40. “No matter how much you plan, it is tenacity,
unyielding desire to succeed, and the ability to
cope with change that will eventually prevail.”.
Perry Payne (born 1966), Rugby Player, Father, Executive
TENACITY
62. Social Networks
Data and charts of our Facebook and Twitter account performance via http://export.ly
63. Social News / Bookmarking
http://news.ycombinator.com, http://delicious.com, http://stumbleupon.com and
http://reddit.com have historically performed best for us, but you should test results
68. Involve a Sharing-Incented Community
The brilliant strategy by http://www.urbanspoon.com made them one of the biggest players in
the local restaurant business and got them acquired by IAC
69. Design Like an “Award Winner”
Check out http://google.com/search?q=css+gallery for tons of great galleries and inspiration
87. Q+A
SSB2011
45 days to play w/Mozzers
(and kick your competitors’ proverbial….!!)
• Twitter: @SEOmom
• Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog
• Email: gillian@seomoz.org
Editor's Notes
The era of traditional sales is officially over
People all over the world are declining to watch, listen to, or be persuaded by ‘in your face’, one-way communications and ‘pushy’, interruptive ads.
From Raving Fans…
to Conversation Marketing
and Friends-of-Fans marketing
we are witnessing a huge shift in the marketing and buying consideration process
Social Media does not create or change the story of a company.
It merely increases the speed with which the message travels
…and the breadth of the coverage of the message
The common conversation around Social Media is centered around tactical advice
Select platforms
Target markets
Likes are the new links
Depth + breadth of engagement is where we will find our ROI
Etc. And these conversations ARE important… and we’re going to hear a lot about the tactics.
But let’s begin with the root of social media – the reality behind the messages we craft and send out via social media.
What is the ‘truth’ that Social Media is spreading so efficiently? It’s the truth about the nature of a company or brand. That’s what it’s spreading
The nature of a company can sometimes be found in its guiding principles
But whether it’s nature is codified in written tenets or not
The nature of a company is always found in its processes
Here’s the story of how SEOmoz built the world’s largest brand in search marketing software using Social Media - Inbound marketing.
1981. I opened a small consultancy
I raised 3 children under my desk
I taught the children, “If you share, you will get more”.
Later this sentiment was popularized by a movie called, “Pay It Forward” We built a company based on that premise... And darn, if it didn’t work out well!
In 1993, I became involved in a web startup called Market Link International, the first “International Marketing Company on the World Wide Web.” It didn’t become ‘the next big thing’, but it was a great learning experience.
In 1999, Rand joined the company; we added websites to our corporate identity work
Rand was already searching for the idea that would make his mark in the new economy
Yes, it IS personal!In 1999, he wrote in his first online bio on our website:The future of the Internet is as unimaginable today, as the future of flight at the turn of the last century. We have the opportunity to populate this new universe, unfettered by the laws of physics. I take that opportunity as an obligation.”I cried. I (kid) down. Two to go.
In 2001, the dot-com bubble burst and I wet out to make the rain fall while we continued to search for our BHAG (big hoary audacious goal) http://www.jimcollins.com/media_topics/building-greatness.html
We designed, authored, developed, deployed, managed, marketed, and maintained our clients’ websites. We made our living by taking a percentage of adjusted gross online sales.
That meant the sites had to be found in the SERPs.We farmed out the SEO project to 4 companies, none of which could do the job.
So Rand studied the subject.He learned it so well, that a competitor of one of our clients posted this help wanted ad:“Anyone who wants to go head to head against Rand Fishkin for the term Hard Money, apply here.”
We climbed out of ‘The Dip’, into profitability
2002 Rand began to write SEOmoz.org to share what he was learning about SEO with others. Opening comments and allowing others to blog generated interest from intelligent, capable SEOs
2002. Rand blogs every day
2003. Rand continues to blog every day
2004. Rand continues to blog every day
“No matter how much you plan, it is tenacity, unyielding desire to succeed, and the ability to cope with change that will eventually prevail.”.Perry Payne (born 1966), Rugby Player, Father, Executive
2005.Danny Sullivan invites Rand to attend SES NYC
MysteryGuest suggests wearing Yellow Shoes
@SiFish joins Rand in NYC.
November, 2005. A colleague suggests Newsweek interview Rand and SEOmoz. Issue: Dec 2006
2006. Rand publishes SEOmoz income numbers on the blog.
2007.Brand of Rand Fishkin / SEOmoz.org increases and gets on VC’s radar and the company is funded.
REPUTATION IS STICKY2011. People still remember this amazing transparency. When Rand ‘live blogged’ our 2010 and 2011 failed forays into additional investment, people around the world remembered the first publication of our SEO consultancy numbers and applauded our continued transparency.
Rand increases his social reach
SEOmoz’ basic stats – without placing a single ‘paid ad’ until late 2010.
Tactics.
We accomplished it through ALL the pieces of inbound marketing. This includes SEO and email marketing as well as what we’d now call ‘traditional’ social media marketing.
Info-graphics and illustrations help to make posts ‘go viral’ faster and wider. Info-graphics are not a ‘flash in the pan’ or ‘tactic of the moment’; they’re a long term strategy. As the volume of information we require to accomplish our daily work increases at breakneck speed, our propensity to want to absorb information through images, graphs, charts, and video will continue to increase. It’s a faster way to get the info in and digested than by words and numbers alone.
Pssst… these are the MONEY SLIDES!
Deep comment marketing is more than a thumb up or ‘Good job!’ comment. It means writing a thoughtful 2-4 short paragraph response and and entire blog post on your viewpoints on the subject at hand. Put the blog post on your website and invite people to read more on the subject in your ‘deep comments’ on the other blog site.
