BlueGlass LA is going to be an incredible conference, there is no doubt in my mind. The lineup of speakers is pretty ridiculous . I’m psyched to finally meet Dave McClure in person, who I’ve known since his PayPal days way back in the late ’90s. Dave sponsored the LED Digest right during the dot-com crash of early 2000 and it really meant a lot to me at the time. Dave, you’re good people, let me buy you a drink next week.

BlueGlass will take a bit of a different tack than most conferences do. There are search and social presentations to be sure, but also lots of content on getting startup funding and dealing with VCs. Check out the agenda for the full skinny.

It’s going to be a pretty killer opportunity to learn about internet marketing and the VC game at one event. Not to mention killer networking.

Use this code to receive a 15% discount on your registration: audette15

I’m speaking on, “How not to FAIL at getting search traffic” with the hyper-awesome Vanessa Fox. Get her new book, if you haven’t already.

Hope to see you there!

UPDATE - Here’s my presentation on Slideshare, How to Not FAIL at SEO, by Adam Audette. The conference was a raging success. Incredible content and networking. I learned a ton.

The quick response time their support team has exhibited is immediately noteworthy. We’ve never had to wait for more than a day.

Advanced Web Ranking

SEO rock star Aaron Wall has recently posted an overview of Advanced Web Ranking, explaining that this software has been a re-occurring recommendation coming out of forum discussions. Rather than diving into what he has already covered, we wanted to highlight a few key features of Web Ranking and then turn focus to its sister application Link Manager.

In Advanced Web Ranking there are a few ways you can check rankings from different locations using proxy servers and their Google Preview Tool.

Since Google has implemented all sorts of geographical relevancy into their results, having the ability to show a client the rankings from search results that they see in their location or focusing on search engine ranking in specific markets is a necessity these days.

Just like any other software, the end results depends on what is put into it.

It helps to have more than one person collaborating and sharing new things learned on software with so much functionality. Advanced Web Ranking (and Link Manager) is cross-platform so it works on both Macs and PCs, making it easy to add users. You can also assign privileges to control for users to access certain projects.

Advanced has robust reporting capabilities. All reports can export to PDF, CSV, Excel, Text, XML, and HTML. Below is an example of a HTML ranking report.

Reports can also be sent via email, or uploaded to a server through FTP to be browser accessible. These can be scheduled to run automatically. The ability to automate is a huge time saver and they definitely make it easy.

Virtually every component of these reports is customizable - from page orientation, margins, colors, and fonts to displaying or removing charts. Custom logos can also be inserted adding personalization. Both Advanced Web Ranking and Advanced Link Manager have these reporting capabilities.

Link Manager has come a long way in terms of stability and features since we started using it. Tracking indexation, link popularity, backlink history, and managing link building campaigns are at the core of this application’s usefulness. They seem to be expanding features with some useful tools as well.

Link Manager provides great insight into the indexation of a site and can compare each search engine. It also has the ability to add many domains, subdomains, and search engines.

This is another similar report, but with the number of backlinks taken from Yahoo’s index. Notice the ‘compare dates’ in the upper right. Both of these reports have a nice chart option, where you can see number of backlinks obtained over time for a domain or for specified URLs. This report is an excellent resource for determining the success of a link development campaign.

Advanced continues to expand features by adding tools to the arsenal, many of which come from the “feature request” portion of their forum. These include WebSite Crawler, Google Maps Webpage Importer, WebPage analyzer, and Analyze Domains Quality.

This a cross-platform Xenu alternative, but lacks the ability to exclude pages from the crawl. It’s not as fast as Xenu, but pretty quick as long as you have the “retrieve rank for found pages” box checked.

With WebSite Crawler you have the ability to export to Yahoo or Google SiteMaps to a CSV file. It also has few more SEO metrics when compared to Xenu like PageRank and “Robots no follow”.

This is a great tool for identifying competitors citations (like link equity for local search), allowing for the total owning of competition in local listings via the “meet then beat” mentality. Once you know the number and quality of your competitor’s citations you have some actionable numbers to work with.

This tool is very handy and one that we use a lot. After finding an issue with a portion of a site, for example redirect issues, we’ll place (copy and paste) a sample of the URLs in here for presentation and additional metrics, such as PageRank. Some nice options include parsing a page for automatic insertions of URLs.

And as usual, has the option to export to CSV.

This is a very interesting report.

