to all rank just by putting them in the right spaces. He thinks you can do it either way. A site properly themed will rank. A small site by definition is almost at the same level. He doesn’t think it matters which way you do it.

Jill: Remember that the links that point to your site label it as a certain type of site.

[Greg announces that Matt Cutts is in the room.  Everyone behave.]

How important is SEO in blogging vs the frequency? And how long a post be?

Greg: Frequency doesn’t matter if no one is reading your blog. Frequency is good for readers but people have to actually care about the content.

Vanessa: As far as length goes, it has to be as long as it needs to be.

Jill: Write them for your audience, don’t get too caught up in SEO on blog posts. They’re not gonna rank for highly competitive phrases.

Todd:  Do keep in mind keywords in your title. He mentions how The New York Times missed the boat when the plane crashed into the Hudson because they didn’t use “plane” or “crash” in the title. They went with a clever title, instead.

Rand: They do lots of testing about when to publish.  You want to optimize your content so that Mahalo can best scrape it and put it in their results.  You can also republish new posts on old URLs (and move the old one) so that you get the old links + the new links to get the rising tide.  [Greg says that's a little blackhat.]

Aaron: There are plugins for different blog platforms like SEO Title Tag where you can make your h1 heading optimized for readers.

Greg: He says the plugins work really well.  You can write different headlines for users and the search engines.

As a news publisher, should you publish different site maps for your own? Do you need multiple site maps?

Vanessa: If it’s a regular Web site, you may because it will help you see which parts of your site are getting indexed the best and spot potential problems.  For a news site map there’s no need.

Bing and Yahoo – What are your general reactions?

Greg: He can’t wait. There’s a lot of dormant stuff in Bing that will produce traffic once its on Yahoo.

Todd: It looks like if you search in Bing for something and Yahoo for something, you’re gonna get the same results, in the same order. There’s going to be a lot of opportunity in that, but the opportunity isn’t for big brand kind of stuff.  It’s gonna provide a good opportunity for your side projects.

Greg: Dust off your old stuff. Bing is very domain-focused. His test stuff in Bing is doing quite nicely, there’s just no traffic. Yet.

Rand:  Go and verify your site with Bing’s Webmaster Tools. It may do you some favor in the rankings just by having your site registered with them.

[Vanessa says she asked MSFT about this and they said it wasn't true. Rand says it is. They're fighting.]

Rand: Bing’s market share compared with Yahoo will look like 30 percent but the traffic that leaves Bing and Yahoo for queries will be much lower than that.

I have a colleague who gets high rankings through all internal links – is that possible?

Jill: Depends on the competitiveness.  If it’s not competitive, it’s possible.

Once you do KW research, how do you find out what terms are most important?

Vanessa: Depends on your business goals. You want the right audience, not the biggest audience.

My mom’s not here but our godfather Danny Sullivan is. He’s moderating Arnab Bhattacharjee, Matt Cutts, and Sasi Parthasarathy. Matt just tossed me a package of peanut butter M&Ms from the stage. Hmm, does that mean that link to Google up there is a paid link? Free M&Ms are almost like free Google phones, right?  Questions.

Okay, let’s see what they’re talking about. I’m gonna nom quietly on my bribe.

Is Google going to do something with the “you are sending automated” message when you send a lot of queries? We’re doing research.

Matt: You can always stop by the Webmaster Central forum. The motivation behind that is that there are some worms who will spider queries looking for vulnerabilities. They try to throttle those if they look like automated requests.  You may have someone in your company doing scraping, etc. Check on what queries are going to Google. They try to balance it so that most people can do all the queries that they need.

What’s the future of Yahoo Site Explorer?

Arnab: They’re going through everything they do for the ecosystem.   They’re in deep discussion in how to move that forward.

Sasi: The users comes first. What’s more important for you is what we’re gonna do.

Danny: …so we don’t know. [Ha!]

Is it a problem if my site is in secure https:// format?

Matt: No. The query [paypal] shows they happily show them in the search results. Just pick one or the other.

Google is showing a date for my Wordpress blog. How do I get the date out of the results? I don’t like it there.

