Last week, I attended the eMetrics conference in Alexandria, VA. Yes, for once a local conference…meaning no flying time. This one was a little bit different for me, as it was totally focused on Analytics and Metrics, rather than search, but was still very worthwhile.

Unfortunately, due to a busy schedule here, I was only able to attend a few sessions, but those that I did attend were enjoyable and informative. If you’d like to read my write-ups on these sessions that I did over on Li Evans of Key Relevance‘s blog, here are the links:

• eMetrics – Navigating a University Website
• eMetrics – The View from the CMOs office

…and, if you were interested in the answer to the question of how many adult conference attendees you can fit in the back of a standard taxi…

Jim Sterne, Mike Grehan, Simon Heseltine & Andrea

On October 6th, I’ll be speaking at SMX-East on the topic of Buzz Monitoring in the “Search and Reputation Management” session, 3:45 – 5pm in New York City. If you’d like to attend (there are 30 or so other sessions besides mine) and you’ve not booked your ticket for this conference yet, then you can use the discount code smxspeak when registering to save $150 off the cost of a new registration.

On October 28th, in San Jose, CA, there’ll be a new event called BlogWell.  We won’t be speaking at this.  But, that’s because the 8 speakers are all senior people in charge of social media at large corporation, such as Cisco, Graco, The Home Depot, Intel, Kaiser Permanente, UPS, Walmart, and Wells Fargo. So, for the minimal price of $200, you get to hear case studies, how to get started, how to keep the ball rolling, and best practices.

Moving on to December, both Joy and I will be speaking at the Specialized Information Publishers Association’s (SIPA) annual online marketing conference. I’ll be talking about all aspects of Reputation Management, and Joy will be covering Analytics. I’ve actually been on the planning committee for this conference, so to see it grow from the first meeting to now being a fully scheduled event – with great speakers from major companies (AOL, Cisco, Marketing Sherpa, Forrester Research, etc) – is absolutely fantastic.

So, if you’d like to attend this show, we’ll be in Las Vegas from December 8-10, with a really good hotel rate of only $119 per night at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino.

There are few places where I feel more stupid than in an auto parts store.  Because…when I am in an auto parts store that means that there is something that is VERY basic in my car that needs fixing.

I hate knowing that everyone in the store knows more about everything in the store than me.  And I hate not having any idea of how much things should cost.

As I stood at the counter of the NAPA auto parts store this morning, trying to figure out how to purchase a gas cap to replace the one I lost, it occurred to me that many people feel the same way about finding a digital agency as I do about buying auto parts.

SEO, PPC, Social Media, and Analytics are topics that are rich with jargon and self-proclaimed experts who want you to think that there is no way that ordinary people could be successful and that the only way to be successful is to hire someone to do all the work (e.g. outsource it to them).

After many years in the working in the industry, from traditional agencies, to consultancies, to an analytics provider, I know this is not the case.  So, just like a good auto part store will help you find the tools you need, take the intimidation out of a foreign situation, and explain what you need in plain English – so should a good digital agency.

So, if you need a gas cap, I can’t recommend NAPA auto parts highly enough.  Not only did the gas cap cost less than $7 (which I assume is a good price), but the salesperson did not even make fun of me when I asked the difference between the locking and the regular gas cap.  He kindly explained to me that, ‘Well, the locking gas cap….locks.’

If you need a good digital agency, contact us – we can explain to you how your current campaigns are doing and train you on how to do better.

After the soaking everyone received on day 1 of Search Camp, thanks to Hurricane Hanna crashing the party, day 2 was a lovely, warm day. Now as to whether the weather, religious observances, partying from the night before, or the opening Eagles game of the season was to blame, attendance was lighter in the morning sessions, although by the afternoon it did seem to build up a little.

The first session I attended was… well… the one I was presenting on Local Search. This session was actually helped by the light attendance, as some slight A/V glitches meant that we all had to gather around my laptop to see the slides (yes, I know, slides at an unconference, but when you’re talking about specific websites, I think that you need to show screenshots to illustrate the points). My session ended a little early, so I was able to catch the tail end of Kim Krause Berg‘s presentation on Usability.

