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What I Learned at Search Engine Bootcamp

Posted: 09 Dec 2008 07:56 PM PST

Last week I was fortunate enough to be given a pass to attend the Search Engine Bootcamp here in Melbourne. I tweeted throughout the day quite a bit - but thought I’d write up some of the tidbits that I took away from some of the sessions over the day.

There was a lot covered so I won’t go through it session by session (I missed a few at the start and end of the day too) but here are a few of the quotes and ideas that I came away with from different speakers (and a few thoughts on why they stood out).

Tim McDonald - Found Agency

Tim spoke about PayPerClick advertising and while I’m not into PPC I was interested to see a few similarities between what he spoke about as key ingredients to driving traffic with PPC and in techniques that we talk about in driving traffic organically through good blogging technique.

In one section he spoke about the reasons that people click on ads - including:

benefits - people click on ads that promise to benefit them in some way
brand - people click on ads with brand names that they recognize
differentiation - people click on ads that are different from others in some way
curiosity - people click on ads that make them curious
legibility - people click on ads that make sense
call to action - people click on ads with a call to action in them

What struck me as I looked over this list was that it could quite easily be translated into a list about how people read posts with headlines or titles with certain characteristics. When people are scanning through lists of potential posts to read in their RSS reader, on sites like Digg, in Search Engine Results - they’re more likely to click on titles to read the full post if it delivers in some of the above ways.

Nathan Stewart - Alkemi International

I heard Nathan speak earlier in the year and found him to have lots of good insights. Last week he spoke about landing pages and different aspects of websites that convert. Again - much of what he said could be applied to bloggers. Here’s a few tidbits that stood out to me:

Let Your Site (Blog) Evolve its Design - When redesigning sites - many people ‘dump’ their old sites and move onto a completely new version. The problem with this is that you fail to capitalize upon the lessons you’ve learned with your current design.

Nathan used Amazon as an example of how to do it better. If you look at Amazon from day to day and week to week you don’t notice a lot of changes in their design - but if you compare it from month to month and year to year you can see that their design is quite different. Their strategy is to incrementally change, or evolve, their design over time. Lots of small changes that are tested to see what works best - which over time add up to effective change in their design rather than just a complete redesign.

Why are websites failing to persuade people to take action:

Nathan shared three reasons.

1. poor planning - sites tend not to think about where they want to ‘lead’ their readers/visitors. Good planning will think about a site in terms of ‘paths’ that you want to lead people along to travel through a site and to a point of conversion.

2. no customer centric Architect - someone needs to take on the planning role. Many websites developments don’t have someone taking on responsibility for this.

3. upside down approach - too much focus upon graphic and navigation first and then content last. Start with content and add other graphical and navigational aspects later. Content (text based) is king.

Understand Your Visitor (Reader)

Nathan also focused quite a bit on getting into the shoes…. or more importantly the minds… of visitors to your site (or blog).

most people visit your site with a purpose in mind - understand what it is and deliver it
understand how your customer buys and makes decisions
actions only take place after a decision has been made - if you want people to ‘do’ something you need to help them make a series of decisions along the way rather than just tell them to do something. It’s not just about the final decision - but usually it is a series of decisions along the way.

It is really about understanding the world from your audience’s perspective. Knowing demographics (how many of your readers are male, how old they are, what their income is) doesn’t really tell you enough about your readers - you need to know how they think, how they make decisions, where they are in the decision making process when they visit your site etc.

Four types of People and their Buying Styles

Nathan presented a slide that presented four different types of people and the way that they made purchases. I wish he’d had this slide up longer because it fascinated me but I managed to get some of it down. He said that these four styles were based upon Myers Briggs personality types and that when designing a landing page for a website it was important to address all four buying styles in your copy.

The four types could be remembered with different characters from the Simpsons (and also Sex in the City):

Competitive - what can you do for me? (Bart)
Spontaneous - why should I buy it from you? (Homer)
Methodical - how does it work? - (Maggie)
Humanistic - who has used your product? - (Marge)

I didn’t get much more than that but Nathan talked about how the first two styles were much more fast paced buyers so should be addressed at the top of a landing page and that the last two were slower paced type people so you could address them lower on the page.

