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How I used a blog to attract thousands of subscribers my first week.

Why I make six figures and you don’t.

How I quit my day job and now I work all day in my robe and slippers while my wife brings me lattes.

Ever seen headlines like these before? Find them at least a little compelling?

Like every good headline, they exist to attract attention and convince you to keep reading. They’re trying to get you thinking about how to use a tool like blogging to make lots of cash.

But there’s something in those big promises that misses the mark.

Now that I have some experience under my belt as a blogger making an online income, I’d like to talk about the missing ingredient of those pitches.

It’s not about your blog

Lance Armstrong has a great book out called It’s Not about the Bike.

In his case it’s about one of his testicles. To be more specific, the one he no longer has.

The book is about how his bike became a vehicle in a bigger race than the Tour de France or his Nike deal, how his bike is a metaphor for life.

Lance and his tragic disease wouldn’t be famous without his bike. And as an online entrepreneur, you won’t be famous, either, without your blog.

That said, it’s still not about the blog. Not at all. The day you realize that fact is the day you’ll turn an essential corner toward reaching your goal of making a living online.

So what is it about, if not the blog?

It’s about your business.

Your blog and your business are different, yet related, things. The former is a sub-set of the latter. The difference is sometimes subtle, but it’s a critical one.

Your blog is a strategy, a branding and marketing vehicle, a means toward an end.

Your business is the money-making model. A product or service for sale.

Your blog isn’t for sale. It may be of service, but it’s a service you’re giving away for free.

Which means, if giving out free content is all you’re doing, or if your blogging has become the core deliverable of what you believe to be a business, your strategy is upside-down.

There’s nothing magic about a blog

When I started out, blogging not only seemed like a good idea — especially with all the voices that suggested you could get rich doing it — it was also incredibly rewarding right out of the gate.

Not monetarily. It was rewarding because of how it felt.

Connecting with people. Helping them. Sucking up all that nice feedback. Participating in a community, being part of a meaningful dialogue.

Those are, and should remain, part of the reasons you blog.

But if they aren’t your real objective, your end game — if making a living is an element you want to add to that mix — it’s time to take stock. Because it’s so easy to get lost in all that community stuff, the warm and fuzzy elbow rubbing, the sense of doing something helpful and worthwhile.

Which doesn’t pay you a dime until you actually sell something.

There will come a day when it hits you

You’ve been getting up in the middle of the night to perfect a post that will go out via Feedburner at dawn. You’ve sweated the syntax of your opening line and polished those nouns and verbs until you found yourself dreaming of your old high school English teacher.

You really care. You’ve become your blog. Just possibly, at the expense of your business plan.

It hit me recently in a post from David Risley, who is one of those “pro bloggers” who, if you don’t read him closely enough, or if you only hear what you want to hear, could lead you to believe that blogging will be the source of your new income, and sometime soon.

But on this day I did read closely, and what I saw there rocked my blogging world.

David, in essence, said this: blogs don’t make money. Businesses make money.

(You’ve seen that message here on Copyblogger as well.)

Your blog is the face of your business, the voice of your brand, the bait that attracts a following.

And yes, you give away as much as you can with it, selflessly and abundantly.

But until you have a product or service to sell, and until the blog connects to that enterprise in a way that actually begins to generate actual revenue in addition to pumping up your online reputation and ego, your blog is nothing other than you expelling positive energy into the universe.

Or, to put it another way, just so much hot air.

Looking for a free online resource that will teach you to think like a businessperson, not just another struggling blogger? Check out Internet Marketing for Smart People, the Copyblogger email newsletter.

About the Author: Larry Brooks is the creator of Storyfix.com, an instructional resource for novelists and screenwriters. His book, The Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling, will be published by Writers Digest Books in early 2011.

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The Critical Mistake that Keeps Bloggers Broke

The medals for the Olympics are minted by the Royal Canadian Mint. They’re the same company that prints all the money for Canada and many other countries. During the Olympics, the Mint has a pavilion set up at 500 Granville Street so you can view the Olympics medals and other interesting stuff. While the medals maybe the main draw, the real attraction on display was the $1 million gold coin.

The one of a kind coin was minted from 100KG (220lbs) of 99999 pure gold and is worth far more than its face value of $1 million. Gold is currently selling for $1,118 an ounce. That means 220lbs of gold cost nearly $4 million. That’s just for raw gold bricks. Gold is worth more if its been minted into a coin or another valuable object. This may explain why the coin was sealed behind thick bullet proof glass. This coin is recognized by Guinness World Records to be the world’s largest gold coin.

The Royal Canadian Mint Pavilion is open to the public during the 2010 Games. If you want to see the mega coin, then be prepare to line up for at least an hour and a half. As a matter of fact, lining up seems to the theme of the Olympics.

Thanks to Ashley Chow for taking the photos. You can read Ashley’s Olympic adventures here and here.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

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What A $1 Million Gold Coin Looks Like

To the tune of “Get Down Tonight” by KC and the Sunshine Band: Do a little dance! Make a little noise! It’s Friday night! It’s Friday night!

Sometimes these fits of brilliance just hit me.

