Category Archives: seo

February 23, 2012

Should You Remove Your Google Search History Before Google’s New Privacy Policy Takes Effect?

By Giselle Bisson
Google 的貼牌冰箱（Google refrigerator）

Google knows when you've been sleeping, knows when you're awake and even knows what you've been eating. Isn't that a little TMI?（Photo credit: Aray Chen)

You’ve probably noticed this message on Gmail, Google, You Tube and all of the other Google-owned services you use lately. And like most of us, you probably clicked and ignored it.

We’re changing our privacy policy. This stuff matters.

If you do click “learn more,” you get this message:
“Our new (privacy) policy covers multiple products and features, reflecting our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google.”
What that really means is that beginning on March 1, 2012, all of your data is being interconnected across all Google products which include the Chrome browser, Google Voice, Google Docs, Gmail, You Tube and their social networking service, Google+. This information can be culled into a profile that knows almost everything about you — what you watch, read, eat, buy, your health concerns, your sexual orientation, your politics, your finances, your friends, who you talk to and how long you spoke to them, even your location at the time you sent that message.
According to Google, they know your wi-fi access points too.
Google uses this information mainly to provide you tailored content — and in highly-targeted data for their advertisers. Some of this data is sold to corporations.
Last week, while attending the SFMusic Tech conference, I got a demonstration of an API (Application Programming Interface) technology that tracks your computer’s location and IP address and lots of other personal data. The man who demonstrated this to me showed me the code generated, and how this information, which includes the IP address of your posts in social media, is sold to their customers, which include services like Intelius.com and other corporations.
It’s difficult to predict now how that information might come to haunt you at some point in the distant future that you can’t even imagine today.
In December, I was at a cocktail party at the very lavish and beautiful Silicon Valley home of a successful man who does investigative research for major law firms. Essentially, data mining. And what he told me was pretty fascinating.
“Nothing you do or say on the Internet or in email is private.” In fact he said, “If you don’t want something uses as evidence in a court of law, never, never put it in email.”
As a PR professional, I always tell my clients there is no such thing as “off the record” when talking to the press. But now, in the era of Internet and social media, we must remember there is not such thing as “off the record” on the Internet either.
So if you want your personal information “off the record” you need to take responsiblity for it. Because services like Google want to encourage you to share and interlink as much personal data as possible.
Yesterday, the Electronic Frontieers Foundation, which acts like the ACLU of the Internet to protect individual privacy rights, issued this bulletin:

“On March 1st, Google will implement its new, unified privacy policy, which will affect data Google has collected on you prior to March 1st as well as data it collects on you in the future. Until now, your Google Web History (your Google searches and sites visited) was cordoned off from Google’s other products.

If you want to keep Google from combining your Web History with the data they have gathered about you in their other products, such as YouTube or Google Plus, you may want to remove all items from your Web History and stop your Web History from being recorded in the future.”

For example, when you play certain video clips on You Tube, Google places a long term cookie on your computer. What this cookie could be used for in the future is anyone’s guess, but you might be better off not getting it in the first place.

According to the civil rights organization, ACLU this week:

“…Keep in mind the fact that any data Google collects and stores is available not only to other corporations who buy it from the data giant, but also to the government. The laws governing our digital privacy are woefully inadequate and in some cases incredibly invasive, allowing for police access to our data even if they have no evidence that we’ve done anything wrong.“

I always recommend using a private P.O. box and a voicemail number when entering personal data into online forms and shopping sites protect yourself from potential identity theft. You may particularly want to protect your identity if you are a public figure, musician, performer, CEO or celebrity.

It all depends on how much you value your personal privacy and if you can foresee any time in the future when your search history, email or other Internet data could be supoenaed and used as evidence.

Whether you are large business or a solopreneur, that could have huge implications sometime in the future that you just can’t predict today.

Here’s the Google privacy policy. Take time to read it. Don’t just dismiss it. As Google says: This stuff matters.
Related articles:

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in citizen journalism, damage control, Google Wave, privacy, search engine optimization, seo, social media, you tube

March 7, 2011

What’s in a name? Everything!

By Giselle Bisson

I was talking to a client the other day who wanted more visibility. They had a hideously long URL for their company website.