Jason West from WebSalad

Jason’s topic was Online Reputation Management. To be honest I thought I’d find this session more helpful than I did. Perhaps I know more about the topic than I thought I did, perhaps its just too big a topic for such a short session or perhaps it was because he kept talking about bloggers as ‘those bloggers’ :-)

One of the aspects that Jason spoke about quite a bit (he must have said it 10 or more times in his session) was the importance of owning Google with reputation management. He mentioned again and again how they didn’t really look much beyond Google what they did and didn’t focus upon managing people’s reputations in other forums like social media.

While I can understand why they do this (Google is probably the #1 place to focus and in some ways it is easier to manage) I think it’s dangerous not to include other sites. A recent example of how social media sites can really hurt a brand’s reputation was seen recently in the debacle that Motrin had with some of their advertising and the uproar that happened about it on Twitter. Under estimating what social media can do in terms of an online reputation can be dangerous and it will only become more and more dangerous.

One thing that Jason spoke about that I did find helpful was the way that they view Google for different search terms. They see the results page on Google for brands that they manage as ’shelf space’ and look at what control they have over the different listings on the first two results pages on Google.

Another key quote from Jason - “A blogger can have more influence than a major brand has over their own brand online.”

Kate Gamble from Bruce Clay Australia

I found Kate (follow her here on Twitter) to be a refreshing way for my day to end at Search Engine Bootcamp (I had to leave after her session). While she said she hadn’t presented well she covered the topic of Social Media Marketing very comprehensively and clearly.
She spoke about the 4 C’s of Social Media:

Content
Context
Connections
Community

A process for Companies Wanting to Get into Social Media Marketing

She also outlined a helpful process for companies wanting to get into social media as a marketing tool.

listen - where are your people, people interested in what you’re interested in. Always start with this.
set objectives - get this clear
participate - based upon objectives
monitor - without this its largely a waste of time
report - what did you learn?
analyze - what does it mean?

This process is cyclical - so once you’re done you go back to listening.

Social Media Breadcrumbs

I also liked the concept of ‘creating social media breadcrumbs’ that Kate spoke about. A social media breadcrumb is a path that we create to lead those who find us on social media sites to other places that they can connect with us. So on a Twitter profile it might be a link to a page which has other social media sites that we have presence on or a link back to our blog. Kate spoke about how these ‘breadcrumbs’ should be consistent from site to site and have the same ’story’ and ‘branding’.

Shiny Object Syndrome

Kate spoke about how everyone wants to play with the latest social media toy on the block - but this can actually be distracting and waste your time. Instead ‘go to where your people are’ - find out who those you want to interact with in social media are gathering and build a presence there - whether those places are the ‘cool’ places to be or not.

Calls to Action

We often think about developing Calls to Action in advertising and even in writing effective blog posts - but it isn’t something I’d given a lot of thought to with social media. Here’s the question:

what do you want ppl to do when they see your profile on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace….etc?

It’s actually a great question and one that need not be that complex to answer. Your answer might be - to drive people to visit my blog - or to check out my LinkedIn profile - or to buy my book. Once you know what you want people to do having seen you on these sites is to call them to do it and give them a clear way to do so.

Reflections on Search Engine Bootcamp

All in all I had a good day at this conference. It was a relatively small event (there must have been 30 or so in the room) but that made it better as it gave an opportunity to circulate, ask questions and not get lost in the crowd.
The content wasn’t what I’d call advanced - but was solid and well presented. As you can see above - I came away with a few things to think about. Interestingly most of it wasn’t really about search engines directly!

There were other speakers that I’ve not written about here (the full agenda is here) but I either missed them (there were a few I wish I’d seen earlier in the day) or didn’t find them quite as relevant for me.

I’m looking forward to SMX in Sydney next April now!

Tags: Search Engine Optimization

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You Need a Blog Strategy

Posted: 09 Dec 2008 01:06 PM PST

Do you have a Blog Strategy? In this guest post Josh Klein shares some suggestions on how to blog strategically.