I love coming across the hilarious antics of people who know Google Street View is in town. SEO and social media marketer Michael Gray found a great one this week: two dudes chasing Street View in scuba gear! The story told by traveling through that moment in time is priceless. If you go back a frame you see them waiting in their lawn chairs while reading the paper.

We’re trying out a new recurring feature on the BCI Facebook fan page. In our Facebook question of the week, we want to know what you think about topical issues in Internet marketing. This week’s Super Bowl advertisers had me wondering if traditional media ads have more-or-less become a means for driving online traffic. Add your two cents to the convo, please!

Oh, and it’s also important that you weigh in on PajamasJeans. They’re pajamas and they’re jeans. I believe Susan’s comment was: “I can’t tell if these are brilliant or insane.” One vote for brilliant! PajamaJeans are so the next Snuggie!

Here’s another fun find, and this one’s especially useful for folks who like a dash of personality with their analytics data. VisitorVille is an analytics program that represents your site, your visitors, and the sites from which they came as a virtual town. The sites are buildings, the visitors are people and search engines are buses! It’s like Sims for statistics!

Bruce Clay, Inc.’s cohorts down under have been busy! Bruce Clay Australasia made its SEO Factors and Trends Report, previously available only to clients, available to the public. The report includes recommendations for social media marketing, link building and personalized search optimization.

Want some tips on personal branding? (I do!)

First, don’t let NBC do to you what it did to Leno. Some brand analysts believe Jay Leno’s brand may be tarnished beyond repair.

Next, look on the bright side of life. According to analysis by social media marketer Dan Zarella, negative remarks expressed on Twitter may result in fewer followers.

Finally, see what lessons you can take away from the big guys. Mashable breaks down the keys to success when building a brand hub through media. Not surprisingly, social media participation plays an important role.

If you’re looking for some pointers for performing site audits, SEO Alan Bleiweiss has published the first part of a series that offers just that. From putting a price tag on failure to the generation of an action plan, this is hands-on SEO at its finest.

Internet marketing firm Outspoken Media celebrated a one-year anniversary this week. Co-founder Rae Hoffman shared her insider’s view on launching a startup. From the post I got an idea of initial setup costs, considerations in developing company structure, and areas of significant growth.

CC BY-SA 2.0

Here’s some more interesting insight into the inner workings of a company. A Silicon Alley Insider Chart of the Day charted Microsoft’s operating profit by division. Online services and entertainment and devices have been reliably in the red, while Microsoft Office is the company’s winner by a mile.

I’ve become personally invested in a soon-to-be iPhone app from my buddy Dan, @dgiul. This year I’ve had a minor obsession with food holidays and have been happily announcing them on Twitter. Dan had the brilliant idea to turn the food holiday calendar into a handy app, and he’s open to ideas for names. It’d also be great if you could vote on your favorites! Thanks for helping make this dream a reality!

Susan continues to rub in the fact that she’s got a darling baby niece and we don’t. Hey Susan! Just so you know, that dewy-eyed angel you were snuggling is actually a lying, murderous bigot! I’m on to you now, babies! (J/K. Susan already knows about those naughty monkeys. She sent me the post!)

Digiday is surveying mobile marketers for their Mobile State of the Industry Q1/10 report. Participants will receive the survey results, two weeks free access to their digital knowledge base and the chance to win a pass to a DM2Event or a gift certificate.

Just in time for the Winter Olympics, Google has introduced a snow mobile to its Street View fleet. Yahoo! Sports is decked out for the Olympics, and Bing Maps is putting its tech preview of Streetside Photos to good use with pics of Vancouver.

I ran across a series of travel quizzes on National Geographic, which could be hours of fun for those snowed in this weekend! There are quizzes on countries, cities and national parks. I got a pathetic 5/8 for my home town of L.A. Think you can do better?

If you’re not snowed in this weekend, you’ll probably be celebrating Valentine’s Day with your sweetie. No sweetie? No worries. Romance isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be, right, xkcd?

Friday Recap: SEO Olympics — Love, Flips and Tricks Edition was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

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Friday Recap: SEO Olympics — Love, Flips and Tricks Edition

Guest post by Mike CJ.

“Treat your blog like a business” is something we’re told all the time. It’s solid advice, assuming you want or plan to make an income from your blog, and adopting it as a mindset often leads to the successful transition from a blog into a business.

But what does it actually mean?

Have a proper accounts system

Record income and expenses as they happen. Monitor cashflow – every day if things are tight. There are so many tools out there to help you do this, and many of them are free to use. Outright is one of the easiest.

Set objectives

The blogosphere is full of objective-setting posts at this time of year. Most of them revolve around traffic and subscribers. And that’s fine, but if you do want to blog professionally, you need to have financials behind those. You need to know what you’re going to earn over the next year.

Set budgets

Once you know what’s coming in, set yourself some spending budgets. How much of your income are you going to re invest in the business? For training? Software? Marketing? By setting budgets, it makes buying decisions so much easier. Do you want to advertise your new book here on Problogger? Don’t waste hours wringing your hands trying to decide. If it’s in budget do it, if it isn’t, don’t.

Seek opinions and advice

Most “real” businesses, even small ones, don’t run in a vacuum with the proprietor making every decision. And yet many blogs do just that! Get as much advice as you can, from your partner, your bank, your accountant and from other bloggers.

