Nick Wilsdon» Social Media

Google, Ethics and The Myths of Social Media: An Interview with Jill Whalen

Nick Wilsdon — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:27:00 +0000

There are few people as well known in SEO/SEM circles as Jill Whalen. She founded High Rankings LLC in 1995 and has grown this since to be a leading brand in the industry. Their Search Marketing Newsletter and SEO forums are well known to many. Her conference record speaks for itself.

I first met Jill during the days of ThreadWatch when, as Graywolf writes, “website owners had cajones”. It’s a pleasure to be interviewing someone I respect both as a marketer and a friend. Enjoy.

Ethics has become a hot subject again. What can you tell us about your ethics or methods as a marketer and how/if that perspective has changed over the years?

My feeling is that ethics are a personal thing. It’s something you can’t really fake, at least not for very long. It doesn’t just apply to one part of your life, but permeates into every part — from your personal life to your business life. To me, being ethical and having integrity, whether it has to do with search marketing or not cheating on a spouse, or any other thing that may come up in your life — simply means doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.

What effect has Google moving the goal posts had on you, as a first generation online marketer?

Google has moved the goal posts? :D See, the beauty of the type of search marketing that I’ve always tried to practice and teach is that it makes your website fairly impervious to routine algo changes. Google changes their algorithm in order to close loopholes that search engine spammers exploit. So if you’re making your site the best it can be for your users as well as the search engines, you’re pretty safe!

As the philosopher George Santayana once wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.” Based on your experience in the industry, what mistakes have online marketers made in the past and what should we have learned from these?

Well, it really goes along with both of the previous questions. I’d say the biggest mistake is in trying to trick the search engines rather than just fixing your site. I compare that to putting a band aid on a broken arm! Now, that said, I only work with existing, legitimate companies. I do believe there may be different rules at play when you work with affiliate sites and the like, but that’s not where my area of expertise lies.

That said, it really is great to see that so many people have indeed learned from the past and are working to create great websites these days, rather than chase their tail with spammy tricks.

Many of the old-school marketers are keeping out of the limelight these days. Are they just too busy with work or are there other reasons?

I imagine the reasons vary between the people. Those who have been in the business for a long time have an easier time gaining clients, so yes, they may certainly be too busy to be in the limelight. And it may not be a necessary piece of their marketing plan. After all, being in the limelight is just a form of marketing and PR. Other search marketers are growing their companies, and have let some of their newer employees have the spotlight for awhile.

For me and High Rankings, being involved in the SEO conversation has always been an important marketing component, as well as the part I love the most, so it’s unlikely that you’ll see me disappearing anytime soon!

With the arrival of social media it sometimes seems to me that presentation has become more important than content. The loudest voices can drown out the more experienced ones. Past or present, which three online marketers do you wish we could hear more from and why?

One of my early online mentors was John Audette who ran the i-Sales newsletters (among other things). He was always someone worth listening to, which he proved often as he sold a number of companies. He’s basically retired from online marketing, but interestingly enough, his son (Adam Audette) is carrying the torch and continues to put out the LED newsletter and is becoming a voice in search marketing in his own right.

I also miss hearing the smart and witty common sense online marketing advice from my old pal, Scottie Claiborne. She’s still in the biz to a certain extent, but is focusing on her job as the Webmaster for her local library. She occasionally pops into our forum now and then and when that happens she still provides the same great advice as always!

I believe anyone else that I’ve paid attention to over the years such as Jennifer Laycock, Debra Mastaler and Kim Krause Berg, are still out there fighting the good fight. I can’t think of anyone else at the moment that I’d like to hear more from.

You’ve always worked hard to dispel SEO myths. What do you think are the biggest myths about social media and SMO?

For starters, the biggest myth is that social media is something new! Social media is just a fancy name for online communities, and they have been around since the Internet’s infancy. In fact, I got my start online using social media. First, on a BBS playing an online game (generally with teenage boys!) where you could leave messages for the others playing. Then through the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) where I created a parenting chat room.

That was not only social, but a way to gain business. My first clients were parents/friends that I met through our chat room. I think even old-fashioned email discussion lists would be considered social media. It was through those that I was able to establish myself as an SEO “expert” of sorts, way back in the late ’90’s. I also met other search marketers like Danny Sullivan, Marshall Simmonds, Shari Thurow and Detlev Johnson through those lists (and then later through in-person conferences).