I rolled my eyes. I immediately knew they were doomed to failure unless they changed their name.

I asked: “Is there any way you can find a shorter url?”

My prospective client hemmed and hawed about how attached he was to his ridiculously long company name.

There’s a reason why Google and Yahoo succeeded — and a host of other earlier search engine contenders like NorthernLights and AltaVista bombed.

There’s a reason why YouTube won the video wars and early contenders like, “uh, um, uh, whats their name, I forgot” failed.

Because YouTube is a freakin’ awesome brand. It says what it does. It has attitude. It’s memorable. You can spell it. It rhymes with things. It’s unique. It works in other languages and other cultures.

When I named my business, I spent an entire rainy day on Go Daddy typing things in at random until I found “Visibility Shift.”

Even though it’s not short, it’s memorable, it says exactly what it is.

And it’s relevant to my consulting practice, which is about shifting your visibility to a new level. I was absolutely floored when I discovered such a great website name was even available — and for $7.99.

There are several reasons you want to take time to find a truly memorable stand out URL:
- easier to type – a long or unmemorable url discourages people
- memorable - (One word is best. Two words are ok. Three is just too much.)
- Searchability (SEO) - A name that isn’t unique is going to bring up millions of search results in Google. You want a unique URL so you are the first and only hit in Google, without having to pay $$$$ to Google for adwords.
- International localization - remember the web is global and your name has to translate easily into other languages — so it’s better if it’s not a word in any language.  Run your name past some friends who speak other languages and some translation software and make sure it doesn’t translate into something embarrassing. (The Chevy Nova flopped in Mexico because “No Va” means “Won’t Run.”)
- Put less words on your site, more pictures. Especially remember that the web is international and words need to be translated.  So the fewer words, the more universal your message is.  Learn from the success of big brands like Apple and Google who take a less is more approach.
-  It doesn’t have to be a .com — You can be successful with a .us, .tv, etc. For example, Delicio.us.
- Groupon is successful in large part because their name rocks. “Group + coupon.” Brilliant. Memorable. Unique. Short. Tells you what it is.
- Get your name first before you spend time and money branding it. Changing your name later is very costly and it means you are undoing all the work you did on public relations, marketing and social media outreach.
- VCs look at your brand and name as a big reason to invest. A great logo, web design, business card, brand and name are almost as important as the product or technology behind the brand.
- Think about web branding when you name your products — and your kids, too. I’m grateful that my mother, very ahead of her time, gave me a name that is so unique that I go to the top of Google. Check that name out in Facebook, Twitter and Google and make sure it’s available. (The reverse applies if you want to protect your privacy — then John Doe is the way to go.)
- Consider adding a unique middle name to your name that describes what you do so you stand out. (ie: David “Avocado” Wolfe is a speaker in the health food field.)
This advice applies to any personal or corporate brand — a musician, band, artist, writer, book title or film. Choose your name carefully and snap up the URL as soon as you can, even if you end up sitting on it for years before you get your project started.
For more information about naming, visit Name Wire a blog about naming.

2 comments   |  tags: , , | posted in blog, bootstrapping, Facebook, personal branding, privacy, public relations, renegade marketing, search engine optimization, seo, shameless self promotion, social media, Twitter, Uncategorized, viral, website

February 9, 2011

7 lazy ways to shamelessly promote your blog and social media posts to get more traffic

By Giselle Bisson

Put your social media on autopilot - reach thousands of influencers, worldwide while you're still asleep or drinking your first cup of coffee.

 

1. Use “Share This” widgets to shamelessly self promote.

Whether you’re using WordPress or any other blogging or web development tool, you can use the “Share This” widget on your website to quickly promote your posts .  Just install the widget on your site and right after you file your post share it shamelessly! Take an hour and share your story with every possible site out there–especially Digg and StumbleUpon. The more you share, the more links you are generating back to your site — and the more traffic you’ll get.

2. Use the “Publicize This” feature in Wordpress.

Yesterday WordPress announced some improvements to make their Publicize This feature more friendly.  Follow the instructions and watch your traffic soar.

3. Time your posts strategically.

In the world of old school journalism and PR, we have learned to strategically project which times and days will generate the most pick up for a news announcement. Tuesday at 8 am EST is when I’ve found press releases get the most pickup.