Produce reports

Monthly or quarterly, produce a report showing how the business is performing against the various targets. Examine what went well, and what didn’t. Use the findings to inform your planning for the next period. The act of producing the report itself is effective, but it’s even better if you have to present it to someone else – even if it’s your partner.

Enter into collaborations

Working with other bloggers can really accelerate your success, as well as theirs. Seek out opportunities with like minded people you see around the web.

Use professional tools

It’s too easy to let yourself down with poor design, a tatty invoice or by not having a business card. None of the accoutrements of being in business cost a fortune – they’re a small expense compared to the loss of image when they aren’t right.

Invest in training

Every business should have a training budget – choose the right books, courses and memberships and you’ll get a far greater return than the initial cost.

Treat your readers like customers

Typically only a very small percentage of blog readers will ever become customers by buying something from you – most will simply enjoy the mass of free content you put out there. And that’s fine. But treat every one of them as a potential paying client, and that percentage will slowly increase over time.

Those are my thoughts about treating your blog like a business. What would you add?

Mike CJ is a full time professional blogger and author. He lives in the idyllic Canary Islands, just off the coast of Africa. You can find out more about Mike on his blog Mike’s Life and catch up with him on Twitter @mikecj

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

What does treating your blog “Like a Business” really mean?

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What does treating your blog “Like a Business” really mean?

In the year and a half that Bruce Clay, Inc. has been doing a weekly radio show/podcast with WebmasterRadio.fm, we’ve been lucky enough to have the most incredible guests. And while I try to feature our expert interviewees on the blog as part of SEM Synergy Extras, there’s usually no substitute for hearing from the authorities themselves.

Unfortunately for listeners, at the moment SEMSynergy.com is in need of a little TLC because the only way to sort and view past episodes is by date — not super helpful if you’re looking for a particular guest or topic.

While we undertake some modifications for the site, I thought I’d do a little organizing for your podcast listening enjoyment. Here are some of our interviews from the last six months, categorized by topic. My hope is that this will allow ya’ll to dive right in to our stellar archive of episodes. So sit back and scan this list to find your favorite personalities or topics.

SEO Strategies & Trends

Gina Poole, vice president of IBM Software Group Marketing 2.0: Gina talks about the difference between traditional CMOs and digital CMOs. She also talks about how a search marketer can pitch the value of SEO in a way that’s best appreciated by a marketing officer. (Subcategory: SEO Evangelism)

Dr. Ralph Wilson, editor and publisher of Web Marketing Today: Ralph talks about best practices for small business e-commerce marketing. He also talks about his recommendations for search marketing during the seasonal peaks and the challenges of PayPal for a small e-commerce business. (Subcategory: E-Commerce SEO)

Heather Lloyd-Martin, president and CEO of Success Works: Heather talks about using principles of psychology to create persuasive copy. Using Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as a guide, copywriters can create conversion-driving copy by speaking to the target audience’s needs. (Subcategory: SEO Copywriting)

David Harry, IR specialist, blogger, and founder of SEO Dojo: David shares his analysis of the latest round of testing to observe ranking fluctuations due to personalized search. He also talks about how SEOs might approach optimization in light of personalization and how Google Caffeine, Google’s emphasis on site speed and personalization may fit together. (Subcategory: Personalized Search)

Paid Search

Heather Lutze, Internet marketer and author of The Findability Formula: Heather talks about her book, a plain-English resource that can help SEM students hit the ground running. She also talks about organizing campaigns to target consumers at various stages of the buying cycle and preparing for seasonal PPC campaigns.

David Szetela, CEO of Clix Marketing: David shares his recommendations for PPC management, including landing page development, incentives, weighing CPC against ROI, and seasonal campaign planning. He also talks about the effect of a Microsoft-Yahoo! search partnership and why it could be advantageous for search engine marketers.

Social Media Marketing

Dana Lookadoo, SEO and social media marketer: Dana talks about the value of real-time search for individual users as well as businesses and gives her tips on how to optimize content for real-time search. Real-time search can serve as a lifestream, or a window into the interests of an audience, helping a business to engage with that audience.

Michael Gray, Internet marketer and blogger: Michael shares his recommendations for marketing on Twitter, including tips for avoiding reputation nightmares with Twitter Lists and Twitter ad networks. He also talks about a number of content distribution tactics that have proven effective on Twitter.

Tamar Weinberg, Internet marketer, blogger, and author of The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web: Tamar talks about her book, which guides readers to develop a social media marketing strategy and then details specific tools and platforms. She explains that the etiquette of social media marketing is just like social etiquette offline, and she also talks about the role of content and customer service within social media marketing.

Analytics & Conversion Optimization

Jim Sterne, chairman of the Web Analytics Association and founder of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit: Jim shares his insight into topics of importance at the eMetrics Summit this year. The conference lineup reflects the needs of today’s marketers working in tough economic circumstances.

Avinash Kaushik & Daniel Waisberg, author of Web Analytics: An Hour A Day and analytics evangelist for Google, and chair of marketing of the Web Analytics Association, respectively: In the same episode as the one listed above, analytics experts Avinash and Daniel share the findings of a paper they co-authored for the industry’s peer reviewed journal, SEMJ.org. They propose the pioneering concepts of a customer-centric Web Analytics 2.0.