So for anyone who thinks that social media or the use of it for business purposes is new, please think again! The thing about social media that seems to escape many people, is that it works best as a lead generator or a way to get links only when it’s used first and foremost for true social purposes. If you are using it because you think you have to, or as a duty, you’ll never discover its full impact. You really need to love it and be a real part of the conversation to get the most out of it. I would recommend choosing just a few social media sites that have the sort of community you are interested in, and stick with those, rather than trying to take part in all of them.

For instance, while many people seem to like Digg, that’s one I’ve never had much interest in because the discussions there are simply too nasty. I prefer to hang in communities that have some heavy-handed moderation which keeps the discussion on topic.

Currently, I’m finding Twitter to be one of the more interesting communities as you get to pick and choose whose information you see. If someone says stuff you’re not interested in or don’t like, you simply unfollow them! It’s a totally customized chatroom or forum discussion. I’ve discovered interesting websites through Twitter, as well as gained new subscribers to the High Rankings Advisor newsletter, and new members to the High Rankings Forum. I don’t use Twitter for that purpose, however, and really only participate because it’s fun!

The new search engine Cuil has been trumpeted this week as the next “Google Killer”. Do you see this attempt succeeding and if not, can you see anyone managing to dislodge Google from the top position?

It’s way to soon to know what will happen with Cuil. Their initial attempt left a lot to be desired, that’s for sure. I’ve been saying for many years that it’s really Google’s game to lose. Since they’ve permeated through the popular culture it will be extremely difficult for another company to dislodge them from the top position. They’d have to really start sucking big time, and another engine would have to be light-years better in terms of relevancy. While it’s not impossible, I don’t see either of those things happening anytime soon.

In the true tradition of the SMX “give it up” session, can you tell us one marketing tip you’ve managed to keep secret so far?

As I said as a panelist on the first give it up session, the biggest secret is that there are no secrets! There may be some new tricks out there that people keep to themselves, but since I believe that tricks are a silly way to optimize a website, I’ve got nothing for you in this respect. As with everything in life, there are no quick fixes. Search marketing is all about hard work, dedication and to a large extent, passion!

You can catch Jill Whalen speaking at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose in August or at PubCon Las Vegas in November. You can also follow her on Twitter.

Technorati Tags: High Rankings, Interview, Jill Whalen, Old-School SEOs, PubCon, SEO, SES, Social Media

SocialMedian Review: First Impressions Of The Next Big Thing

Nick Wilsdon — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:10:01 +0000

What is SocialMedian.com?

From Mashable.com:

You can follow different topical news groups – which are a collection of activities from people interested in the same topic (called News Networks) – or subscribe to updates from other users (called Newsmakers). On your homepage, you can then filter between the activities in your News Networks and the activities among the Newsmakers you’re tracking. Activities tracked include “Clipping” a story (akin to Digg with bookmarklet and all) or commenting on something on Socialmedian.

Looking beyond those features – which on the surface seem like a hybrid of Digg and Friendfeed – is where Socialmedian potentially gets very interesting for news junkies, and it comes in the form of providing feedback to the service. You can vote on each story’s relevance, rank topics in the order of importance to you, and upgrade the frequency at which you’d like to see stories from specific sources.

So SocialMedian has got a bit of everything in there; social submission, voting, news aggregation, sharing and groups. I’d also mention that it delivers a handy email summary of articles every few hours or daily. KillerStartup suggested these notifications would be via Twitter but they either got this wrong or this feature will be coming in the future. I hope it’s the latter. On the face of it this mashup is doing nothing new but the way they have combined the features works.

Who’s Using SocialMedian.com?

SocialMedian.com was launched publicly on the 31st July but already reports 5537 users. More importantly, the site has attracted some well known early adopters, such as Steve Rubel and Robert Scoble and Louis Gray. The owner Jason Goldberg is also very active on the site and doing a heroic job at drumming up the activity. To start you off, here’s a list of 25 SEO/SEMs on the system. Feel free to add your SocialMedian URL in the comments.

SocialMedian themselves encourage new sign-ups to follow the most active users on the site, so early adopters can use this to their advantage in building their network.

