Re-assess, Re-think, Re-imagine SEO

8 Mar, 2010 in General, Marketing Thoughts, Search Engine Optimization, Social media by JoseGuerra

A few weeks ago we were invited to talk about SEO at the Dallas-Fort Worth American Marketing Association and we took the opportunity to “de-muddle” the search and content landscape. We focused our presentation on how Search Engine Optimization is evolving into what we are calling CSO or Content Search Optimization. The concept behind CSO is that with the growth of user-generated content on social media and web 2.0 sites, along with the proliferation of blogs and their integration into search results, off-page SEO is set to become more and more relevant when optimizing for search engines results. 

Search Engine Optimization has been a cat & mouse game since its inception, marketer and web masters spent their time figuring out how to game search engine algorithms to only find out that these sites kept evolving and coming up with new criteria. The beauty of this game has been that it has evolved in the direction of making results more and more like what you would find on an offline search for a product or service. The difference though is that looking for an accountant offline could take you days or weeks to find a good one. You would probably look for one on the yellow pages, then ask your friends if they knew one, then interview several, than ask for references, to end up probably working with one that worked with someone you trust.  However, online you can do this in a matter of minutes or seconds. Product or service searches on Google (using their filters, social search features and Google buzz) or searches on Facebook (which can also be filtered for friends) will, if not already, complete the entire search and selection process.

So, the questions are: How do you optimize your web presence? How do you embrace word of mouth and user generated content around your brand? How do you grow a network built on trust and reputation? In a few words, and you can watch the presentation below to get more details, the answer is three-fold.

First, you want to establish an editorial calendar because it will help you increase content quantity, quality and your will get more subscribers. Do simple math, more content + better quality = better search engine ranking. Add a little of smart marketing and you will get more readership and that will drive more subscribers (or potential customers)

Second, become a publishing warehouse as it will help you get your target audience in the format and timing that they prefer the most. Take the topic for the day, week, month, whatever your reality is and put in your “content development process” to create blog posts, articles, presentations, tweets, white papers, questions, videos, podcasts, etc. or whatever your target audience respond best.

Third, leverage personal branding to distribute content to networks built on trust and reputation. As stated on a previous blog employees can become a great channel to distribute your content.

By Jose Guerra
Principal

Exito

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What does Employee Retention have to do with Social Media Marketing?

8 Mar, 2010 in General, Marketing Thoughts, Social media by JoseGuerra

Everyone talks about the importance of embracing Social Media as a marketing channel because it is free, easy to implement and everyone is doing it. But I also want to emphasize that it is a great channel to retain and engage employees. Leveraging employees, and their online networks and presence, in corporate social media initiatives helps marketing get the brand in front of the target audience via a channel and network built upon trust and reputation. Employees, on the other side,  fulfill their need to express themselves, develop their own personal brand for professional growth and get the opportunity to integrate their work life with their personal and social life more smoothly.

Employees and their families are online and using social media related sites more than ever before (I assume I don’t need to give a stat on this to make the point) and they like to share personal and professional content with their networks. The beauty is that these networks are built on trust, reputation, friendship and real business relationships. Therefore, they listen to what each other has to say making it a great word of mouth channel for a brand. However, many companies are still concerned that access to social media sites while at work could be a source of loss in productivity…well, let me say that the next outlook version integrates with Facebook and other social media tools and most of them have mobile devices. So, I would say that corporate mind-set will have to change much like it did 15 years ago when email came up. Next are six simple ways to start embracing employee social media activities to boost your marketing target reach while retaining employees.

  1. Set expectations and boundaries: Define how social media can help align employees with your business and marketing goals and what the objectives are for social media. Then be specific on what the expectations, implications and limitations are for employees. Clearly and frequently communicate this to them to make sure they are aware and accountable for their actions, but don’t force them into social media and make sure that they don’t feel that they have to do it.
  2. Educate them: Create a program to coach them on the benefits and limitations of each tool for social and professional purposes.  Show them examples of what to do and what not to do. Do it frequently and embrace knowledge sharing amongst themselves. Encourage employees to try it and find their own social media style.
  3. Invite them to participate: Share with them all your news, campaigns, events, promotions, offers, etc. and ask them to share them with their networks. But don’t stop there, make them part of it by asking them to provide content and help in the creation of these initiatives
  4. Use incentives: Contest are great, I recommend setting up daily, weekly or monthly contest to rewards those that participate the most or help reach the goals of the initiative at hand.
  5. Give them feedback: This is key, no one knows how they are doing and how they can improve if they don’t get any feedback. Give them metrics, comments, ideas and feedback in general on how they are helping the company. They need to know the consequences and implications (positive and negative) of their actions to improve them, correct them or embrace them.
  6. Embrace their ideas: Social media is all about user-generated content and participation, so companies must incorporate employees ideas into their programs. Employees are the ones closer to the customers and prospects and understand better than anyone else what make prospects and customer click or engage. Create the appropriate mechanisms to incorporate their social media ideas.