Bryan Eisenberg, author of several books on Internet marketing, including Call to Action and Always Be Testing: Bryan shares his prediction of the marketing skills that will be crucial in the coming year. He also talks about his observations of the increasing mainstream recognition of conversion optimization.

Link Marketing

Eric Ward, Internet marketer specializing in links: Eric explains his recommended approach for link marketing this year, including a shift toward looking at link building from a synergistic point of view. He also talks about the effect of personalization and whether or not it may change the link marketing approach.

Semantic Search Technology

Tomasz Imlienski, executive vice president of Global Search and Answers at Ask.com: Tomasz explains the effort he’s leading at Ask to continually develop their proprietary semantic technology. Some search categories, like TV listings and sports, are greatly enhanced by Ask’s ability to extract information from structured data such as databases and XML feeds.

Doug Leeds, president of Ask.com U.S.: Ask is developing technology to better extract existing answers on the Web as well as to better find and index the source of answers not yet published. Doug explains what people can do to prepare their site for Q&A search and for being considered a subject matter expert by Ask.com.

While I’m on the subject of our WebmasterRadio podcast, this is the perfect time to share the good news. The full SEM Synergy archive is now available on both WebmasterRadio.fm and iTunes!

Archive Dive with SEO Experts — SEM Synergy Extras was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

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Archive Dive with SEO Experts — SEM Synergy Extras

It’s been a week deserving of a shout-it-from-the-rooftops “TGIF!” So much going on, makes a girl just wanna curl up with a bucket of Rocky Road, watching the lightning storm out my window.

Alternately, I could kick back and watch the Sundance Film Festival online. YouTube announced it is getting into the movie biz starting this week. YouTube will start renting movies, launching the offering by making five Sundance Film Festival films available for rent this weekend.

Have you heard that it’s raining in SoCal? A series of monster storms pummeled the Cali southland this week.

Driving about after a storm brought Paula to an observation that I second:

Seriously, what’s up with that? How do rain-drenched towns deal? Someone please speak up in the comments. Think I’m overreacting? This is not just the weather-privileged California girl in me talking. See, this image from space proves that NASA believes me. (Related: Images from space show that Mars is a hottie!)

NASA added to the history books today when an astronaut broadcast the first live tweet from space. Careful there, space rangers. Tweeting while astronauting could be dangerous. Multitasking with mobile devices seems to be a dangerous feat these days. Scientists and researchers are beginning to look at the effect of constant multitasking, both behind the wheel and on foot. And maybe even from the space station.

While we’re on the subject of dangerous feats, behold! The flying blogger!

Sorry, that doesn’t have anything to do with anything. I’m just so darn proud!

Know who else should be proud? Internet marketer Lyndon Reid who trusted his gut on a major wager. One group of Internet marketers. One hand of black jack. What happens next?

“What happens next?” is a question that has been top-of-mind for many SEOs staring in the face of a personalized search world. David Harry has published the results of his latest round of testing around the rankings flux of search personalization.

A great company and client of Bruce Clay, Inc. is looking to support their Internet marketing efforts with two in-house SEO/SEM positions. Salem Web Network is looking for two search engine marketers to work in the Richmond, Virginia area, so if you’re an experienced SEM or SEO interested in working hand in hand with Bruce Clay, Inc. at a passionate company in Virginia, be sure to check out this opportunity.

I ran across some fun, interactive visualizations this week. I’m not sure how new they are but I figure it never hurts to share. Digital marketing agency Razorfish brought us A Decade in Search, which outlines the most popular search queries along with the shifting partnerships in search. There’s also the Conversation Prism, now available in a zoomable, clickable format. Last but not least, I learned about Charting the Beatles, a crowdsourced collection of Beatles-themed graphics.

Bing is getting fancy, adding some new visualizations as well:

[10:05:42 AM] BCI-Susan Esparza: Kinda neat Bing feature
[10:06:13 AM] BCI-Susan Esparza: I feel like this is typical of Bing (and Ask too.) They have lots of neat features but when it comes to “just search” they fall down.

Photo by D Sharon Pruitt

Okay, that kinda hurt. [Truth often does. —Susan] How about a unicorn chaser? Shoot. Fresh out of unicorns. How about some funky candy instead? Apparently the chocolate in England is superior to its American counterparts. In the East, Japan takes the gold for these 20 strange candies. It’s like an adventure for your tongue.

I have to veer back around to Twitter news because I didn’t get to it all when I was talking about tweeting astronauts. Rumor is that Twitter plans to release the usernames of inactive accounts. Sadly the Twitter name I’d like is quite active. Making it worse, the user known as @Virginia wouldn’t even be my friend if I asked her to. (See bio. Sad face!)

One tweeter was arrested under the Terrorism Act and has been banned for life from his local airport after tweeting a bomb threat that was intended as a joke. The moral of this story? Bomb threats to airports are never okay. Was that so hard?

A Friday Recap almost wouldn’t be complete without an outstanding blog post by Lisa Barone. Today she caught a new feature making its debut on Twitter called Local Trends. The tool lets you see the trending topics broken down into location. Lisa tells us that people in SoCal are whining about the rain. Ahem. Please refer to the image from space linked to above.