Why? Because on Monday at 8 am, everyone’s still groggy and drinking coffee (or they’re rolling in late to the office, or sitting in meetings.)

Tuesday is when business gets rolling. And it’s the day when publications traditionally have their story meetings.

Wednesday is the day the weeklies traditionally file their stories.

Thursday is still ok, but your story might get forgotten by the following Monday when reporters are writing again.

To bury bad news, you use reverse psychology. To bury bad news, announce on Friday afternoon, or right before a holiday weekend when everyone’s jetting out of town early. (This is the day for announcing the departure of a CEO or dismal profits that you don’t want to influence the market with.)

Well, I’ve discovered the same theory works with blogging, Tweeting and Facebook:

Tuesday at 9 am EST is the perfect time for a Tweet or post you want to get noticed because:

- It’s 9 am on the East Coast and everyone’s drinking coffee and checking their email, Twitter and Facebook.

- It’s 12 noon on the West Coast and everyone’s checking their social media profiles while on lunch break.

- It’s 6 pm in London, and everyone’s finished their work day and are checking their PCs.

There are lots of tools that help you write your Twitter posts in advance and time them. WordPress also let’s you schedule a post in advance so it blasts out just at the right time.  Marketing consultant Gary McCaffree has this great chart that helps you predict the “sweet spot” for a Tweet — he says the best time is between 9 am and 3 pm.

4. Have everything connected so your WordPress updates your Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, automatically.

This is so easy and so potent. (And you can even rig it so that it’s on autopilot while you’re still asleep — tricking your clients and colleagues into thinking you are a hard working early riser!)

- Set up the Wordbook plug in to post your WordPress to your Facebook wall.

- Now set up the WordPress to Twitter plug in so that your WordPress post automatically goes out to your Twitter subscribers.

- And use the Twitter to Linked in widget to set things up so your Tweet automatically updates your LinkedIn status.

Wow! You just got out the word to thousands of professional connections while you were still asleep!

5. Use a press release to dramatically boost your story’s pick up.

There are hundreds of free press release sites that will help you blast out your story to the planet, or you can use a professional press release wire service for a fee.  You can time your news in advance to go out at a strategic time, and you can load up your press release with key words that will make it stand out in the search engines. Plus, if you use a paid newswire, your news will automatically go out into Yahoo News and Google News where it’s picked up like an AP or Reuter’s newswire story.

With one well written article or news release, I have consistently generated from 50,000 to 100,000 links back to a client’s website. (That’s not a typo.)  And your traffic will only increase as spiders and bots pick up your news, reprint it on RSS feeds and blogs throughout the web, and yes, generate more links back to your blog which in turn permanently increase traffic and search rank.

But the key word here is “well written.” You can’t get this kind of pick up for self serving fluff — your content has to be genuinely newsworthy, interesting, engaging, funny, controversial, keyword-rich or relevant. If you’re not a wordsmith, hire a professional.  Ultimately it’s a juicy headline and great content that gets noticed, reprinted, passed along virally and linked to.

6. Time your email newsletter to go out at the same time.

Start a news virus! Put your blog post in your email newsletter and time it to go out simultaneously to your customers, internal company employees, investors, partners, influencers and your press/blogger list.  With everyone hearing about your news announcement at the same time, it has more psychic impact and feels more important.  Also it’s courteous to give the news to your most valued contacts just as it goes out to the blogosphere.

7. Spin it and send it out again.

Tweet your story several times in one day or week by simply spinning your Tweet slightly and changing the headline to focus on a different aspect of the story. For example, my headline here is: “7 lazy ways to shamelessly promote your blog posts.” My next headline could be: “7 lazy ways to get more traffic on your website,” and then “7 shamelessly lazy ways to get more Twitter traffic,” and then, “Get more web traffic while you’re still asleep,” and so on… and yes, you can even set them up in advance so they go out on autopilot.

Well, (gloat, gloat) just wanted to let you know that this post went out to thousands of friends and influencers, all over the planet, boosted my search rank and increased my credibility while I was lounging around doing my morning yoga and drinking my first cup of coffee.

That’s why I love social media!