Matt: Users do  like seeing the dates. If you’re showing something from 2006 and they want new info, they’re not going to click on your page. We can infer the content age based on when we first saw it. He’s not sure of any way to NOT make the date show up.

Matt, you mention in a video you’re showing position now. Is that totally rolled out?

Matt: It’s not totally rolled out. The idea is you want to show really fast search results. It turns out you can use AJAX to not just do the search, but to do the search and use that same URL, fetch what the results should be, and fold them into the search results. The problem is not everything browser supports that functionality that well. It’s about speed.

There’s been discussion about PR sculpting – should we be sculpting links?

Matt: The idea is that people want to change the attributes on links to shunt PageRank. They don’t think it’s a good use of your time, but they made a change where that link juice doesn’t get pushed to other pages, it dissipates into the link graph. What’s better is to work on the architecture of your Web site. You can take your best performing products, move them closer to your root, and then they’ll get more juice naturally. You want to surface your best content near the source of your PageRank. In the time you’re spending trying to PR sculpt your site, you could have created some great content.  It’s more useful to not think about PR sculpting, but to focus on good architecture and content.

Arnab: All these micro optimizations pretty much don’t help.  He says he agrees with Matt.

Does blocking the links cause the remaining links to get more credit?

Matt: It doesn’t.  If you have 100 links, your PR on each of those links is roughly 1/100.

Danny: So I can do whatever I want and Google’s going to make it’s own assumptions anyway? [Matt says, 'right'.]

Arnab: Page importance is just one of many factors the engines look at. It’s really about if you’re relevant to that specific query.

Matt: Don’t get obsessed over PageRank.  They don’t take it out of the toolbar because a ton of regular people enjoy looking at PR to see how reputable  page is [I would like names of these so imaginary people]. If he found out it was just SEOs obsessing over it, he’d get rid of it.

Cross domain canonicals – we had the canonical tag released last year. What’s the status now?

Sasi: They support it for intra-linking. They are not supporting cross domains for now.  Maybe they will in the future if the usage is better.

Arnab: They do support it within a domain. They are exploring algorithmically if it makes sense to do it cross domain.

Matt: He’s been watching sites shoot themselves in the foot with it and accidentally 404 their main pages. They keep the right to say you probably didn’t mean to do what you’re doing.

Arnab: Please do not use rel=canonical as a bandaid. Its better if you don’t have to use it.

What’s up with Google and domain authority. A blank Wikipedia page ranks higher than my content.

Matt: Google typically ranks lower Wikipedia lower than other search engines. [the audience basically laughs. because we don't believe him.] Wikipedia has done better at not showing stub pages.

Danny: Big sites can fart and it ranks.

Matt: I disagree that big sites can fart and they rank. A lot of the small sites can move faster and do things well. Wikipedia does a good job on SEO. They have good linkage. A typical Wikipedia page is useful and will be returned. We don’t think Wikipedia pages have to be ranked.

Arnab: We don’t do anything to make Wikipedia rank. It’s natural.  If you have content and links, you’ll rank.

Sasi: It’s that person’s opinion that they have better content. We may think Wikipedia has better content. [FIGHT!]

We created workarounds because you couldn’t understand AJAX.  Now you can. Should we take them down?

Matt: No.  If it’s working and white hat, leave it alone.  Go make great content.

Danny gives a request. If you’re gonna spider the AJAX content, I want to see that in the cache page.

Arnab (Yahoo rep), do you need to come next year? [OH MY GOD!]

Arnab: I hope that you would invite me next year.  A representative from Yahoo search will be here next year. Yahoo will continue to focus on the search experience.  Yahoo search is super important. We’re continuing to innovate. Our abstracts will look different. We’ll pull in Yahoo-specific content in the results.   Text, image and video will come from Yahoo.  Yahoo will keep all of its vertical properties.

Is it beneficial to use CSS to position content higher on the page? Does your important content have to be higher on the page?

Matt: It’s not a huge thing. It you think about how regular people make Web pages (not SEOs), they don’t worry about it. They’re just gonna write their content and have it generate it however it does.  You probably don’t want to bury your lead 5 pages out where NO ONE will find it, but it’s not a big issue.  A lot of people spend a lot of time worrying about table tricks – if the content is compelling, that’s what’s important.