Has Twitter usurped your vanity search results against your will? Turns out you can add one line to your blog or site to indicate it’s your preferred representation of you. Handy-dandy microformat, FTW.

Now on to Google and SEO. Internet marketer Ian Lurie has published the Google Analytics Cheatsheet. It’s not an exhaustive cheat sheet, but it does cover all the tools he and his staff use day-to-day. Ian has generously licensed it under Creative Commons, so feel free to download and share, but definitely give credit where credit is due for this incredible resource.

On the David Naylor blog we find common mistakes of beginner SEOs. Strategy, research, keywords, content, links, and on and on. No SEO sector is immune, so stay alert.

And just for fun, ever think about what properties Google might be looking to acquire? Phone maker HTC? Competitor Yahoo!? Or maybe they’ll look to gain a stake in everyone’s favorite superstore Walmart. Oh the possibilities!

Things I learned from Boing Boing this week:

• What does vengeance look like when money is no object? (Watch the Bugati Veyron skit to find out.)
• Sloths have gotten a bad wrap. They’re actually fast, smart and, um, really picky eaters.
• Our Stone Age ancestors may have started farming for love of beer. Probably should’ve seen that coming.
• The Shiba Inu puppy cam is back! I also recommend the two-week old Boxer pups and the rambunctious CKCs if that’s your style.
• In 2011 the New York Times will begin charging frequent readers to access the Web site. I plan to pony up. You? [Not a chance. —Susan]

Friday Recap: Storm Chaser Edition was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

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Friday Recap: Storm Chaser Edition

The tenth anniversary of the ill-fated Time Warner-AOL merger came and went this week. It was on January 10, 2000 that the old media stalwart and the new media darling came together in marriage. The union was a highly celebrated realization of the long-anticipated digital revolution.

We’ve since traveled 10 years down the road. The couple that once shouldered the hopes of the digital soothsayers has divorced. Though, by the time the final nail was driven into the coffin, the fortunes of the pair had spent the previous decade in a nose dive.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/f-r-a-n-k/ CC BY 2.0

The New York Times this week published a retrospective on the Time Warner-AOL merger that’s a must-read for anyone in the digital space. AOL’s co-founder, Stephen Case, was interviewed for the piece. Describing the merger announcement, Case said:

“It was a moment of achievement after a decade or in some cases, in our case two decades, of trying to prove that this concept had real merit, suddenly the Internet had arrived and we’re beginning this new century with a combination of these two great companies.”

So what went wrong?

In 1999, the year before Time Warner and AOL announced their historic partnership, another giant, this one of the auto industry, effectively split with what was once considered a transformative technology: the electric car.

In the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, a theory is posed: not only did oil companies object to electric cars — a technology that could dampen demand for their product — but car companies were also resisting the change.

Earlier this week Detroit welcomed the annual North American International Auto Show once again. Guess what technology is playing heavily into the line-up of auto makers across the globe? Electric cars, of course. And this time around, they’re more efficient, more in vogue, and sexier than ever.

What’s so different this time around?

Learning from the Past

The stories of the incompatible couple and the mismanaged motor have a lot more in common than you might think. They both hold lessons for businesses doing business online today.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelzimmer/ / CC BY 2.0 There’s a fork in the winding road. Which path will you take?

In the case of the electric car’s temporary demise and subsequent reprise, we find that when it comes to the wave of the future, there’s no stopping it. Businesses following traditional business models have tried to avoid the Web, have tried to maintain the monologue beloved by the ghost of marketing past, and have suffered losses of consumers and reputation alike. Made stubborn by fear, these businesses have tried to squash the need for presence and communication online, but it’s an undeniable force.

When recounting the past around Time Warner and AOL, we see that a culture clash was partly to blame for the soured relationship. In the Times article, Time Warner’s president at the time of the merger, Richard Parsons, said, “I remember saying at a vital board meeting where we approved this, that life was going to be different going forward because they’re very different cultures, but I have to tell you, I underestimated how different.”

Similarly there’s a culture war happening in board rooms and marketing departments across America today. While I’ve read many success stories of the changing of the guard, I read about just as many gaffes and missteps of companies resisting or failing to understand the new media world. Rather than butting heads at the expense of success, business leaders must embrace the new landscape and carve out their company’s place in it.

Electric Cars and Fallen Giants: Marketing Lessons from the Fates of Time Warner, AOL and GM was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

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Electric Cars and Fallen Giants: Marketing Lessons from the Fates of Time Warner, AOL and GM

Welcome back to this week’s roundup of the most popular conference coverage on the Bruce Clay, Inc. blog in 2009. You’re in the groove and back for Day 2, where today’s topics are: the future of search, mobile and local marketing, video marketing, and holistic search integration. With four session tracks, plus a keynote address and an SEM Synergy podcast, there’s plenty to cover, so away we go!

