conversations monetized

I’ve been writing a little back and forth today with Mr. Ted Shelton of The Conversation Group. I’ve been deliberately OUT of the conversation for awhile now, not reading much about social media. Thanks to Mr. Shelton for pulling me back in
He said, “I would be interested in your take on Shel’s description of two different approaches to social media:” Two Social Media Camps in the Enterprise

In his post Shel Israel describes two camps.

Camp 1:
In nearly every company I talk with, I hear about those who understand that social media is something new and different from traditional marketing. It is not about putting messages into foreheads. It is about the enormous wisdom and efficiency to be gained simply by having conversations with customers, prospects, employees and partners.

Camp 2:
…there is muttering and trepidation of another camp, one that is often being pushed by the traditional marketing people who see social media simply as another channel to push out brand awareness and product-related messages. It is another way to have the corporation talk about the corporation rather than listen to customer concerns, complaints or even compliments.

Responding from my current practice is difficult. For one thing my entire professional career has happened online, in the shadow of Google. I started at an email newsletter editor with 1 million subscribers and helped grow a 50k member forum based on reader responses. I’ve only ever known the cluetrain.

Secondly Israel’s writing about social media at a scale that I left behind when MSI folded and I went freelance. My clients are small businesses so I think these days at a scrappy, micro level.

One of my clients runs a designer jewelry company. He started http://www.FairJewelry.org and writes about the agonizingly slow changes in the mainstream jewelry supply chain. He also wrote a guide encouraging jewelers to be more transparent in their sourcing so buyers can make more educated decisions. His primary tools are his blog and his email - he sends out his FRE handbooks as email attachments to people who write to him requesting it.

I have a client who sells power tools. I visit woodworking forums and aggregate advice, acting as a sort of community editor and highlighter for our site blog and newsletter (30% opens, 46% clickthroughs on average). Not razzle-dazzle social media but none the less it works and generates response (comments and page views) from our readers.

That said, I believe I fall into Israel’s first camp, as I prefer letting conversations grow organically and I lean heavily towards transparency. Also, don’t tell my clients but I’m not a marketer in the traditional sense. I prefer to find mutually-beneficial ways of communication and conversation.

But to stretch my brain a little I’d look at several opportunities/proven models for conversation and community building for an enterprise client.

1) identify and segment the creative types who use their product lines and create mutually beneficial communication tools to empower them to leverage the company’s existing attention share. Something similar to how SalesForce opened their financial ecosystem to developers.

2) build a customer-run and driven (or at least augmented…) help desk.

3) identify the brand evangelists and let them drive. I’d reread all Jake McKee’s lego posts and figure out how to apply his findings to the enterprise.

Thanks to Mr. Shelton for getting me thinking macro! It’s a lot of fun
So how about you? What camp are you in?Norvasc
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80,000 links in 3 months.

Ranking for competitive terms in 6 months with a brand new domain.

Sounds pretty sweet, huh? Those are the numbers that Matt Inman reported to Joe Whyte in a Search Marketing Standard interview… Those are the numbers that made the quiz bug bite.

Four months later I’m working with the Search Commander himself, the Internet Consulting Guru Mr. Scott Hendison, to develop a quiz-building app and write link-building quizzes for his clients. Woohoo!

I just wrote 2 quiz marketing posts. The first is an overview of quiz marketing tactics that I’ve seen - going beyond link building (I know, scary territory, right ;). The second shows my initial approaches at quiz writing, how I’ve been thinking about them and the research I’ve conducted to try and become a better quiz writer.

Personality Quiz Marketing for Links, Leads and Consultative Sales
Some Thoughts on How to Write Personality Quizzes for Link Building

First off, I’ve only written one quiz and I’ve currently generated 0 links using personality quizzes. I write this to share the research I’ve done thus far for folks who’d like to think WAY TOO MUCH about quiz writing in the future.

A SMStandard article first got me interested in personality quiz writing. The article mentions a quiz called “how geek are you?”