Arnab: We do understand there are sections of the page that are purely navigational. They can recognize that. They also consider PDF documents.

Is the real-time content part of the main index or are they from different indexes?

Matt: He’s not sure but it’s an excellent question.

Sasi: It depends how fresh the data is.

Why don’t you ban Mahalo?

Matt: Mahalo is an interesting site. It’s either a search engine or a content site. Jason Calacanis has been working on it for awhile. It uses Wiki software so they build individual pages. He thinks of it as a content site. Aaron Wall railed against Mahalo. He showed some bad screen shots, but that’s not all the content on Mahalo. He told Jason that Aaron had made some good points and if you have auto-generated or stub pages and don’t make sure there’s a high bar of quality there, we will take action on our side.  All the pages Aaron pointed out now have noindex on them. They try to be zen about sites. If it’s good for their users, they’ll return it. If it’s not, they won’t.

Is it better to have everything on the same domain or should I use subdomains?

Sometimes you dont want a subdomain because you have to think about latency. There are pros and cons.

Is it suspicious to block JS files?

Matt: No, but he’d recommend letting them crawl it because sometimes they can discover new pages.

After a VERY quick break we are back in action.  Speaking we have Jessica Bowman, Laura Lippay, Michael Martin, and Everett Sizemore. There’s no banter as Everett Sizemore hops right in because we’re a little behind.  Okay, fine, a little banter. Fun story: According to a few people, Everett and I were standing next to one another for at least 20 minutes the other day and I had no idea. I’ve never officially met Everett. Hopefully we’ll change that soon.

Okay hopping right in!

How To Succeed As An In House SEO

Just because you bring SEO in-house, doesn’t mean it s going to work. Both situations require the right people, tools and skills.   He says the word of the day is going to be value.

You Are Only What It Costs To Replace You

Ouch.

In-House SEOs can provide added value above and beyond search engine optimization. We get some quotes to help us feel cultured.

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value. – Albert Einstein

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.- Warren Buffet

Extend Your SEO Mindset Beyond The Site

Facts

• Your brand does not exist in a vacuum – seek out what other people are saying about you. You need to be there when people are reading blogs, watching videos, etc. Be everywhere all the time.
• Sometimes in SEO 1+1=3
• You have the power to change someone else’s rankings
• Universal Search is no longer the exception

SEO Link Building and PR Intersect

In-house SEOs can get more out of link building efforts than just links. It used to be that he would some SEOs may pay a blogger 50 bucks to drop a link on their Web site.  That doesn’t happen anymore. You have to find more creative ways to get links. Its turned out to be a good thing. Now instead of just getting the link, you’re getting reviews, testimonials, more eyeballs, etc. He talks about a drawing he did with a green living blog, which helped them get links, increased brand awareness on Twitter, etc.

If an inhouse SEO sees people asking questions on blogs and in reviews, they can walk over to the content department and have them write content. That’s something an agency isn’t going to do.

SEO Social Media Marketing and PR Intersect

Online reputation management grew out of SEO. Now there are entire companies dedicated to this.

Reactive ORM: Getting bad search results off the first page by helping more favorable results outrank them.
Proactive ORM: Monitoring your brand image and catching situations before they get indexed, heavily linked to, or go viral.

SEO, SMM and Market Research Intersect

They do a lot of competitor intelligence. They use that information to help other departments.  If they’re on SpyFu and they find out their competitors are bidding aggressively on a keyword for a product you don’t have, maybe you should consider carrying that product. They also use it for crowd sourcing.

Things to ask:

• What is selling well for your competitors?
• What else are your customers trying to buy?
• What is the next hot thing?

SEO Reports for Other Departments

• Buyers / Product Development – give a quarterly report
  • Top internal search fails
  • Top PPC & SEO keywords for competitors
  • Keyword research trends
• Business Development / Executives
  • State of your industry in search
• Customer Service:
  • Top complaints & compliments from blogs & social media
• Copywriters and Merchandisers
  • Top questions about products from blogs & social media

Up next is Michael Martin.