This report averages pages indexed (Google, Yahoo, Bing), links, and website ranking for the domains. It also takes the meta keywords specified on the domain’s home page and checks if you’re on the first page for those terms for all three search engines.

Conclusion

Advanced Link Manager is definitely the less sophisticated application when compared to Advanced Web Ranking. But they’ve improved it by leaps and bounds over time and their support, feature request, and frequency of version updates (and patches) are phenomenal.

Using these applications with innovative tools like OpenSiteExplorer, MajesticSEO, SEMrush, WordStream, and others has proven to be a powerful combination.

Advanced offers saver packs where you can receive discounts for buying in bulk and bundling products. They also have special offers where you can get a license for a writing a post like this one.

Part of me still wants to answer with “it depends” because it really does depend… I am not going to tell the client wanting to simply answer customer service complaints that Flickr is totally where you want to be, man. Just like I’m not going to point the client with gobs of multimedia to share singly to Twitter. But at the end of the day, if I had to pick a ‘favorite’ it is Twitter.

Twitter is just like Brad Pitt. When someone asks the average red-blooded American (or simply breathing) female who her favorite male actor is she wants to say “Brad Pitt, hello?!” But, she’ll try to think and stew over the right answer for a bit first… Maybe it should be the actor who’s won the most Academy Awards? Or the guy who does all the artsy indie films? Or maybe that new guy with all the upcoming Hollywood buzz so she sounds ahead of the game? When really the first guy that popped into her brain was Mr. Brad Pitt. Mmmm.

Brad is sexy, talented, reliable… Great for marketing a flick. He’s with that really hot Tomb Raider chick and he’s permanently imprinted into your brain jetsetting around the globe with his gaggle of beautiful children. Just. Like. Twitter.

Twitter is sexy, great for marketing (reliability is up for debate…) and let’s face it, pretty inescapable.

There are lots of other greats out there… You have your George Clooneys, Matt Damons and Denzel Washingtons of the world. Your Tumblrs, Kontains and Foursquares. But if you’re looking for a good date night movie, girls night flick, poolside magazine story or heart throb to hang on the wall, Brad’s your man.

If you’re at square one with beginning a social media endeavor, whether personal or professional, I say start with what you know works (or I guess in this case take my word for it and go with what I know works.) Twitter is feeling to me like the backbone of social media. It gets the job done and 9 times out of 10 does it well. And just like Brad, no matter how long since his last movie, how scruffy his beard gets or how many children call him “dad”, we know we can count on him as more than a “hot for a minute” fad, but something we can turn to in a time of need.

Don’t be one of those people to hate on Twitter because everyone and their step sister is doing it and “that makes it lame.” And don’t hate on Brad just ’cause he’s commercial and pretty… Uh, hello Inglorious Basterds rocked right? Or ya know, Oceans Eleven. Just trust that something is popular and reliable for a reason and give it a shot.

PS - Brad, if you’re reading this, call me.
PPS - What is your one fav social media website?… And you can’t say, “it depends.”

The allure of online marketing is the ability to measure, measure and measure some more. But what’s the value of all that data without actionable items to move the needle on your company’s bottom line? Nadda.

In his latest book, Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability & Science of Customer Centricity, Avinash Kaushik makes more meaning of all that wonderful data, with perhaps hundreds of actionable items you could do right now to begin pushing that needle. Avinash starts with some of the basics – traffic sources, key failure points, click density, segmentation – and jumps off from there, with good ideas on quantifying the impact of some of the more elusive online marketing channels, including Twitter, video, and blogs.

As Google’s Analytics Evangelist, Avinash’s love for all things analytical shines through, making this an entertaining and enthusiastic read.  The content is dense – you could spend hours tinkering with your own data after reading one chapter – or if you needed to, there’s a lot to gain from reading this at a high level at first and then digging deeper later.

Now, that’s hardly a revelation of any sort; in fact it is, at this point, probably common knowledge. And while it may seem, in retrospect, as though the Internet came along and immediately revolutionized traditional marketing, the truth is that the marketing industry has changed as the Internet has grown. The revolutionary nature of the Internet, then, has resulted in the evolutionary age of marketing.

While some will eagerly point out that it took traditional marketers too long to crawl up out of the primordial muck, as it were, it can also be argued that marketers simply reacted only with the urgency necessary; as the urgency increased, marketing executives around the world eventually met the challenge (yes, even if maybe at times it seemed a grudging rise to challenge).