Here is an example of one of the more than 80,000 links developed with this campaign: How geek are you? Notice the badge that links back to the quiz location AND the sweet little bit of link text pasted beneath it… (free online dating). WOW!

Here are some of my hypotheses and questions for your consideration:

1) Start With a Pre-Built Personality-Type Framework
I’ve been working towards creating personality-insight quizzes that begin with a set number of end results (8) for those taking the quiz. To create a stronger framework for my types - which will ensure that people get results that actually match their personalities - I’ve spent a great deal of time researching the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test.

The Myers-Briggs system has 16 types. This page grouped them into 8, which was convenient for a particular quiz I’m writing: http://homeopathy.healthspace.eu/psychology/8types.php

2) The Ring of Truth Will Increase Usage and Linkability
I speculate that people will be more likely to post results (and generate more links) if they feel their results have the ring of truth - if they see something of themselves in the results. Perhaps more to the point, that they see something in the results that resembles their ideal for how they appear to others.

3) Have Lots of Questions but Only 2 Possible Answers per Question
Rather than forcing people to select from LOTS of potential answers, let them pick from just two. This is easier on the brain and helps the quiz go by faster. If you’ve done your homework in understanding the framework of the Myers-Briggs types you can then ask questions based on the binaries they developed in their work.

Here’s an example of such a quiz: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

4) Differences Between 1%-100% Quizzes and “Type” Quizzes?
The wildly successful “How Geek are You” quiz is a 1%-100% quiz. There is only one type - geek - and you get your percentage based on your answers. I have the sense that these types of quizzes would be easier to create, especially if you have a deep knowledge of a given area. Further, in certain areas where people place value in how steeped they are in a stereotype/lifestyle you may see wider link placements. Further, the 1-100 gradient frees you from a more rigorous type system. I can see both having strong marketing application though, and I think there’s a deeper thrill of discovery when it comes to discovering your type.

5) The Crazier the Better?
Upon reading this blog post by How Geek Are You? creator Matt Inman: Fighting 5 Year Olds, I recognize that there may be more in writing crazy, depraved and/or ridiculous quizzes than I initially thought. My brain usually tries to work the site’s content/intent into the quiz itself. I suspect that this may limit who takes the quiz though, and how popular it can become.

Ok - enough writing about writing - time to do the actual hard work of writing quizzes!

Ever since the quiz marketing bug bit me (when I read this interview with Matt Inman by Joe Whyte) I’ve paid a lot more attention to personality quizzes and folks who use them for marketing. I’d already seen them on MySpace and I hear they’re quite popular on FaceBook.

Then I started to notice how much people ADVERTISE to get people to take quizzes (what’s your true age? when will you die?). When I see people paying to advertise their quizzes I take this as an indicator that there’s value.

This post - which I may update in the future as my understanding of quiz marketing improves - includes the following marketing objectives served through quiz creation:

1) Quiz Marketing for Links
2) Quiz Marketing for Leads/List Building
3) Quiz Marketing for Forced Surveys
4) Quiz Marketing for Consultative Sales

1) Quiz Marketing for Links
Link development is what originally got me started thinking about personality quizzes (see article linked to above). In this method you strive to create not only compelling quizzes, but compelling quiz results that offer the quiz taker some unexpected or much-desired personality definition. The goal is to have folks paste their results on their blogs, favorite forums. If you’re really slick you create them for MySpace and Facebook.

For an idea of what these types of quizzes look like, and a site that enables visitors to create them for its own advertising ends, check out GoToQuiz.com. Also see the original quiz that helped Matt Inman develop links and traffic to his dating site which he sold: http://www.justsayhi.com/bb/geek.

2) Quiz Marketing for Leads/List Building
Typically these are the folks who advertise their quizzes. And why not? They know the value of a lead/list member and know how much they can pay to get new ones. Here’s an example of an ad I saw (in gmail…):

The Average IQ is 100. - www.TheFreeIqtest.com - What is yours? Find out with our Free IQ Test.