By Jose Guerra
Principal

Exito

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Brand Spanking New Digs

5 Mar, 2010 in General, Progress Report, corner6labs stories by admin

New C6 WebsiteCompanies always get excited about launching a new website. In reality, maybe they are the only ones who care about the new website, but the excitement is nothing short of motivational. That’s how we feel here at C6 with the launch of our brand new biz front.

The new website is geared towards answering the question of who are are and the powers we yield, as well as a full on endeavor on the SEO front.

Check it out and let us know what you think. And if you feel like stopping by for a little bubbly, let us know and we will save you some.

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More Than Bathroom Reading

2 Mar, 2010 in General, Marketing Thoughts, Rants & Raves, Search Engine Optimization by dmcleish

Art of SEOI have to admit that I am not much of a reader. Why? in my completely crazy brain, I figure by the time I read something, it will have changed anyway…so why not shoot to learn from experience. Yes, I do know that this is a very illogical angle to approach this from, but it works for me as a justification method. Being as it may, I have to read, and because I have to read I like to choose books that I know will not waste my time. Casual reading ?  no thanks, not my thing, Even thought “They” say it is suppose to increase your IQ (I am doomed).  Give me the books that amazon says is the best book written since the bible and I will invest some time.

I came upon such a holy grail recently that I couldn’t help but sharing. “The Art of SEO” by Eric Enge and bunch of other people. As passionate as I am about SEO, I usually approach anything that has to do with the topic with reluctancy, because lets face it, most people tell you the same crap so called SEO experts have been spewing since 1994 (the good ole days of Infoseek). Here is the crap I am talking about, the question of question that just gets under my skin, and usually asked about a brand new website… “Is the website Search Engine Optimized?”. Maybe someone forgot the definition of optimization, but correct me if I am wrong, and I very well may be, how can you optimize something you haven’t had the chance to test and tweak? The question should rather be, “have you chocked enough self important keywords into the website’s meta keyword and title tag? and doused the content full of sentences that don’t make any sense because we had to get the keywords in there?”. Not to mention the fact that SEO is no longer just an on-site affair. Please don’t get me started, back to the book.

Armed with the reviews of the smart and good intentioned folks on amazon, I embarked on my bathroom reading journey of this book. The authors did an incredible job outlining a lot of theories missed by most other examiners of the SEO topic. The book gives you more ammunition to fight with than Rambo-in- the-middle-of-the-jungle-with-his-never-ending-supply-of-bullets-and-sharp-pointy-objects-carved-from-his-knife. Moreover, they point out one very crucial thing many SEO firms fail to tell you, Every SEO campaign is almost as different as a finger print. Different brands, different goals, uneven playing field… GO figure. The thing that strikes me is that this book was actually written in 2009, but seems to be more current than some of my other SEO readings which make me think that Eric, Stephen, Rand and Jessie (I assume we are on a first name basis, even though I don’t know them) are what you call forward thinkers. I love forward thinkers.

To sum it up, your company needs to be relevant in organic search…It’s not a luxury, it’s a must. To push you in the right direction, go get this book. Nope, I am not getting paid for this post (not saying I don’t want to), so don’t get any ideas.

When I say “me” or “I”? I mean  Dwamian Mcleish .

Follow me on twitter at twitter.com/dwamianm.

Follow corner6labs at twitter.com/corner6labs

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Getting Yourself Out Of Brand Dog House.

25 Feb, 2010 in General, Marketing Thoughts, Social media, Tips & Tricks by admin

6 divided by 2 ways to start the fixing process.

