SEO Werkt!

I’ve got the hang of keeping my daily to-do list actionable, but I’m struggling to include some of my large and vague goals. How would I go about creating actionable items for a to-do list from a list of non-concrete goals, like ideas or self-improvement concepts? More »

Your life is packed full of all types of alerts. You get emails, text messages, push notifications, and phone calls all the time begging for your attention. If you’re feeling a little overwhelmed, blogger and founder of DuckDuckGo Gabriel Weinberg suggests reducing those alerts down to only the actionable ones. More »

To: john@techcrunch.com
From: AOL HR
CC: AOL IT/Networking, AOL Legal, eldon@techcrunch.com, alexia@techcrunch.com
Subject: ACTIONABLE OFFENSE: Pornography/Adult Content Viewing On Company Property

Mr. Biggs,

Our network administrators in AOL’s Broadway office have consistently flagged you on your assigned computer for repeatedly and openly viewing a pornographic website, sex.com, that currently bills itself as a Pinterest for sex.

Furthermore, you were viewing the said content in a conference room on the fourth floor in clear view of passersby including a group of Tibetan monks brought in by the Huffington Post to clear the fourth floor video studio of evil Gyalpo spirits.

This is not the first time you have been seen visiting sex.com and your claim that it was entirely for research does not explain why you’ve used it every hour, nearly on the hour, for the past three days. Your statement “sex.com is the most expensive URL in the world and this is an important pivot for them,” is no longer acceptable. Also, pointing to this post by former writer Robin Wauters is also insufficient explanation.

We ask that you clear out and personal belongings and leave your company-issued laptop at the fifth floor help desk and leave the premises immediately. We will also be sending you a bill for any damage to the rug near your desk.

Sincrely,
Lydia Parton
AOL HR

This is how I think… or, rather, how I’m thinking about things today.

I’m a big fan Chris Taylor over at Actionable Books. He does some of the best and most interesting in-depth conversations with some of the business world’s biggest thinkers. I was truly flattered that he wanted to sit down with me the day after The Art of Marketing event in Toronto earlier this month. This is a forty-minute sit down where I discuss everything from careers and content to marketing strategies and a little peak into my next business book, CTRL ALT DEL. I do realize that this may be a little too self-promotional for some (feel free to skip it, I won’t be offended), but it turned out to be one of the better conversations I’ve had about marketing philosophy.

Here it is: "Squiggly Careers = Happiness" with Mitch Joel…

"Squiggly Careers = Happiness" with Mitch Joel from Goose Educational Media inc. on Vimeo.

Tags:

actionable books

business book

chris taylor

content

ctrl alt del

goose educational media

marketing

marketing philosophy

self promotion

squiggly careers

the art of marketing

video interview

vimeo

Gmail has an automatic spam detection system that uses a combination of pattern analysis, user analytics, and virus/phishing detection to send suspicious messages directly to spam. Gmail’s spam detection and filtering, which is extremely accurate, is part of why the email service has reached its current popularity levels. Yesterday evening, Gmail announced a new feature [...]

Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal

Below is live coverage of the Making Data From Google Webmaster Central & Bing Webmaster Tools Actionable panel from the SMX West 2012 conference. This coverage is provided by Avi Wilensky of Promedia Corp…

Below is live coverage of the Making Data From Google Webmaster Central & Bing Webmaster Tools Actionable panel from the SMX West 2012 conference. This coverage is provided by Avi Wilensky of Promedia Corp.

Disclaimer: The coverage is brought to you in real time, using a custom live blogging tool. Feel free to ask questions or leave comments for inclusion into the live coverage. During the live event, live notes will auto-scroll with newest entries at top. After the session is complete the archive version will have the oldest entries at the top. We ask you to please excuse any typos, as these are live notes.

I wrote recently about the new era of display marketing, and how real time bidding and other advances are bringing the precision and performance of search advertising to display. Well…a new era of unstructured data is also upon us. A widely cited 2011 IDC study found that the amount of data in the…



Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Sales force-driven organizations are wising up to using social media to build relationships with customers. Businesses are investing in sales enablement software like Salesforce.com, iCentera and Jive that have social-related functions internally to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing and some even have ways to manage social contacts.

Sales as Content 

Sales organizations are all a-twitter about content marketing, certain the answer to closing sales is in a steady flow of just the right white papers or video talking heads. All that is right-minded in my book. The sales process, especially in B2B, starts earlier and earlier with business leaders investigating their problem online before they may have even formed the words to describe the problem exactly. Companies like IBM with their Expert Network and use of LinkedIn  are building presence and thought leadership online that tries to anticipate the business leader’s pain before it’s diagnosed. 

Sales as Service 

Thinking about content as sales “bait” is one thing (and a little insulting to the customer, I might add). Thinking about sales as a continuing service to customers and prospects is different. Instead of simply ramping up on valuable content, sales organizations who want to get into the sales cycle earlier and even build strong relationships with prospects well before closing would do better to think like IDEO. 

One of the most well-known product design firms in the world, IDEO is expert at getting to the root of customer problems whether they be rooted in usability, service, or some anthropological insight. They’re good at making life easier for customers. True, their solutions tend to be in the product and experiential like designing the Community Pharmacy for Walgreens. Beneath the actual solutions lie a relentless curiosity about behavior and behavior change, “We identify new ways to serve and support people by uncovering latent needs, behaviors, and desires.”