Linked to: http://www.thefreeiqtest.com/ Note the pure lead-gen quality of their landing page. BRILLIANT! This site is all about renting its list to - most likely - online education companies.

3) Quiz Marketing for Forced Surveys
If you have a ready market for selling consumer surveys then you might consider something along the lines of the “Are You Ugly?” quiz (check out parent site worldofquizzes). You may remember the “Are You a Slacker Mom?” quiz that someone advertised so heavily in gmail ads. This is another case where you get your quiz results AFTER taking the consumer survey.

4) Quiz Marketing for Consultative Sales
Maybe consultative sales is too high-falutin of a term for this particular quiz I found. The concept could work for b2b or b2c though. A travel site enables its visitors to take a quiz that helps identify their travel personality. Then, based on this personality, they provide suggestions for where in the world to travel.

What I like is that they created their own labeling system for personality types. There’s more opportunity for them in that they could have developed the concept out for link building as well.

Best Trip Choices travel personality page. (there’s a quiz on the site somewhere…)

I think there’s a great deal of room for developing the personality quiz concept into many different marketing areas - to me it’s one of the most exciting content marketing concepts around :D. Further, there’s huge potential in quizzes for helping segments of your community identify themselves and determine who else in your community they could benefit from knowing. I’m sure there are other personality quiz marketing ideas out there… and many more ways that providing tools for personal insight can benefit your business.

If you have experience in any of these tactics you’re willing to share I’d value an email: gfrench(at)gmail.com.

update:
this site charges 5$ to take their personality quiz: https://www.personalitypage.com/get_passwd.html

On April 30th 2004 I defined the term “Algoholic” in Urban Dictionary. To the best of my knowledge I coined the term.

Here’s what I wrote then:

1. algoholic
Someone who watches search engine algorithms closely for the purpose of making appropriate changes to websites with the intent of getting higher results.

Usage:
If you check Google datacenters regularly you’re probably an algoholic.

Today I thought of the term that obviously must lead to becoming an algoholic… SERPES.

Here’s the definition I submitted to UD:

1. Serpes
The virus caught by those new to search engine marketing. Typically characterized by beginning to use the abbreviation SERPs in conversation and email. Further, those newly infected will display a heightened interest in analytics and any shred of information regarding the algorithms that determine how pages rank in search engines.

Leads to becoming an Algoholic.

Usage:
Ooh boy I just gave my new clients teh Serpes - they just sent me links to Search Engine Watch articles from 2004.

The UD editors haven’t approved serpes yet, but when they do feel free to add to the definition

So as a creative side project I’ve worked on a comic since back when I lived in Lexington, KY and worked at WebProNews (I think it’s getting on to 4 years now…).

Here’s what my friend Mark Bee said about it (and I think he sums it up quite nicely

I like the jerkiness. The pace and the delivery work sort of like a Native American myth, where it’s fast and slow, and brings the reader into details of the story that the TELLER considers most important.

What I like:
The framed narratives, the action-driven dialogue with a few big words thrown in (they talk like my action figures used to: “get’im!”), the spots without dialog, the figures and their gracefulness (i.e. Echoboy’s pelvis).

There’s also a line of hand made, stencil-printed t shirts to accompany the comic - you can see me, Ben and Alexi (of Road Trip 2.0) modeling some here:

Click here to check out the Echoboy comic >>

Update:
Kind words from SF/F writer and editor Paul Jessup

Because of my increased focus on thoroughly investigating link data of high rankers to find targeted and valuable link partners I’ve been reading as much as possible on other link building tactics. Of course I’ve been reading the work of Eric Ward.