But as someone who spends considerable time reaching out to, and interacting with, marketing directors, it strikes me that the vast majority of marketing managers or directors are somewhat in tune with SEO; mostly, they recognize one of two things: 1) SEO is important but they know nothing about it and are eager to surround themselves with people who do know SEO so that effective search strategies can be implemented or 2) SEO is important and they know just enough to recognize their limitations, deferring to the experts to implement an effective search strategy.

Now, none of this is to say that my job in Business Development here at AudetteMedia is simply dialing the phone and signing the resulting contracts, but the combination of receptive marketing executives and marketing executives contacting us directly makes my rejection among the most palatable in sales.

Perhaps because of this, I typically roll my eyes at the assertion that ignorance is bliss in the marketing world. While we spend a fair bit of account management time educating “traditional” marketers, they are generally receptive to learning and their bosses privy to the efficacy (and ROI) of well-executed search strategy. Not that the marketers need one necessarily, but I have been their defender. To me, rumors of their demise, as they old saying goes, are greatly exaggerated.

Or so I thought.

Recently, I contacted the VP of marketing at a highly recognizable Fortune 500 company (sorry, not naming names here). That he picked up his phone was rare enough (I am conditioned to leave messages), but what he said into it proved stunning.

He had no in-house SEO team (I don’t want to create nightmares; I always ask).  Actually, he had no idea what SEO was and he had no idea who might oversee SEO efforts in his company. And he had absolutely no idea what Internet marketing initiatives were underway within his division. Now, as I mentioned above, to be in sales is to accept rejection as a norm.

But this guy was not rejecting anything; he was quite friendly and willing to talk, he was just, dare I say, clueless about SEO. And since I take great care to research the companies that I’m calling on, I took the opportunity to try to explain to him why I felt AudetteMedia a good match for his company and how we could grow his Internet traffic and sales.

He seemed open to discussing what I could only picture him envisioning as some type of mystical black art (and who among us could blame him for having that notion?), but he had in his mind the concept that he was incapable of understanding anything that he deemed “technical.” And, to him, everything was “technical.”

He asked, plainly, “…so, you’re doing Twitter? Because we have a guy who does that for us already.”

As I began to explain the differences between “doing Twitter” and our SEO services (which, as a matter of full disclosure, sometimes include “doing Twitter”), I had two images cemented in my head. The first involved the guy on the other end of the phone playing with his Newton’s Cradle and ignoring every word I said as he surveyed an office devoid of the clutter normally associated with work; the other involved his perception of my presentation as akin to the generic adult voices in the animated Peanuts series.

Either way, the disconnect that I sensed was readily displayed when he asked, “how long have you worked for Google?” Apparently, he had heard “search engine” early in the conversation and drawn his conclusions quickly. After carefully explaining that I did not, in fact, work for Google, I thanked him for his time and then asked him if there was anyone in his company or division that he could think of who might be in charge of search strategy.

His answer? “You might ask the switchboard operator about that.”

If all of this is evolution, well, then I think I may have found the “missing link.”

When the “switchboard operator” knows more about a company’s search strategy than does its VP of Marketing, it might just be a strong indicator that neither is long for their current position.

But this experience serves as a reminder that even the largest and most successful companies ignore SEO sometimes, and not always on purpose.

Where is your marketing department along the evolutionary chain?

George was kind enough to conduct an interview with me recently on the RKG Blog, and I wanted to return the favor. Please find our dialogue below.

6 PPC Questions for George

At what point or spend level should a business start looking to a paid search bidding/management tool to help their paid search campaigns? Or, does spend even factor into this?

Spend does factor in simply because you have to pay someone for the service or the tool or both. If the program is tiny, spending less than $5K per month, it’s hard to justify the expense of hiring someone to do it. Full service agency fees start making sense when the spend gets into the $15K - $20K per month range. Now there are cases where companies need to tick off the “check box” that says they must have a top flight paid search program even if it is small, and it may make more sense to have someone else do it, but from an ROI standpoint if the cost of management is as much as the media spend the economics seem out-of-whack to me.

How does the evolving SERP at Google, which contains far fewer classic results than it used to, effect PPC strategies?