5 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in blog, bootstrapping, citizen journalism, Digg, Facebook, flacks, newsletter, PR Newswire, press release, public relations, renegade marketing, search engine optimization, seo, shameless self promotion, social media, Twitter, viral, website, Wordpress

December 21, 2010

8 free (or cheap) ways to give your web branding a new look for the New Year

By Giselle Bisson

Start the new year with a fresh new look for your personal brand.

This down time between Christmas and the first week of the New Year is a perfect opportunity to give your personal branding a lift and start the New Year with a fresh image.

Here are eight ways you can use free templates and other inexpensive tools available on the web to give your business or personal brand a lift.

1. Reinvent your name for the new year.

Is your business name unique–or is it lost in the crowd? Consider finding a new name for your business and a unique URL — an identifier that people type into the browser to find your website. Do a little research on  Go Daddy or directly from WordPress, and see if your business name (or your personal name, or the name of your book) is available. If your name is generic, hard to remember or hard to spell, change it today before you start your branding campaign.

 

Check for copyright availability too before you buy your URL. If your business name is no longer available in Facebook, Twitter or Go Daddy, consider modifying or changing it today to something unique before you move on to step 2.
If you aren’t the first whatever that shows up in Google, you’ll need to pay dearly for that in advertising. Names are free. Ads are expensive. Save money by choosing a unique name before you start your web marketing campaign.

2. Start a blog with a free WordPress theme.

Do you have a blog yet? Or do you have an old website that desperately needs an update? A blog is the hub and the center of the wheel of your integrated web marketing strategy, so start with it first.

I recommend a blog, not a Website, because blogs are filled with words, and Google uses words to search for you. In short, blogs, which are filled with Tags and Categories and Words are instantly Search Engine Optimized.

Moving from an old static website to a new WordPress blog (or adding a blog as a link on your old static site) will generate an instant surge in traffic and customers in the New Year.

With one click and you can move your old, outdated WordPress site into a new theme and try it out.  Just click “theme options” in your Dashboard to try on a new look — or spend a little to get your site hosted and you’ll be able to choose from thousands of free templates for your site.
Choose a template that offers a “custom-background” and “custom-header” and custom colors, such as this Elegant Grunge template I used for Visibility Shift.
Your background is important and spend enough time to really find one that strikes you. I like to start with a clean, white, simple zen-like template as a blank canvas and add bling from there:
  • Top 5 WordPress Simple White Themes: http://www.techcats.net/top-5-free-simple-white-wordpress-themes.html
  • 10 super clean and minimal themes: http://www.cssreflex.com/2010/10/10-super-clean-and-minimal-free-wordpress-themes.html
  • 40 stylish, minimal, clean themes: http://speckyboy.com/2009/04/20/40-stylish-minimal-and-clean-free-wordpress-themes/
  • 20 beautiful minimalist themes: http://sixrevisions.com/wordpress/20-beautiful-minimalist-wordpress-themes/
3. Add a new free custom  background to your theme.

You can find a free wallpaper online to use as your background, or buy stock art or better yet, use your own photo that you have rights to.  There are thousands of free backgrounds available, here’s just one site to check out:
  • Free wallpapers: http://techmagazine.ws/free-textures-background-images/
4. Create a new custom banner for your page:

Some WordPress sites enable you to drop in a photo, crop it and add text to create a custom banner or header. I used a photo by my brother in law, Adrian Fernandez, (of a galaxy) for this blog, Visibility Shift. Prior to that, I used a free image of Times Square that matched the wallpaper in my Twitter page.
  • Free Twitter background: http://twitrounds.com/twitter-backgrounds/times-square/
Here is just one of many sites that let you create free banners without needing to know Photoshop:
  • Header Art: http://www.header-art.com/
  • Theme Headers: http://www.themeheaders.com/
You can also find sites that offer cute, free custom backgrounds for Blogger, like this one I used for the blog, Shopping for Love:
  • Background Fairy: http://www.backgroundfairy.com.
5. Add free plug ins or custom fonts to your blog.

