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tagCouldn't agree more with Stoney here on this. Working in a niche market that's heavily reliant on brand recognition, a business name can do wonders when prominently placed like: Company Name | ...
(Edited for spelling)
Incredibly deep post with tons of information on the panel. Makes my notes look like a children's book.
Matt, it's great to see how you and Quipp used this as an opportunity to assist some great causes. Congratulations to you both as well as to the African Well Fund.
Great article here from Kim, and one that anyone involved in social media ought to read. Without getting too detailed, I'd liken Kim's experiences today to what we see in the search industry while attending conferences. We can talk / IM / tweet / message one another until we're blue in the face -- but when we get to hang out, it's great times.
This is a great contribution from Ann, and I've found a few new tools here that I had no clue were out there.
Thanks for the comment Michael.. The new blog design really seems to be sitting well with folks. For reference, I fully plan to break out this presentation with more in depth thoughts. As Sugarrae pointed out to me this morning - it's pretty stupid of me to have 37 graphics when all that text is just waiting to be indexed. :)
Story: Are SEO Forums Still Needed?
This is a solid article and I'm pleased to see a lot of people weigh in on things as they have here. It's clear that in our industry more than any other, social networking through forums, blogs, networks like Sphinn, etc. are all key to being successful.
Great find. Last night I searched for Tiger Direct (because I'm too lazy to type ".com") and I saw similar message.
Excellent comments already here and on the blog, and I thank you all for providing them.
@vangogh I was informed when twitterfeed pushed the article out that similar dicussions have taken place wheras users have a feed reader open, or read the stories and then go back and submit them. I did not consider that in my post, but I may go back to add that in so as to create a more valuable article for readers.
@dannysullivan @nultp The community as a whole is great, and I often use Sphinn as a method of reducing my time wading through hundreds of unread items in my RSS reader. Whether people just vote things up or genuinely believe it to be great content - I do make it a point to read the top stories if they look interesting or relevant. I've discovered a lot of new sites and blogs to subscribe to because of this.
@Eavesy I completely hear and understand your arguement - and it needs to be noted because really, we can and should be doing what we want to.
Serious kudos out to Bill and Steven for their positions and professional responses. I just posted some additions to my original post, and they need to be echoed here for those following:
The Community Responds!
Please Note — Since the time this was posted, I’ve gotten some great feedback and responses on my thoughts. Particularly, I want to applaud Bill Hartzer’s blog post and Steven Bradley’s comment. Both of these gentlemen took the position of absolute professionalism - and their thoughts and counterpoints need to be read.
Furthermore, Danny Sullivan offered his thoughts on my post as well on the Sphinn story page for this post. Please be sure to read the comments there in conjunction with this blog post.
Great idea Bill.
One of the issues I have with folks saying that they use readers and then go back to vote, is that there's connection from Google Reader or Bloglines (et. all) back to the Sphinn story page.
@iBrian Great comment and feedback on the article, I appreciate your taking the time to provide that. I didn't want to lump Sphinn in with other communities, as there is that purely egotistical aspect where people get to promote thenselves and their own work.
Like me... Submitting my own article :)
While I may be jumping to conclusions here, it seems to me that we can assume that:
• Hewlett Packard is willing to pay $5 per click
• Honda Motor Company is willing to pay $4.71 per click
I could be wrong, but if I were working on behalf of these major organizations, I would be a little more than upset with this information being broadcast to those searching.
Rand, I agree with you. I'd go to conferences where JC was speaking, and maybe even attend his panels. I'm just tired of the keynotes by Calacanis because they create this media frenzy afterwards.
Jason is an incredibly talented marketer. I'll give him that, and would love to gain a fraction of his skillset in that department. I just don't want to see SE conferences become his forum to rant and rave while the paying public leaves feeling offended.
So, if i publicy say that I wish I were there to HEAR JC's keynotes -- would it render all that I've said useless?
Even with that risk aired, I'll certainly acknowledge that I didn't hear anything from Jason directly yesterday. If that makes me a bad person, I'm okay with that. I realize that my haste in making an assumption makes me look like an arse.
Strong commentary Jane, and I concede that he's a tremendous marketer, good for generating buzz, etc.. I still fail to see how his consitent keynote appearances are truly helping the industry though.
