Copy Brighter

This week brought us two powerful new resources for link building: * Dutch SEO and link building expert, Wiep, released a survey of over 15 industry-recognized link building experts as Link Value Factors. This reports takes a cue from SEOmoz's Search Ranking Factors, which I call the "Rosetta Stone of SEO" because it offers many different perspectives and trusted opinions on the secret Google ranking algorithm. Wiep's report offers a panoramic perspective on assessing link potency and value. * Another top-notch Dutch SEO and Web developer, Joost de Valk, released the link analysis tool for Firefox. This is a superb tool for looking at backlink profiles of your own sites and your competitors and finding out which links have value. I'd consider both of these resources a "must" for anyone serious about SEO and link building. Enjoy!

I knew that the Digg user experience was sure to deteriorate when they agreed to let Microsoft serve their graphical ads, but I didn't know they'd allow advertisers to try and foist this type of deceptive blinking schlock on a relatively tech-savvy community:

I was really hoping this was some kind of joke. But sadly, it very clearly states that "This is not a joke." And it seems to run contrary to the spirit of Kevin Rose's promise:

It’s important to say that we’re as focused as ever on a great user experience. So, no dancing monkey ads, and the design will remain uncluttered.

Diggers used to love some of the ads on the site (e.g., Snorg Tees girls) and mention them frequently in the comments. Reddit is doing a little bit better at targeting their audience, and the community speaks up and gives feedback on the insulting ads. Diggers should do this too.

And advertising execs should know that deceptive, blinking "Free Laptop: Must Complete 6 Offers" banners erode social media users' confidence in a site's advertising much more than any short-term profit it could bring them.

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Once of the drawbacks of being a social media power user is that everything moves way too fast. You've got so many amazing stories streaming your way that you barely have time to read and enjoy them. Instead, you're forced to woof it all down: rush to vote on friends' picks and hustle to submit your Google News / RSS finds before someone else beats you to it. You're lucky if you get to partially scan most of it. Making "permanent" bookmarks in your browser can get messy, so the good people at Idea Shower have created Read It Later, a temporary bookmarking plugin for FireFox. When you see a story that you want to get back to later on, just right click on the link and select "Read This Link Later." The story then gets stashed in a convenient browser button for you to peruse later on. It also contains a feature for submitting and bookmarking your best finds to other social sites. Good stuff!

Sometimes the need to remove negative publicity is very real and overpowering:

In case you are victim of an unwarranted attack, or you need to overpower a pesky duplicate brand – here are some proven online reputation management tactics.

You'll Probably Need Links

Some articles suggest that online reputation management is easy. They say all you have to do is make a bunch of MySpace profiles and Squidoo lenses. If Bill Lumberg of Initech were an online reputation manager, he'd say, "Ummm..... yyyyeeeeeah...... Right."

Just making profiles might work for little-known brands or obscure personal names. But what if you're working on a nationally known company or famous person, and it's exceedingly difficult to rank for their name? What if the dirt is being dished out by multiple international news sites packing PR 9 domains? In these cases, you need to choose your profiles sites carefully, optimize the pages well, and point lots of good links at them. And you're gonna have to do this all discreetly, without attracting attention of the UGC site admins or making a dirty backlink profile in the search engines.
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If you're launching a new site and you are submitting it to some of the more reputable old & expensive web directories, you want to get as much anchor text bang for your $279.95 as possible. But most "reputable" directories will only link to your site by the "official" name, whatever that is. Before: So pick the right "official" name. Just make new graphic header for your site, and throw it up there for the one week that you submit it to the directories. If the site is for a real estate office called "HomeFinders Realty" you might just want to name it "Denver Real Estate, Inc." And change it back after you get accepted with juicy anchor text. After: In most cases, after they've charged your credit card for the link buy editorial review fee, they won't be double checking it anytime soon. Okay, some people might say this is a little bit grey hat... but I rationalize it by saying that if you are going to pay hundreds of dollars for an ad listing, you're entitled to (try and) get your money's worth with good, descriptive anchor text that doesn't mislead the search engines or users. And when that auto-billed $499.95 annual review comes around again, they are more than welcome to change it back– if they notice. Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe you’ve bought a carton of soy milk with a picture of a wind turbine on it. Or you get internet service from a company claims to be carbon neutral. It is marketing designed to bring up warm fuzzy feeling, unless you take a more skeptical view of carbon offsets.

