Online retail giant Amazon has been forced to lock out over 10,000 members of its Amazon Associates program due to a new tax signed in by California Governor Jerry Brown.  Governor Brown, who took over from Arnold Schwarzenegger in January this year, has served as Governor twice before. The new, controversial tax is aimed at non-resident retail corporations, like Amazon, and is levied on online purchases made by California residents.

Shutting down the Associates program in California is bound to have serious repercussions that will extend far beyond The Golden State. The first to be hit will be third party retailers who leverage Amazon’s immense ecommerce infrastructure to sell products of their own. Also affected will be affiliate marketers, those who promote products on Amazon’s behalf, making commissions off sales. For some this is an excellent way to make additional income, especially during these tough times. For others it’s a full-time job and many influential internet marketers are, understandably, up in arms.

Unless they manage to help repeal it, Amazon stands to loose huge amounts of affiliate-generated income. It would also be forced to pay additional sales taxes on all transactions originating from within the state of California.

This is not the first time the so-called “Amazon tax” has reared its head. The states of New Yoke, Illinois, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Arkansas have all passed similar laws. As a result Amazon shut down its Associate programs in all states but New York, where it has mounted a legal challenge.

Levying a tax specifically against internet-based income and internet companies in general, truly the one industry where America is still dominant, is a bad move both economically and politically. Doing so in California, however, seems just downright irresponsible – stupid even.  Yes, California is in financial trouble, more so than many other states, but that trouble can hardly be alleviated by crippling online business. From a political standpoint Governor Brown is doing himself no favours by alienating Silicon Valley, especially after only a few months in office.

The tax isn’t just an “Amazon tax”, it theoretically affects many other internet giants also. Many of the big-name companies are already based in the state, most notably Google and Facebook, and whilst some might argue Amazon’s loss could well be theirs gain they forget that internet marketing is all about interconnectedness with advertising on one platform often driving sales on another. The removal of one player from the equation, even one they may be directly competing with in other areas, will no doubt have a significant impact on their bottom line. As a result many in Silicon Valley are no doubt watching this latest development very closely.

The Amazon Tax Debate – Have Your Say!

Should the government get off Amazon’s back or are they right to demand that large corporations like Amazon pay more taxes? Is this a good thing or a bad thing for California? Does Governor Brown “get” the internet? Can he succeed in balancing the books where so many before him have failed? We want to know what you think!

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.

People love to talk about SEO, especially business owners.  It’s become a buzz topic and many of the folks (especially small business owners) that catch wind of it will do the minimum that they’re aware of – which often consists of stuffing their website full of keywords.

I’ve had many conversations with business owners that tell me that they’ve optimized their website and they handle their own SEO.  This brings a cringe because more often than not their idea of SEO is centered on website content and keywords – nothing more.

They’re often blinding by the pride of seeing their website appear in the search results, even if it’s not at the top.  I hear “There’s only a little way to go, just need to tweak my site content a little more”.  Too much emphasis is being placed on website content itself as a ranking factor and it’s not – at all.  Website content as a whole does not determine placement in search results.

There is so much more to site rank.  The content within a website is merely there to establish relevancy. Relevancy in content is the doorway into the SERPS but it’s not a fast-pass to the finish line.  It’s rare that you can optimize a site and get top rank.  If that happens, you’ve probably found a local or regional phrase with no competition or a completely irrelevant keyword – or both.

Other Ranking Factors

There are hundreds of variables that are considered during the milliseconds between hitting enter on a search query and the posted results.  Google has to ask a lot of questions to determine who, of the millions of pages in most categories, are the most relevant and in what order of relevancy to file them for a specific phrase.  Of those hundreds of factors, there are several that carry a bulk of the weight.

• Trust/Authority of the Domain
• Link Popularity
• Inbound Anchor Text
• Keyword Use
• Traffic
• Social Engagement Metrics
• Registration Hosting

How much emphasis is placed on each is going to vary with every update made to algorithms which tends to happen almost daily (especially with Google).   Because of the weight put on so many different factors, it’s easy to see that website content – while important – does not carry the weight of your SEO and should not be your primary concern as a ranking factor.