Articles are delivered via newsgroups. These are some of the most active SEO/SEM and Social Media groups I found with user numbers in brackets. Follow the links to sign-up.

http://www.socialmedian.com/network/seo (79)
http://www.socialmedian.com/network/search-engine-marketing (60)
http://www.socialmedian.com/network/seo-2-0 (39 – well done Tad!)
http://www.socialmedian.com/network/social-networking (859)
http://www.socialmedian.com/network/social-media-watch (909)

Enough Good, What About the Ugly?

I’ve experienced some strange activity on the site. Once where a news item was sent to the wrong newsgroup and another time where I was unable to edit a comment. Also SocialMedian.com is having some obvious issues with the current load, this reduces the site to a crawl at times and is probably the underlying cause for these other issues. More than once I’ve been left staring at the default Ruby on Rails error page. Hopefully the fact they have not chosen to customise this with a Fail Whale indicates this problem to be temporary.

Another issue which bugs me is connected to the sharing story functions. If you choose to tweet or email links from SocialMedian, the recipient is required to sign-up to follow the link to the source story. This is true for any non-members casually browsing the site. As Paul Silver twittered back to me, “that smacks of link hoarding/user grabbing”. I think he’s right. I won’t be using that function again to send links to my Twitter feed.*

On the subject of nofollow, the site is sea of pink using the Search Status Plugin for FireFox. However links to the source article are left followed. With so much nofollow plastered about I’m not sure how much linkjuice will flow down to the article pages but hopefully this is a show of respect to the original content producers rather than an oversight.

Conclusion – Should I Sign Up?

I was impressed with the site. As I wrote before, it brings something new to the table in an already overpopulated niche. I really like the level of maturity and number of professionals in this community. These are articles on venture capital rather than LOLcats or iPod rave reviews (although there is already an Apple group). I haven’t read their policy on submitting your own material but the audience looks receptive to commercial sites or marketing related posts.

SocialMedian also encourages you to explore topics through their grouping system. After you read an interesting article you can subscribe to that group feed. It maybe the early adopters but I found myself reading posts on marketing, investment and blogging that wouldn’t be in my usual news sources.

While SEO/SEM/Marketing communities are always going to be my passion, I enjoyed the way SocialMedian pushed me in other directions. With all the banal blogging recently this was a breath of fresh air and an exciting opportunity to meet people outside my immediate SEO/SEM circles.

In my opinion, SocialMedian is a serious contender.

Update: Jason has just twittered me to say they are working on removing the signup requirements. He’s also acknowledged the speed issue. Thanks Jason. You can follow the SocialMedian twitter account here.

Technorati Tags: Beta Launches, Jason Goldberg, News Aggregators, Social Media, SocialMedian, SocialMedian.com, Twitter

Stumblecards: Viral Marketing For StumbleUpon?

Nick Wilsdon — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 20:39:48 +0000

StumbleUpon users have long complained about spam infecting the network, even going so far as to set up dedicated groups to fight it. So far the spam has been fairly easy to identify, mostly clumsy insertion of Viagra or make-money-online pages. However a new viral has appeared this week that has many users scratching their heads. If it is a marketing idea it is far more sophisticated than anything this author has seen on the network. Could this be a sign of the next generation of marketing for StumbleUpon?

While stumbling new pages, the user will run into one of these new stumblecards. The message congratulates the user and offers the following passage as explanation:

The latest sensation sweeping the web, ’stumblecards’ are simply an online version of the humble trading card. What’s so great about ’stumblecards’ is that you never know when you’ll find one. There are many out there to collect so keep your eyes peeled. When you find a card, be sure to bookmark this page or give it the thumbs up so you can go on to collect them all.

So what is this all about? Is it just a way of gaining votes within the StumbleUpon system? If so, it seems to be working. The joker card has 100+ reviews and counting, while some users are dismissive, many are curious about the ‘game’.

Upon inspection it seems unlikely that StumbleUpon have authorised this promotion. Notably the first cards to appear at the site uP’n'@tOm were copyrighted to them. The joker card appeared later and does not carry a copyright, but has Google Adsense on the bottom of the page. My guess would be that the second site jumped on the meme while it was hot. As I am sure others will be planning to do right now.

So what do you think about the promotion, interesting viral idea or waste of time. Let’s hear your thoughts…

Technorati Tags: Social Media, stumblecards, stumbleupon, virals