Last week I went to a local environmental group discussion that was sponsored by Renewable Choice, a local carbon offset company. As we sat at a Nepali restaurant drinking beer and munching on papadums, two company representatives passed out pro-offset literature and moderated a lively discussion.

Most of the audience members who spoke up challenged the two company reps, grilling them questions that were difficult for them to answer. There was a pretense of politeness, but a palatable undercurrent of skeptical antagonism.

I’ll spare you the coverage of the pretense and principles. Here’s what I was able to “read between the lines” from conversation:

• Carbon offsets are intangible, even symbolic. When traced back to the source, the offset credits usually encourage climate protection that would have happened regardless of buying or selling of paper certificates.

• Carbon offsets are a “middle-man” business model, kind of like the charity telemarketing or multi-level marketing (MLM). An undisclosed cut of the profits goes to support the offset purveyors, and some of it is (hopefully) passed on to renewable energy infrastructure.

• High-carbon corporations like Pepsi and Whole Foods are some of the biggest buyers and fans of carbon offsets. Rather than take steps to actually reduce their carbon emissions and environmental impact, they carry on with business as usual and leverage the credits for advertising and PR to “green up” their image.

• Carbon offsets are sold to individuals and corporations at different rates, with no outside regulation. Some people question the integrity of the accounting.

• While most carbon offsets may not do much to reduce carbon or help the environment, they may be an easy first step that gets people thinking about carbon emissions and environmental issues. Some awareness is better than none. It’s a start.

• Some dubious companies have sold carbon offsets and gotten called out, blurring the line between green marketing and greenwashing. The stigma of this could harm more legitimate non-profit environmental action groups and causes.

After an hour of discussion with the environmentalists and carbon offset sellers, I felt like there was an inconvenient truth about carbon offsets. I’m not saying that all offsets are inherently questionable, but it feels to me like a symbolic/economic thing doesn’t really get to the root of the problem or leave the Earth any greener and pristiner than before.

I’m on the lookout for technologies and products that make a significant, direct difference. And I don’t want to get distracted.

A Wicked Social Buzz

I haven't been in the search marketing business for that long, but I'm definitely gravitating towards social media.

I find that creating content and participating in social web is significantly more stimulating than... say... making XML sitemaps, geeking out infront of WordTracker, or crafting copy with judicious use of the phrase "Alabama tax lien attorney." Watching the links, comments and votes pour in after a social campaign is up there with hitting a home run or the jackpot in Vegas. It triggers strong emotions and a massive rush of endorphins.

The buzz of brainstorming a massive social campaign and watching it spread is much stronger than watching the rankings incrementally improve during a manual link building campaign... it's a much bigger bang than modest pleasure of crafting a clever 301 redirect...

But Is It Sustainable?

Naturally, I'd love to make social media the main focus of my workday. But as a Capricorn, and I'm way too practical to just follow my bliss without any kind of business plan. As I think about how to take my social media skills to the next level, here's a few concerns that come to mind:

1. The ethics of SMM are blurry.

Is it OK to make a second account? Ask friends for votes? Buy votes or automate them? Write fake reviews? Recycle content? Bury the competition?

I generally try to swing straight, organic, white-hat and transparent-ish (I don't want anything coming back to haunt me)... but I'm aware that the pressures of client expectations and making profits (a.k.a. stayin' alive) can really stretch people's morals and ethics. And if you think Digg and Stumble are competitive now (in the absolute infancy of the genre) it's only going to get harder. 2007 is to social media what 1996 was to SEO.

Will we see teams of professional voters and commenters? Rampant payola and Multi-Level Voting (MLV)? Online reputation extortionists and protection rackets? Social media username and brand squatting ("MrBabyMan" is already registered. Please choose another name.')? Account brokers? Officially sponsored story submissions ("$2999 for express home page submission, subject to editorial review")?