What is an In House SEO?

Mike couldn’t find a definition of an In House SEO so he made up his own. Ready for it?

An In House SEO is generally a director responsible for increasing targeted organic search engine traffic to the company’s site(s). The SEO Director needs to affirm the company’s goals from the executive level then, combining SEO knowledge with the company’s capabilities, formulate a plan to  be executed from IT resources and measured for effectiveness. They need to walk the talk & leave the dancing to the agencies. Heh.

How to Succeed As An In House SEO

• Keep up to date with SEO practices – Mike says to read Outspoken Media.  I suppose he also lists off other blogs , but, well, I like ours the most. And my carpal tunnel is kicking in.
• Setup an SEO “Jirga” to bounce ideas off
• Understand company’s online goals
• Synergy with company’s other online efforts
• Understand coding – at least HTML. Helps grease the wheels.
• Define SEO Procedures & Guidelines – especially if you work for a large company. it helps to get everyone on the same page.
• Know when to Delegate, Automate, or Outsource
• Create Metrics & Goals

This planning, communicating, documenting, execution, & monitoring is best facilitated by proper project management

The Importance Of Project Management

Project Management is defined by the Project Management Institute (PMI) as the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements. The combined knowledge & skills of both project management & SEO is the foundation of an In House Director’s success. To solidify your understanding of this process PMI provides a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification similar to a CPA in accounting. He thinks its really useful for in house SEOs to help define processes.  However, you don’t need a PMP to at least use available project management tools to assist in your in house SEO efforts.

[Someone in this room is eating an orange and I am going to find them and STEAL IT. I'm starving.]

Project Management Tools

• BaseCamp – Easy & economical
• TeamWork – FREE plans & robust
• Jira – Good self hosted & customizable option
• Microsoft Project – Overly complicated & unnecessary for SEO

Using tools helps to centralize communication, task management, file sharing, & tracking

Soft Tools Of Project Management

Project management tools facilitate electronic communication but there is a need for soft people skills to properly execute In House SEO.

• Need buy in from the Executive level & clarity to what the end result they are looking for is
• Need to align your goals with that of management to get your tasks scheduled in a timely manner
• Need understanding from those that execute in IT that this will make their job easier down the road & earn their respect by showing knowledge in the coding involved

In the end make sure success is transparent & attributed to all levels as this will further “grease the wheels” to your continued In House SEO success. You need cohesion from the top down.

Next up is Laura Lippay. She’s gonna talk about jobs and salaries. People suddenly perk up.

What do I look for in an SEO Candidate?

• Personable
• Patient
• Inquisitive
• Influencer

SEOs come in different flavors:

• Marketing SEOs: Should be able to find opportunity in certain projects and know how to prioritize. They should be able to build link partnerships, balance PPC and SEO, understand how SEO fits into the marketing mix, track performance.
• Developmental/Engineering SEOs: Should be logical. Should be able to see goals in the details. Be problem solvers. Code savvy.  Keyword savvy if they’re writing Meta tags and Titles and stuff like that.
• Editorial SEOs: Know how to write for the Web, how to construct link bait, know how to do keyword research, how to link out, to create relationships with other bloggers, etc.
• Social Media SEOs: Should be likable because they have to drive engagement and get followers, etc. Good multitaskers

What Title Do I Give My SEO Employee?

She shows a list of about a gazillion titles that people in our industry call themselves. No Chief Branding Officer because my job is totally made up. I really just nap all day and pay people to Twitter for me.

Things to consider when creating titles:

1. Will the position always live where it is?
2. Will the title still make sense in five years?
3. Does the title give the flexibility for slight changes in responsibilities over time?
4. Will the title make sense to others?

What do I Pay My SEO Employee?

She talks about a post SEOmoz wrote in 2006 about how much SEOs should be paid. It looked at geographic factors, experience, influence, etc. In 2009, SEMPO released an In House SEO Survey which showed that salaries had increased.  2009 yearly salaries for individual contributors with 1-3 experiences were getting 40k-80k; VPs were making up to $250k.

