Social Animals

Neither of my kids run an internet business.  They don’t run websites.  They aren’t interested in SEO (search engine optimization).

And yet when I google their names (just first name and last name), my daughter ranks #1 and my son is listed on the first page.

I suspect he’d rank higher if it weren’t for the fact that Jeff Winter is a relatively common name. There’s also a famous “voice over” person named Jeff Winter and a famous Premiere League Soccer Referee by the same name.

And yet, BOTH are on page 1.

Without even trying.

They did it just by using their Facebook accounts. If that doesn’t tell you that social media is a powerful way to be discovered by the search engines, then you’re living in the 1990s.

Don’t abandon tweaking your keywords, managing your link juice BUT start building and participating in online communities now before you’re lost in the crowd.  Social media allows your brand message to spread virally and the search engine rankings will take care of themselves.

The next generation simply takes it for granted.

Perhaps we should too.

Crush It!

Just spent the past 3 hours devouring Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book, entitled Crush It! Tomorrow I’m going to lock our marketing department in the boardroom and read it to them aloud.

While the book is targeted at entrepreneurs, I think that established companies like ours can use many of the tips in this book to help make the the transition from traditional marketing tools to social media, trust building and permission marketing.

Did You Know? 4.0

It’s amazing how quickly these stats go out of date. For instance the current number of iPhone apps is >85,000. Still interesting to watch, though.

World of Mouth

Thanks to Shannon for sending this along….

Happy 20th Birthday WWW!

The guy who invented the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, tells you what’s next.

Getting More LinkedIn

Not a paid advertisement!

As more and more colleagues are looking for new positions, I’m advising them to develop their business networks, since more than likely, their next opportunity will come from someone within their network.

I’ve been a member at LinkedIn for over a year, and today just discovered that it has become a much more powerful tool with which to market yourself.

Watch:

Like most application users, I typically use about 10% of the features of any application. Until yesterday, I used LinkedIn to post basic profile information only. I added a few contats and requested a few introductions. That was pretty much it.

I plan on adding the blog webpart into my profile and plan on playing with other features as well. I’d encourage anyone who’s serious about building an online profile to check these features out.

Let me know what works for you and what doesn’t!

Inspired by Alltop

I’ve just taken a look at Guy Kawasaki’s new project, called Alltop, which is an elegantly designed pre-formatted RSS Reader.

While anyone can accomplish the same for themselves with any free RSS Reader, the fact is that many people either don’t have the time or the inclination to do it for themselves.

The benefit to the blogs that he’s selected for inclusion in the Alltop framework is simple – more eyeballs. By aggregating the best blogs around selected topics, each will benefit from proximity to excellence within it’s category.

The idea was inspired by PopURLs, and it’s very clean design was executed by Electric Pulp.

I expect that this site, like Guy’s previous project Trumors, will be a success. He’s removing the barriers to readership, by building the reading lists for the readers. You don’t need to understand RSS or how to use a Reader. No need to organize blogs within topic. No need to spend the time to discover the most popular blogs. Users just need to know how to click on an article.

Chances are, as people discover Alltop, they’ll become addicted to the various blogs featured within.

This is an idea worth adapting for Corporate use.

In my experience, the value of RSS is not being leveraged effectively within most businesses. We still rely on printed reports, or emailed presentations and time consuming update/status meetings and conference calls. Getting information is still a challenge, requiring time and effort.

Imagine a world where your company intranet was a simple interface like Alltop. Imagine headings like;

Strategy – featuring internal blog feeds on market development, sales and marketing efforts, geographic expansion or acquisitions

Talent – fed by Job opening blog (or application) and your Corporate YouTube training channel

Execution – fed by your Lean Processes Blog, 5S efforts, Process Improvement project blogs or RSS capable Project Management applications etc

Ideas & Innovation – an assembly of thought leaders blogs (hint: check out Alltop’s EGOs section).

Competition – fed by pre-defined Google Alerts for your industry and direct competition as well as RSS feeds from industry related publications.

Our Priorities – internal blogs which detail progress on the most important tasks your company is undertaking.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

Create several blogs within your organization’s network. Find a couple of early adopters. Get them started publishing and show them how their efforts are seamlessly published to the company via your new Alltop style intranet.

Guy – if you could donate an open source version of Alltop for internal Corporate use, you’d likely make America a far more efficient place to work. Until that happens, I.T. people, get started on your own version!

Wine 2.0

If you want a stunning example of what a Web2.0 marketing approach looks like (or rather, how it should work) look no further than Stormhoek.com, the website of a small South African winery.

The website is basically a blog, with links to a YouTube channel and a MySpace page.

Hugh MacLeod (of GapingVoid fame) is the marketing brain behind it all.

With a miniscule budget and heavy competition, he’s managed to very successfully promote the Stormhoek brand (going from zero cases to 200,000 cases in the UK in about 2 years).

Read through the posts and learn how he leverages the passion of wine making and how he communicates and amplifies his brand’s message. Watch how he spreads the word of his brand in new, innovative, 21st century ways.

Note the authenticity.

Note the lack of sales pitch. (Heck I couldn’t even find a listing of their brands on the site!)

And while you’re there read the Smarter Wine Idea post.

And count your lucky stars that you aren’t a competing brand manager.

The Economics of "Free"

Thanks to Guy Kawasaki’s blog, here’s a thought provoking video of Chris Anderson (Editor in Chief, Wired magazine and author of “The Long Tail“) speaking at Nokia World 2007 about the “economics of free”.

Well worth the 45 minutes or so.

A Great Web Resource

I’ve just discovered slideshare.net, a site which allows uploads of PowerPoint presentations on virtually any topic.

Whether you need inspiration on a topic, some examples of terrific (or poor) presentation styles, this is the place to visit.

I’m considering writing a Squidoo lens on Change Management, drawing from my experiences with two global ERP implementations. Had slideshare.net been in existence ten years ago, I might have avoided a few scrapes along the way.

Here’s an example of a slideshow on Change – one of the biggest challenges facing every business today.

SlideShare src=”http://static.slideshare.net/swf/logo_embd.png”> View Upload your own

I urge you to check out the site for yourself for education or inspiration.