Seo Smarts Today With Skye King
Strategy is key with Google but so is Smarts… as many IM’s claim, if you create your own branding, utilize your own language and position yourself on Google, others will see you and follow you. Following does not always mean mimic, it means learn from what others are already doing so well at. My SEO Smarts Today came out of a video I did in Guatemala in response to an email I recieved from Emil. Emil wrote to me explaining to me a young 18 year guy named George has created the latest and greatest SEO tactics around. If you’ve been in the Industry for more than a year, then you know every week there is something new unfolding, this is the life of Internet Marketing, everything moves fast and it’s pretty intense learning. After watching the video, which I loved, I began to think about my own SEO tactics and thought out loud, “I’ve been dominating Google for years now and have never shown anyone how to do it! SEO Smarts Today was born there and then, in a small deserted cafe in a foreign country. I’m so excited to share these simple strategies that literally get me onto Google within minutes, and on page one:)
So here we go. At a recent Marketing Event in Vegas I met up with Jimmy Davis CEO or Harmonic Marketing and Creator of My Story Hub. I began doing a bit of keyword research for the video and found out how many keywords I could use then I got thinking of how to utilize the branding of names, which I am a HUGE proponent of- branding is KEY! Every day I add something else to my branding of my name, blog, articles and my products. Do a Google search on your name and see what comes up.
When you look at the screen shot below you will see that I use my name and Jimmy’s name, also the topic and branding aspect of Jimmy’s company. With these three elements, I did a bit of research to find out if any of these were being used on page one on Google, nope, so I went in and took advantage of that fact and placed my article in a high profile Internet Marketing site, BetterNetworker.com. As you can read here, within 5 minutes I was on page one in two spots. I love the power of SEO and what you can do with it when you know how to use it. I will be launching SEO Smarts Today in April, it will be a downloadable PDF file so anyone can ultilize the information and get started owning their content on Google and making it keyword rich!
SEO is a huge playground to work within. What I do is play with keywords that are under 5,000 to be able to get my site up on page one of Google within a couple of minutes tops. If I want to go deeper, I will use multiple keywords to my advantage to rank high on Google. Symmetry is key in leading a good SEO tactic in place, that is why I created SEO Smarts Today, to give my team and viewers an easy access portal to work from, enabling anyone to take advantage of content placement.
Business Transparency & Social Media
With so many businesses of all sizes being aware of the benefits of social media optimization and implanting strategies to become more connected, social media is helping to forge a new era in business transparency and engagement, creating both new challenges and opportunities.
The days when companies could rely on carefully crafted press releases or flashy ad campaigns to communicate with their customers are long gone. Especially futile is an attempt to convince people that your products are the best in the field. In the age of social media, the rules have changed drastically, and people today demand a more honest and direct relationship with the companies with which they do business.
Companies now face a clear choice: wall themselves in and become increasingly controlled and hidden, or use social media and other means to reveal their human side, welcome transparency, and forge new relationships with their customers.
Below are the top four shifts that businesses are making due to social media optimization (SMO).
1. From “Trying to Sell” to “Making Connections”
The goal with SMO in most cases is not to sell more but to engage and connect with customers on a deeper level — and, as a result, through such engagement people feel more comfortable doing business with those companies.
The most popular brands in social media tend to post less about their products or services and more about things that help their customers get to know the people and personality of a company. Jeff Swartz, who is the President and CEO of the Timberland Company, is a great example of this. Swartz uses his Twitter account to show his personality by tweeting about his life and the social issues he is passionate about, rather than the shoes his company makes. He also links from his Twitter bio to Timberland’s Earthkeeper project that supports environmental awareness, rather than to the company homepage, in an effort to make a connection with people around something that goes beyond just the products Timberland sells.
Lesson: Rely less on PR tactics and grab at the opportunity to interact with your customers sincerely.
2. From “Large Campaigns” to “Small Acts”
Being able to communicate on such a wide-spanning platform also allows for small acts that express gratitude and a commitment to customer satisfaction. Sites like Facebook and Twitter provide businesses and their followers a broadcasting network, and businesses are beginning to see that rather than spending millions of dollars on traditional ad campaigns, small acts can be more valuable because people will inevitably share such experiences through the social web.
In the past, if we had a very bad or very good experience with a company, it could take days or weeks to tell all of our friends and relatives about it. Today, in a matter of minutes, we can let all our friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter know about what happened. When every customer experience can be easily and widely broadcast, small issues become extremely important.
Since bad experiences are broadcast just as fast and just as easily as the good, it pays for companies to pay attention to the one-on-one customer relationships forged via social media.
Lesson: Instead of only relying on big campaigns, make authentic, helpful relationships and communication the new campaign.
3. From “Controlling Our Image” to “Being Ourselves”
For generations businesses have stressed over the concept of image and maintaining a carefully crafted public persona. Of course companies need to have employee policies, and there is such a thing as bad press, but look at the most popular companies in the era of social media, and you’ll generally find the ones that give their employees freedom to be themselves in online spaces. The goal should no longer be to create a very controlled and polished image that everyone in a company tries to reinforce, but rather to give employees the means necessary to be human beings that can put a friendly face on the corporation.
Also important is being aware of what online perceptions of your business are. How people connect with your business dictates to a great extent the longevity and reliability of their association with your brand and service. Therefore, it’s not just about what you tell them about the business, it’s also about what political stances you take and what information you share and
Lesson: Leave the dated concept of company image behind and embrace your business’s differences and human qualities.
4. From “Hard to Reach” to “Available Everywhere”
To engage with customers, it is no longer enough to have an email address and customer service number on one’s website. Today, people want to interact with and engage businesses via their chosen means of communication, whether that is Twitter, Facebook, discussion forums, or a feedback site like Get Satisfaction.
However, this omnipresence also presents an added challenge: listening to what your customers want and implementing suggestions. Any expansive platform also adds extra responsibility to use the information gathered in a way that is both purposeful and helpful. This means that just as it is extremely important to reach this audience, it is also important to make the changes they are asking for. Keeping lines of communication open during this process is also helpful since feedback is available with every step.
Association of Better Networkers