Yes, you can gain some rank by optimizing your site and it needs to be done but don’t do the victory dance yet.   I hear the question of “I’ve optimized the site, so I’m done and we just wait now, right?”  Absolutely not.  On page optimization is only the first step and it’s your means to establish relevancy alone.  This is how you enter the race against the competition and you start engaging your target audience for specific search phrases.  From here, you need to start thinking about the other ranking factors.  Link building and social engagement or social sharing is going to be the big fish that feeds your SEO hunger and start bringing in results.

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.

One would think that the days of spamming the search engines were nearing a close, and the type of search engine spam seen in the 90′s and at the turn of the millennium was long gone. But it seems with every new update and promise of a cleaner search environment from companies like Google, those who tip their black hats to the masses find a different way to scam thousands (even millions) of internet users.

The recent death of Osama Bin Laden has brought about a new round of attacks and cyber scamming through both black-hat SEO and Facebook PPC hijinks. SEO Poisoning attacks have already spread far and wide as it’s been reported by researchers at Kaspersky Lab, an antivirus firm.

While leveraging non-relevant events or keywords was once used to get just about any website to the top of the SERPs before the days of the Google slap, the less common SEO poisoning now focuses primarily on phishing campaigns. Within hours of the announcement from President Barack Obama that Bin Laden was confirmed dead, the phishing started on a massive scale.

This type of SEO poisoning is less common because of consistent updates and the diligence of search engines to refine and improve search results but they still commonly center on major news breaks. Phishing campaigns will typically spike surrounding major news events because cyber criminals are using the traffic heavy search queries to lure internet users. Most are unsuspecting because they’re interest is piqued and they’re distracted by their own curiosity.

It’s sad to see and frustrating to know that these black hat types sit in wait like a Nigerian scammer, waiting for some type of global event that will generate a mass of search volume with virtually no competition for those unique search phrases. They’ve established a system that lets them jump on any topic.

Meta Spammers Would Be Proud

With this particular campaign, malware authors had launched an SEO campaign to spread rogue antivirus software through the organic search results while simultaneously flooding Facebook with adware. The primary damage was done through their manipulation of the search algorithm, where they positioned the malicious web sites at the top of the search results; sites purporting to offer frontline news on the death of Bin Laden, including videos and pictures of his death.

Of course no such videos exist, and photos of the deceased terrorist were never circulated. With curiosity piqued however, users flood into those sites where they are faced with offers for anti-virus software that is not the “best antivirus 2011″. The rogue antivirus program is actually powered by the Trojan.Win32.FakeAV.cvoo Trojan virus, and it’s designed to trick users by polling for credit card information in exchange for a PC cleaning.

To ensure the effectiveness of their bogus campaigns and phishing scams, the cyber criminals also created a slew of adware campaigns on Facebook, inundating the social network with ad claims of free food or airline tickets in wake of celebrating the death of Osama Bin Laden. Those who clicked through were launched into a funnel of websites that are designed to continually gather information (email, personal contact info, etc.) without ever actually coming through. The payout for the phishers is that they get paid for each contact, view or click.

Will Algorithm Updates be Enough?

I’m a bit put off over the whole matter – that such a major event could and would be exploited. Aside from the gross exploitation of something very close to a lot of people around the world, including Americans, it also shows that the major players in search and social media don’t exactly have everything together.

This type of occurrence shows us that while Google may very well be constantly refining their algorithm to improve search results, they’ve got a long way to go before what people find in search is actually relevant to what they’re looking for. I know that the most recent update is supposed to head in this direction, as Google is putting more weight on social proof for ranking. Unfortunately, as long as keywords and inbound links provide the most weight for ranking factors this type of SEO poisoning is going to continue.

What do you think – can the move toward social proof and author authority as a ranking factor help to prevent issues like this in the future?

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.

Earlier in the week, the New York Times published an article that exposed the black-hat tactics of J.C. Penney. The article detailed how the company was able to obtain #1 rankings in Google (organic listings) for virtually every product category that the company sold. This included living room furniture, dresses, bedding, area rugs, home décor and more.

This type of performance has been going on for months, clear back before the 2010 holiday season. J.C. Penney even outranked Samsonite.com for the term “Samsonite carry on luggage”.

The purpose of organic search is essentially to “read” the “actions” of the web and its virtual population so that – within the search results – Google can dish back the most relevant content based on what the population of the world (and the web) deems to be the most relevant.