After that I hit Beth Harte‘s “Is Email Marketing dead?” presentation. The biggest takeaway from her session was that email isn’t dead, but you have to be careful how you manage your campaigns, she listed her 7 deadly email marketing sins

1. failing to test in multiple email clients
2. failing to spam check the copy
3. putting hurdles in the way of unsubscribing
4. Neglecting to maintain the list’s invalid addresses
5. Becoming complacent
6. sending non-relevant content
7. most importantly, emailing a user without their permission
8. failing to track the effectiveness of your email through an analytics program

ok, so I threw in a bonus sin

After lunch at the Temple University student cafeteria, it was back to the presentations, where I attended sessions by Geoff “I don’t need a powerpoint” Livingston on “Blogging for Business”, and Kevin Ryan on “The Past, Present and Future of Search”.

For the penultimate session, I presented to a fairly large crowd on “Social Networking and Social Search”, which raised some good questions from the audience on how to engage in these networks, and how to identify which ones to spend time on. (if you want the answers you should have been there Ok, the answers are honestly and transparently in a non-spammy way, and it really depends on your niche and where your stakeholders currently are).

My final session was an Entrepeneur site clinic with Frank Watson. We walked through a site, with the owner, talking about the various issues he was currently having, the issues he didn’t know he was currently having, and the issues he’s going to hit.

All in all, I’d have to say from the feedback that I’ve heard that SearchCamp Philly was a hit, and plans are already startig to fall into place for the follow up next year.

On Saturday, the combined PodCamp Philly / SearchCamp Philly (pcphilly08) conference started.  I’d been asked to speak at 4 presentations (1 on Saturday and 3 on Sunday).  The conference kicked off with the news that it had raised over 5K for the  Science Leadership Academy.

The first session I attended was Beth Harte who spoke on “Managing your SEM on a Budget”.  For some, this session was their first experience with an ‘unconference’ where the audience is encouraged to participate.  Rather than just being lectured to, they can ask questions and offer advice – sometimes giving new information to the presenter.

The next session was Geoff Livingston talking about the “Difference between PR & Social Media.”  He started this presentation off by immediately involving the audience by asking marketers to raise their hands.  Then, by asking the PR people to raise theirs.  His next question was for the PR people that didn’t identify themselves as marketers, why didn’t they think that way?  PR is a subset of marketing.

He then moved into a discussion of Apple, with the initial statement that “Apple engages in PR not social media.”

To engage in social media:

• they would have to give up control
• they would have the issue of too many conversations to monitor and respond to
• they’d have to be more authentic
• they’d have to be transparent
• they would have to network and commit the resources to do so

He closed his session with the quote: “Social Media is going to bring PR to it’s fricking knees, it may take 10 years – but it’s going to happen.”

Next up was Wil Reynolds with a presentation on “How not to get ripped off by SEO firms,”… although a more apt title would have been “Should you do SEO in-house or outsource?”  This session had a lot of energy, but ran for the full hour in presentation mode.  Meaning, there wasn’t the level of interaction with the audience of the other sessions.

Run from an SEO firm if:

• they cold call you
• they don’t have good rankings
• they try to sell you on crappy tools
• they don’t proactively offer to analyze traffic and conversions from organic search
• they only offer rankings reports
• they are heavy on the scare tactics – Google penalties
• they claim that they use proprietary software for simple tasks – that free tools already exist for
• they ‘dabble’ in search – not a core competency
• they demand a retainer for you to keep your rankings

Personally, I’d also add in:

• they set up a new url for you and don’t clearly state that you own that url
• they have their own link farm that they claim ‘works for all their other clients’
• they won’t give you a clear answer on whether they outsource their work, and which parts

Will Reynolds and I did a Small Business site review next, where we walked through 2 audience submitted sites to give them advice on do’s and don’ts.

Finally, Howard Greenstein ran the “Twitter: Are we just drinking the Kool Aid?” session, where people talked about the benefits of twitter, and for those not on, their concerns.