Keynote

How to Prepare for the Future of Search – SES San Jose, Aug. 11-13
Speaker: Charlene Li

Top Takeaways:

• Social media and real-time content present a new challenge to search engines. With regards to social media, search engines can’t tap into the in-network content. With the real-time Web, search engines are on their way to figuring out the value of retweets, replies and spam detection.
• The future of social networks is continuous, everywhere access. And the intent of users will be better deciphered through location, time and social context, not just the words used. Search results and ad delivery will likely be influenced in the future by social data like number of friends and degree of influence.
• Businesses can prepare for this super-connected online social environment by targeting people rather than keywords. Build relationships by listening to and monitoring the discussion. Then engage in dialogue and encourage feedback.
• Businesses must also be prepared by getting backend data in order. Social networks should be integrated into the site. There should be a single sign-on and identity record, an integration of off-site data, as well as an understanding of which users are power influencers.
• Businesses must be ready to relinquish control to their audience and users. Most businesses are struggling with giving up control, as control was possible the way media worked previously. But today, understand that control is actually a fallacy. Instead, try to build trust over time.

The Future of Search

Top Takeaways:

• Successful searches (those that don’t result in another search) performed on Google went from 72.6 percent in 2009 to 67.8 percent in early 2009. Yahoo! and Microsoft search showed similar declines in the number of successful searches. Is search becoming less effective? One theory is that search queries are getting harder. Search queries are getting longer and one- and two-word searches are becoming less prevalent. There will be a growing need for algorithms that factor user perspective in the search mission.
• Don’t overlook social media answers sites. Yahoo! Answers, About.com and Answers.com have all seen tremendous growth in the last year. Searchers are doing a lot of research and they’re very specific about their questions. This is how you get to people before they get even start looking to shop.
• What is the effect of purchasing a link on a high-quality site that doesn’t actually relate to your own site? SEO experts answered that you can stretch relevancy in a lot of ways, but it has to be targeted at a page level. Stretching relevancy is fine, but be careful how far you stretch it because you don’t want to dilute the topic of the site.
• What is the effect of the proposed Yahoo! and Bing partnership on search? SEO experts answered that it marks the end of an era. Crawling the Web as far as search is concerned has reached its limits. Search engines are looking at new signals, such as real-time data.
• According to comments made by Matt Cutts at SMX Advanced in June, the behavior of the nofollow attribute was changed. He said that nofollow-based PageRank sculpting is not the most efficient use of an SEO’s time, and that the best kind of PageRank management occurs when a site’s architecture directs PageRank to intended pages.

Best of Conference Posts on the Future of Search:

Searchscape: Latest Stats About the Search Engines – SMX West, Feb. 10-12
Moderator: Chris Sherman; Panelists: Eli Goodman, Jon Stewart, Bill Tancer

Advanced SEO Roundtable: What Is It Really? And Where Is It Going? – SES San Jose, Aug. 11-13
Moderator: Richard Zwicky; Panelists: Matthew Bailey, Bruce Clay, Mike Grehan, Todd Friesen and Todd Malicoat

Audio of You&A with Matt Cutts – SMX Advanced, June 2-3
Moderator: Danny Sullivan; Speaker: Matt Cutts

Mobile and Local Search

Top Takeaways:

• When optimizing local listings, associate keywords with your business listing, but not within name, address or phone number info because that’s your fingerprint, and keywords there could fragment that fingerprint.
• When submitting your local business listing to the Google Local Business Center: determine the top five categories for your industry, because even if Google doesn’t suggest the category, the local Yellow Pages might use that and you’ll want to be there; use the additional details to reiterate your categories and include anything that is a differentiator; keep in mind that completeness is a factor so include pictures, videos, etc.
• Mobile search is different than desktop search. There are mobile bots, mobile algorithms, simplified rendering, a smaller screen, more specific searchers with more immediate intent, and more interactivity.
• When optimizing for mobile users, follow all traditional and local SEO best practices, provide info relevant to mobile users, submit your site to mobile search engines and directories, code in XHTML and use CSS. Don’t rely on embedded images, objects, scripts, frames, Flash, pop-up windows or mouse-over events.
• The traditional data sources for local search results are directory category trees. Emerging sources include direct feeds, third-party aggregation and Web crawling. Yahoo! is looking to improve local search results with more structured data, as well as crawling unstructured data such as reviews.

Best of Conference Posts on Mobile and Local Search:

Local Search Ranking Factors: Blended, Natural and Video – SES Chicago Local Search Summit, Dec. 7-9
Moderator: Steve Espinosa; Panelists: Mike Belasco, Gib Olander and David Rodecker

Getting Mobilized! Mobile Marketing Strategies – SES New York, Mar. 24-26
Moderator: Amanda Watlington; Speaker: Cindy Krum

Local Search Marketing Tactics – SMX West, Feb. 10-12
Moderator: Greg Sterling; Panelists: Scott Dunlap, Matt McGee, William Scott, Atif Rafiq and Dennis Yu

Online Video Marketing

Top Takeaways:

• The top ranking factors for YouTube are: Title, Description and Keywords tags, links, annotations, comments and more, but not 200 factors like in Google’s Web search. Do competitive research and analyze demographic and referral data of your videos in order to focus optimization efforts.
• Before creating videos, start by defining what your objectives are. Is it views? Engagement with your brand? Conversions? Get a full picture of what you really want to do. After you run your campaign you should understand what you should be doing better and what you succeeded at.
• If you want to get more people to watch your video, share videos with members of the community, experiment with annotations, video responses and thumbnails, avoid spamming video of other users or rating your own videos, embed videos on Web sites to make your videos more discoverable and easier to find, and use analytics like YouTube Insight to better understand your audience.
• Viral content is cool stuff that people like to share. Brand sites often tend to be quite boring. Videos tell a story and get the audience engaged. Remember that content isn’t king anymore. Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.
• Viral is hard to create, but you can improve your chances. Utilize popular destinations like FunnyOrDie, Flickr and social news sites. Be sure the content is very visual, easy to consume and has a social tone. Make sure you’re part of the community before trying to participate. Have a goal before you start.