If you are hosted, you can use a wealth of free Plug Ins to jazz up your blog. If your site is WordPress hosted, you can use Typekit for two free fonts. (Two is the max you should use anyway for clean design.)
Unique fonts will really make your site stand out. I used two very distinctive Typekit fonts in the Laughing Heart site and the colors of pink, lavender and purple for a playful look that suits this husband-wife spiritual comedy team.
The most important plug in is a Share This button that will encourage readers to virally share your content via email, Facebook, Twitter, Stumble Upon, Digg, etc.
6. Start a free newsletter.

Your newsletter should use a similar color scheme, template, banner, background, photograph and font as the rest of your branding. My branding designer recommends the free My Newsletter Builder for a newsletter. Most of my friends and clients use Constant Contact. A new service, My Emma, is more stylish.
Make sure you add all of your social networking pages into the signature line in your newsletter.
While you’re at it, update your email list and type in or scan the contacts from all those business cards you gathered in 2010. When you build social media pages, you can use that email list to invite customers and contacts to join your pages.
You can manage your email list for free in a free email program like Fastmail or Gmail.
7. Update (or start) your Facebook Fan Page, Twitter page, Linked In profile and Yelp page.

If you don’t have a social media presence yet, the winter break is a great, quiet time to hunker down and do the tedious, time consuming work it takes to get your pages built and invite all of your contacts into them.
Again, use the same photo, name, background wall paper or logo, and the same fonts consistently in all of your web and social media pages.
8. Send out a New Year’s holiday greeting with your e-newsletter to announce your new look.
There are tons of free New Year’s wallpapers out there that you can use to spruce up your newsletter, or better yet, commission a portrait of your family, work group or business, or a collection of photos that sum up the highlights of 2010.  Use your newsletter to announce your new website and Social Media pages to your friends, family, business contacts and customers and start the New Year with a fresh look for 2011.

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in blog, bootstrapping, Facebook, newsletter, personal branding, renegade marketing, search engine optimization, seo, shameless self promotion, social media, template, Twitter, viral, website, Wordpress

November 8, 2010

Executive social media jobs exploding. (It’s not just for ninjas, gurus and interns anymore.)

By Giselle Bisson
Look how fat I am on your airline.

Commedian Kevin Smith posted this Twit Pic with the caption: "Look how fat I am on your airline," after Southwest bumped him off a flight for being too fat.

2010 was the year of the uber-embarrassing social media blunder:

  • Southwest Airlines threw celebrity Kevin Smith off a plane for being too fat to fly in one seat. Smith’s Tweets about the incident were not only widely read and hilarious, but a PR nightmare for the airline.
  • The Gap changed their logo and the blogosphere errupted by ridiculing it with the “Crap” logo and the “Gag” logo.

In the wake of so many embarrassing social media disasters, smart businesses are finally starting to take social media seriously. This week, social media hit a new Tipping Point and the Fortune 500 started creating new jobs and investing in seasoned professionals.

Today I did a search in one of the employment databases and found an astonishing 3,193 new jobs created in the US in the last few days for social media professionals! But more amazing, most of these jobs are senior level, VP, Director or Manager positions. This is a dramatic shift from even a few months ago.

Here are just a few of the major brands that are advertising for new social media posts:

Sony, Corning, American Express, Coca Cola, Ingram Micro, Intl, Nike, Accenture, EHarmony, Red Cross, Forever 21, Vocus, View Sonic, ToysR US, IBM, BBC News, Lowe’s, DSW, Chrysler, L’Oreal, Chase, COX, Este Lauder, Yahoo, Vonage, MGM, Citrix, GNC, Kellogg, Equinox Fitness, Bloomberg, HP, Ann Taylor, Starwood Hotels, Omnicom Group, CitiGroup, Lily Pulitzer…

Many web-based businesses and tech start-ups are also searching for social talent: Amazon.com, Tiny Prints, Elance, Moxie, Diapers.com, Yahoo, Tripadvisor, EHarmony, Shopzilla, Vocus.

But not a single ad looking for a social media “guru” or “ninja.”


5 comments | posted in blog, damage control, Facebook, many to many, press release, public relations, search engine optimization, seo, social media, Twitter, Uncategorized, viral, viral video, website, you tube

November 3, 2010

Seven lame, business-killing excuses for not having a social media presence.

