Archive for February, 2008

I’ll be hopping on I64 and heading to the Social Media Louisville meeting at Ramsi’s Cafe tomorrow night. Hope to see you there!

WHO: Social Media Club Louisville

WHAT: February Gathering

WHEN: 7 p.m. until 9 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2008

WHERE: Ramsi’s Cafe on the World, 1293 Bardstown Road, Louisville

WHY: To share, learn and grow as social media experts both individually and together

About the meet-up:

Three members of the group have graciously volunteered to lead our discussion, which will focus on selling social media to clients, bosses and CEOs and the public, media and more. Brian Wallace of NowSourcing.com, a full-service social media and reputation management consulting firm, will share his thoughts and expertise on pitching social media to clients. Clay Marshall, a social media specialist with Digital Business Solutions (DBS), will tackle the topic of convincing bosses and CEOs to buy in and Rick Redding of The Ville Voice (and LEO columnist) will offer his insights on selling social media through to the media, advertisers, media buyers, friends, co-workers and more.

PS: It looks like the SMG was covered in Louisville Business First - on the front page. Nice Job Guys.

Webpronews did a good Interview 

I just learned the source: Modern Mechanix

I have six professional heroes presently - and I don’t mind sharing. In random order, they are:

• Seth Godin - For telling me to quit dead ends and focus on being the best.
• Edward Tufte - Guided me into information design, recognizing and avoiding chartjunk, and telling stories visually.
• Jakob Nielson - For telling it like it is even when it’s totally unpopular.
• Richard Florida - For drawing attention to what drives creative people.
• Steve Wozniak - For his approachable demeanor as well as the desire to spread knowledge.
• Steve Jobs - For his relentless passion to innovate.

I’ve met Florida, Tufte, Jobs and Wozniak. If only for a moment (they wouldn’t remember me.) I had no trouble making the list above. It came to me in 3 minutes. Each have contributed through a career of hard work with a real passion to improve things.

Have any heroes emerged in the SEO world? Should we expect it? As I sat in a meeting recently all eyes were on me to save the business. My answers about content creation, social media, and slow, steady growth were not superhero answers. Some are looking for the cape crusader to save old-school companies with new marketing feats of awe. People start looking for a mild-mannered SEO to burst from the phone booth and fix the problem. I don’t know why.

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A quick search of Google News shows dozens of cases where homeowners, business owners, and community code enforcement officials are embroiled in battles over improper building permits. In many cases, the builder is forced to tear down the structure - at great expense. Communities put permitting procedures in place so that an even-handed process is applied and ensure safety, prevent shoddy workmanship, and preserve home values. You must stand in line, fill out forms, and pay fees when your project is already complex enough, they reason. So lots of people try to get around it, and some succeed. Houses crack. Fires start. Communities get uglier.

In the website construction industry, we can draw a parallel between SEO advice and building permitting. Pressures placed on any web development project can cause marketing goals to be ignored or at least diluted. The builder doesn’t have to “live” with the results. They get paid and can easily vanish independent of the commercial success of the venture. The SEO gets called to come fix the mess. But the mess is already sealed in the walls. The cracking foundation has already been built upon.

Many companies invest heavily in their web design and construction, and then call on SEO experts to come in after the fact to make suggestions to help traffic flow. Unfortunately this often results in bad news. The website was not designed with search in mind, and you have to re-build it if you want organic traffic to flow. This is the equivalent to being forced to tear down that addition to your home, or that big warehouse building you just put together. You’re stuck. The expense to rebuild it is too high. The expense not to build it is too high (paid search.) I’d like to make the plea to the business community to consider thinking about SEO earlier.

I propose that people involved in web development look to the construction industry for guidance. Involving an SEO/SEM consultant before, during, and after your web development plans are in place can be a money-making proposition. I think that in some ways this is like permitting your building project. In my opinion, SEO/SEM experts should be project managers for any web development project where marketing the site is a core business directive. Decisions will be made with the social, search, and traffic goals take center stage, not the aesthetic “high” of the site being finished and wowing a committee. (more…)

AT&T Announced today that over 12 Million AT&T and Starbucks customers will get free Wifi at over 7000 locations across the USA.

Beginning this spring, Starbucks Card holders can enjoy up to two hours of free Wi-Fi service per day at Starbucks locations offering Wi-Fi access, while more than 12 million qualifying AT&T broadband and AT&T U-verse^SM Internet customers will have unlimited free access to the Wi-Fi service. In addition, more than 5 million of AT&T’s remote access services business customers will be able to access Wi-Fi service at Starbucks locations. AT&T will soon extend the benefits of Wi-Fi at Starbucks to its wireless customers. (more…)

… my column from Business Lexington this month…

With increased Internet use and widespread broadband connectivity, the shift from old to new media is influencing the way people participate in elections, according to a recent report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Not since John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon debated in front of 70 million new television watchers in 1960 have we seen such a change in political media. A wave of changes brought on by Web sites, blogs and social media is being led by the 18- to 30-year-old demographic and is spreading to reach Americans of all ages and backgrounds.

The number of Americans who received political information using the Internet in 2004 was around 13 percent. In the 2008 survey, that number had doubled. In the same period, younger voters using the TV as a major source dropped from 75 percent to 60 percent, while the percent using the Web soared from 21 percent to 46 percent. Daily newspapers have held steady for most of the population, but those under 30 use them half as much as they did in 2004.

And people are getting more active. The system got a taste of this during Congressman Ron Paul’s 2007 campaign, where the Internet’s power to mobilize grass roots efforts (if not votes) was convincingly demonstrated. A powerful, virally energized operation emerged that may form the template for an entirely new way of campaigning. Competitors scrambled to take note of Congressman Paul’s campaign tactics as he broke single-day fundraising records and went from silence to viable effort in the shortest time ever seen.

As impressive as it was, few think Web-based participatory media such as bloggers will move voters to the polls on their own. But the effect on regional, grassroots campaigning is beginning to show its strength. This “final mile” blogger-to-activist effect uses the Internet for efficiency but eventually depends on old-fashioned campaigning like rallies, petitions and meet-ups to actually affect primaries and elections. As was demonstrated, decentralized and passionate young voters, savvy in use of social networks like MySpace and Facebook, began to reach individuals in their community who pick up signs and knock on doors for the first time in their lives.

The “Big 3″ phenomenon lives on today’s Internet, but with a big twist. The largest election news sites include MSNBC, CNN and Yahoo News, together earning 54 percent of all traffic. Unlike television, however, the remaining 46 percent exist in a “long tail” with hundreds of others, from the Drudge Report to Youtube to individual blogs.

One of the most impressive Web sites to emerge is Political Base a brain-child of CNET co-founder Shelby Bonnie and recently joined by Kentucky political veteran and former BluegrassReport.com blogger Mark Nickolas. “We’re trying to capitalize on an electorate that appears energized to change the system by giving them a place where they can learn the issues, explore multiple viewpoints, engage in debate, and mobilize others around their ideas,” explained Nickolas.

On many sites, participation changes conversations from “one to many” into “many to many,” often keeping controversial issues “alive” long after mainstream media has moved on. Watchdogs spot and post candidate inconsistencies and gaffes before campaign managers have a chance to do anything (and long after they’d rather forget.) Last summer, Senator George Allen, a Virginia Republican, was caught calling a college student of Indian descent a “macaca.” The student, who was videotaping, subsequently placed the tape on Youtube, where it was viewed over 250,000 times and was partially blamed for Senator Allen’s defeat. (more…)