I recently started an article series on how to write a blog worth caring about. The first lesson – and the thing too many people skip – is creating a blog strategy. That’s our topic for today.

Gone are the days when launching a blog was enough; the web is too crowded. You’re going to have to work your tail off to be successful – as you know from reading Problogger – so you better have a good reason to be doing something this hard.

In other words, you need a strategy with clear goals.

Thinking tactically – writing a one-off post, promoting yourself, optimizing for search, building links – is all well and good, but won’t matter in the end unless it moves you towards the right goal.

I admit my blog started as an experiment in search engine optimization, so I had no strategy. My plan was to take a site to the #1 result in Google as fast as possible just to see what worked.

I had to sneak past Wikipedia, Boing Boing, TED and 5.3 million others, but I won the #1 spot after 3 months of work and realized, to my horror, that people were actually reading the site. This is when most blogs die, but mine didn’t because I went back to the drawing board and came up with a strategy, a reason to exist.

Here are 6 different strategies for a blog (though there are plenty more). You don’t need to fit yourself into just one bucket (I don’t), but you’ll be more successful the more singular your focus.

1) Spread an idea

There might be one idea you’re passionate about, and you want to reach as many people as possible with that one idea. Maybe you’re into going green, want to get an official elected, or think people need to stop writing making-money-online blogs.

Though ideas are a fine reason to blog, if it’s the only reason, a blog might be the wrong format. If you’re all about the idea, you’re better off spreading it where the people already are – other blogs, magazines, newspapers, and street corners. Building an audience ain’t easy.

2) Learn

It’s hard to talk about ideas in a way that can change people’s minds. By writing a blog about your ideas, you help yourself develop your ideas beyond what could happen in your own head. If you can get readers to give you feedback, you’ll be challenged to defend your ideas.

Blogging makes you smarter.

3) Build a podium

Having any sort of “media channel” – meaning a place where people go to consume ideas – is a powerful asset. A blog gives you the ability to direct attention (of humans and of search engines) to anything that matters to you.

People talk about the power of networking in business – a wide network of peers lets you tap into a variety of skills and opportunities. The golden rule of networking is to not want anything… which means you need to network before you need the network.

Building a podium is the new networking, and you also have to build it before you need it.

Though networking is as powerful as ever, the ability to direct attention to ideas is a whole new layer.

We are in the middle of a gold rush for attention, and though it might feel like you missed the boat when you read Problogger, you should realize that even if 10 people read your blog, you’re ahead of the vast majority of humanity. Since the bubble burst, people have been too bearish on the web. There is massive untapped potential, so build your podium now.

4) Build authority

Your blog doesn’t need to be an income stream to make you money. In Darren’s recent poll, 85% of you said you made less than $1,000 in October (an annualized $12,000). That’d put 85% of you below the U.S. poverty line if you were “pro” bloggers.

I’m convinced that the best use of a blog is to direct attention to the other projects you work on that do make you money. Even if your blog does make money, look at the success Darren has had by cross-promoting TwiTip, Problogger, and Digital Photography School.

TwiTip wouldn’t have 2,500 subscribers today if it weren’t Darren’s web property. You could dismiss this as the power of celebrity, but Darren isn’t exactly the Britney Spears of the web (that would be Kevin Rose). This is niche authority.

But a niche doesn’t have to be subject-based, it can also be location-based or social group-based. Because of my blog, when friends — and friends of friends — have ideas for websites, they talk to me. Strangers use my contact form to ask about consulting. None of that is because I’m a famous blogger; it’s because I’m the only person they know that has an authority blog.

5) A resume

Until the recent sharpest downturn in the economy, I was getting unsolicited job offers multiple times a week because of my blog and social networks like LinkedIn.

Getting the job of your dreams requires being a qualified and compelling candidate. Most people spend all their time worrying about the qualified part without working on the compelling part. Who cares if you graduated summa cum laude if no one actually bothers to read your resume.

Writing a blog on your subject of choice helps to qualify you, but more importantly, it makes you a compelling candidate that stands out from the crowd.