By Giselle Bisson

1. You’re too busy.

I don’t think social media is optional anymore — a professional presence in social media is now a marketing necessity, like a business card or a website. You can’t afford not to have a social media presence. You’ll look like a Luddite, like you’re out of step, like you’re stuck in the Eighties — when people actually got their news from a newspaper, bought things from ads and were influenced by television.

For most businesses and professions, social media is important. (It’s not as useful for big brands and large corporations, unless the communication is coming from a charismatic CEO or spokesperson.) Make an investment in social media, plan your strategy first, do it right, and you’ll be paid back ten-fold.

Updating your profile and sending out Twitter updates can become part of your regular routine — like brushing your teeth, answering email and checking your voice mail.

Using free tools, you can interlink all of your social profiles — so that your Twitter automatically updates Facebook, your blog and LinkedIn. You can update everything simultaneously from your mobile phone in a few minutes a day.

2. You don’t “get” this social media thing.

When you tell stories in public, not only do they have to be true (fact checked, verified, libel-free and legal), accurate, spell-checked and well written, but your story needs to be interesting, engaging and continually evolving. If you’re not naturally good at that, or you don’t have time, you’ll want to hire professional help.

Ultimately, you’ll need to be engaged on a daily basis. Celebrities, consultants, musicians, workshop leaders, public speakers and CEOs who “get” social media make it a priority and are personally involved. You can also outsource social updating to a pro. But make sure they take time to truly know and understands your business, know how to tell an engaging story, have a “voice” and “get” the culture, ethics and rules of the community you’re trying to reach.

3. You can’t afford it.

Everything you need is free. If you hire a consultant, you can get a lot of value from a few hours of his/her time setting your site up and coaching you on the unwritten secrets, tips and tricks of really using Social Media brilliantly.

4. You don’t need it.

Just like you “didn’t need” a website back in 2000. Everyone else jumped on the bandwagon, killed brick and mortar businesses, got all the cool urls and are now worth millions. Are you going to miss out on this land grab too?

500 million people worldwide are utilizing Facebook to create their personal brand. Many events are solely promoted on Facebook. You are really late to the program and totally out of the loop and out of touch if you have a stagnant, unupdated profile or none at all.  These days a lot of people think you don’t exist anymore if you’re not in the social sphere because they aren’t even using email anymore and use Facebook or LinkedIn as their main way of communicating with colleagues, or Twitter as their main way to announce breaking news.

5. You’re doing fine with Google adwords.

Oh yeah? Why are you buying search results that will disappear as soon as you stop paying — when you could be using social sites and a blog to build a search ranking that will last forever. Also, you’re totally missing out on a highly targeted market if you’re not also advertising on Facebook.

6. You already hired an SEO guy.

In my opinion, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is dead in 2010. It was important in the age of static HTML websites in the 90s.

Why? Because search engines can only search text! The most important thing you can do is generate tons of text and mentions of your URL that will drive people back to your website.  More about this tomorrow.

7. It’s not necessary.

If you are not on social media, your business reputation is at risk! Ignore social media at your peril–because people are probably talking about you, your competitors and your brand. They’re building relationships without you. They’re inviting people to cool events that you’re not learning about.  If you’re not on social media by now, it’s as if you don’t exist.

Bad PR used to be quickly forgotten when the newspaper was tossed in the trash. Now it lasts forever in Cyberspace. Bad customer reviews can quickly destroy a new product launch, a new event or a beta program.  Bad word of mouth on social networks will severely damage your personal reputation.

Negative reviews on Yelp can kill a restaurant in a few days. Don’t worry, you can now pay Yelp a monthly fee (aka bribe) to remove bad reviews. Better off to not get them in the first place.

You need to be prepared to brand yourself and position yourself wisely. And you need to pay attention to what your peers, competitors and partners are saying in the social realm.

If your business is large, you’ll also need to track the coverage and monitor feedback so you can respond to customers immediately. It’s all quickly becoming as complex as a traditional, mainstream media PR program.

Whatever you call it — Social Media, Emerging Media, New Media — it’s all just a conversation.

But it’s a conversation you can’t avoid anymore.  Ignore it at your peril or it will happen without you.  It’s time to lead the conversation.