When you’re using salary tools, know they’re not always as accurate, but it can help you to see gaps by location.  She mentions using Indeed and Simply Hired. She shows a few comparisons of what Indeed and Simply Hire guestimate that people are making.  It’s hard to blog. And then we’re done. My right hand is burning with the fire of carpal tunnel.

Up next is Jessica Bowman.

SEO isn’t like any other discipline in your company. You can’t compare your role to anyone else’s.  A good SEO sticks their nose in other people’s business.  You have to be in product management, usability, etc.  You need to instill change. When a company decides to do SEO, that’s when change needs to happen. Incorporate SEO into every aspect of the life cycle so that you’re not fixing costly mistakes later down the line.

SEO involvement is intense at the beginning and declines as the project progresses. It’s a lot of freaking work. To help ease it, create an SEO Ambassador to help.

Your SEO Ambassador can represent SEO, make sure SEO requirements are included, acts as QA for SEO in each release, pulls in the SEO team when things are complex, train others on SEO and work with their team to integrate SEO into existing processes, documentation and workflow.

If you get this right… you’ll still fail sometimes. The big problems happen in implementation. You have to talk to people. Do the happy hours. Walk the halls. Go calm people down.

Most companies are spending 90 percent of their time getting to “yes” and dishing out requirements and they think they are done.  Get involved in what’s happening and create a project plan. Write proper, formal documentation.

What can SEO documentation have?

• Examples of other sites doing this and how they are doing it.
• Anything you know about the systems, where they get the data from, their limitations, etc.
• Why you need it, what will happen without it.
• Mockups/Wireframes
• Requirements that address everything that could go wrong Imagine you are writing it for a robot or an idiot who will only do exactly what you have written on the paper.

This is a lot of freaking work!

It goes back to your ambassadors. How can you delegate responsibilities and get accountability? You want ambassadors to be proficient enough to do most of the work for you. You need to be able to manage both the trees and the forest.

And we’re out. More running. And maybe some Advil.

Good morning, everyone! It’s the final day here at SMX so everyone’s running around just a tad slower than they were the previous days. That means less banter, but perhaps more snarky remarks when the delirium finally takes over my fragile body.  You want to hear something cool? Last night I got to meet George Revutsky, the guy Scoble threw under a bus, and chat with him about what it’s like to be scoble’d.  Neat, right? We shared a moment.

Okay, getting to it! Up on stage we have Chris Sherman moderating Vanessa Fox, Avinash Kaushik, Misty Locke, and David Roth. They’re on really high chairs.  I’m afraid little Vanessa may fall off.  The sound’s a little wonky too where I’m up front and still can’t hear anything. Chris gets us started.

Last year during this time we were in the early stages of an economic meltdown.  How are we doing now? Does search still have a bright future?

David: He thinks we do. He thinks the recession gave search marketers a chance to show their stuff.  It’s showed a shift back to SEO.

[There was some super awesome info here but... my computer closed the tab and it all went away.  Perhaps a moment of silence instead.]

Vanessa, you’ve watched the SuperBowl for Search Engine Land for a few years now. The SuperBowl is obviously the big spend. We’ve seen many advertisers pull out of that this year. Is that a secular shift?

Vanessa: With Pepsi, they decided to spend their money in social media. It’s interesting that some people are deciding to spend their money online. Watching the SuperBowl ads, it showed her that companies are only starting to see that online is important. There’s a lot of work left with large brands.

In terms of branding, there’s an argument that branding and search don’t really mix.

Avinash: One of the greatest things about search is relevancy and accountability. Branding was a great metaphor for wanting to do something without understanding a particular outcome. With search, that’s not the case. He read a post about the 7 ways you can measure branding online and four of the ways were about search. If you can tell me what it is that you want as an outcome, search is a massively effective way to show up for the right kind of people.

The biggest news this year was the deal about Microsoft/Yahoo. We have a new genuine number two, that’s a good option for people.

Dave: Since we have regulatory approval, integration is on. There have been lots of resources put toward it from both companies. The proof will be in the pudding once advertisers start to migrate. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. Yahoo’s stance is that we’ll continue to innovate against the user experience.

How is integration going?