6) A legacy

Follow the advice of Merlin Mann and Gary Vaynerchuk: act as if you’re writing to one person you respect, and think about the message you’re sending to your future grandchildren (who will see everything you leave on the web).

Just because your blog is built around another strategy doesn’t mean you can ignore your legacy. Don’t do anything you aren’t going to be proud of.

Sometimes that means skipping opportunities that look like short cuts. There are no short cuts to greatness.

Why bother?

Everything else you do must come from your strategy. Without a strategy, you won’t have focused content, a powerful layout, metrics to track, or any idea of when you’re succeeding and when you’re failing.

The point of defining your blog’s strategy is so you’re not shooting blind.

Your blog’s strategy informs what you should be doing (and what you should not be doing). Without strategy, you’re just creating another blog that will die off when you lose your passion next month.

If you don’t come up with a reason to care about your blog, no one else will.

Josh Klein advises Fortune 500 companies on their web strategies and writes a blog about making websites that matter to human beings.

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5 Reasons to Start a New Blog

Posted: 09 Dec 2008 06:04 AM PST

Over my first 4 years of blogging I started in excess of 25 blogs. Most failed and no longer exist - but in those first 4 years I started a new blog every few months.

In hindsight I now look back on that period and realize that my strategy was flawed.

I did learn a lot - but I was writing too many blogs, I was writing about some topics I had little interest in, I was not writing enough original and helpful content (I was too stretched) and as a result of all this - the vast majority of the blogs I started in that time failed.

As a result of this realization I changed my blogging strategy and decided to focus my energy upon two blogs - ProBlogger and Digital Photography School.

I decided to resist the urge to start new blogs and to focus my energies on producing a higher quality destination for readers. The strategy worked. The extra attention I gave my blogs led to better post, better design and a better reader experience - the blogs have grown strategy.

In the last two and a half years I focused upon two blogs and didn’t start any others. In a sense the pendulum swung from a place where I was starting new projects every second month - to one where I started none.

Last month I decided that it was time to start a new blog - TwiTip. In doing so I realized that perhaps in not starting a blog for a couple of years I’d been missing out - perhaps the pendulum had swung too far.

5 Reasons Why Starting a New Blog Can Be Good for You

Here’s some of the reasons that I have enjoyed launching TwiTip (and why I think occasionally starting a new blog is a good idea):

1. To Keep Fresh - perhaps the thing that I’ve enjoyed the most about the process of starting TwiTip is that it’s given me energy. While I love ProBlogger and DPS and they do give me energy - there’s something special about new blogs. The excitement of launching, the gathering of a new readership, exploring new topics, seeing how readers respond to your posts, connecting with other blogs in a niche. Starting a new blog can give you energy and keep you fresh.

2. To Explore New Tools - I’ve found it harder and harder to keep up with the latest plugins and tools available to bloggers in the last year or so - simply because my main two blogs have gotten to a point where they are quite stable and don’t really need too many tweaks. TwiTip has allowed me to play with some new tools/plugins, techniques, features that I might not have tested otherwise. In a sense TwiTip has become a live testing ground for new techniques - some of which will probably be incorporated in my other blogs.

3. To Explore New Design - In a similar way - TwiTip has been fun for me to explore a new way of presenting content with a new theme. I’ve enjoyed the Thesis theme a lot and have played a little with some of its features. In coming weeks I hope to unveil a new design too which again will be fun to present.

4. To Experiment with New Voices - Sometimes when you have been writing a blog for a few years it is easy to fall into patterns in the way that you write. The patterns might not be bad (they could work well for your audience) but it is easy to become a little dry as a result. A new blog gives you space to explore new styles of communication.

5. Extra Income Stream - I didn’t expect it to happen quite so quickly but in December TwiTip welcomed its first ever sponsor - SitePoint. I’ll write about the process of this at some point soon - but it essentially happened as a result of building a decent daily readership and while it’s not big dollars - it certainly is a nice extra income stream.

A Word of Warning

What I’ve found in the pendulum swings that I’ve been through - from having a single blog, to starting 25 or so of the things, to not starting anything new…. is that new blogs are good - but in moderation.