83 comments | posted in blog, damage control, Digg, Facebook, MySpace, PR Newswire, press release, public relations, renegade marketing, search engine optimization, seo, shameless self promotion, social media, Twitter, viral, viral video, website, Wordpress

May 5, 2010

Social media is not for everybody.

By Giselle Bisson

Who needs social media anyway?

The other day I ran into an man in Peet’s cafe. He introduced himself as a seasoned marketing professional.  I told him I was too — but that I specialize in social media.

He spat out vehemently:  “Most of social media is pure bullsh*t for my clients.”

Maybe he’s right…for his clients it might be a waste of time. (Maybe his clients are all computer illiterate, over 60, still use a landline or are Luddites who don’t trust ATM machines yet either.)

For a few, select businesses, like lawyers, (unless they deal with high profile cases), or people with government or corporate jobs (unless they are company spokespersons), or arms dealers, or private detectives, or anyone with a security clearance, it’s probably better to keep a very low or non-existent social media profile.

But if you’re a business that would be listed in the Yellow Pages, if you’re a business that would have  a business card, if you’re a business that would get written up in the newspaper, if you do your business online and especially if you’re a current or aspiring public figure — Social Media is  your new calling card.

Social media, like PR, is not for everyone.

Not everyone wants to be famous, and not every business needs a public profile. Some businesses are better off quietly working their sales team, Rolodex and one-on-one relationships. For example, if your customers don’t use the Internet, then you won’t find them here either.

But if you run any business with an online presence, and if you want visibility,  then social media is for you.

Social media campaigns are also critically important for most small town “Mom and Pop” businesses like restaurants, bed and breakfast inns, hair salons, moving companies and the like — because getting listed in Yelp! and showing up on the Yahoo or Google Map is now more important than a Yellow Pages listing. (Yellow what? Who, under the age of 65, uses the phone book anymore?)

And for that reason, social media is quickly becoming a tool in the marketing/PR professional’s arsenal — to complement speaking engagements, press tours, article placement, trade shows and the like.

I’ve been doing traditional print and broadcast PR for more than 20 years. But social media is by far, the easiest, cheapest, fastest, most effective promotional tool I’ve ever used.

Better than email. Better than newspaper ads. Better than brochures and postcards. Much better than a website that nobody ever finds or reads. Faster and thus sometimes even more effective than traditional news media press relations.

For some businesses, like doctors, dentists, real estate agents, authors, consultants and especially small businesses and sole proprietors, it can bring you a whole new level of visibility.

And for others, like artists, musicians, performers, workshop leaders or anyone who throws events, it’s downright essential.

But if you’re still reading a newspaper, listening to the radio and using  a landline, maybe Social Media is not for you.

1 comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Facebook, public relations, renegade marketing, seo, social media, Twitter, Uncategorized, website

March 24, 2010

Even the richest men in the world can’t maintain Internet privacy.

By Giselle Bisson

Somtimes you don't want attention. How do you bury unwanted news in the search engines?

A gossipy story about Google CEO Eric Schmidt  has been making the rounds on Twitter today.  It’s old news — about his “break up” with Steve Jobs from a pay phone while he was on the lonely road to Burning Man in 2007.

But what’s fascinating and newsworthy about this story is that even if you’re the CEO of Google, and one of the richest men on earth, you can’t protect your privacy in the search engines!

Schmidt was also unsuccessful in getting his ex-girlfriend to permanently remove her tell all blog from Google’s own Blogger.

Google’s own FAQ states:

We run into a lot of people who think that Google runs the web and controls all the sites on it, but that’s really not the case. The sites in Google’s search results are controlled by those sites’ webmasters.

The moral of this imoral story? Even the CEO of Google can’t remove negative publicity from Google.

So if you don’t want unwanted attention to linger, forever, in the search engines and on the web, what can you do?

There’s a cheap PR trick I’ve used with clients that can help you bury news you don’t want people to find. Flood the web with good news of your own by sending out tons of free press releases (and paid releases on PR Newswire or PR Web) filled with feel-good feature “stories” with the same keywords embedded in them that searchers will likely use to find the negative story.  This turns the “needle in a haystack” factor of Google in your favor.

Eventually you’ll knock the bad review so far down the ranks in Google that only the most intrepid researcher will be able to find it.