Product expansions and image-based ads have not yet changed the game, but are high on everyone’s radar and rightly so. If images or rich-media proves to provide Google with a larger revenue stream than the current text links impression for impression then that will be the wave of the future. If I was a betting man I’d bet that five years from now the ads are still text for the vast majority of searches. The reason is simply this: most users search for categories of things, not for specific products. Because of that, single product images and landing pages are unlikely to be what the user wants. That hurts click-through rates on the ads and conversion rates once the user gets to the site meaning the advertisers are willing to spend less for the traffic and Google makes less money. Firing targeted category/sub-category image-based ads might be the Holy Grail, but generating the right creative to go with every conceivable search may be economically infeasible for the advertisers. I could see image links gaining a foothold in product specific searches, but that’s the minority of paid search.

We’ve seen paid search grow tremendously over the last 5 years – as more and more businesses realize the benefits – how should companies deal with the additional competition and complexity?

6 or 7 years ago, paid search was almost like shooting fish in a barrel; the more money you spent the more you made. You could do search badly and get away with it. That really isn’t the case anymore. While few advertisers do search as well as it can be done, in almost every vertical now there are a few people doing it well and many others doing it with some level of competency. Wading in with a couple hundred Keywords, a spreadsheet and credit card is a tough game these days.

As the competition gets stiffer the importance of every detail grows. The KW list, the match-types, the negatives, the KW-landing page-copy combinations and the bidding sophistication on the low traffic stuff can be the difference between an ordinary program and a much bigger more successful one.

Advertisers who manage search in-house need to take an honest assessment of their approach to see if they have the tools to compete effectively, and if not take a good look around at the platforms for rent and for full service agencies. The tools are huge time savers, but aren’t terribly sophisticated. They’re not only limited in what they can do, but if the analyst in front of the tool isn’t top-drawer, the performance might be no better than the old spreadsheet model. The problem with agencies is they vary so much in quality.

There are an awful lot of agencies out there who use poor position-based bidding systems and rely on machine-generated Keyword lists to do their work for them. The fact that your agency is well-known and well-paid doesn’t mean their work is beyond question. Advertisers are well advised to take a careful look under the hood to see if the data and the practices applied are really up to 2010 standards.

In regards to above, how are smaller businesses going to need to adapt to stay competitive?

Small businesses that can compete in large search markets can have big paid search programs and the resources (internal or external) to manage them with the big dogs.

For the folks in small markets who can’t afford the platforms or agency support the good news is that Google’s self-management tools are free and are improving. Their conversion optimizer can be a fine solution for a small program if you’re willing to have Google tracking on your site.

Have you experimented with the Google Product Ads for your clients, and if so, what have the results been? How do you see that feature taking shape in the coming year?

The product extensions, previously known as Plus Box, seem to raise Click Through Rates, but at this point almost no one actually uses the ajax expansion or clicks on the product links revealed. The CTR improvement may just come from the plus sign next to the ad. People may learn to use those pluses as time goes on, but as I mentioned earlier, ultimately people aren’t ready to pick a product most of the time.

The CPA product ads we haven’t used as of yet, and I’d be interested to hear how their working out for those who do use them and for Google.

How will Bing’s takeover of Yahoo! change PPC strategies for your clients?

Really it doesn’t change anything strategically. It will give us a somewhat richer data set on which to base bids and do analysis, and will somewhat reduce the hassles associated with having ads in 3 different places that need to be updated. In the great scheme of things it doesn’t change the game.

If you’re reading this you’re probably engaged in some type of internet business, perhaps ecommerce, perhaps online marketing, perhaps technology. If so, you are among some of the most fortunate people in the United States as internet business is one of the few bright spots in today’s economy. Report after report speak to the growth of internet related endeavors, while most of the economy is deep in the throes of recession.

The Wire

The perimeter of military outposts is called “the wire.” Going off the base is called being outside the wire. Being outside the wire is usually dangerous and troops don’t venture there without the proper training, conditioning, and armament. The same applies to the current economic situation in the United States - the present economy is loaded with hazards and it’s dangerous to go there without being just as equipped as the soldier going into battle.

The key is to stay where it’s safe - inside the wire. Most of us don’t have any control over the things that impact our economy the most: we don’t have any control over the political machinations by the government; we don’t any control over the greed games played by Wall Street; we don’t have any control over the idiocy of many of the banks. Of course you need to keep an eye on those things, to be aware of what those with the power to really change things are doing. But the key strategy, particularly for those of us fortunate to be involved in internet related businesses, is to stay inside the wire.