Ross, you absolutely have a clue - trust me. The fact that you're concious of where you stand with SMM proves that. As I mentioned on Twitter -- it's my style to make blanket statements to get people emotional and interested in having a debate. I really enjoy it when people discuss the article's topic as you have here.
That's why I casually mentioned that... "My goal here is to agitate you enough to become better at what you do."
I could challenge your stance that SEM and SMM are closely related though if I had taken the time to clarify what is included in (my idea of) SMM. SMM to me is viral content generation, link bait, social media profiling, branded SERP defense, community involvement, etc.
Viral content and link bait efforts absolutely agree with SEO's initiatives. Creating social media profiles for the purpose of polluting the SERP's can begin to counteract SEO efforts though. Are they related? Sure they are. But, not enough for me to say that ideal compliments.
SMM also requires a lot of maintenance and babysitting. I've found that most hardened SEM firms lack the ability to maintain efforts after they have launched. The ones that do, are more Internet Marketing organizations -- NOT SEM firms.
I say this because to manage SEM efforts, you need to go beyond keywords and search results. You need to understand the legalities of what's posted. You need to invest time into learning your client's best interests, their business capabilities, their threshold for involvement, etc. While Internet Marketing firms can offer SMM and SEM services, I've yet to find an SEM firm offering quality SMM.
I'm probably muddying the waters here a bit by leaving things open and vague -- so to wrap things up, I'd say this. If your firm offers SEO and SMM services, it's NOT a search company. It' an online marketing company. :)
John, I want to treat your comment in the right context, so I hope that this response is not too close to my response to Ross.
Before going too far, can you give me an unbiased example of an SEO firm, as well as a link building firm? Multiple examples are welcomed too...
To me, an SEM firm would be an organization along the lines of iProspect. In other words, an organization large enough to trip over itself. I don't have any connection or experience with them, but I'd be shocked if they thought they could magicly provide SMM services overnight. Firms to me are simply not nimble enough to compete in this space.
Link building firms and brokerages are another beast alltogether, which is why I was interested in some examples that you may have offered. While SEO and SMM may be kissing cousins, link brokers and SMM are light years apart in my mind.
I would guess that you're building links as a supplement to your SEO services. Or, you're generating links with specific anchor text so as to reinforce your SEO efforts to make your work more effective. There's nothing wrong with that, and it is certainly part of the SEO puzzle. But that's why you're leveraging SMM -- to supplement and strengthen particular SEO efforts.
The organizations I'm (alredy) fed up with (and ranting about) are positioning themselves as SMM experts because they're involved in the SEO space. That's not even possible, as we're in the infacy stages of SMM.
To clarify -- a firm is a larger group of people who are generally hired and trained for specific roles. The nimble companies you speak of are really just effective and effecient teams of people who know what pieces to put together to be successful.
bbcarter, -- I tend to call the industry of paid search anf organic optimization SEM, while others think SEM is straight paid search. SMM and SMO are certainly interchangable for me as well in that same regard, so I won't go too far into that.
You ask some great questions. I know I can answer them, I'm just not sure I can provide the depth of answers your looking for.
How much SM activity is there in the niches people will want to manage/optimize? (i.e. products and services) I can't speak to that, as I'm not in that space as a service provider, and I haven't reviewed such services to market any products.
The people you talk about you are SM rock stars may be great at doing it naturally, but clients want to hire someone who can do it naturally and intentionally for them. Sounds like you're saying the SM-rock-star naturals can't/won't do this? Mentioning Brent, Chris or Brendan was done only because I've spoken with them and/or reviewed their work in enough detail to understand their dedication. I can't speak to what they do professionally, but I'm sure we can safely assume they profit from their work.
I agree that there are clients, ready and willing to purchase social media optimization services.
My arguement is that there are true professionals, and those who are simply posers. It's the activities of the posers that I'd love to do without.
So, this article is a bit of a mixed bag for me. As recently as this morning, I was throwing Ask.com under the bus. That includes comments I made TO Lisa. So, I'm possibly part of the people she speaks about in her article.
With that said, this article is a must read because it forced me to see the other side of the coin. Very few people are passionate about what they do and the industry they work in.
Lisa is NOT one of those people.
Story: Does Your Company Name Really Belong In Your Title Tag?