The other technique? Ignore it, and eventually the fickle public will be twittering about the next scandal and it will be as stale as a Tiger Woods story.

Tiger who?


Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in damage control, press release, privacy, seo, social media, Twitter

March 13, 2010

Why the only website worth having is a blog.

By Giselle Bisson

I was having a new business meeting with a client yesterday. He has a restaurant and he’s looking for ways to stay on top of the economic downturn.

The first problem: Nobody can find his restaurant. First, it’s in an obscure location in San Francisco. His website in also on an obscure location on the Interent — buried somewhere in 6.5 billion web pages.

I typed the restaurant name in Google.

It didn’t show up.

I scrolled, scrolled and scrolled through pages and couldn’t find it.

I typed it in quotes.

Still. Nothing.

I typed in the name of his restaurant, plus the keywords: San Francisco. Vegetarian food. Italian. Pizza. Pasta.  The address.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

And finally I just went to the site. It was one of those static websites. It screamed: “We’re gonna party like it’s 1999.” It was so static that there was not a single word of type on the entire site that Google would ever be able to find. It was all pictures and graphics! And of course, it had never been updated. (The way Google ranks you  higher in the search results is by how often you update your information.)

I said: “That’s why you need a blog, not a website.” Because blogs are filled with keywords that Google can find — and they’re updated much more often than websites so they end up higher in the search results.

We then searched for this blog, Visibility Shift.

Out of 8,000,000 results for “visibility shift”, Visibility Shift is the first one on the list in Google! In fact 6 of the first 10 hits refer to it.

I said: “I built the page yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

“Yes, it immediately got to the top of Google because I built a Twitter following first. I sent 850 Twitters out first and they’ve been retweeted thousands of times, along with the words ‘visibility shift’ in the URL.”

“And I have 11 articles in the blog already, and they’ve been picked up by thousands of spiders and bots and RSS feeds and search engines and are already reappearing on dozens of other websites.”

This blog has already generated more traffic in the first week than my old static website got in a year.

We looked for my other blog, which has been on the web for 5 years. It has a very generic name, so it generates a ridiculous number of results when you try to find it. (A mistake I’ll never make again when naming a blog.)

Even so, out of 451,000,000 results (nearly half a billion) it’s number two in Google!

It’s received a fairly respectable 200,000 visits in the past 5 years. I’ve done a lot of search engine submissions, and Twitter, and link exchanges. But another eason the search rank is so high is because it’s hosted on Google’s Blogger — which automatically gives it a higher search rank than my static website will ever have.

Blogs are much easier to find than webpages.

This was a good lesson in those fancy terms marketers like to use — SEO and SEM.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) organizes the pages on the website for both the search engine spiders and the visitors to the site. Search engines look for your site based on combinations of words on the site. The more words you have on your site, the easier it is to find. That’s why a blog is so much more effective than a static webpage.

“Oh!” he said.

Now, Search engine marketing (SEM) are the things you do off the website to bring more traffic toward it. These are like putting your URL on business cards, restaurant reviews in an online news site,  press releases with your URL and company name in them, and anything else that generates incoming traffic and links — which moves site pages higher in search engine results pages.

You want things that spread your URL around the web — like Twitter, a public Facebook listing, and links from blogs and online zines — or review sites like Yelp!

See, I said, “that’s why social media, press coverage and blogs are way, way, way more important to your business now than an old static website will ever be.”

And this is why if you have a business that depends on your customer being able to find you on the Internet when they’re hankering for pasta, you need to have the words: “Italian restaurant and San Francisco” show up as many times as possible on your blog–so Google can find those words.

I said, “You know, this is totally cheating, but we could just rename your new blog: ‘Italian-restaurant-pasta-sanfrancisco.com.’” That will be a lot more unique and useful than the generic name of his restaurant.

“What a great idea!” he said.

“That’s available in Go Daddy and will cost you only $4.99. Plus my monthly retainer.”

He was sold. I got the job. We’re building a blog and a Facebook fan page this week. I’m looking forward to seeing his restaurant turn into a destination restaurant — one of those obscure restaurants people love to drive across the city to discover and show off to friends.

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in blog, Facebook, renegade marketing, search engine optimization, seo, social media, Twitter, website, Wordpress

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