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

The studies conducted by Citibank with research firm GFK Roper and Internet2Go with small-business networking site MerchantCircle look at different segments of small and medium firms. But as the research from Citibank (probably the most representative of the “average” small business) found out that 86 percent “say they have not used social-networking sites to get business advice or information,” the research from Internet2Go (based on a segment of small businesses that have already made leaps toward trying to become more social-media-savvy) found that 45 percent already operate Facebook pages and 46 percent have either a business or personal presence on Twitter.  So combining these two findings I get to a number around 7% of small business that have used social media to grow the business.

One may question how I got to this number, but the importance of this is that there is still a window of opportunity for those small businesses that are innovative, ambitious and willing to take the risk that leaders do.

Over the next few days and weeks I will take this report and share my thoughts on how these changes and possible scenarios affect small and medium businesses, how they can prepare to maximize the opportunities that these changes will bring. I will do my best to address B2B and B2C scenarios

Stay tuned! I will share them as I post them.

Below is the first one so you can get a glance at what I will be writing about.

From the IBM report: “Consumers are increasingly exercising control of how they view, interact with and filter advertising in a multichannel world, as they continue to shift their attention away from linear TV and adopt ad-skipping, ad-sharing and ad-rating tools. Our survey suggests personal PC time now rivals TV time, with 71 percent of respondents using the Internet more than two hours per day for personal use, versus just 48 percent spending equivalent time watching TV. Among the heaviest users, 19 percent spend six hours or more a day on the PC versus just 9 percent who watch a similar amount of TV.”

So, there are a three interesting thoughts and findings in the previous paragraph: First, people are spending more time online than in front of a TV, second, consumers have new tools to control how they interact with advertising on all channels, and heaviest users spend significant more time on the Internet versus on the TV. This means that TV advertising (perhaps with the exception of product placement) is slowly dying not only due to the penetration of the DVR and the penetration of the Internet, but also due to the sociographic characteristics of the Generation Y (those born from the mid 1970s to early 1990s).

People are watching TV more than ever before, but they do it in a different way. As of March 2009, 30.6 percent of households in Nielsen’s National People Meter Panel have a DVR, and the penetration of the DVR is expected to reach 40% by the end of 2010, which will only hurt the effectiveness of TV ads. In addition to this, radio advertising is also being blocked thanks to satellite radio. Mass broadband Internet penetration is a fact already and the Generation Y has been shaped by instant communication technologies and new media such as social networking websites, which may explain Generation Y’s reputation for being peer-oriented.

So, what does this mean for small and medium companies?

It means that the field is leveling in terms of marketing and branding. Larger firms will eventually not be able to sustain their brand awareness and reputation based only on gigantic marketing budgets. New media is much more affordable for a many reasons; amongst those is the nature of social media which I will cover in a later post in this series. What I want to highlight in this post is that small and medium firms have a window of opportunity to get ahead of their larger competitors in adopting new media. Because smaller firms are more nimble and agile, they should take this opportunity to embrace new media and familiarize themselves with it.

To get started I would recommend the same of what many are saying, so below are some links that I suggest reading before kicking it off. However, I would like to emphasize that new media and in particular social media is about honest marketing and is based on trust, so don’t apply the same old rules of traditional marketing which is based on “interruption”.

Exito.

http://www.li-bs.com/2009/10/social-media-best-practices-getting-started/

http://smartblogs.com/socialmedia/2009/05/05/andys-answers-3-baby-steps-to-get-your-company-started-in-social-media/

http://blog.helpfultechnology.com/2009/01/how-to-get-started-in-social-media/

http://www.clickz.com/3633845

http://www.technotheory.com/how-to-use-social-media-guide/

When employees are in direct contact with their marketing activities, the message, the brand value proposition, the brand identity, etc. the more likely they are to embrace it on their day-to-day work. Employees need to honestly believe in “their brand”, make it theirs and not only pay attention to what they saying but influence it.

Many companies have approached this with a top-down mindset…Here are our values, here is our brand promise, please embrace it, here are some incentives. I think that is not enough, especially with the proliferation of social media and other generational trends where employees are looking for different forms of engagement.

I don’t think that BestBuy employees are racists, it was just a mistake. But I am using the story to highlight a point – the need for a closer connection between employees and the brand.

The New York times published an article titled “Share the Moment and Spread the Wealth” where they talk about the importance of sharing content by leveraging influencers in social media platforms and how Internet sharing companies like AddThis and ShareThis have been growing lately. It concludes that this trend may cause friction on the Internet Industry as “search engine optimizer” firms like Google compete with these “social media optimizer” firms. And posts a question to discuss if and/or how people will share smaller bits of content. Also, I read an article in the last edition of Fast Company, titled “How much are you worth to Facebook?”, which talks about embracing  content sharing by giving incentives to people to share content, all this supported by technology like Lotame that helps you target influencers based on behavioral data.