Build a perimeter for yourself and your business that is inside the wire. Where you set the boundary depends on your training, your experience, your expertise, your financial situation, your risk tolerance level - a multitude of factors that you are in the best position to evaluate. Set your perimeter realistically and, once it’s set, stay inside of it. It’s dangerous out there right now and the risk:reward ratio can be asymmetric to your disadvantage.

Here are 5 ways to stay inside your wire:

1. Stay Lean!
Control your expenses. Minimize your debt. As the VC’s say, keep your runway as long as possible. This can be a very positive thing. It forces us keep our eye on economic viability (i.e. profitability) and to keep our expenses as low as possible. Too much capital can cause the operators of a company to forget that profitability is their central mission. When capital is abundant it’s easy to do stupid things with it (remember the stupid lavish parties, $50,000 conference room tables, leased automobiles and poorly thought-out marketing plans that wasted millions during the first dotcom bubble and bust?). When your funds are limited you are forced to think in terms of ROI (return on investment) for every single expense. A lack of capital demands focus and forces discipline.

2. Emphasize Vertical Growth
Make sure your business stays true to its core competencies. You always want to work at growing a business horizontally as well as vertically, but now is a time to emphasize building on what you’re best at as opposed to adding to your competencies. Budget allocation between R&D and Marketing is always a judgment call, and of course it depends on the nature of the business, but at the moment I would move the needle more toward marketing than normal.

3. Apply Your Energy Efficiently
We’ve all seen the following by Reinhold Niebuhr:

Grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.

It’s easy to get worked up over things being done outside the wire. Of course we should stay informed. But the unfortunate fact is, other than an occasional election, there’s not really much that we can do about those things. We will receive the highest return on our efforts taken inside the wire where we our actions directly affect outcomes. It takes lot of positive energy and effort to create and run a successful business - don’t waste your energy and effort on things you can’t control.

4. Give, Then Take
I have discussed the Data -> Information -> Knowledge - Wisdom (DKIW) curve before. I find it especially important during these economic times when it’s easy to believe that we live in a world of scarcity rather than a world of abundance. Base your value proposition in your business on positioning yourself as high as possible on the DIKW Curve - and give everything else below it away free. Your generosity will be appreciated, especially at a time like this, and your business will benefit.

5. Explain & Deliver Value
People are being more careful than ever about spending their money. But they will spend it where they perceive that they are receiving commensurate value. Identify the essence of your value proposition, communicate it clearly to your customers, and they will buy your product or service.

Build your perimeter carefully - and then stay inside the wire for now. We can venture out when things become a little less dangerous.

Have you correctly defined what business your company is in? Do you define your company by the products you offer or by the needs you meet for your customers? Perhaps the most critical thing you can do when building a company is to properly identify your mission.

This becomes of critical importance when there is rapid and drastic change. In his book “The Black Swan”, Nassim Taleb discusses uncertainty and how dramatic and highly impactful events not only will happen - they are happening more often. As improvements in technology and especially communications gallop forward at an ever increasing rate, one of the effects is that geography, and especially time, are being compressed. Also, as systems become ever more complex and entangled, the incidence of unforeseen consequences increases - and their magnitude is amplified.

Building Wagons Instead of Cars

For example, the buggy manufacturers of the late 1800’s thought that their business purpose was to build wagons. That proved to be too narrow of a definition when rapid technological change occurred in the form of the automobile. Most were left behind. If they had instead identified their true business mission - providing means of transportation - they might have been able to adapt to the evolutionary (revolutionary?) jump from being wagon manufacturers to being automobile manufacturers. A few did, perhaps, but most were trapped in the narrow definition that they had created for themselves.

This is almost intuitively understood by venture capitalists. They always “encourage” (in quotes because VCs don’t really encourage their portfolio companies - they mandate things to their portfolio companies) their companies to be careful about defining themselves in terms of their products. They want their companies to define what needs their customers have that motivates them to buy those products.

Examples of Doing Things Right

One that I’m personally close to, they started out as ArtUFrame.com and that’s the product they provided - the ability to purchase and try different framing options online. I was with the founder of ArtUFrame.com one day when his phone rang. He looked at me and said that he was being offered the domain name Art.com for $50,000 and should he take it? I said don’t put down the phone until it’s done. He ended up selling the company for $200+ million dollars to Getty Images a few years later. Which never would have happened had he remained in his original niche.