So it’s not good when a company worth $17.8 billion in total revenue for 2010 goes on to generate paid links that manipulate their rank, essentially creating the impression that the collective opinion of the world is that they are the most relevant site for dresses… and bedding… and area rugs.

And hundreds of other search phrases – essentially equaling more than two thousand paid links across blogs and other irrelevant site pages that used descriptive anchor text to manipulate their organic rankings.

Since That’s Been Said – Let’s Shut Up About J.C. Penney Already

This is where I’m going to stop beating a dead horse because everyone and their brother has written this topic to death about what Penney did wrong, the lack of detection from the mighty algorithm, etc. In reading up on this topic I discovered something very interesting that I have to address because SEO is in my blood.

If I didn’t talk about this it would be a disservice.

What stood out to me is the epic fail by the New York Times to manage their own SEO. You would think they’d be marginally interested in it since they were so interested in what another major corporation was doing with paid links.

And we thought J.C. Penney was having issues.

As I dug for information and bounced around various blogs and news articles I noticed how difficult it was to pull up the original article from the New York Times – at least in organic search. Sure everyone was linking to it but I plugged in a half dozen or more search terms trying to locate the original article on my own all to no avail.

Amazingly enough even when I included “nytimes” I couldn’t find the piece.

This caught the attention my wife, primarily because I was laughing hysterically from my home office.

What I was faced with was one of the most well-known and trusted reporting brands in the U.S. (likely even worldwide) completely failing to drive effective traffic to their own piece (which was clearly set to go explosively viral) by making one of the simplest mistakes in optimization.

Slapping a generic title on their content.

While The World Focuses on the J.C. Penney SEO Fiasco…

Despite the vast authority of the New York Times in terms of web presence, they ironically failed at setting themselves up for continued organic traffic – on a post about SEO.

A simple analysis of the title shows that they neglected to include the subject of the article (The company in questions – J.C. Penny) or anything that has to do with SEO or Search Engine Optimization. Instead they opted for “Search Optimization and Its Dirty Little Secrets”.

….really?

It’s clear why they chose that – “optimization” is a buzz topic nowadays and they wanted to put a marketing hook in their title. Unfortunately the emphasis on marketing and trying to hook a reader with a journalistic title failed to embrace the power of simple SEO best practices when it comes to constructing titles.

Is it a permanent fail? No – more than likely they could adjust the issue by altering the title but several days after the launch of the piece it remains unchanged. At this point it likely doesn’t matter because so many people are linking to the original piece that they’re getting plenty of traffic anyway.

What’s unfortunate is that it’s not just the New York Times that’s making this kind of mistake. They may have the audience to generate links that will bring the traffic and make the rain come but other businesses online are not so lucky.

When they fail to construct optimized titles set up for long term search placement from an SEO standpoint they’re shooting themselves in the foot.

People search by key words and phrases. Google returns titles with relevant keywords or phrases. If your content fails to deliver in the title, then it becomes extremely difficult for anyone to find you online.

If you’re a business owner or you’re involved in marketing online, then you should take a moment to consider whether or not you’re also making this same mistake when it comes to your content deliver and content marketing.

It’s not likely that you’ve got an audience the size of the New York Times to sustain you.

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.

There is certainly no dearth of SEO companies and link farms crying themselves hoarse trying to elucidate the importance of the backlinks to the novice website owners. Although most experts suggest that link building should form an integral part of page rank improvement efforts, the million dollar question remains do backlinks still hold the same importance that they once did? After all Google is constantly upgrading its algorithm, so there is always a possibility that the big G may have changed the way in which their search bots scrutinize the links to a site to decipher its popularity. A patent filed by the company in 2004 was recently granted and has shed some light on how the company handles the backlink factor.