2. SEO is steady. SMM is volatile.

Just about any website can be helped out by solid SEO. Search algorithms are mechanical and more "impartial". In contrast, social media success depends entirely on the tastes, opinions and politics of people - and their feelings at the moment. Some brands are loved as "way cool" and others are poo-poo'ed as pariahs (i.e., Mircosoft's Zune's "Welcome to the Social" campaign ). You can give things your best spin, but ultimately you have no control over the outcome. The audience decides... and they'll either get a kick out of your story, or they'll kick the snot out of it. And if the sysadmins decide there's anything fishy about your account or voting history... GAME OVER.

3. Social media marketing can be hard on the nerves. The highs are spectacular, but the lows really suck. Every time the sever goes down from a traffic spike, the mob revolts and smashes you and your content with seditious smacktalk, and the burry brigade starts taunting you with libelous comments... it's enough to trigger a heart attack. Especially if weeks of hard work have gone into a project and an expectant client is sitting there, biting their nails right along with with you. I've gotten myself so worked up over social media campaigns that I needed crack open a beer at the end of the day to calm my nerves. I don't want to end up actually ordering that Xanax and Tramadol stuff that always shows up in the comment spam.

4. So many sites, so many profiles, so little time. Technology is a harsh mistress. The only thing my iPhone did for my life was seduce me into spending 15 hours a day online, rather than just 10 or 12. Nowadays, I find myself checking on my Reddit stories while hiking (!).

It's getting harder to find original content that hasn't been submitted already. More time consuming to post it to all the sites that are popping up, keep up with what is going on, AND find time to update 5 different blogs.

Some people have referred to social media promotion as "the new link building" because it's so massive and overwhelming a task. New social media account consolidator sites like Fuser are trying to make access to your Facebook and MySpace-type accounts available in one place, but the social landscape and user base are growing faster than tools and widgets designed to keep up with it. Sooner or later... we'll have to adopt 30 hour days in order to get it all done.

Social Media Career Ideas

I think that becoming a social media professional is possible and sustainable. But it hasn't yet evolved into recognized business marketing role yet... so we'll have to take define this emerging profession and market ourselves aggressively.

Here's a few ideas on how you can start to do that:

• Become an expert a seeding and growing online social communities for corporate or non-profit sites. Many well-funded companies are throwing up massive web infrastructure, but they don't have a clue how to kick things off socially. You can use the same interaction skills you've sharpened on forums, blogs and Facebook... where there is a growing, commercial market for it.

• Work with startups. Here in Boulder, there are tons of tech startup companies with venture capital and solid developer talent. What they seem to be lacking, in most cases, is someone with serious social networking influence and viral skills to make their concept popular. They spend $2,000,000 developing and launching a site. For promotion, they send out a couple of electronic press releases and do a half-baked Blogspot site. Then... while woefully carrying the desks out of the office, they wonder why their site never "caught on."

• Seek cool brands that could be leveraging social media, but aren't. (Think: surfing companies, solar technology, DRM-free audio downloads.) Offer to help them out, and show them how they could benefit by participating in the social web. It's probably on the back of their minds already, but they don't even know what – or who – to ask. You might literally be the answer to their prayers.

• Try pitching some traditional PR firms (if you've got boatloads of patience and professional tact). Work for them and help them understand how the Web is changing the world of communications. Help them realize these are no longer the days of pompous-sounding press releases and licking stamps. Teach them how to make "social media relations" a part of what they do.

What Do You Think?

If you've read down this far, you're also probably pretty excited about social media. I'd love to get your take on things: Do you think social media marketing can be a viable business and career?

What kind of issues, problems and potentials do you see with it?

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Today I am joining 16,000 other bloggers on Blog Action Day to speak out on a topic that directly affects all of us: the environment. In addition to my monthly contributions, I pledge to donate 100% of this year's ad earnings on my other blog to Environment Colorado, a local action group that is putting pressure on the government to get movin' on clean energy adoption and incentives.

I was raised with respect for nature.

