Real Estate Marketing SEO Blog

How to be an "Internet Guru" for a Day

Image by Dan Patterson via Flickr

As an avid reader of books and biographies I have learned that very few people can describe the reason for their success with an a to z plan that anyone can follow. Instead you the reader must dig deep and read the lines behind the story.

Having read several "road to riches" type books on social media of late I am reminded of this rule. A great case in point is the recent Gary V book. Crush It!

He shares his road to fame. And if you read it, then I hope you get that he is not easy to duplicate. Not unless you plan on being outrageous, uncensored, and think wildly big. His personality is what drove his success and it worked like gangbusters on the social net as his personality was a natural on the digital social scene.

He is PT Barnum. He is a promoter such that he created the perception that he was THE wine guy online. The biggest lesson is that the point of anything in the digital media is to get it offline. And Gary Vaynerchuk. As in the picture above is offline more than on.

This is not everyone's path to take.  But if you follow his, get ready to let that personality of yours explode!

Social Media: What Comes First the Chicken or the Egg?

Image via Wikipedia

Betty White hosted Saturday Night Live last Saturday. The 88 year old charmed the audience with cameos in many of the SNL favorites like Magruder.

As Mary McKnight recently posted in her Sacrilicious blog, Betty White thanked Facebook for getting her onto SNL.  The headline read, "How Facebook Got an 88 yr old Betty White on SNL"

Did Facebook really get Betty onto SNL?, or did TMZ get Betty onto Facebook?

You see Ms. White's star started rising again because she became somewhat of a regular scoop on TMZ (on TV and TMZ.com). So I would tend to bet that FB culturally was more a reflection of the offline buzz created by TMZ than an organic event fueled only by Facebook.

So what?  you might say.

It matters so that we as marketers know how to employ this beast called social media.

How to Change the World With Social Media

The social media is more of a continuation of a movement than the movement.  Eventually becoming the movement (or at least a major part of the movement).

When you get out of the "geekeshpere" the social net tends to lose its ability to generate its own buzz without strong intervention and a strong personality or pre-existing brand. There is nothing organic about Ashton Kutcher's following on Twitter. Indeed his following is a natural extension of his brand.

Kutcher corralled his fans in and around the social media. In other words Kutcher already existed before social media as did Betty White.

Channeling P.T. Barnum

It is rumored that Barnum said that "there is a sucker born every minute".  On the net the tools that sucker us in are sold as more than what they are. Websites were to replace newspapers. Blogs were to replace the need for SEO. Social Media was to replace all of the above. 

In part the allure has been economics. The cheap and easy. But this is the grand deception. Marketing is not easy.

Of course where there is hype there is some truth. When this many people are in one place there has got to be an opportunity to make a buck. If as some say Facebook is the size of a country, many of its citizens are geriatrics.  In other words if this is the social media where is the meaningful conversation?

However, much of the social net is populated by three citizens:

1. The socializer-This is the gal who gets it. She chats, communicates and shares.

2. The "ata boy"-This is the person who never knows what to say except that they agree. This is of course not a conversationalist. This guy ican take marching orders though.  Facebooks like button was invented for this guy.

3. The DOA-Checks in every so often but for the most part does not spend much time "socializing".

This leaves a very small population that is conversing. The key to marketing in the social media is to join the conversation. However, as we see above little conversing is going on. However, that does not mean you cannot lead a movement and even the DOA's can follow. 

It is more difficult to do unless you are KFC or Ashton Kutcher. The only alternative is to have a monster personality and to be Barnum. Gary Vaynerchuk has been heralded as the icon of socializing business. Zappos created a corporate culture around the social net.

The skeptic in me would ask about their first to market positioning as part reason for their success. But I would also say that they became Barnum. Gary V's personality and lust for publicity is far more interesting than anything else he does. Few are willing to pimp themselves out and to seek the edges of their promotion power as these guys.

And I will end as I began. First Mary McKnight. She is a Barnum. She is willing to push the edges to find her audience. She has broken the all time record for f words in one article. She has used her sexuality without apology to get her message across. Her website engages the male senses from the get go while affirming female empowerment.

Like yen and yang Mary also pisses a lotta people off. President Obama has a lot of haters. He also is President thank you very much. Mary gets this proposition. She is willing to polarize many to attract many. That is marketing. Call it segmentation if it helps.

Finally During Betty White's monologue she thanked her Facebook fans for getting her on SNL. She also went onto say what a waste of time FB is. Maybe , Maybe.

I would love to hear your unique perspective in the comments below.

Twitter Saved the Blogging Star

Getting Back To Blogging Basics

 When blogging first hit the scene it was seen as a panacea to expensive SEO and  webhosts. Rightfully so. There is much to be admired within most blog structures. Adequate html code, easy editing, pinging and syndication. And the mythological advantages that preceded blogs as a household name certainly helped to grow the medium.

Blogging and pinging was instant Google love back in the early 2000's.  Obsessions with long tails and link schemes like blog rolling and blog carnivals often gave birth to websites more interested in the shiny new media than business building .  Conversing with competitors and fellow bloggers than potential clients and customers.