The link building mistakes that even the experts make

• One of the most fundamental and glaring mistakes that even the experts are prone to making is using only PR6 and above sites for their back links. It is important to understand that ‘au natural’ is the operative phrase when dealing with Google and it certainly does not seem natural that only the high hitting sites want to link to you. It will be obvious to the spiders that you are trying to scam the system and that’s not going to work in your favor.
• The secret to getting the giant G to love your site is to ensure that you have a healthy mix of sites linking back to your site, so while the PR6s and others look fabulous, including the PR0s and PR1s will keep things looking normal. However, you need to ensure that you do not go overboard with the easy backlinks. Although you certainly should include some web 2.0 sites, forum posts, blog comments etc just using those to fill your link spread is certainly not going to help your cause.
• The third mistake is getting links from a fixed number of niche sites; for instance, if you have a site related to gardening, you get backlinks only from 3 sites that have a good PR standing and are relevant to your niche; this again is a dead giveaway
• Finally, error #4 is a repetition of the first mistake; there are always people who scour around exclusively for backlinks from highly ranked domains such as .edu and .gov. If all the sites that link back to you are from these top level domains, your ploy is going to be ridiculously obvious.

Meet Mr. Righteous Surfer, he is your best friend

The central ethos around which Google wrote its search algorithm is that of Mr. Righteous Surfer, who is this guy you wonder? Well, he is the average Joe who goes site hopping looking for information and other things online.

A lot of businesses have been built around anticipating the customer’s next move or what he is most likely to do and Google has done something similar with the Mr. Righteous Surfer technique but the tech geniuses that those guys are, they have taken it several steps farther.

You do not have to get a written explanation of how the Google algorithm is designed as long as you understand this simplistic yet ingenious concept. When people rummage through websites and come across links, they are more likely to click some over the others. For instance, if you have an automobile related website, with two links on the home page, one which leads to the ‘about us’ page and the other which takes the visitor to a page on car repair tips, which page do you think Mr. Righteous Surfer is more likely to visit?

The way Google views this conundrum is that a link which has a higher likelihood of being clicked on and visited, should enjoy a better rank. This is of course the most simplistic explanation of the Mr. Righteous Surfer Model and Google has tweaked it enough to turn it into a commendable search engine force. However, the central theme still remains constant, Google trying to offer the best services to its customers. So, this brings us to the trillion dollar question, what would be the perfect link as described by Google.

Google on what is the perfect backlink

Here are some valuable insights on the right way and place to put your backlinks in, so that they can garner the much needed attention from Google.

The aesthetics: So, do the font size, color and how the link stands out against the background really make even an iota’s difference to the standing of the link? You would be flabbergasted, but the answer to that question is a resounding ‘yes”.

Think like Mr. Righteous Surfer here, would you not have a higher propensity for clicking on a link which has a larger font than the surrounding text and one which stands out because of the contrasting colors used for the link font and the background? In all likelihood, the answer to that question will also be positive. This brings us to another crucial point, do not try to hide links in the text; it will do more harm than good. Also, always make sure that the links are highlighted, so that your visitors can clearly demarcate them from the rest of the text.

The anchor text: While the importance of using anchor text which is related to the theme of the page has been elaborated umpteen times, few know that Google also checks for the commerciality of the anchor text. Although the company has not warmed up to anchor texts with overt commercial intent; unfortunately, you cannot always circumvent this factor, especially if your keyphrase includes the word ‘buying’ or ‘for sale’.

The surrounding text and the page attributes and how they connect with the link: Another elementary point that Google takes very seriously is the relevance of the link to the content of the text on the source page. So, adding a link to a loan site on a page that offers home cleaning information is definitely not going to earn you brownie points from the big G. While this factor is painfully obvious even to the new kids on the block, what even the experts fail to tell you is that Google has taken their scrutiny deeper.

Not only is the overall relevance of the page checked but also that of the text that surrounds the link. So, you will need to ensure that the link fits in perfectly with the surrounding text, in terms of the niche. To check Google’s views on a page that you are linking to and its relevance to your link, use Google’s external keyword tool. Simply add the url of the page where you intend to place your link and if the keyword that you are targeting appears, your selection is spot on.

Image links: For the image links, it is vital to ensure that they not only have the right tag but should also link to a relevant page. For instance, using the image of a flower linked to a gardening page will certainly be a hit with the spiders and will definitely earn a place in Google image search. Make sure that the name of the image file has the keyword that you are targeting. The aspect ration of the image is also an important consideration, so you need to ensure that your images are not so puny that they go unnoticed. For example, a pixel size of 200 X 200 will certainly get noticed.