Dave: That’s just beginning. There’s a large amount of resources at Yahoo that are going to be moved over and work with the engineers on integration. A lot of it remains to be seen. The clearance was just a couple of weeks ago.

Misty, you have good insight into clients along a broad spectrum. Are they excited?

They are. It allows for a viable number two. It may not change how we upload campaigns but it does let us shift our focus and our strategy. As a whole, her clients are really excited and looking forward to the opportunity?

Is the opportunity potential reach?

Misty: Reach is one of the biggest outcomes. They’re excited about the additional value. Microsoft has always driven the highest ROI, so there’s excitement about that. It’s going to open up some new ways to use Microsoft and Bing.

Now we have two major players. You can look at that consolidation as us shrinking or you can look at it as having two really strong players.

Avinash: Competition is a good thing. It makes everything better. He always found that it’s prudent to have varied strategy. If you step a bit above, people get far too obsessed with the competition between the engines. You should already have had a very effective strategy among all engines. Last month Google brought him 3 visitors for the term [analytics], Bing brought 800+. He loves Bing. You need to have a portfolio strategy because you’ll find new customers and be able to use your dollars more effectively.

Vanessa: She’s waiting to see how things shake out with the integration. She wants to know how SearchMonkey and BOSS play out when Yahoo doesn’t have its own index. Hopefully we won’t lose all the ‘yahooness’ of search once it gets merged into Bing.

Google has this famous culture of reaching out and also being opaque. Google said Caffeine would be rolled out after the holidays… but it’s only on one data center. What impact is the Caffeine impact going to have on SEO? Is Google going to continue in the spirit it always has?

Vanessa: She doesn’t know that Caffeine is going to impact SEO all that much. It’s more a back end change. She thinks their hope is just to do what they always have… but better. It’s not a rankings impact, except in an indirect way. If your site is crawled and indexed more, it will affect rankings. But there’s not more to do from an SEO perspective. She hopes Google will keep its spirit. She doesn’t see a reason that they’ll stop talking to people.

Avinash: Even if every Googler woke up and said they’d spend their days answering questions, it still wouldn’t answer everyone’s question. They try to do it at scale to give people the kind of info and transparency that they need. Google wants to help you make better decisions with search data. He says he’s orgasmic about it. No. Really. That’s what he said.

One of the big themes when listening to people talk is social media – is there a threat that social media could replace search?

Vanessa: People are still searching. They’re searching more and more. You have to think about your audience. If your audience is involved in social media, you need to be there as well, but it’s not an either/or.

Misty: This is a real opportunity to blend the boundaries between search and other marketing vehicles. We’re having so many other opportunities. If she’s looking at a marketing campaign, search is getting most of the ability to drive the discussion. We have to find new ways to be relevant and to drive lift.

David: The rest of the marketing world is coming our way. The marketers are doing the Facebook buys and leading the social strategies. The big companies are looking towards search marketers as the experts in this.

Avinash: The media loves “or” stories. Facebook OR Google. Search OR Social. Video did not kill the radio star. You have to have a portfolio of channels. He speaks as a person who thought Twitter was the dumbest thing on Earth. And now he thinks it’s the coolest thing since sliced bread. It’s very important to realize that as you think of all the elements of your portfolio that you use them for what they are good at. Big brands don’t do well on Twitter because all they do is SHOUT. That’s not how you use the medium. You have to execute your strategy based on the platform that you’re using. Don’t go for an OR strategy. Think of AND.

Conversation is important but if you’re going from mass marketing to personal touch, how do we manage that?

Avinash: He thinks we put on the wrong lens when we ask how we can keep advertising more relevant. What you do today is to try and influence people to do something. There are many ways to do that now that you can influence people. And one emerging way to influence people is to have these conversations. Shouting at people is going away. He thinks that’s why people like Google. Because at the right moment, the right ad shows up. The way that we influence people is changing and we’re going to have to experiment with new ways to do it. Because we don’t get to tell them what works. They tell us.

We’re engaging with people. People are sharing their information, we’re being social, etc. We’re still in the naïve days. What’s gonna happen when we get unethical marketers using this data?