As a kid, I was in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, so I got to go camping every month. In college, I further honed my wilderness skills at outdoor festivals and Rainbow gatherings, where I learned how to live on the land and leave no trace. My first professional job was on the JET program in deep rural Japan. There was nothing to do in my country town besides swim, hike, climb volcanoes, and surf - and I found great peace and refuge in nature.

After Japan, I spent 2 years on a personal vision quest / RPG adventure... backpacking and camping across Asia. From high glaciers in Western Nepal, to horribly polluted cities and devastated forests in Indonesia, to uninhabited coral-ringed islands near Burma, and in outback bush of South Australia... I got to deeply experience some of the most pristine and some of the most disgustingly damaged ecosystems on the planet.

I saw how quickly the third world was developing, and how many BILLIONS of people were craving a fossil-fuel and plastic powered Western lifestyle... way more people than the Earth can possible support at our current level of energy and disposable technology.

I realize my nature and travel experiences were much more than an adventure or an indulgence – they were an initiation. Last year, when I was shocked to find out my friend Chelsea Gerlach was arrested and sentenced to 9 years in prison for radical environmental action (arson) – I felt the call to action. I decided that what I wanted out of my life was to master the science of marketing (affecting mass-scale changes in behavior) and find a green technology "killer app" that will seriously reduce carbon and environmental damage... not just a "feel good" indulgence... and use my marketing powers push it through to adoption.

I've been immersing myself in copywriting, SEO and social media with the sincere hope it will allow me to play a more powerful role in preserving the environment and leaving the Earth in decent condition.

I want to look back on this life and know what I did professionally really mattered. Not only for my fellow man and my ancestors, but for the corals and the squirrels, and for the bees and the trees... who can't do anything about it... like I can.

That's what the focus of my trip is going to be, from now on out. Thanks for reading, and thanks for contemplating what your part in the game of life is going to be...

I'll be back to social media and green marketing coverage, shortly!

Recently the Digg interface got an extreme makeover. There are now more social features on the site, like photo albums and public "shout" messages. And the new system has been designed to make reciprocal voting on friends' stories far less convenient. Instead of blasting down a list of your friends' submissions ("Digg! Digg! Digg! Digg!")... Uzi style... it now takes some real mouse-clickin' effort. It takes so much patience that some people are submitting less, and others are ditching personal politics and "friends of convenience" and only voting on stories that they actually like. While many of the hardcore Diggers complained that the site is ruined, I think the changes are probably making the site fairer and more accessible for the average user. And I think it has (marginally) improved the diversity and quality of the content that hits the home page. The interface changes make it far more time consuming to maintain a Digg power account. Before you could maintain relationships with people by checking in once a day and spending 10 or 20 minutes on the site. Now it takes more like 30 to 90 minutes a day just to vote on friends' stories, and you need to check in two or three times a day because you can only see three pages of your friends' recent submissions. Thankfully, there's a way Digg through your friends' submissions much quicker. If you've got a Mac, the Dugg widget for your dashboard is highly recommended.

Just hit the F12 key, and click on the tiny "i" in the upper right corner of the widget. For the "Digg Topic" select "friends' submitted" and put your username in below:

Click "Done" and then you can see a list of your friends' stories. Click on them and it will open up the story in your Web browser (in tabs) All it takes to Digg a story is a quick: F12 + Click-Click rather than: Opening up a browser, going to Digg.com, (maybe) logging in, clicking "Friends' Activity," clicking "Submissions," then click the story, then click to Digg it, then click the back button. I personally find the Dugg widget really makes voting quicker and more enjoyable. You can check in on your stories and your friends' stories several times a day with minimal effort. The only downside it is gets kind of "messy" by opening dozens of browser tabs while Digging a long list of stories...