It’s almost hard to remember that Amazon started out as an online bookstore. But their central mission was to provide a dependable, convenient and efficient online shopping environment for their customers. Mission accomplished.

This is another one that I’m close to as AudetteMedia founder Adam Audette has worked with Zappos since early 2001. Even though all they sold was shoes at first, they never labeled themselves in a way that would indicate they sold only shoes. Of course they had to start with something and shoes were what they chose to built their model around. But their true mission was to create raving fans (what a great business - creating raving fans!). After they accomplished that (in spades), they expanded their product line, and recently sold to Amazon for a substantial sum.

AudetteMedia (no mention of search marketing in our name) is engaged in internet marketing. While not confined to organic search, SEO is one of our core competencies and we do a substantial amount of business with it. Search marketing is exposed to a perfect example of what Taleb calls a Black Swan, an unexpected event with large consequences. Suppose that overnight (and a lot of things on the ‘net happen overnight) a development occurs that largely displaces the search function at Google? Impossible, you say? Well, I can even imagine one and I am 100% certain that it is being worked on as I write this.

The Artificial Intelligence Personal Digital Assistant (AIPDA)

I’m aware that we have used the term PDA for many years. But the devices are really pretty primitive in terms of their capability. Suppose we develop a PDA with artificial intelligence that we can turn loose on the internet? Somewhat similar to the spiders currently used by, yep, Google. When you boil it all down to a fine residue, Google’s mission is to provide relevancy - a means to find what you are looking for on the internet. They have a lot of goodies besides their core value proposition, but not much that can’t be duplicated by others. What they do a great job at is delivering relevancy.

Well, your AIPDA could (and will) do better. As you spend time with it, it will learn about you. It will know what kinds of movies you like, what kinds of restaurants you like, what kinds of books you like. And then it will use that information to continually search the internet on your behalf - your personal and intelligent mini Google machine. It will report its findings back to you in any frequency and manner that you prefer: every 10 minutes on your mobile device, every hour on your computer. And it will continue to learn more about you as you select some of the findings that it reports to you. It will also save everything in a meaningful way that will construct your own personal universe and make it even easier for you to find things moving forward.

Which means you won’t use Google as much. And companies won’t use AudetteMedia as much for optimization of their organic search marketing efforts. Potentially depressing. But, fortunately, there is a solution.

The Business We’re In

We are an internet marketing company. We have purposely built a highly capable core competency in organic search marketing, we devote a lot of our time to it, and we generate a lot of our revenues with it. The reason we have done that is that we consider organic search to be one of the best ways to meet the central need of our clients - expanding their online business. Search marketing happens to offer one of the best price and performance values in internet marketing at this time so that’s what we concentrate on. But we also have built, and continue to build, capabilities in other forms of internet marketing. If the environment changes we will change with it in order to continue to deliver on our central business mission - helping businesses expand their online business.

In short - AudetteMedia is not an internet marketing company because we do SEO - we do SEO because we are an internet marketing company.

Gotta go - working on developing AIPDA bait.

What business are you in? Is it the right one?

2009 has been a big year for social media. Many of the sites have proven, in some eyes, that they can stick around and social media won’t just be the “fanny pack” fad of the industry. Although, those were pretty cool… A purse that buckles around the waste and wait, guys can sport it too? Radical. Well, come 1997 this was pretty much obsolete. Not so much the case for social media.

Social media marketing isn’t a fad – it’s becoming an important and integral part of online marketing and a ship your business should set sail on. By rolling your eyes at the idea of marketing through Twitter, Kontain or any of the other social media sites popping up out there, you could be opening the door to a big advantage for your competitors. As online marketing grows and steps into the future, so should your marketing plan. And it should include social media.

Introducing the best social media marketing sites of 2009 (that I think will be just as important, if not more in 2010)…

9. Digg

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. If you, as a business, can spread some a.) funny b.) interesting or 3.) surprising content and get some peeps to “digg” it, you’re set. The hardest part with Digg is growing your presence on the site to gain any ground to stand on for votes. So, start now. Build a presence. Make some connections and the better your content is, the more votes you’ll get. And people just might end up talking about you – or better yet - at your website.