Avinash: If you look at the sides of the Egyptian tombs, there are spam comments in that. Spam has been a problem for a very long time and it will continue to be a problem for a very long time. Try to use intelligent ways to supress it as much as possible and provide incentives for doing the right thing.

Misty: There will always be spam. Marketers will always find a way to use/exploit mediums. What’s different about this is that the users are policing the good and the bad, not the marketers. They can judge authenticity.

We keep hearing mobile is coming. Is it here?

David: It’s here but maybe its not what we thought it was going to be. We’re at 20 percent penetration of smart phones across the US.

Avinash: He has an Android phone and he did a search that went to the Google servers, transcribed what he said, picked up both locations, and gave him driving directions based on where he was.

Misty: It’s here and she has the stats to prove it!

Vanessa: The ubiquity of mobile opens up the door for new search opportunities. Most of the world never had a smart phone before. this is the first time it’s become a mass audience. They dont know they’re searching, they just think their phone does this cool thing.

And we’re out! only 15 minutes between sessions and this is already 17 minutes over.  Girl’s gotta run!

[I'd encourage you to check out both Bruce Clay, Inc. and Search Engine Land's coverage of this keynote, as they may have gotten a bit more than I did.  Some technical issues plagued me a bit.]

Up first is Chris Winfield.

He laughs that the session is called 60 Minutes Per Day For Social Media Success… and the session is 75 minutes. Hee!  Chris tells everyone in the room to follow Outspoken’s blog coverage and I turn about 18 different shades of red. In fact, I almost took my laptop and hide under the table. While I’m under there, you should subscribe to the blog. You’ll feel so much better when you’re done.

Social Media Can Be Overwhelming

Chris was watching Sports Center trying to get away from the Internet and he heard them mention Twitter three times in the first segment. He couldn’t believe it.  A lot of people think that because they  hear about Twitter all the time that THAT’S where they should be spending their time.  That’s not always the case.

Social media doesn’t have to be overwhelming. You have to simply it. To show us how this is done he picked a random paintball company and he’ll be using them as his example throughout the session.

So, how do you simplify the process?

Locate Your Audience:  It’s not just Facebook or Twitter.  Look where you’re getting traffic from.   Use Google Analytics. Run it, check it, and look at it again.  There may be niche social networks, other blogs, retailers, etc, that you don’t even know about. Test things yourself. Don’t just focus on the sites you think people are using. Google Analytics will even allow you to set up filters so you can exclude certain sources to help you get a better idea of where exactly people are coming from based on blogs or social media.

Your clicks and prospects know where they spend their time online. ASK THEM! Ask the trust ones and use polls/incentives.

He says to create Google Alerts. [I love Google Alerts.] Set up Comprehensive Searches on Brand terms and get Alerts every time the brand is mentioned to discover new networks and sites. Do the same thing for your competition. Find out where they’re getting mentioned.

The Importance of the Niche Community

Find out what the most active blogs, forums, Twitterers, Facebook groups, etc, are in your industry.  How can you do it free and quick?

• Blogs: He mentions using All Top. I grumble because I hate All Top on principle (I call that principle “Guy Kawasaki”), but he’s right. It’s a great resource. They aggregate nearly every type of content into what they consider to be the most influential blogs on a topic. If he’s the aforementioned paintball Web site, he can go to All Top, type in “paintball” and find they have a whole section dedicated to paintball.
• Forums: He’s a huge believer in forums. He thinks they get ignored because they’re not that sexy anymore. They’re powerful because they have people in there who are so passionate. When he was getting married, his wife was on LIWeddings.com and she knew a member that had 90,000 posts in a year.  That’d be a great person to connect with. [Though, Chris says, you probably wouldn't want to have a real conversation with her. Ha!] He mentions using Big-Boards.com, which tracks the most active forums and threads.
• Twitter: Find the influential Twitter users.  He likes using WeFollow. It lets you find people based on tags. Twellow is another great directory.
• Facebook: Look for active Facebook groups or Fan pages. Create a Fan page for your local community to get people involved. See how active people are on your topics. Do searches for them.
• Yahoo Answers: A nice way to create different touch points and get people to your site.  You want to become the expert.
• Niche Social News Networks: More targeted than the big dogs like Digg, Reddit, etc. Easier to have success because there’s less competition. You can see his list of the best niche social media news sites.