Google Social Search Explained

Google is always testing new search features. And Google labs is always full of new, interesting and sometimes useful things. Google is fascinated by the social media as they obviously have felt the exodus away from their engine to Facebook and other social sites. Check out their new social search.

Rank Quickly in Google with Social Media SEO

Check out this video and find out how to get easy rankings in Google. Look for a word under 50,000 or less competition. Rank in Facebook pages, notes, and Twitter. This is a follow up to my recent blog post Does Social Media Help Your SEO? Notice in the video I do not say that Facebook Fan Pages can get ranked. With all the hoopalah with Fan Pages they do not get ranked by Google in my tests other than with realtime. So who cares.

So if you give your attention to notes and Pages you will get your posts ranked easier while the Fan Page owners get into the ever so non relevant real time results.

Rapid Fire Content Syndication

See how I syndicated my post yesterday through the use of Ping.fm

Does Face Book Help Your SEO?

On Social Media Helping Your Search Engine Optimization

It was about 2005 and I had an email conversation with this astute fellow named Mike Koenig from San Diego. He was selling an information product about online Video production. The key component being that getting a video onto youtube was easier to rank for "long tail key phrases".

He said look at this result I rank on the first page for "San Diego Probate Attorney". My dull witted reply was, "no you do not, that is You Tube that ranks in the top ten!"

We went back and forth and then finally I got it. So what if it was You Tube? It is still the Attorney's video. And of course the video has all his contact information.

Bling!

The Lightbulb came on.

Today some are calling this the faceless web. Whereby you can get phone calls without someone even visiting your main website.

So let's look at why you would want to have a video on You Tube or a post on say Face Book or Twitter.

I. Traffic- In some circles this is called parasitic marketing. Taking advantage of the traffic generated by a large website like You Tube or Face Book.

By posting links to posts automatically or semi-automatically an author can get their post syndicated or repurposed to numerous outlets all over the web.

II. Links- Links matter to Google right? I hope I hear a resounding YES! Ranking in Organic search is mostly all about the links. A profile in You Tube may provide you a link, however most of the links are nofollowed. Nofollowed means the value of the link is not respected by Google.

III. Brand- Having a Fan Page in Face Book can enhance your brand if enough people are indeed fans. The fact that you communicate online through the new media can illustrate your business personality as well as your transparency.

IV. Connection- Now more than ever there is an ability for the public to just pick up the phone and call you, Instant Message You, comment you or Email you through the membership portal. These portals allow multiple methods for your public to contact you.

So How Does Social Media help your SEO?

Technically it doesn't. Sure you can get a link in some cases like at Twitter. But even there the link lacks any custom anchor text. And for the link to have value it must be backed up by links to it. And where do those links come from? Your friends on Twitter.

"You earn reputation, and then you give reputation. If lots of people follow you, and then you follow someone--then even though this new person does not have lots of followers," his tweet is deemed valuable because his followers are themselves followed widely,Google Engineer Amit Singhal says. It is "definitely, definitely" more than a popularity contest, he adds.

"One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation," Singhal says. "As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well." So maybe the social sites can get your profile or posts ranked. So you are really taking advantage of the large portal's own SEO.

But how do they know you have a friend? Ech hem....drum roll please. A Link!

Let's look at the three we have mentioned:
Twitter- Twitter allows you to get ranked in three ways.
a. Your individual posts-Page is indexed in Google however the links are no followed.
b. Your individual profile page (http://www.twitter.com/profile name)
c. Your real time tweets-Google is now feeding in realtime conversations such as those occuring at Twitter. If you have ever seen these threads of conversation you will surely think someone has been hitting the Vodka over at the Googleplex. I am doubtful that this feature will continue. As I mentioned in my last post. The Twitter conversation at the ROP convention looks as if your are reading conversations posted by severely handicapped 8 year olds. With all due respect to real handicapped 8 year olds as I am probably being too kind to the adults.So if you get into a real conversation which most Tweeters and especially Realtors do not,then your realtime chats may get into Google. Lucky you.(sic)
D. Someone else's Tweets and their syndication. If you are Retweeted by a Tweeter then you will be on his or her post(s) also. Along with their syndicated Tweets to other networks.

So that is Twitter. I will produce a Video for Twitter SEO,You Tube SEO, and Face Book SEO soon and add it to this post.

So does the social media help your SEO?

No. At best they give you a link. Being on the social media is sort of like taking advantage of the host site's SEO (authority). Any Realtor who has used Active Rain gets that concept. There are plenty of opportunities by the way than the usual suspects. Zillow and Trulia offer Realtors opportunities to publish on their websites. Additionally, many local based portals do the same. And these probably offer more direct opportunities for you than these larger new media portals.

The Big Equalizer

Google is betting on users using their Google Profile to search. For a couple years now you would get personalized search results based upon your own habits. So if you go to your own website while signed into Google you will see your site is number one.

I always have thought this stupid because I have bookmarks galore to tell me where I want to return. I go to Google for new stuff. But I digress.

So Google has this new social search feature that is part of its personalized search. I have not researched it yet. But I will be offering a full report with the video .