The target URL: Google does not take kindly to techniques that try to undermine the efficacy of their algorithm. The bots are not just looking for the relevance of the target url to the source page which has the link on it, but they also want to ensure that the links do not point to a site on the same host, which may very well belong to the same person. In other words, any attempts to cheat the system by link masking or pointing to a deeper page on the site or placing a link on one of the other sites that you own, will not work.

The position of the link on the page: It would do you good to understand early on that Google does not think highly of comment links, footer and sidebar links and forum links. So make sure that your link is in the main body of the page and high up in the list if one has been used.

The visitor’s choice: Google also has a system in place whereby every link on a page earns a positive point when a visitor clicks on it, increasing its rank while the other links on the page earn a negative point because they were not clicked on. This proves a very vital point, that if you place your link on a page which already sports several dozen other links, you will just end up getting a lot of negative points.

The dubious claims about ‘no follow’ links: This one has been doing the rounds of the internet for a while, with many experts claiming that “no follow” links are worthless, but are they really? Let’s go back to Google’s core mantra again; does it not say that you need to have a healthy mix of sites in your link profile? Then, why should pages that offer “no follow” links be exempted from this rule?

Where to find the ever elusive perfect backlink?

Do not let anybody convince you that spending hundreds of dollars for an automated link building tool will get you the perfect link. It simply isn’t going to happen. As opposed to this, the semi automated tools out there are a better bet.

Also, it is imperative to understand that while Google will point you in the right direction by showing you all the sites that are relevant to your niche in a search, you will need to do the heavy lifting on your own and this involves building rapport with the owners of the sites and gaining credibility in your niche community.

Do not expect webmasters to fall over each other vying to get you to place a guest post on their site. However, if you build up a relationship with them first, project the image of being a friendly person who is genuinely interested in the niche and the various sites dedicated to it, you may just be able to get your foot in the door.

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.

When it comes to supporting your on-page and link-building efforts, there’s nothing more appropriate or better than a soundly developed content marketing strategy.  Some may argue that content marketing is link building since you’re going for links but in my opinion content marketing is about more than just getting some links.

It’s about thought leadership, and leading the crowd to a specific point.  Why just build links when you can build an army?

So the question here, in terms of content marketing, is which is better: article marketing or guest posting?

If you’re running a blog, especially a popular one that gets a fair amount of traffic, you know the kind of buzz that can be generated from a winning topic.  You also know the kind of buzz that can be generated from someone who speaks as if their mouth were actually a gaping a…  you get the point.  Whether the traffic comes from controversy or intelligent thought (or both combined) there’s a lot of benefits to be had in guest posting.

I have to immediately knock article marketing out of the running between these two.  In a title bout, it’s a 3 second knockout with Guest posts winning hands down.  Here’s why:

The response is immediate

Not only do your readers appreciate a breath of fresh air (or a breath of fresh ass, depending on the type of guest you invite in) they crave it.  If readers know they can expect something new on a regular basis from you, especially in the form of a guest post, they’re more likely to share the content and invite other people to read.  Likewise, if the guest-poster maker type individual has their own little following then they’re more than likely to land on your blog as well in order to read the newest piece from their “effervescent” deity.

That’s meant to say..they’re “bubbly”.  Get it?

The readership is bigger

I know I touched on that already, but the benefit of that bigger reader-base is that some of them are bound to stick around or pop in for another visit.  Perhaps just subscribe to the RSS to get more – if you’re lucky you might even get a few Opt-ins on your site if your CTA’s are bold enough.

Your Site Stays Fresh

When you drone on through endless posts (lets face it we all do it) you’re bound to get locked into a certain style of posting; the tone, the format, the topic.  In the end, unless you have some measure of writing genius or you’re  comedic god the likes of which would make Mel Brooks bow down, you need something fresh.  As mentioned previously, guest posting is one of the best ways to stave off the boredom that you will inevitably generate among your fans.

Except that guy who follows you religiously and wants to wear your skin like a rainbow jacket.  He probably won’t ever get tired of you.

You will build links

With the mass of traffic from guest bloggers, the link sharing that will take place among those you guest post with and the sharing going on among everyone you can rest assured that you’re going to gain some quality links on sites that carry a similar message.