Use easy-to-use desktop application tools to monitor and scan multiple popular social media networks for given queries in real-time to stay ahead of mentions.

Final Tips

• Find out the ACTUAL sites your audience is using.  Don’t use a site just because someone told you it works.
• Get very involved in the most active communities.
• Be active and helpful but still focus on ROI.
• Be a damn human!

Next up is Jennifer Laycock.

If you only had an hour a day, here’s where Jennifer thinks you should spend your time:

• 10 min a day: Schedule Tweets: Use a tool like HootSuite to help you schedule your tweets. Build a name for yourself  by being the person who finds the great content. Schedule the content so its being released all day so it looks like you’re there even when you’ve moved on to something else.
• 10 Min a day: Upload Content: She mentions sites like Flickr, etc.
• 15 min a day: Scan & Respond: Use Social Mention to go in and see what people are saying about you each day, check in on your FB page and get back to people.
• 25 min a day: Blog post: She thinks small companies need to spend most of their time here. This should be your keystone and where you drive everyone back to.

Why does social media matter?

• It delivers traffic: Focused, high value and emotionally-invested traffic. Traffic is powered by word of mouth
• It delivers links: Lots of topical , credible links
• It delivers conversions: Registrations for an event, a newsletter, etc.
• It delivers credibility: You can get out there and demonstrate your knowledge and collect third party vouchers

Concentrate Your Efforts

You need to find new ways to tie it all together. She thinks you need to tie it all into your blog. Your blog is your best opportunity to put multiple types of content into the same location. Your blog is the only place where you can integrate all these forms of content into one place.  You have a lot more control when you’re on your blog in terms of pulling people in to susbscribe. You can link to all of your social media channels so they can find the places where they can connect with you.

Your blog is your best chance to track conversion potential. You can somewhat track Twitter and FB, but you have a way better ability to follow your customers if you can get them on your blog. That’s how you can see how they’re interacting with your site.

It’s also about control. If you have a tool like Twitter and you can send them wherever you want, why wouldn’t you send them to your own? She thinks the blog should the keystone to everything that you’re doing. just because it’s been around for awhile doesn’t mean its boring. f you’re looking to seel, there’s a lot of potential..

Next up is Matt Siltala.

Matt took the Chris Winfield Approach to presentation writing – which means he let Twitter help him write it. ;) These are some apps Twitter says they can’t live without:

• Ecofon
• Twitdroid
• Foursquare [boo! hiss! throws things!]
• Tweetie
• Tweetdeck

Mobile Social Media Success Starts Here:

• Mobile Apps = Friend
• Have a Plan
• Time Management
• Make Sure And Set Goals
• Non Mobile Tools That Help
• Focus

Have A Plan: Use time savers to help you appear on multiple channels. If you upload something to Posterous, it will automatically upload it to Flickr, which will post on Facebook.    If you check into Yelp, it will post on Twitter or Facebook. If you have a Wordpress blog, you can post using the Wordpress mobile app –> which will autopost to Twitter –> which will post to Facebook.

It all depends on how you have it set up and how you’re using it. He likes doing things from the phone because he’s always on his iPhone.

Time Management

Facebook and Twitter take up the most of his time. You have to limit yourself to the essentials.

• @replies
• DMs
• Lists
• Messages
• Wall Postings
• Industry Alerts – (keywords you are monitoring)

Twitter Time Management Tools

• TweetDeck
• EchoPhone
• Lists
• TweetBeep
• Alerts
• Twitter Search
• Multiple Accounts

Make sure you set goals. What do you want to accomplish. How much time will you spend on Twitter or Facebook? Voting & Sharing? Relationship building? Networking? Branding? Traffic? Sales?

Non Mobile Tools

Have the appearance of always being social by setting up all your feeds and working the tools. Using Google Alerts, Friendfeed, Twitter Feed, etc.

Stay the Course

Don’t let these things get you off course. Stay focused. The time you spend needs to be focused on things that matter.  You can’t be on all of the social networks at all the same time. Pick five for your industry and become experts on those.