If a sales organization spent their energy on understanding their customer’s actual experience and behavior and then sought to deliver services that made their lives a little easier, they might end up with a great strategy for building enduring relationships. Inevitably it would actually point to creating content that is helpful to customers/prospects/influencers. So, right back to that content marketing model we are all working on just within the context of delivering service.  

It might also cause the sales organization to create tools and applications that make it easier to make a smart business decision. Pull out your iPhone. Mine is full of consumer-facing examples of new customer services from my airlines, Delta; my aspirational travel agent, Jetsetter; even my car insurance provider, Geico. IDEO would think holistically (design thinking) about the buyer’s experience and how we might overcome barriers, friction points, and emotional moats.  That is a refreshing way to state the goals of social selling. 

Do: I am all for quick hits and big solutions. I would suggest committing to a content strategy based upon delivering the most useful content possible to your customer’s decision-making process. What reports, white papers, customer testimonials would help them make a good decision? Simply putting on the buyer’s hat vs. your own seller’s hat can drive you to create more useful content. Meanwhile, try a process where you think more creatively about delivering useful services to help the selling/buying process. You can hire a consultant. You can interview customers. You can trigger some effective brainstorming to explore new service territories. 

Resources:

• IDEO Method Cards – this pack of cards introduces you to a variety of ways to apply a design approach to business problems. Flip through. Find 3 that sound promising and just try them.
• Patterns – a useful blog from IDEO on design thinking and application 

Timing: By 2nd Q it will be key to be executing on a content marketing strategy that embeds social components. By 4thQ, it would be terrific to have a utility or buyer service in place being used and tested.

(thanks to madupiyadasa for the pic)

Dan Zarella, a social media scientist for HubSpot, is one of the highlighted speakers at Pubcon’s Master training this year. Zarella calls himself a scientist because he is tired of the “unicorns and rainbows” marketing advice – instead, he believes focusing on data and facts is more productive and the best way to invest our time. His presentation today explored aggregated data collected from Twitter Grader and included valuable takeaways to make your Twitter presence create higher ROI.

Myth: Ideas spread because they’re good
Fact: Ideas spread because of exposure, attention, and motivation
On Twitter, there are plenty of great ideas that do not perform well and sometimes horrible ideas perform great.

Zarella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness on Twitter

Exposure – the user needs to follow you on Twitter
Attention – the user has to see the tweet
Motivation – the content must motivate the user to retweet

Exposure

Myth: “Engaging in the Conversation” is the most important thing you can do to obtain more followers
Fact: Publishing interesting content results in more followers than engagement
Actionable Advice: Accounts with greater than 1,000 followers are less conversational than accounts with fewer than 1,000 followers. Instead, they broadcast content via sharing links on Twitter. Accounts with more than 1,000 followers are approximately three times more likely to share links than accounts with fewer than 1,000 followers. There is generally a positive correlation (not causation) to Tweeting more links and having more followers.

Myth: Don’t self-label yourself as a guru
Fact: Words such as official, founder, speaker, guru, expert, or author are correlative to a higher numbers of followers when used in the Twitter bio. However, self-referencing in Tweets negatively correlates to a high number of followers. In addition, ReTweets are less likely when self-referencing.  Stop talking about yourself.

3 Things to do RIGHT NOW to impact your number of followers:

1. Add a profile picture
2. Add a homepage link
3. Add a self-referencing bio

Attention

Myth: Share links as often as possible
Fact: If you are sending more than a couple of tweets per hour, your tweets will crowd out your own content
Actionable Advice:  Although CTR will vary wildly for different industries, followers are much more likely to click a link if you are not tweeting continuously – do not crowd out your own content.

Myth: Keep tweets short to improve the number of clicks
Fact: Longer tweets get more clicks
Actionable Advice: There is a slight positive correlation between the length of a tweet and the number of clicks the link will get – longer tweets get a higher CTR.

Myth: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are bad days to tweet
Fact: As the week progresses, CTR increases and retweets are more likely
Actionable Advice: Because the number of tweets is lower before the weekend, there is an increased likelihood that your tweets will be retweeted on Friday.

Motivation

Myth: Information is powerful and will spread
Fact: Scarce information and novel ideas are contagious
Actionable Advice:  Providing scarce/valuable information that followers have not heard about will cause people to amplify the message. Create blog posts, whitepapers, and other content related to information voids.

Myth: People are more likely to tweet something that has a significant number of retweets
Fact: People are more likely to share articles that have been tweeted zero times vs. hundreds of times
Actionable Advice:  Social proof and novelty work in concert, which means that people want to be the first person to share an authoritative piece of content. Experiment with hiding the number of comments or tweets and determine if this results in more social actions.

Myth: Asking followers to ReTweet a tweet does not work
Fact: Inserting the prhase “Please ReTweet” and “Please RT” in a tweet increases the number of ReTweets
Actionable Advice: Social calls-to-action will improve the number of ReTweets and this tactic should be employed.

Zarrella’s insight, which is based on scientific data, is a helpful starting point for companies and individuals trying to optimize their presence on Twitter. However, since his insight is based on aggregated data, the results can vary for individual Twitter accounts. He recommends using the above information as a starting point and adjusting the strategy and approach based on what works for each individual twitter account.

Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal