Social media Automation

I thought I would write something about automation as I get many inquiries about this topic. What can be automated and what can not be automated online. My simplest answer is that everything can be automated. But most stuff shouldn’t be.

That’s why I LOVE spammers
Spammers usually look at vulnerabilities on the web and try to exploit them in any way possible. They automate as much as possible as they shoot from the hip and try to make a hit. I tend to look at spammers to see what smart solutions they have made that I can use to make my work more efficient. I use them and their creativity to become better at what I do. If something can be automated, it should be. If something can be created easier, then it should be. There is no natural law that says all dialogue has to be between two people. The only law in any social interaction is that everyone should get something out of the dialogue. Think win-win and the rest will follow.

What is a good Social media Automation?
If I for example can generate an automated response that solves a problem for another person, then that is a GOOD solution. If I however do not solve the users problem, then I get a problem. Thus it is in both peoples interest to make sure that any automation you do in social media (in particular) helps to solve problems rather than create them.

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Finding the right keywords

There is a lot of posts out there about finding good and relevant keywords for your pages. Basically your method all depends upon what your purpose for the page is. Some keywords are highly converting such as “buy underware now”, but the traffic to such a keyword might not be that high. So, if you are looking for traffic, use another word that you think you might receive better traffic ratings for.

Post about Keyword Research
In this post I will not go on and on about different methods as there are so many good posts out there. Finding relevant keywords is really the art of SEO.

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Where to put the keywords

I will now continue my SEO 101 guide with explaining where to put the keywords for a particular page.

Just as you arrange your ordinary word document that is longer than just a page, you construct an index so that all people reading your document will have an easy overview of what they are reading. On a website this index is called the sitemap. (Now some of you think… “Isn’t that the start page??” NO IDIOT… I will deal with the start page later… but keep in mind that you do NOT… I repeat… do NOT put all the links to all your content on your start page)

In the sitemap you should put links to all the pages of your website. As you want your reader, google and all other interested to know where they end up you use the “jam jar method” to lable your links and the pages where the people will end up.

Where to put the keywords - jam jar method

Jam Jar Method
Just as you don’t put “Sweet and sticky” on a jar of strawberry jam (because no one knows what’s in it) you don’t put a slogan or something catchy in a link to a page. You simply say what’s on the page or in the jar. As for the case of the Jam jar you would write “Strawberry Jam”, as for a web page explaining the recepie for strawberry jam, you would give it the name “Recepie – Strawberry Jam” or “Recepie for strawberry jam”.

Many people put catchy phrases in their links, or even worse, put “read more” in their links leading to pages. This method sucks as it doesn’t give the reader any notion on where he or she is going to end up.

On-Page keyword optimization
Once you are on the page there are some elements that search engines as well as people find more important than others.

The title
First of all it is the title of the page. This is what is seen as the link from Google. It is also what is seen in the field on the very top of your browser. The title is defined in the head meta text of the page. The tag you use to define it is <title>Your title</title>.

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Institutional brands vs. user generated brands

Image Borrowed from Merge Left marketing

There has been some talk for a while about brands not knowing how to work in social media. People think companies are too pushy and that they try to push their thoughts upon the users. In many cases this is a correct view. Companies do have their agenda. They want to make as much money as possible for as long as possible. This post will deal with two types of ways to ensure you build good starting blocks for your brand to succeed in social media.

The Institutional Brand
The biggest difference with this post and many others is that I recognize the need for an organization to construct their own brand. As I have said in previous posts, a brand is a composite of many raw materials. Internally, in an organization or in an institution, these raw materials are built, they are kept, and usually also written down on a piece of paper called “brand manual” or “brand guidelines”.

An institutional brand lives and flourishes within the organization. The smallest organizations often don’t think of the brand as something separate from themselves, in medium organizations the brand is perceived as the light of god, and in bigger organizations the brand becomes either the guiding star or the culture in which everyone works. Good or bad, an institutional brand is the sum of it’s raw materials and its employees.

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PARTY your way to Social media Success

For a long time I have tried to find a common ground for all successful Internet social media projects out there. What do they provide to their users that other projects do not? What do they give? What values do they bring? I guess this is a far from complete model, but as I finalized it I realized that the first letters in the words spelled PARTY and thus I got inspiration to this blog post.

Explaining the PARTY success model is quite easy, and I cannot find a single successful social media project that do not fullfil all of these criterias. Likewise non-successful social media projects fail on one or more of the criteria.

PARTY success model Explained
I will try to briefly explain each one of the letters in the PARTY success model. I will not get into defining what I believe is success. But considering my usual greed, it involves some kind of positive balance sheet as well as being highly popular.

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SEO Link values According to Gollum

There is allways a huge discussion in the search engine optimization community about link values. However, only a few people come out and say that they are actively building links to rank better in the SERPs. Even fewer people say that they buy links.

In an attempt to actually build some understanding on the topic. I contacted the link builder and black hat SEO spammer Gollum. Yes, you’re correct. Gollum who made an outstanding performance in playing himself in the Lord of the Rings. Gollum takes us behind the scenes to describe what the Lord of the Rings is really all about. Namely: The value of different links!!

– Oooooh… preeccciousss… links… preeecious liiinks… I’ll tell you all about them links..

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Online Marketing Matrix

My boss Björn Alberts once showed me an excellent (suckin’ up big time) chart displaying the master matrix of any online web project. Since then I have basically made these types of matrixes as a way to structure my thoughts. This post will display one of those matrixes. Maybe not as useful as the one linked to above, but for organizations stuck in SEO-land, it might help with the visualization of where to go and what to do in order to go there.

Basically SEO centered business models rely on highly rational processes. The future models of making money online are however less rational and more behavioral.

I am far from ready with the model above, but it combines the worlds of online marketing that is evolving right now. You might want to criticise it for its lack of banners. But I truely and passionately advocate against banners as a means of online sales and thus I keep it out of the model. Secondly I sincerely feel that any marketing that has not at least a long term connection to some kind of sales, is a waste of money.

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Google Wave will be what takes Customer Dialogue to the next level

There were two things that popped into mind when I was watching the clip about Google Waves, recently published on YouTube. The first thing was –> wow what an intranet. Number two was –> wow what a customer care system. Then I started expanding my thoughts, just as I allways do and it didn’t take long for the complete brain melt down to take place. I will share some of the thoughts I have, but before you read any further, you should probably watch the video here:

Customer Care
First of all companies should really start thinking about their customer care systems in terms of Waves.

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Quantum SEO – A Shift from Einsteinian Relativity

[WARNING: Do not read this post if you want to read how to posts. This is total confusion. But perhaps there is someone who can clarify my own thoughts for me out there. So I might just give this a shot.]

I am kind of bored by discussions of Search Engine Optimization. Not only is it very simple but these discussions are all about:

  1. Being relevant –> will get you relevant backlinks
  2. Writing well –> Use the words you think people are searching for
  3. Reference your best stuff –> Treat all the pages of your website as an individual website, only create one website for each purpose, if you need to describe something that’s on another page –> link to it

This fantastic BWR model is well known and understodd througout the SEO community. NOT, I just invented the abbreviation as I thought the 1 Million allready existing in the field was not enough. The theory is the same though. What ever the theory is called, the rules are the same.

If you choose to focus on your content in order to get the sweet white hat links, or if you do CGI injections to get the juicy black hat ones. It is all the same. Links + content = SERP success. This post is about putting a spinn on this discussion as I want there to be something more –> namely Quantum SEO.

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