I personally gravitate towards buying bling from a trusted friend who’s family has owned a classic jewelry store for 3 generations. My personal friendship with the proprietor helps me feel safe about purchases. Most SEM shoppers don’t have the same luxury.

When buying diamonds or procuring search marketing help, it’s best to have a trusted adviser in the industry to guide your decision making. (No my jewelry store pal did not put me up to this post, nor will he even have reputation monitoring sufficient to catch this “mention.” *sigh*

Who is Good, Who is Best, Who’s Right For Me?
An industry luminary confided in me that, in his opinion, there are a but a hundred boutique search marketing shops savvy enough to give world-class advice on par with large production line SEM agencies.

Whilst huge Internet marketing agencies are a great fit in their standardized approach for some clients, others need personalized thinking, out-of-the-box tactics, business plan input and the Zen of true industry thought-leaders.

Authority Trade Publications
So how do you navigate the SEM vendor world and figure out what the heck to do? One tried and true method is to discern who the thought leaders are, writing about provocative issues-of-the-day for authority trade publications and speaking at conferences. Follow their work and get to know their immediate communities.

First stops are SearchEngineLand, SearchEngine Strategies, SEOmoz, SEORoundTable, OnelineMarketing Blog, and Sphinn. Noted SEO artist “StuntDubl” once told me that any SEM “worth their salt” is known at least in passing to these communities.

Ask other SEMs…we know who’s who. For some real excitement climb on into the SEM blogger-Twitter crowd mayhem. Twitter is SO RAD for friending SEMs!

The above mentioned thought-leader communities encompass some of the finest vendors (and in-house) marketing pros in the world. Follow the blog rolls and banter of community members on these sites and you’ll know who the thought leaders are. The quest inevitably leads to SMX, SES, PubCon, PPC Summit, SEMpdx, SearchMarketingNow, WebMasterRadio, SmallBusinessUnleashed, Cre8asiteForums, and SEMPO.

General Search Marketing Counsel
You don’t have to pick your main & forever search marketing firm all at once. One idea is to find a search-focused advertising agency you think you’d most like to work with and retain them as “General Search Marketing Counsel” for help in planning and procuring the right vendor team.

The General counsel role can lead to a larger scope of engagement. This gives both agency and client time to acclimate, truly assess needs and go about efficient execution of newly defined projects after an thoughtful organizational process.

Given escalating demand and the pesky presence of spamming SEO snake oil salesmen, qualifying a reputable vendor outside the mainstream global factory-agency approach can be a daunting task.

Who is Good? Who is the Best? Who’s Right For Me? The irony is that in these days of hyper-specialization, there are very few “full service” SEM vendors so man mid-sized agencies have partner vendors of different stripes. There is a Tao to crafting strategic SEM partnerships so look for an agency with lots of cool friends .

There are going to be more and more advertising agencies entering the SEM space over the next few years. Some of them will be terrific, some dumb and a whole bunch in-between. Vetting SEM vendors will become an art in itself and consultants will crop up to meet the need. There will be a new role for some grownups to play as “General Search Counsel,” tour guides to the shell shocked Web1.0 world.

Buying SEM help is like buying a car without being a technical mechanic. If you don’t have a friend in the business it can work out great or turn out to be a real mess. Consider procuring help from an industry insider to help organize your Internet marketing efforts, even if it’s only a few hours a month. They’ll charge a lot per hour and it will be worth it.

Nobody speaks seriously about Facebook social PPC at search marketing industry conferences. I can’t believe it. Shouldn’t we be discussing multivariate landing page testing deeply segmented by users’ interests and affinities as opposed to keywords?

Doesn’t Facebook provide us a prescient peek into future mainstream social PPC platforms? As an industry could we be missing a chance to get ahead of the curve in preparation for the ultimate revolution in commercial personalization, true social demographic targeting? I don’t get it…

A certain search-Messiah told me one conference eve (over free MSN Pad Thai) that Facebook Social PPC is not search and has no place at “search” conferences-which opened my eyes. Is it or isn’t it? Search means typing something into a box and receiving contextually related organic or paid SERPs in return doesn’t it? If you don’t query the index and get a results page it aint’ the search industry right? Most folks perceive search conferences are only about customer-pull advertising, you know like AdWords and organic results.

Following logic to its correct end, Google’s famed & cutthroat content network (site targeted & other) is not really search either. Google content network ads are interrupt-push advertising marketed to relevant AdSense publishers’ content. That said, I believe most still perceive AdWords Content campaigns as part of the search industry.

Hmm. How come Facebook PPC is not search industry stuff too? Why don’t we teach important lessons embodied in Facebook social PPC at search marketing” conferences…or do we only espouse Google social PPC without calling it that? Maybe the new definition of the search industry is all things Google and nothing else.

The Beat Goes On
More and more additional criteria (by which to segment a PPC campaign) is dialed into new media placement platforms, none the least of which is Google’s fledgling ability to target PPC to behaviors other than searching keywords. Facebook social PPC though a somewhat rudimentary mechanism, deals with a much smaller sampling and ground-up data collection methods. Still the approach has resulted in a glorious prototype of PPC behavioral targeting to come, yet we practically ignore it in the mainstream search industry vernacular.