8. YouTube

YouTube is a video sharing site and we all know that. But people spend thousands of minutes mindlessly watching funny, informative and entertaining video clips everyday. If you don’t have any video content related to your business, shoot 6 cute puppies playing in a field and title it “Cute Puppies Playing by [insert business name here]”. Anything with cute puppies rolling around is gonna get a buttload of views (so put your logo in the upper right corner and a link to your site and see what happens.)

7. Flickr

With a Flickr account you can share photos and videos, join and create groups, connect with other members and share information. It’s a classic and well worth your time. ‘Nuff said.

6. Posterous

is the “dead simplest place to post everything.” Just email them. So, posterous claims it’s fame by offering a blogging platform with no strings attached. Simply email what you want to post, attach images, video, audio, etc. and you’re done. Lots of really hip people are on posterous, and you probably should be too.

5. Ning

Ning lets you join and create new social networks for your interest and passions. This is great for your niche (or obscure) business – you can create a niche (or obscure) network and join with all the other obscure weirdos into your craft in one place. It’s easy to use, lots of people are already members and it’s a great way to introduce a lot of people to what you’re all about.

4. LinkedIn

This is where you get to be professional. Create a business page, encourage all employees to join LinkedIn and provide links to your business, create relevant groups, share them and connect with LinkedIn’s gigantic network of experience professionals. LinkedIn ranks pretty well for business names too.

3. Facebook

Tried and true. Looking at Facebook with our SEO-tinted glasses wouldn’t get it a #3 on our list, but from a social networking standpoint and brand awareness angle it rocks. Whether you’re big or small, get yourself a Facebook page, start encouraging fans, offer special Fans-only coupons, advertise on Facebook and the largest social network online just might jump on your business’ band wagon.

2. Kontain

Kontain is new, just learning to crawl and trying really hard to get up and walk. He falls down sometimes and may even face-plant onto the carpet, but he sure is trying. In my personal (and professional) opinion this site is awesome. If you have images to share (especially artsy, crafty, or some too-cool-for-words) get ‘em up on Kontain. People here love to share stories with imagery and it’s a great network of individuals wanting to support one another. You’ll get a lot of views and followed links (score!) and might just find a new wave of traffic to your website.

1. Twitter

You’re not on Twitter? Who are you? Miley Cyrus? Ok, so everyone… besides Miley Cyrus… is on Twitter. If you are, great. But, if by chance you’re not, get there. And once you’re there do something. Be interesting, funny and entertaining (wait, have I said that before?) and engage with people. Offer customer service responses, special deals, new industry information, whatever ya got. PS – offering people free/cheap sh*t works every time. So do it now.

So, Just Do It. I think some famous brand might have said that one time? I don’t know, but the time for social media really is now. These guys lasted through 2009 to prove themselves, so make them work for you in 2010.

But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!
- Robert Burns, “To a Mouse”

It’s indisputable that social media has enabled effective viral marketing. There has never been greater opportunity to generate positive word of mouth about your product or service. Done properly, some level of success is more or less guaranteed. Where things get a little less certain is when the goal is to develop a viral promotion that is intended to become a huge hit - one that multiplies geometrically across the internet.

Purportedly sophisticated agencies spend an enormous amount of thought, time and money trying to come up with the next big viral hit. And then stand by puzzled why theirs fizzles while some kid uses his phone to record a one minute video that becomes a hit viewed by millions on YouTube (can you say Star Wars Kid?). Why is it such a hit and miss endeavor?

Much of what we do successfully comes from experimentation, analysis and trial and error. In many situations we are able over time to identify the things that work and the things that don’t work. This is especially true on the internet as we are able to gather so much analytical data. But not when it comes to trying to manufacture a viral marketing top hit.

With viral marketing it’s almost impossible to know what will take the ‘net by storm (or storm the ‘net) and what will provide a lower level of success and then fade away. The reason? We’re not able to gather meaningful data from failures or successes that can then be used to design the next successful viral promotion - thanks to the ways in which nonlinearity and its first cousin chaos theory play a role.

Nonlinearity

Nonlinearity (sometimes called disambiguation) describes a situation that has a disproportionate cause and effect - fancy terms for something familiar to us all. The classic example used to illustrate nonlinearity is a pile of sand. I’m going to use kid’s blocks as my example.