Don’t bite off more than you can chew - if you do the quality of your blogs will suffer.

I’m sure different people have the ability to juggle multiple projects differently - but at least for me I’ve found that I work best when I’m able to focus my energies on a small number of projects (for me that is 2-3 blogs plus a few social media accounts) - but that I also get a lot of energy from new projects also.

In short - it’s a balancing act!

Tomorrow I want to extend this post with some tips on ‘how’ to add a second blog to your stable of blogs. Stay tuned.

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Online Reputation Management Training Workshop

Posted: 08 Dec 2008 05:46 PM PST

If you’re interested in learning about Online Reputation Management and can get to Vegas on 14 January Andy Beal is putting on a one day event that you should consider.

He’s offering a $100 discount to ProBlogger readers (use the discount code of ‘problogger’ when signing up and you’ll get it). Plus there’s a further $200 early bird discount if you register before 31 December.

This is a day of professional training - particularly targeted for those who look after their company’s reputation management OR for those wanting to offer online reputation management to the services that they offer to others (a service that I think more and more companies will be paying for).

The class size is for 25 so places are limited.

Andy is a growing authority on the topic of online reputation management - in fact I was at a seminar last week where an Aussie reputation management expert who was speaker spoke glowingly of Andy and recommended him as an expert on the topic.

Learn more about what Andy is offering here.

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Updating Old Posts On Your Blog

Posted: 08 Dec 2008 10:35 AM PST

Today I spent a little time here on ProBlogger updating an old post that I wrote back in 2006 - Becoming a ProBlogger, a Story in Many Parts.

Why Update Old Blog Posts?

I know some bloggers don’t like to update old posts (they like to let them stand as a record of their thoughts at any given point in time) but I personally don’t have an issue with it at all and think it’s a worthwhile thing to do on a number of fronts:

1. Accuracy - there are some times when things you’ve written are simply not true - or cease to be true. Correcting mistakes or making updates to reflect new circumstances actually makes your blog more useful for readers surfing through your archives - which all goes to help improving your blog.

2. Change of Opinion - there are times when over time I change my opinion on different topics. While an old post that you no longer agree with might make interesting reading - it can also impact your reputation. Someone coming to that post won’t know you’ve changed your opinion and will assume that you still think what you once did unless they find something that points them to your new opinion. At times this can be quite damaging to your reputation.

3. Usefulness and Usability - sometimes information in old posts can simply become dated or even ‘broken’ (ie links no longer working as other sites die). Updating these posts with current information and fixing links (either by updating or deleting) makes your post more useful.

By no means am I arguing that bloggers update all of their old posts - but it does make sense to go back through key posts in your archives to do some updating - particularly those that continue to generate traffic over time.

How to Update Old Posts

There are a variety of ways of updating old posts:

1. Quick Fixes - in many circumstances it’s as simple as replacing a link, fixing a mistake etc. In these cases I rarely make a note of it being an updated post as I don’t think it really impacts readers to know that it has been changed.

2. Updates - you’ll see in the example above that I did two things. Firstly I added a number of paragraphs midway through the article. I made the subheading of that section quite clear that it was an update. Secondly I made a note early in the post saying that it had been updated. I wanted to do this at the top of the post to show readers that the information in it was still current. I didn’t want people to see the 2006 date and think it was not valid any more.

When you do these updates that are more than cosmetic (and where you think the information is important) - it can be worthwhile making a short post about it on your blog to indicate to current readers that the post is updated.

3. Reposting - on my photography blog I will regularly take old posts, update the information and then repost them with the current date. I can do this on that blog because the permalinks on that blog don’t include the date in them (as they do here on ProBlogger) and so reposting them doesn’t break the links.

4. New Posts - the last technique that I use is to write a new updated post and then link to it in an old post. I do this when the updated information is significant and warrants a completely new post. In these new posts you may wish to refer back to the old post (so readers can see how your ideas have developed). It is well worthwhile when writing a new post on a topic you’ve covered previously to add a link to the old post to direct readers to the new one so that they get the up to date information.

Do you ever go back through old blog posts and update them? How do you do it?

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