I think that both articles are approaching it the wrong way and I don’t agree with their position for moral reasons. Human beings have personal relationships and professional relationships that many times overlap with each other, but there is alway one governing relationship when it comes to trust.  If the solution to monetize social media is by muddling the waters and introducing money to relationships based on trust and friendship, I think we are evolving against core values of a healthy society. But, who am I to say that?. However,  I think if that were to be the future or next evolution of social media and online social behavior we would face a world with closer and smaller networks built on trust and friendship, which will co-exist with in larger social networks. The tools exist today, Facebook has some if you want to tightly manage your social networks. The need exist today, it is just not massive yet. The question is then, what are we marketers going to do as we face tighter and tighter communities that find ways to protect themselves from marketing messages and advertising? I think the solutions must come from firms truly living their brands and their identity, where employees, customers, partners, suppliers, and other industry related groups pass the word, share the content.

The key is that the content must fit within their social activities – not easy for certain companies. I think that the ability to constantly produce content innovation that is  tied to brand values and that is real will help firms find and retain loyal customers/clients.

I think that large organizations have approached it by sourrounding themselves with (hiring) highly  creative people from prestigious ad agencies. This approach makes sense for me because these agencies have the expertise to craft very innovative campaigns, and although one may think that they don’t have the proper knowledge of the client’s culture, product, market, etc. their clients may them humongous amounts of money for the them to research and learn all the need to do to create outstanding campaigns. However, with the proliferation of social media not only as a set of tools and technologies but as a social behavior phenomenon, companies are embracing new sources of ideas such as their own customers. There are many examples of this, one of the latest ones is Unilever.

But, how can small and medium firms compete and leverage new social media practices to effectively compete and win?

They can’t afford paying creative directors from well known ad agencies to spend hundreds of hours researching about their company, culture, products, competitors, customers, etc to then come up with super creative and cool campaigns that they can’t afford to run on the expensive media recommended and with the frequency needed to have an impact.  Small and medium firms must be resourceful and the answer is within themselves. They can leverage all the knowledge, ideas, social and professional networks, and passion that is within their employees, partners, customers, investors and even suppliers to come up with the most creative and innovative campaigns ever.  That is the core of social media and the Web 2.0, it is the collaboration in the creation.

If you are a small or medium firm and your are wondering how to innovate in your marketing programs, you may have the answer sitting next to you.

I have been networking and focusing on business development, well last night I met this guy from Colombia, Dario, an entrepreneur full of passion, ideas and energy. The conversation took us to talk about wine and I kept thinking about business opportunities related to Chilean wine and how they are leveraging new media and social media to market their wines to the US  consumers. Long story short, there are great opportunities there, but this morning I run into this video that makes me proud to be Chilean…and makes me hungry for “un asado con ensalada chilena” that I may just eat that tonight.

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE

The alternatives one has when facing a  longer wait than expected at a doctor’s office are only a few; reading those old magazines, watching the TV, sending text messages or checking emails on your iPhone…not much for more than 4 hours.  What do you do?  answer the poll to the right of this post.

There are some good news though, some are trying new ideas such as restaurant-style pagers.

What else do you do when you have to wait? add your comments below.

I think it is going to be a week of many learns for me. I have always sustained the theory that to be a successful entrepreneur you must be a good sales man and I have never considered myself a sales person. I have never done it and never wanted to learned it, but I took the plunge into entrepreneurship knowing that I was going to face many challenges and unknowns. Well, here is the first one – Selling. Believe it or not, I am looking forward to it.

Y.E. Yang, the first Asian golf player to win a major, The PGA Championship, said yesterday after beating Tiget Woods “since I was playing with Tiger, I might as well have the fun of my life”.  Tom Watson, not the great golfer, but IBM’s founder and CEO between 1920 and 1950 said that “Nothing Happen Until a Sales Is Made”.

I am going to listen to the words of wisdom from Tom and the words of joy from Y.E Yang.  I am going to have the best time ever selling what I know will change the live of many people who have been waiting for too long…

Chao

I was marked in my life by the experiences I shared with my friends during my high school years, probably like many of you. I spent most of those days playing Rugby (Koala’s was the name of the team) with great guys that thought me many things, amongst those the value of team work, hard work, confidence, humility, perseverance, smart decision making, loyalty and most importantly friendship. We accomplished great things together and I will always be thankful of all of them.  They are too many to mention, but I want to name a few (forgive me if I did not mention your name, but you are in my heart) so here we go: Gato, Mono Barrientos, Mono Pena,  Moni, Sopapo, Waldo, Raul Aguayo, Fidji,  Maya, Wander, Toto (los tripode…ja) Jaimito, Arcaya, Regalin, Cano, Tote, Chicho, Foli, Marcelo Pino, Casanova, Ivo, Chino Flores, Cone, y el huevo Ponce.

Now that I am embarking in a new venture in my life to start my own business with Dwamian I know that I am going to meet new people, make new friends and work with many great coleagues. And I know that if I apply what I learned with the Koala’s I will be successful.

I miss you all,

Comments in English and Spanish are welcome.

Comentarios en Espanol y en Ingles son bienvenidos.