His recent article in the Search Marketing Standard print magazine got my pulse pounding from all of its revelations on the searches that Ward performs to find link partners. If Ward was an affiliate marketer this would be like giving away his most profitable keywords in paid search. These are like gold and I present them to you for edification and for me for remembering them:

1) “public library” “useful links” nutrition site:gov
2) “submit food news”
3) “useful nutrition links”

Of course these are for a site seeking links for nutrition related content, and you could run other variations for these as well. I’d try stuff like: “submit food articles” and “submit nutrition articles.” Plus I’d probably dig into the nutrition-related blog space.

His article, “The Link is Dead, Long Live the Link” suggests that the era of the mass-submitted article, press release and directory submission are less effective and it’s time to start augmenting mass efforts with more niche directed efforts. I couldn’t agree more! Thanks Eric for a timely article (note - it’s in the print edition of Search Marketing Standard).

My recent post on link building made its way into the Marketing Pilgrim’s picks for August 20th… WOOT! Mr. Beal I’ll be thanking you with a tattoo of your name in a heart

I generally fall on the creative side of online marketing rather than the overly technical. I think it’s in part because of the “audience sense” I developed at WebProNews, where some days I was the editor of JavaProNews and others I had to write SEM content for our million or so subscribers. Give me your profitable keywords and I’m off thinking of articles, blog posts and email newsletters that will appeal to your target demographic. It’s because I’m so creative that I’ve always enjoyed my marketing conversations with my good friend, the uber-analytical, technical and data-driven Ben Wills.

It was Ben who introduced me to the back link analysis processes that have become the foundation for my content creation and link building efforts these days. This post is an outline of my methods for the more creative SEOs out there - the article marketers and bloggers seeking to build powerful, business sustaining links - who have perhaps overlooked some crucial publishers and communities to target with awesome content.

1) Know and Target Your Most Profitable Keywords
2) Conduct a Link Hub Research Dig
3) Sort By PR and Links Out (Co-Citations)
4) Determine Your Strategic Options: Social Media, Directories, Blogs, Publishers, Forums
5) GO! GO! GO!

1) Know and Target Your 3 (for now) Most Profitable Keywords
This link building process begins - as your online marketing efforts always should - with your most profitable keywords. It’s likely that these are your most competitive keywords too - the words you used in your URL, the titles of your site pages and in the link text of the articles you’ve been writing and distributing and links and PPC ads you’ve been buying.

The process I outline here can certainly stretch to encompass ALL of your keywords, from the top of the big head to the very tippy-tip of your long tail. I’m not adept at managing and manipulating such enormous amounts of data and for my purposes I find that limitations - like digging in on only a couple of the most important keywords - give me far more traction and forward momentum.

I say know and target 3 keywords because this will give you plenty of data to start a two-three week project at a couple hours or so a day. Target more if you want, but if you lean on the creative side like me it’s important to maintain momentum on projects. Aiming at just 3, or 2 or even 1, will simplify the process for your first run through and will get you to spend more time focusing on the important hub sites in the communities that influence rankings for your target keywords.

2) Conduct a Link Hub Research Dig
This is an exciting part for me because of the tool I use to support my dig. Nothing beats hands-on rankings investigations, but these won’t show you as efficiently whose links are actually affecting rankings right now.

I use a for-pay windows-based program on my wife’s computer for my hub digs. Before plunking down your hard-earned cash for a hub finder I’d suggest working with Aaron Wall’s hub finder, currently housed on his LinkHounds site.

Hub Finder on LinkHounds.

I’m not as familiar with Wall’s hub finder as the tool I use, but in conducting a search on his I found it did help identify the sites that link out to more than one of the top 10 sites for your search term.

It has several posted mirrors in case Wall’s has reached its maximum queries:
http://webseodesign.com/seo-tool-chest/hub-finder.php
http://www.emeraldcoastentrepreneur.com/Hubfinder/hubfinder.php
http://www.cyclelicio.us/hubfinder/

When I search for hub site potential link partners I “open up the flood gates” and investigate the maximum listings for my tool (top 30 sites for a term) and the minimum number of links to sites in the top 30 (which is 2). This means I’ve got tons of back link data for those top 30 sites and will see the hubs that helped these top sites achieve those rankings.