Heading of the conference, we all ran into Hanna, or to give her her full name ‘Hurricane Hanna,’ who decided to drop the contents of the sky directly on the attendees.  We may have been wet through, but our spirits weren’t dampened.  We’re all looking forward to a great Day 2 (although I still have 3 sessions left to present…).

So, you’ve done some buzz monitoring, and you’ve found out that on a fairly well known forum in your field – which is visited by your customers and potential customers – someone has trashed your company / product / service offering / customer services / CEO / etc.

What do you do next?

There are a several approaches you can take:

1. The Ostrich approach. If you stick your head in the sand, it’ll obviously go away… right?  Wrong. Not responding shows that you’re either not listening, or that you consider the conversation beneath you.
2. The Bull in a China Shop approach. You blunder into the conversation without really listening, disparaging everything the user said as wrong.  You don’t become part of the conversation – trying to just shut down anything negative.
3. The Cuckoo approach. You sneak into the forum under false pretenses - i.e. pretending to be a satisfied customer – rather than disclosing that you’re representing the company itself.
4. The Worker Bee. For whatever reason (corporate policy, etc), the company doesn’t respond, but employees in their spare time do. It shows a willingness from some in the company, but as it’s not ‘official’ – there’s an element of the Ostrich in there.
5. The Labrador approach. Open, honest, and trustworthy. Your response states that it’s from the company. You reply in an honest manner, stating when you’re wrong and when the poster is wrong, and suggest ways to correct the issue if further steps need to be taken. Then, you actually follow through.
6. The Weasel approach. As per the Labrador approach, except there’s no follow through, any promises made of improvements, or changes to products or processes are empty and / or false.  This will eventually be seen as such, which will then undermine the validity of your future statements.

So, which animal do you want your company to be? Obviously, in an ideal world, we’d all say Labrador.  That’s the intent that most people have when they start out responding to issues. But, when emotions or corporate policy get involved, that Labrador starts to morph into one of the other creatures.  Most notably the Bull emerges when dealing with people either just trying to get a rise out of you (Trolls, or maybe even competitors disguised as Trolls) or people who have decided that they really don’t like your company – and nothing will change their mind.

If your company forbids any social network interaction, then they’re going to be the Ostrich.  There is also the potential for employees to be Worker Bees or, if the policy would make them fear for their jobs, Cuckoos.

So, in order to be that faithful Labrador, you need to make sure that you are honest, open and transparent (hmm, maybe I should have used a Paris Hilton analogy, since we can get HOT out of those 3).

Sure, you can still have a corporate policy that prevents you from saying certain things or responding to certain issues, but be honest and open about that too, and people will understand.

If you’d like to hear more on the topic of Reputation Management, there are still a few spots left for our 2nd Wednesday Webinar, which this week is on this very topic, so sign up for our Reputation Management Webinar here.

Unless you belong to Manassas Community Toastmasters, your next best chance to hear me, Simon Heseltine, talk is going to be online at our Webinar Wednesday sessions.

On Wednesday, August 6th (in 2 short days) – I’ll be presenting a webinar on Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC), on Wednesday August 13th I’ll be talking about Reputation Management and your business, and on August 20th the topic will be Blogging and Social Media for your business.

The price doesn’t reflect the quality of these presentations, as they’ll all be free.  So, jump on over to register for them now, as space is limited.

If you miss the webinars, or you quite simply prefer the in-person thing, we offer personalized training sessions for your company.  Or, I will be presenting at 3 sessions at Search Camp Philly in September (6th – 7th), and at the Specialized Information Publishers Association (SIPA) mid-year marketing conference in Las Vegas in December (8th – 10th). There will probably be a few other opportunities to hear me speak in between, but none that are confirmed as of yet.

Photo by Tamar Weinberg

Last week, I gave a brief introduction to Twitter.  So this week, I thought I’d do a write up on creating a Twitter profile, and what you do once you have one.

First things first, head over to the Twiter sign-up page and type in the user name that you’d like to have. As you’re typing, you’ll find out if it’s available or not. Once you have something you like, type in the password for the account, and you’re good to go.