I don’t know how it happened, but last night I was watching CSPAN while the president and CEO of Toyota defended the Toyota brand in front of congress. While I was emphatically un-impressed by some of the representatives of congress and their professionalism towards the matter, I must say that I felt quite the opposite of Akio Tayoda, president and CEO of Toyota. IMO, he was very poised and professional while addressing what I thought were disrespectful and despicable “I am running for re-election” questioning from some member of the congressional panel. As a “marketer” who so often deals with PR issues our clients face, it begs the question of how do companies get themselves out of a PR mess.

The way I look at it, your brand is like being married…as a guy, sometimes you are just going to forget a birthday or a valentines day, unless you are one of “those guys”. There are times when you may have to work your way back off the couch.

#1 . Gain empathy

Like many [insert number here] step programs, the first and foremost step is to gain the empathy of your audience by recognizing that you are aware of the problem at hand. What this does is establish an emotional connection with your audience that helps you to gain their attention for what you have to say next. Usually, depending on the audience, people want to know that you care about their feelings and “admitting guilt” is a way of saying “I don’t want to bullshit you.” However, don’t be all negative, highlight the good of your brand without being obnoxious.

#2. Road map to regaining trust

Now that people know you are aware of the problem, the next step is to patch things up. This can be done by establishing a road map to making things better. “Over the next [insert realistic period here], we will address your concerns by [insert steps here].” This establishes a clear goal for your audience on which to measure your performance. People consciously and subconsciously love to compare so playing to that tendency will be in your benefit. The pressure here comes with hitting those goals and this leads me to my last point…

#3. Be transparent with your actions

Fixing the issues you are having in a black box may fix the issue, but it will not fix your audience’s perception. With this in mind, if you become transparent with the steps you are taking to fix the issues, then your audience will see that you are committed to regaining their trust which will in turn play on their empathy.

Of course, in PR there are many steps to helping a brand in mayday, and each solution may have its own approach. Can anyone say Tiger Woods?

Don’t just read… contribute. What’s your take on the matter?

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What the heck happened on Nov 6th?

15 Feb, 2010 in General, Marketing Thoughts, Rants & Raves, Tips & Tricks by admin

Usually, in our effort to show you that we know what the hell we are talking about, we would give you a series of pointers to help you with your efforts to reach the masses.  However, TODAY… we will simplify. TODAY… we will only give you one tablespoon of marketing medicine that is sure to knock that common cold out yo chest. This bittersweet but yet pleasant tasting nugget that will blow your noggin serves to answer one question, and one question only… “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED ON NOV 6th”.

Website Analytics

If you are like us, you constantly check your web stats, email metrics and other Key Performance Indicator data to help figure out how your online efforts are being received. Hopefully I don’t have to stress the importance of being borderline obsessed with doing this. In fact, if I have to stress that, then you and I really need to have a little sit down. Metrics is the Grand Puba of learning. You may not be aware of it, but your brain auto-magically collects and analyze you life’s metrics in order to help you develop and even more primitively, to survive. In short, data is your friend. If you don’t know what is or isn’t working, then chances are you are fishing with dynamite, and while one could argue that it is a good approach to catching a lot of fish…and thus a terrible analogy, I would argue that all you create is a mangled mess.

Like many companies in our current economy, we are being super aggressive with our online branding efforts, so we have three maybe even four different types of campaigns running at all the times.  How do we keep track of them all? and better yet, how do we know which ones to keep running.

So you waited, now here is the sweet, sweet nugget. Drumroll…

KEEP A MARKETING JOURNAL AND RECORD EVERYTHING.

You laugh?! This may sound strange, but one of the first things we did at corner6labs was to keep a marketing journal. This seems like a no-brainer to us, but we have yet to say, “We keep a marketing journal” to someone and the don’t look at us as if we just punched a baby. Keeping a marketing journal helps us narrow down the answer to that elusive question…what the hell happened on Nov 6th. Looking over your blog traffic, your email metrics, your website metrics, will do you no good if you don’t know what you did to earn those numbers.

The other side of having all-that-metrics  is knowing what to actually do with it…but as I said, one thing for you today, so that answer may lie in a phone call.

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Kay Byfield – Thoughts On How Social Media Is Changing the Search Landscape (Guest Post)

5 Feb, 2010 in General, Marketing Thoughts, Rants & Raves, Social media by admin
Editor’s note: Today we have a guest post from Kay Byfield,  a highly reputable Marketing Communications Professional. Kay is currently the Executive Vice President Membership at DFW American Marketing Association. Kay expresses valuable insights into “How Social Marketing Benefits Business” in an environment where social media is changing the online marketing landscape (See Video). You will also find Kay’s LinkedIn Profile Below the video in this post.