I’d suggest that you conduct as wide a search as possible at first with whatever tool you’re using. Over time you can narrow down your searches as you experiment to find that sweet spot for the term or niche you’re developing links in.

3) Sort By PR and Links Out (Co-Citations)
So once you’ve got 100,200 or even 1,000 sites in your spread sheet you can start analyzing and organizing them.

First I list my sites by PR - though this metric alone is NOT an indicator of a good link - and then by number of “co-citations,” which is how many of the top 30 sites for my keyword this given site links to. All the sites that didn’t return PR get cut. Depending on how many sites I’m analyzing, sites with PRs of 1, 2, or even 3 get cut too. I can hear Mike Grehan slapping his forehead as I type these words, but hey. When you’re faced with analyzing 1,000 sites and you’re spending your clients’ money on your time you’ve got to draw lines using some kind of metric

The other important metric of course is how many of the top sites each of these hub sites link to. If there’s a low-PR site that happens to link to a bunch of the top sites then there’s a reasonable chance that this site would be a good one to get a link from. Further, if we’re talking about an uncompetitive keyword then there’s more reason to throw the PR metric out the window as a starting guide.

Once you’ve trimmed the list at the bottom you can trim it at the top too by cutting out Google Answers and all the DMOZ clones out there. You’ll find lots of unreachable-for-now type of sites like CNN and others that you needn’t worry yourself with at this stage of the game. A link from a major site would be awesome, but for now you should focus on the easily attainable!

4) Determine Your Strategic Direction: Content Creation, Link Requests, Link Purchases, Content Distribution
By this time you should start seeing some interesting link possibilities emerge. For one thing social media sites will start to appear - you’ll start to see the ones that may have some bearing on the keyword(s) you’re trying to rank for. Give these their own list and make time to set up profiles in them and see about finding a few friends within them.

You’ll also see directories that appear to have bearing on the rankings for your keyword too. Mark these down as potential submission points and places to potentially buy a link. Some sites sell links and even regular banner ads. If it’s a niche site it could well be worth buying some actual advertising!

Finally, the blogs, forums and other relevant and influential content publishers will emerge, and these are the sites that I focus on with my creative efforts.

For me, the content sites, blogs and forums are a creative revelation on a number of different levels. As a writer these sites show me what kinds of content will earn me publication on their sites, or links from their sites. They’re also a sneak peek at what kinds of content are most relevant to this demographic (as sliced by the target keyword). Whether I’m creating content and requesting links or creating content and requesting publication with link attribution, this list of sites helps me understand what kinds of content (how-tos, opinion, entertainment) work in this space.

Further, these hub sites are often focal points for communities, or are even forums. This kind of a link dig is an awesome starting point for beginning your “conversation marketing” and community outreach because it reveals the influential community sites for a given keyword.

5) GO! GO! GO!
Write articles! Submit to publishers! Write tailored, custom link requests! Conduct interviews for targeted link exchanges! Buy links! Go! Go! Go!

It’s easy to get caught in the analysis paralysis of link digging. It’s exciting to find 100 potential sites to link to you. Excitement is great but I’ve had a hard time getting grocery stores to let me exchange it for their food. The point of this hub identification exercise is to better target your link building efforts on the sites that will make a difference to your rankings. Good luck, God bless, build links!

6) Oh Yes, By the Way…
I’m currently seeking link building clients Shoot me an email: gfrench@gmail.com or call me at (919) 696 4225 to discuss!

I cut my teeth in the email newsletter world over at webpronews. I started in on some email newsletter template wireframing today for a Bold client and got that good ole’ marketing-geeky feeling over the executive summary on Email Newsletter Usability from Nielsen Norman. Here are the points that made their way into my “design concepts” list for the project:

So yeah, I doubt your skull cracked from reading any of these findings but they served me well in my design process and served as a great refresher for lessons I got many moons ago. Thanks Nielsen Norman for rocking on with your bad selves.