Lilly, my 4-year-old granddaughter, and I like to build towers out of a set of cherry wooden blocks (I relate extraordinarily well to 4-year-olds as part of my brain seems to be stuck at that age level - something I’m grateful for as you can learn a lot from a 4-year-old). We build a base with a number of blocks and then start stacking them one on top of the other. Lilly is good at this - she lines them up and then places them carefully. As a result we are usually able to build a pretty tall tower. We know we’re done when one last block manages to crash the entire tower. The action of just one component manages to affect them all - to mix metaphors “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” That’s nonlinearity.

If we go the other way, where something gains momentum on the upside as opposed to collapsing, we might call it going viral. What Malcolm Gladwell in his eponymous book refers to as a tipping point: “the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable.” Gladwell defines a tipping point as a sociological term: “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.” That’s also nonlinearity

The challenge in trying to design a viral hit (let’s say a viral video) is that not only is there no way to predict whether or not this point will be reached, it’s impossible to predict or identify the (boiling) point at which it would have been reached if it failed - or the (boiling) point at which it took off if it succeeded. Which means there are no meaningful data points to use as reference when trying to design your next hope-to-be viral video.

Chaos Theory

Chaos theory (sometimes more intuitively called nonlinear dynamics - see note at end of post) compounds the challenge substantially. Chaos theory describes the phenomena whereby a small input can lead to a disproportionate response. Which makes it very difficult to calibrate the initial small input given that very small differences in the beginning can lead to huge differences further down the line.

Chaos theory was first discovered by a meteorologist by the name of Edward Lorenz. In the early ’60s he was working on a computer program designed to help predict the weather. With the modest computer power available at that time it took along time to run his programs. To save time, he decided to run one sequence from the middle rather than the beginning. Here are the two curves:

A Starting Difference of .000127 Produces Totally Different Results!

The original curve was produced by a value that had been carried out to six decimal places. For the second curve Lorenz had entered a value carried out to three decimal places. In the original sequence the initial number was .506127 and in the second it was .506. A difference of .000127 in the beginning value produced a totally different result for the two sequences.

You have probably heard of chaos theory described as the “butterfly effect.” Lorenz once described it as “… a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil might cause a tornado in Texas.”

The phenomena described by chaos theory makes it exceedingly difficult to isolate and identify which variables will have what effect - and to what magnitude - as you distribute your hoped for hit around the internet. An expression on an actor’s face, a word of dialog, a prop on the set, little things can, and will, have enormous effect when multiplied many times.

And again, if your video fails to achieve hit status, you are not able to determine why it failed in order to design a “better” one next time. There are just too many small variables with potentially huge effects for you to identify the key ones to change, which means you have not been able to acquire any meaningful data points that might help you.

Go Ahead - Try for a Hit - But Don’t Bet the Farm on It

Using social media for viral marketing is effective. But maintain reasonable expectations. Having a viral marketing production achieve hit status is largely due to luck. Sure, take a shot now and then for fun, but direct the majority of your viral (and other) marketing dollars into tactics that have predictable, quantifiable and repeatable results.

Addendum: A Bit More About Chaos Theory

You might be thinking, Why should I care about about chaos theory? Because understanding it can be very useful when you are trying to analyze a marketing campaign tactic. Being aware that seemingly insignificant differences in a variable can have enormous effects on the degree of effectiveness on a campaign gives a perspective on how important things can be on a very granular level.

Sometimes the name chaos theory makes it counter-intuitive to understand. In everyday usage the word chaos means “a condition or place of great disorder or confusion”, which seems similar to randomness, which is defined as “having no specific pattern”. But the word has a different meaning when used in a mathematical or scientific sense. In mathematics and science chaos theory is also called non-linear dynamics, which does a better job of separating the everyday usage of the word chaos from the more technical usage.

One aspect of a chaotic system that is really counter-intuitive is that it is not a random system. If the inputs are exactly the same then the outputs should be exactly the same. For example, a roulette wheel is not a random device. If the input parameters were exactly the same every time, i.e. the speed of the wheel, when and where the ball is entered, the force with which the ball is entered, etc., then the output would be exactly the same - the ball would always land on the same number. But the input always varies, if only minutely, which causes the result to vary making it look random.

Chaos theory describes the phenomena where a tiny difference in input will create a huge difference in output in complex systems (i.e the Internet) with many iterations. I know it all seems kind of abstract, but an understanding of chaotic theory can be very useful when trying to measure results in a project as it sheds light on the impact of variables.

Another reason to spend some time with chaos theory is that it will lead you to fractals:

By the way, this one was a mild hit with over 550,000 views.