Best of Conference Posts on Online Video Marketing:

Pumping Up YouTube – SMX East, Oct. 5-7
Moderator: Christine Churchill; Panelists: Matthew Liu, Ciarán Norris and Manny Rivas

Up Close With YouTube – SMX West, Feb. 10-12
Moderator: Chris Sherman; Panelists: Drew Hubbard, Matt Liu, Jonathan Mendez and JC Longbottom

Igniting Viral Campaigns – SES Chicago, Dec. 7-9
Moderator: Tessa Wegert; Panelists: Denise Chudy, Greg Finn and Jennifer Evans Laycock

Search Intersections

Top Takeaways:

• Search doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Integration matters. Of search engine users, 67 percent are driven to search by an offline channel and 39 percent convert. Yet only 55 percent of marketers are integrating search and offline methods.
• Among the online-offline integration efforts, 84 percent use their Web address prominently and company name prominently, while 41 percent are using the same colors. Only 25 percent use the same keywords online and offline. However, keyword relevancy and consistency across channels is key to success across online and offline integration.
• Display ads don’t just increase site visitation. They also drive consumers to search for the advertiser trademark terms. Those searching for a brand are more likely to convert and also have a higher conversion rate when exposed to display, and even higher when exposed to both search and display ads.
• The average e-commerce shopping cart has a 60 percent abandonment rate. Usability optimization can improve conversions by making the process intuitive. However, SEO is a left brain task while usability is a right brain task.
• Benefits of pairing organic SEO and usability include: higher rankings, increased efficiency, more qualified leads, more conversions, lower bounce traffic, positive experiences and stronger brand loyalty.

Best of Conference Posts on Search Intersections:

Integrating Search & Offline Marketing Campaigns – SMX West, Feb. 10-12
Moderator: Sara Holoubek; Panelists: Jason Clement, Ann Cafferty Pyle, Marty Weintraub and Andrew Wheeler

Search Meet Display; Display Meet Search – SMX East, Oct. 5-7
Moderator: Greg Sterling; Panelists: Kevin Lee, Robert Murray and Surag Patel

SEO & Usability – SMX West, Feb. 10-12
Moderator: Gordon Hotchkiss; Panelists: Lance Loveday and Eric Papczun

Live Conference Episode of SEM Synergy

SEM Synergy – Live from SES San Jose – SES San Jose, Aug. 11-13
Host: Virginia Nussey; Guests: Mark Knowles, Reid Wakefield and Jamie Smith

Top Takeaways:

• The SEO-friendly content management system Pixelsilk introduces real-time SEO suggestions within the content editor. The capability speaks to the fact that SEO should be part of nearly every decision made on a site. Pixelsilk’s Search Advice has the potential to ease implementation of SEO best practices and minimize after-the-fact SEO needs.
• Search marketers have long paid attention to search engine rankings, but a number of important metrics have been overlooked for some time. As we enter the new year, search marketers can reconsider issues of importance to them, including visitor targeting, what happens after the click, user engagement and more.
• Dynamic call tracking is a relatively new tool in the search marketer’s tool chest, which allows phone-dependent businesses to understand the online ads that are working and those that aren’t. It helps advertisers understand precisely what visit was the catalyst for a call.
• In a study analyzing the effectiveness of pay per click ads versus organic SEO, paid search marketing outperformed organic search marketing by .7 percent more conversions. However, this figure doesn’t account for the possibility that one drives the other or that synergy between the two boosts the effectiveness of both.
• In a study on conversion attribution, 45 percent of sales occur on a first visit to a site. Today there are few means of tracking the searches performed before the 55 percent of sales made on a repeat visit. The study found that 70 percent of customers purchased on a second search; however, credit is only going to the final search. By filtering visitors by IP address and analyzing their referral data, marketers can give credit to different touch points occurring before the transaction.

Best of Search Conferences 2009: Day 2 was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

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Best of Search Conferences 2009: Day 2

Yesterday I watched this mini disaster unfold before me between a couple exchanging Christmas gifts.

As I watched the repercussions of the exchange of gifts (I’ll tell you what happened below) I found myself thinking about unmet expectations.

Elliot Larson once said – “Anger always comes from frustrated expectations” – as a blogger interacting with readers for 7 years I’d have to say that I agree.

As I think back over the times where I’ve had readers most frustrated and angry with me (and when I’ve been most frustrated with others) – it almost always comes down to there being a difference in expectations between blogger and reader.