Kay ByfieldAs a marketer, I have been waiting for analysis of search engine effectiveness to include measures for user relevance and the power of the communications to establish connections.  I am encouraged because that finally seems to be happening. According to Dwamian Mcleish and Jose Guerra, SEO is passé; the new term should be Content Search Optimization (CSO). Communications specialists like me should be cheered because the system has finally begun to catch up with what we always knew.

Graphic designers have similar concerns to those of content providers.  They believe that attractive, easily navigated sites will increase the power of the organization’s web presence. Unfortunately, the traditional measures by search engines do not include many metrics for these factors.  In fact, only recently have search engines begun to read flash so designers were cautioned not to use those impressive graphics.

Similarly, search engine rankings required that content developers integrate as many key words as possible in the copy but also keep it short. This is not useful to the reader however, because target audiences expect messages to respond to their need.  Packing search terms into the text does not add value for the reader.  It was just another way of gaming the system to increase visibility of the website on the Internet.

The goal of the search engine is to provide highly relevant, easily accessible information to the consumer. Consumers will benefit as organizations begin to realize that the easy measures are not enough anymore.   As the website owner, attracting visitors through high page ranks is about helping them find you but it is also about delivering value once they are there.  Overall, you increase your rankings if you build that trust over time.  At the Branding SIG for the DFW AMA on February 2nd, Dwamian said that the search engines are beginning to develop measures that incorporate content relevance into the rankings.  It cannot happen too soon.

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Thanks DFWAMA!

3 Feb, 2010 in Uncategorized by admin

Last night we got the opportunity to speak about SEO at the Dallas Fort Worth American Marketing Association’s February meeting, sponsored by Match.com. The event was an exciting one and we got to meet some really cool and smart people. We want to thank everyone for the warm reception and all the compliments at the end. Yeah that’s right..it didn’t suck…too much.

The event was held at AMS Pictures which on initial appearance looks like a movie theater or a bowling alley. However, to our surprise and our sense of intrigue, it was actually just an office. The decor inside was incredible. We got an opportunity to take a quick tour throughout the facility with Bryce Ledbetter, an Account Director, and he got an opportunity to show off the fact that they have been graced by the presence of the likes of Ross Perot, Mark Cuban and even Barney the Dinosaur . Thanks Bryce. BTW, we hate you guys for being so awesome. All in all the event was a success and we cant wait to be in the audience for the next event.

DOWNLOAD THE SLIDES OF PRESENTATION WE GAVE HERE

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Nice to meet you anyway…

22 Jan, 2010 in Uncategorized by admin

corner6labs represented at the Dallas Social Media club (#angelikatheater #smcdallas @dallassmc) event last night where Chris Brogan, co-author of New York Times best selling book, Trust Agents, was the keynote speaker. I won’t go into too much detail because frankly you probably don’t care, but all in all the event was pretty awesome. Chris reassured us that what we have been saying all along about social media and marketing in general is spot on. Thanks for having our backs Chris. The real meat of the night was the tweetup event afterwards. It’s nice to know there are other smart people out there or at least people crazy enough to think like us. But last night also brought an unexpected sighting of Dallas Cowboys owner and General Manager, Jerry Jones, who was apparently there with his wife to see the movie “THE LOSS OF A TEARDROP DIAMOND”. Smile Jerry, you got caught on video (see below). Also shout out to @katfarmer for providing the classic moment of the video. Thanks Kat

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Can I get a charity?…Would you like that social media sized?

21 Jan, 2010 in Uncategorized by admin

There a few media outlets, and a few ticked off people that are reporting that the Haiti relief movement is one of the most successful charity drives to date! Even bigger than the relief efforts from hurricane Katrina. That may come as a surprise to some, but to me, the reason is pretty clear. Give it up to the social webverse.  People see more, interact more, and share more now more than any other time in history. We are at the upswing of a time when social interactivity and the data associated with it will be like air…In fact, there are some that would argue we are already there.

It’s been proven time and time again, one such time being the day Micheal Jackson died, that the people are the people’s news outlet. Nothing new to some of us who do marketing for a living, but it baffles me that some companies still don’t believe in the power of social media.

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