Reciprocal linking doesn’t carry as much weight, but it’s still a good strong editorial link.  It may not command a lot of “link juice” but it can bring you a fair amount of consistent, relevant traffic.

Article marketing has some beef behind it, don’t get me wrong.  There’s plenty there that it should be utilized as part of your content marketing strategy.  If you can do both, you should.  There’s no reason not, too.  If you’re forced to choose between the two, then consider the benefits that go along with bringing the party to your blog.

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.

Numerous articles have been written recently about the recent overhaul by Google in how it’s displaying local search results.  With all the opinions flying around you’re bound to have misconceptions and after reading a lot of the content it’s clear that there are many.  The primary misconceptions are in how the changes made by Google will impact search results as well as how businesses are going to have to change their approach to gaining position in the SERPs.

1. Google Places will Phase Out Organic SEO

The primary concern seems to be that these changes will phase out organic SEO.  Likewise, some are concerned that the change puts more emphasis on the Google Places address.  This is unfounded and inaccurate.  Truth be told with this new revised local display, you’re gaining visibility with local SEO and/or Google Places listings.

The changes don’t really affect or diminish one or the other.  Both should be considered required elements in your local marketing campaign.

2. Google Places will Make Virtual City Ranking more Difficult

There’s also a misconception that with Google Places pages, you will have an extremely difficult time ranking for any city name outside of the one in which your business is located.  With the way the SERPs have run for years, it’s always been a bit of a chore ranking for cities where you only have a virtual presence – especially in larger cities or more competitive markets.

In smaller cities, where many mainstreet businesses tend to grow, it’s always been easy to manipulate and appear within the 3 pack or 7 pack of local results.  The new Google Places hasn’t changed that.  Do enough searches outside the major cities and you’ll see businesses ranking for multiple areas where they have no physical presence.

3. Google Places killed Local Directories

Finally, people keep uttering the “local directories are dead” mantra – that really needs to stop.  This goes back to me previous post about making absolutes.  A directory or site is dead when it actually goes down and disappears.  People say the same thing about phone books but they’re still in use.

Google Places is not going to kill the yellow page directories and other local directories.  If you do a search for businesses, you’re still going to find the listings within sites like superpages and yellow pages showing up at the top of the search results.  The local directories are doing just fine in the search results and they will continue to do so.

In the end, we need to realize that organic seo is not going to disappear because of Places listings.  It’s a means of supporting the same goal, and you should not stop one to start another.  Instead, embrace all the options that are available and leverage them to the best of your ability.

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.

We’ve all heard it before: SEO is dead.  X social media is going to be the end of Y media site and Z is the next best thing since sliced bread.  Here we are however, several years into the social media and SEO race and…oh look all of those sites are still here and the same absolutes are being peddled over and over again.

True that some things have meant the down fall of other things but if we look throughout history it’s pretty obvious that predictions of this nature are always exaggerated to some massive degree and far from accurate.  So why do bloggers keep using absolutes like this?

Because it’s traffic-bait of the worst kind.  They’re playing on the morbid curiosity of people who can’t live without a little bit o’ gossip.  It’s the attention grabbing hyperbole that makes people stop and change direction.

If you’re a blogger, you need to seriously consider whether or not this is the route you want to go with the content you’re producing.  Are you going to maintain the integrity of your site or will you sink to the level of the gossip rags that litter checkout lanes in supermarkets across the U.S.?

Because when absolutes are used in your blog content, that’s exactly where you put yourself – you sink to the level of the tabloid.

It’s true that a very small fraction of the time the information winds up being accurate, but since there are no true prophets among bloggers and marketers online it’s safe to assume that those incidents are just a coincidence where the blogger gets to rant a quick “I told you so.”  As a blogger or marketer, it’s something that you need to stop, because overall it makes bloggers look bad and can put a negative spin on your marketing campaigns.  It’s not the kind of traffic that generally converts well (all they want is their gossip and they’re gone).  You want traffic from people that will admire what you have to say, that admire your work.

You never want traffic “just because”.

A great blog, whether you’re marketing or sharing a personal stance on a subject, will persist and do content the way it’s meant to be done.  They’ll create content in a way that is redeeming to the social consciousness.  Honestly, I’ve yet to read a “dead” or “killer” post on a blog that kept me interested to the point that I felt the need to return.