We track everything. Building great content is the start. Marketing it is the next step. Tracking and improving is the secret sauce to success. It’s not the sexy stuff, but it’s the secret to achieving results that far outpace your competitors. We used Export.ly to for this report on our facebook and twitter activity. Social metrics are now available inside the SEOmoz PRO platform, as is full integration with google analytics.
For social bookmarking, Ycombinator, Delicious, StumbleUpon and Reddit have historically performed best for us, but you should test results
Sigh… Rand and I spend way too much time on this particularly sticky site. Quora is a great place for establishing your credibility and expertise in specific subject matter. It’s a beautiful way to build a personal brand – and if several of your colleagues in a single company engage, it builds credibility and power for consultancies as well.
My own circle has a lot more red and green than blue these days. ;-)
This old SEO pyramid still stands firm today. I’m not suggesting you can ignore the basics. The web is still connected by links. It’s how we get from page to page and how search bots find and crawl our pages. Accessible, excellent content is still the foundation. Targeting the appropriate keywords is still how search bots will correctly rank your pages for the search terms you want, and link building is still the cornerstone of how search bots and readers, arrive at your website, crawl through it, and find what they’re looking for. Putting social media in perspective is one of our keys to success. We know we build to amazing stuff and do the basics first.
Don’t ignore the power of email marketing. We send out newsletters without calls to buy-buy-buy. They contain items of interest to members of our community. That makes them sticky – people WANT and NEED the stuff we’re including in these emails. If you’re not on the list, at the risk of sounding self-serving, I suggest you get on it. It’s free; It’s jam packed with the recent news in your industry; it contains solutions to current problems and it will save you a ton of time in locating info you need to know… and did I mention is was free? :D
The brilliant strategy by http://www.urbanspoon.com made them one of the biggest players in the local restaurant business and got them acquired by IAC.We used the same idea with YOUmoz – we provide a platform where SEOs can promote their own businesses by publishing on the SEOmoz website.
There is no substitute for genius and elegance. If it doesn’t rock, don’t put it on your website. Good enough… isn’t.
TAGFEE is what runs SEOmoz. Think of it as our fuel, our oil, and our air. Every decision, large and small, is run through TAGFEE. “Is it TAGFEE” is a common question around the office. We hire for TAGFEE first, which is not to say we compromise in any way on the skillsets required to be exceptional and produce consistently exceptional work. It’s just that if you’re not willing to be and to work in a TAGFEE environment, you don’t get to stage two, in which we discover whether you’ve got the technical chops to handle the job. TAGFEE comes first, last and at every stage along the way. It is our rudder in the water.
So what’s TAGFEE? It’s having fun while bringing much needed info and industry support to SEOs around the world. Mozcation, Post-It Wars, and RogerBot are all demonstrations of the FUN concept at SEOmoz. Be sure you mindfully create representations of the message you’re trying to portray.
Post-It Wars on Pine – one of SEOmoz’ engineers was noodling out a problem, playing with a stack of Post-It notes. He created representation of Space Invaders on a window pane. The next day… see Mario Brothers across the street? Post-It Wars on Pine was covered by the local news, Geekwire, and many more places in the coming weeks. The game spread up the street, hopped to the next street, Pike Street, over to 4th Avenue and….
Around the world. Sometimes, we make social media news without even meaning to do so. That’s because TAGFEE is the basis. Would it be ok for you to plaster Post-It notes on your office windows? It’s the REALITY of a company that gets blasted out via the media. It doesn’t change the story – the story has to be real to get the ball rolling.
This year, Roger Mozbot became a little more real.
Linkscape, the thing that could not be done – the BHAG. IMO, for an esoteric B2B company, having all the ‘fun’ elements without having some serious game under the hood would backfire.We have fun with the product launchAnd we get as ‘salesy’ as we’ve ever been.
2010 – We attempt to raise money and share how we do it. That was easy.
2011 – We blow it again. And share it again. That’s not so easy.
2010. Jen doesn’t feel well. Corporate policy, having nothing to do with the quality of the product will affect brand viability… and social media spreads that words really efficiently, too.
Build the dot-org first. Keep it silo’d. Connect it when you’re ready.
If you start your community as a for-profit company, consider creating a ‘pirate ship’ inside your organization to create the community around it.
Be the center of the conversation. Since the blog must be of the highest order (Exceptional Work), we created YOUmoz to accept the ideas and research efforts of our community. We use ‘game theory’ to vote up and promote excellent posts to the main blog. Keep it fluid. Your community manager must have discretionary power.
As a corporation, be known for building personal brands, increasing skills, and providing a ‘ladder’, internally and externally, for all your team members. If there isn’t a place for a team member to grow inside your organization, they WILL move to grow outside it. Be supportive; pay it forward. It WILL bring you ‘more’.
Work backwards. Follow the money backwards. Understand what people who convert are doing on your website and determine where folks who ‘fall off’ get lost. Choose the right goals for your business. One size does not fit everyone: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-6-goals-of-seo-choosing-the-right-ones-for-your-business. Make sure all the component of your sales funnel are operating at peak performance. You won’t rank well if your landing pages are irrelevant or poorly designed. Bounce rates affect SERPs as well as waste conversion opportunities.
To become a thought leader, leverage thought leaders. Leverage other thought leaders to build content for your own website. Here’s a good example: http://blog.folyo.me/post/10723370923/how-much-does-a-website-cost The concept is simple; identify leading influencers in your space, recruit them to contribute something small, such as one or just a few survey answers. Then aggregate and share the data. They’ll help it spread.