Now that you have an account, it’s time to make it look like you’re a real person. The first step is to enter a profile picture (Settings -> Picture). While any picture will do, if it’s a personal account, it’s probably a good idea to have a picture of you. If it’s a company account with multiple authors, or if your brand is more important than you personally, then a brand logo is fine. Just remember that it’ll get shrunk down to fit the standard Twitter avatar size (see below), so make sure it’ll scale.

Now that you look like a real person, it’s time to enter some information about you. Go to Settings -> Account and enter your Website, bio, location, etc. If you’d like you can also go to Settings -> Design to redesign the background of your twitter page.

Now that you feel like a real person (to someone viewing your account), it’s time to build out the account. Take a look around for people that you want to listen to, and add them to your following list (you can start with the EndlessPlain twitter account). Look at who they follow and see if they’re people that you want to follow.

Soon you’ll have a nice list of 100+ people that you’re following. Some will follow you back, just because you’re following them. Some will follow you back if they know you, others won’t… or at least won’t until you engage them.

Follow conversations that they have and reply to tweets when you have something to say. They’ll get notified that they have a reply, and they’ll see it even if they’re not following you. This can lead to them following you, or replying to you, which then pushes your name out to all their followers, which has the potential for some of them to check you out and add you.

Just replying isn’t a great strategy though, you do need to add your own unique content, show that there’s a real person out there. Note: Unique content does not equal spamming your followers with continual blog posting notifications, or with every minute detail on your daily life.

Decide on your boundaries, your audience limitations, if you’re going to be sharing some personal details, what do you want clients that subscribe to your feed / your boss / the internet to be able to see? Do you need to go to private mode (which means that you get to approve anyone that follows you)? How active are you going to be? Just remember that as you add more followers, they’re going to expect you to maintain whatever level of activity and quality they’ve come to expect.

…You’re supposed to say “Wednesday”… you know… so I can say “Webinar!” and then… Oh forget it.

Throughout the month of August, Serengeti Communications will present a weekly, one-hour Webinar every Wednesday (say that five times fast). We’ll be covering various Web 2.0 and marketing strategies each week and helping your business get just a little bit better at using that new-fangled thing called the “Internet.” (All the cool kids say it’s going to be the next “sliced bread.”)

So, what are these Webinars going to cover? I’m glad you asked.

And, all this for only twenty-seven easy payments of nothing. But wait, there’s more…call right now and you can get your whole team to attend for nothing. That’s right just twenty-seven easy payments of nothing. That’s nothing for you, nothing for your co-worker, and the extra special low price of nothing for your great-uncle Ted.

So, invite your co-workers, your bosses, and obscure relatives to The Wednesday Webinar Series. Operators (i.e. Stacy) are standing by so Register Today.

Whoops… wrong Flash. The big search news from Google, Yahoo and Adobe is that those two search engines are now able to pull all text from Adobe flash (swf) files. So if there is text within the file it can be indexed and found through a subsequent search.

What are the implications? Well, for starters it means that I need to make changes to my SEO training slides where I state that Flash should only be used sparingly if at all (although I do believe that making Flash readable in some manner this year was an ADA requirement). It also means that you may see a shift in the search results as they roll this out, as it’s not a new form of flash that’s being indexed, it’s all flash that’s already out there. The difference is that there’s a new flash parser (reader) that Google and Yahoo are taking advantage of.

One other implication is that any urls in the flash will be crawled, which could result in flash files being stuffed with links in the near future.

So should you rush out and “flash up” your site? Well, since we don’t know yet how well this is going to work, I’d advise caution, plus you also need to think about the usability of your site. Does flash present the look and feel that you feel represents your organization best?  How will the search engines handle the state of the Flash file?  Will they be able to take you to a particular location in the Flash file, or only to the start?  What about sites that are entirely flash based?  Will everything just point you to the first page?  These are just a few of the many things to think about before making the Flash leap.

What I can say is that this is a good move for Adobe, as by giving over 85% of the search market the capability to index Flash, they’ve removed a fairly large barrier for using that format.