Even when I post about the ups and downs and Twitter or Facebook I stay away from calling on a particular site to go the way of the DoDo.

When you’re preparing a piece geared toward branding, drawing traffic or selling a specific product or service then ask yourself next time – is dropping an absolute going to move you closer to your goals?  More importantly, will it continue to make you proud in your abilities as a marketer and writer?

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.

Twitter is Massive!  …or is it?

If you took a stab to guess the total number of people in the U.S. that use Twitter, what would be your guess?  You’d probably shoot for somewhere around 20-30%, as that seems to be the general consensus among a lot of people discussing the topic.  Some even consider it to be more.  That’s why it’s such a surprise to know that the number is actually a lot lower.

According to the latest report from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, the answer is 8%.

That is more shocking than it is surprising, since many perceive that Twitter is one of the most popular social networking sites and social media services on the web.  Famous folks tweet regularly, celebrities drop bombs, and everyone talks about where they went for coffee.  It’s used to raise money, respond to disasters and even the cops are using it to track down criminals.

So how is it that only 8% of internet users are hanging with the fail whale?

In September, the Pew Report noted that 24% of users went with Twitter “or another service to share updates”.  This time, the researchers asked a more specific questions – “Do you use Twitter?”.

Since 74% of Americans rely on the net, which means that only about 6% of the entire adult population in the U.S. is tweeting.  Even still, it’s the people between 18 and 29 that are most likely to be the ones Tweeting.  Urbanites are twice as likely to use twitter compared to their country cousins.  Of those that do use the system, Pew Research asked the Twitter users how often they check their Tweets.  24% said several times a day, another 21% said they rarely check (some stated “never”).

Of those that are posting, 72% said they post personal updates, 62% post work updates and more than 50% share news and retweet.

If these numbers are truly accurate, then it’s a pretty clear indicator that – depending on the niche you’re in – Twitter may be a lot less effective for marketing than people originally anticipated.  I’d love to know what kind of success stories people have had using Twitter for their own networking and marketing campaigns.

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.

The internet is never really happy with what it has.  “It” is always on the lookout for something better and far more complex.  For anyone in the business of marketing, it’s a hair-pulling trial trying to keep up with the continuous growing trends that shape the way we have to do business.

There is one universal point that helps us understand that change however – technology will never stop trying to outdo itself.  If it’s not a change in SEO, then it’s a new way to tackle social media.  One of the most recent trends that people can’t get enough of is video.

Video Killed the Radio Star

I have to admit that despite being a programmer and handling SEO, I love to read and write.  When I come across any kind of a blog that has a lot of text I’m in heaven.  As long as it’s not too long then I’m comfortable.  I also appreciate a good image however when I hit a blog and a video starts playing automatically, with a strange voice blurting out trying to get my attention I get a little frustrated.

For this reason I sometimes wonder how video managed to make it at all as people violate video etiquette.

Video is popular though because people don’t have to sift through and take in a lot of written content.  They don’t want to have to scroll to find their opinion or idea.  When it comes to anything relating to marketing, people are getting a little lazy and it’s paying off with video.

The Benefits of Video

I know I sound bitter, but I know and recognize the power of video as it currently stands.  They provide people with the instant gratification that is needed.  It began with people trying to find humorous videos of others making complete fools of themselves.  Now, marketers are leveraging the same style content in order to mass traffic and boost their SEO campaigns.

I think one of the main reasons video has taken off is because more and more people have the broadband connections to support it.  It’s not something that could have ever gained ground in the days of dial-up.  Only in the last 5 or 6 years have many people become intimate with the benefits of a broadband connection.  Now, video is everywhere whether you need a tutorial or just something to laugh at.

Affordable technology is increasing the quality of video as well.  Gone are the days of grainy webcams and echoing audio.  More people use quality flip cams to created classy videos that look great and sound even better thanks to scripting.

Videos have become an effective way to reach out to, connect with and engage a target audience.  They are a wonderful mix of the copywriting that has made the world of online marketing popular and the one-way media of television that people have been comfortable with for years.

To Your Success,
Joerg Weishaupt

P.s. Get more information on social media and marketing in my free primer "Building A Successful Marketing Strategy". Sign up for your free copy today.