This week I've been doing some work for a national brand that is suffering from a serious reputation crisis. Some customers think that they are misleading, and they have said their piece on high-ranking blogs and watchdog sites. The company execs are shaking in their loafers, incredibly humbled at how much power a couple of TypePad bloggers and home-spun websites with crappy graphics have. The illusion that they could do anything they wanted while keeping total control over their brand evaporated pretty darn quick. Last night, I came across an example of how not to handle a reputation problem online from Video Professor:

The video tutorial publisher recently sued a bunch of anonymous online commenters who said they got ripped off on a consumer watchdog forum. For instance, a disgruntled user named "Bob" writes:

"After clicking on two offers for a trial I realized that I didn't want any part of this scam and tried to cancel. I thought this was the last I would hear from these people. They billed my credit card later for charges I never approved. I canceled with them and I'm still being billed. This is fraud and I want to see a class action lawsuit to put them out of business. They ought to put that guy in jail, not on TV. He is a crook."

First lesson, beware whenever you see the asterisk qualifier next to the word "Free." Next, go check out the mixed-bag of Google search results for Video Professor. If you believe the numerous online reviews, Video Professor engaged in some rather unsavory bait-and-switch and billing practices. If you believe the company, then they are the victim of a massive, malicious and carefully-cloaked anonymous slander campaign. You be the judge. The local paper found the company's lawsuit questionable and wrote about it last week. Soon the story got picked up tech blogs. Then it got posted to Digg, got made popular there, and it got filtered onto all kinds of news aggregators and other social sites. People started linking to the articles en masse, making the reputation wounds all the deeper, more permanent and more visible. Here's What NOT to Do, When Managing Your Online Reputation:

• Don't initially contact the offending site in writing to beg, bribe or threaten them into removing negative info. It's too easy to post it all up on the Web for everyone to see. Try contacting them by telephone, if possible.
• Beware of making a Wikipedia listing if the grievances against your client are substantial. It's very easy and common for people to add "criticism" subsection that anyone can contribute to, like in this article on Video Professor.
• Don't lash back at the criticism and make yourself look like an "evil jerk." If you do decide to respond, wait till you feel calm and do it with exceeding humility and tact.
• Resist the temptation towards the old-school tactic of threatening and filing lawsuits, as this often backfires. Many Diggers and bloggers embrace the culture of rage, and throughly enjoy dishing out vigilante justice on corporate villains and outing political and legal absurdities. It's their favorite way to flex power and "Save the world" with a few clicks of a keyboard. Just ask the man who sued the dry cleaners for $54,000,000 for ruining his pants.
• Beware of posting fake reviews or shilling. Experienced Web surfers and social media vigilantes will be able to spot you a mile away. If you must flog or post glowing reviews about yourself, at least give yourself a primer with Andy's excellent post on Fake Review Optimization (FRO).
• Don't try to cheat if you can't take the heat. You're sure to get busted on sites like Yelp, Rip Off Report, or Reddit (if you're a politician). Yeah, it's hard to make a living, especially as an entrepreneur, and the temptation to cut corners or employ sketchy business models is always there. People got away with all kinds of schemes and scams in the 70's, 80's or even 90's - when the flow of information was asymmetrical - but they don't work in the social media era! Ask Scientology.

Some of the A-list bloggers have written "comprehensive" guides to online reputation management, but I found them to be rather basic. The best single article I've found is Planet Ocean's excellent Online Reputation Management Guide. I've seen a lot of good results from making subdomains (like Microsoft) with good content on them, and I've seen profile pages on high-ranking social media sites with juicy links pointing at them (or hell, even 200 comment spams from .gov and .edu blogs) at get miraculous rankings. Perhaps the simplest and best advice on online reputation management comes from MC Hammer. In the social media era, buzz travels very fast and you can't be "too legit" enough. If you consistently make people mad, you really need to stop and examine your business practices. Then, do whatever you can to quickly make amends and douse the flames (see Apple's letter after the iPhone price dive). If you've done wrong (even inadvertently), swallow your pride and issue some apologies or refunds - it will probably be much cheaper than the damage negative buzz will do to your brand. Don't stoke up the sparks and turn them into fires, like Video Professor did. Cuz' the hammer can come down hard, and then it will really cost you.

Chorus "Too legit... Too legit to quit (hey...hey...) Too legit...too legit... Too legit to quit...(hey...) Too legit... Too legit to quit (too legit...) too legit... too legit to quit..""