Most bloggers who’ve been at this game for a while have had at least a handful of complaint emails/comments from readers:

“You post too often!”
“You don’t post enough!”
“Your posts are too advanced!”
“Your posts are too basic!”
“You do too many promotions!”
“You promised XXX but you never delivered on it!”
“You never replied to my email!”

Sometimes the complaints are legitimate and other times as bloggers we write them off as the reader just not getting us or asking too much.

Whether justifiable or not – in each of the cases above the person making the complaint had some kind of unmet expectation. They signed up for an RSS feed, newsletter, Twitter account or bought a product expecting one thing but getting another.

As bloggers – how do we manage expectations better and minimise these kinds of complaints?

A few thoughts come to mind:

1. Know what your own Goals and Expectations are

As I look back on some of the instances that I’ve had with readers having unmet expectations of me I can honestly say that in some instances the reason was simply that I didn’t have a very clear understanding of what I was trying to do or achieve.

I’m sure many bloggers are similar – we can be an impulsive lot – experimenting, tweaking, changing directions and starting new things at the drop of the hat. While this often leads to great discoveries and creative new directions – it can also leave readers reeling a little and feeling disappointed.

I’m still quite impulsive – but over the years I’ve learned a little more to take my time with new ideas, to test them with small groups of people before launching them publicly and to force myself to plan and think about over arching goals and objectives in order to make the road a little less bumpy for readers.

2. Communicate Your Expectations Clearly

Once you know what your readers will get from you and your blog – communicate it clearly to your readers.

For example – if you have a newsletter and intend to publish it weekly – state that in your subscriber page. If the newsletter is simply an update of what’s happening on your blog – let them know that so they don’t expect completely new content.

If there are strings attached with any aspect of your blog – it can be well worthwhile letting your readers know about them up front.

This particularly applies when you change any aspect of your own expectations or goals.

For example if you’ve been happily posting at a frequency of 4 posts a week but suddenly decide to start publishing at a rate of 10 posts a day – you’ll want to communicate your decision and reasoning to readers. Changes in your own approach might make sense to you but if you have readers who signed up for something completely different you’re setting yourself up for a clash of expectations.

I’ve seen this problem on numerous occasions including about post frequency, changes in topic/niche of a blog and even changes in the way that a blog is monetized (suddenly adding lots of ads, or paid posts, or affiliate promotions).

3. Identify Common Unmet Expectations and Preempt Them

Over time you might find that you constantly get the same complaint from readers. This could be an indication that you need to consider changing your approach – OR it could simply mean you need to work harder to get the reader’s expectations right earlier.

For example I worked with one blogger a few months back who kept getting nasty emails from readers complaining that the blogger didn’t respond to emails quickly enough. The blogger was inundated with emails and found it hard to answer everyone (and it could take a week or more to do so when he did get to it). He was frustrated that readers expected too much and readers were frustrated because they expected more of him.

We added a simple sentence or two to his contact page explaining that the blogger received 100+ emails a day and was not able to respond to everyone. We also added alternative places that people could interact with him (on Twitter) and also added a FAQ section to his blog and linked to it from the contact form to help readers find answers to some of the more common emails requests that he received.

The complaints he received by readers dropped dramatically.

4. Don’t Hype

Many unmet expectations are just simple and understandable misunderstandings between blogger and reader – however at times bloggers could be a little more at fault by falling into the trap of hyping themselves, their blogs and their products up to a point where they’re setting themselves and their readers up for a clash of expectations.

I know this temptation – you slave over what you do, you want it to succeed and you stretch the truth just a little in some of your claims or promise things you probably can’t deliver on in order to convince potential readers that you’re worthy of their readership.

The problem is obvious though – you simply can’t do what you say you’ll do and as a result you end up with a disappointed (at best) or an angry and aggressive (at worst) reader. At the more aggressive end of the spectrum you might also have the reader tell others about how you’ve let them down.

5. Under Promise and Over Deliver

There’s nothing wrong with big promises and claims – IF you deliver on them. However if you’re not sure if you’ll be able to deliver on an element of what you’re tempted to promise – leave it out and add it later.

For example when we launched ProBlogger.com I always wanted to add a featured content area where I would produce extra and exclusive content for paid members. However at the time of launch I didn’t yet have the time allocated in my weekly schedule to be able to commit to delivering regular extra content.

It wasn’t until recently that I was able to do this and I’ve since added the area to the community. The reaction of adding it later was that readers are thanking me for the bonus – something extra to what they signed up for expecting. Perhaps we could have signed up more people earlier by promising this area earlier – but I’d rather a smaller number of happy members than a larger number of angry ones!

What Would You Add?

By no means am I perfect in this area. I still get readers telling me that I’ve not delivered upon what they were expecting from me – I’ve still got work to do. As a result I’d love to hear from you on how you manage reader expectations in comments below?

PS: I promised that I’d tell you how the gift exchange that I witnessed above turned out. Here’s what happened about half an hour later!

It’s not quite an ‘under promise and over deliver’ situation – but both went away happy with a story to tell!

PS: just been told by people on Twitter that ‘pearl necklace’ might have a double meaning. It was not my intention to be funny or offensive with this, it’s really what the gift was!

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Manage Expectations with Your Blog Readers

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How to Manage Expectations with Your Blog Readers