Traditional PPC becomes Social PPC when targeting options become more complex and spans to behavioral targeting. Facebook PPC is no less “search” than Google content ads. Why do we evangelize about Google content match at search conferences but not social PPC? By classic definition neither is search. Yet our clients are making millions with Facebook PPC while we’re preparing methodologies for the coming revolution. Keeping up to speed on social PPC technique (especially landing page-think) is a critical SEM learning curve.

In fact if you really think about it, all PPC is becoming social PPC at least to some extent. When did it cross the line and become “social PPC?” Was it geo-targeting? No. Was in Microsoft demographic targeting? No. In fact it was ummm…Facebook. As the megalithic AdWords Content network PPC engine realizes it’s obvious destiny as the mother of all behavioral targeting engines, will social PPC be considered a search industry topic then? Sometime we’re so silly .

“My target customer is Black/African American, 45-54, annual household income of $40,000- $59,999, no children in household.

Google’s data is currently available only for the United States. Data source: comScore Media Metrix, Total U.S. 2007/10 (Google’s venerable Site Placement Tool)

Is Social PPC Search Industry Stuff?
We attend SEARCH marketing conferences where pundits preach “content network THIS or site target THAT” as part of Google AdWords reindeer games. They teach tips and tricks and flying machines and its ALL “SEARCH!”

The entire world is about to future-spin the demographic targeting of our dreams and the harbinger is Facebook PPC, though much maligned. Take some target practice on the social graph and compare it to Google. You’ll see that while addressing a limited demographic, Facebook is a formidable harbinger. Think about what FB’s PPC engine does, not the site’s specific demographic and you will be amazed. Extrapolate the class of tools to future-Google. Wow…

Anyway regardless of whether you target a customer’s snoot from Facebook, sneak your way into Facebook from Google’s site placement tool (yes Google does sell Facebook placement) or take aim @ tens of thousands of Google affiliate sites by demographic targeting, Social PPC is as much a part of the search industry as midgets, Microhoo, Feedblitz, drinking, Danny Sullivan or the content network. Facebook social PPC discussions belong at search marketing conferences.

A certain search Messiah raised his voice to me regarding social PPC, above the clanging din of spicy chicken wings and barstools. “Where’s the search? How is Facebook PPC “search?” he asked. Well Facebook and Google push-marketing aside, I don’t care what we call it. We all better learn how to do it. It’s the CONTENT network, foundation of Google’s current behavioral targeting tools, that’s expanding at the moment. Though not “search” by classic definition, we perceive it as part of the “search” industry.

PS, Social Media isn’t “search” either and we talk about it a lot at “search” industry conferences .

PPS, I was just invited to speak @ SES Toronto for which I’m grateful and excited

Organic traffic from keywords is what does matter. Conversion from the traffic matters more. It’s the “average” Google ranking that is most important, a metric which unfortunately is impossible to measure directly. Organic traffic and conversion from keywords are the only true indicators, both of which are metrics-dependent on on expert use of analytics.

In light of personalized search it’s essential that everyone learn to measure natural search success properly, lest we get caught up in irrelevant vanity metrics. Reciprocally SEO professionals need to teach clients to judge organic progress properly by modern standards. Here’s some history and how-to behind the personalized search success-measurement conundrum and a blueprint for educating site owners.

At SES New York 2007, Danny Sullivan interviewed Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products & User Experience at Google. They discussed the recent rollout and scaling of universal and personalized search. It was nothing short of total SEO upheaval. Even back then Mayer indicated that there were “tens of millions of personalized search users” already and called it “new science.” That morning I grit my teeth and stopped measuring organic prominence by rank-checking software forever. The results had been questionable for several months already.

Though we all knew changes were coming, the session laid out stark and exciting realities surrounding the irrevocable personalized search SEO shift. Attendees in the gilded New York Hilton ballroom understood the deep ramifications. The SEO color-by-numbers party was over. No longer would we be able to run absolute reports to test rankings. WebPosition, a classic rank checking tool-of-the-day, was already dead. Bummer…

The Good Ol’ Days
It was so easy in those days to paste a keyword list into a box, designate the search engines to test and run reports which clearly illustrated exactly where any page ranked. Site owners understood the concept and goals were easy to set: Site owners would say “I want to be number one for this or in the top 10 for that.” The measurements were bulletproof. Life as an SEO was pretty darn easy. Little did we know that all hell was about to break loose.

(Classic WebPosition Report)

Then the Sh*t Hit the Fan
Wounded site owners with tanked or missing organic rankings began showing up on our doorstep mid-summer 2007. Google had undertaken the most radical change to search results ever, introducing “Universal Search” which blends listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines with traditional web page results. The organic SERPs as we knew them went away. That September we started using words like “digital assets,” “analytic segmentation” and discussing the new natural search reporting reality in earnest.

“The best search marketing firms measure organic prominence success by traffic and conversion resulting from organic search for keywords that matter.”

A year after the storied personalized search rollout, there is STILL a huge amount of misunderstanding regarding proper measurement of organic prominence. Many businesses simply can not seem to comprehend that an individual’s personal Google results, while pretty to look at, don’t really matter.

Teach Clients & Debunk Myths
Really, most site owners were just beginning to understand the old ways when things changed. Most of the world still has rankings on the brain disease and it’s critical that we SEOs educate the confused masses. It is in this light we share presentation bullet-points we use with clients to teach the concept of personalized search and offer new definitions for organic “prominence.”

When accepting any natural search engagement we now sit our clients down with this outline before the work begins to discuss until they understand. We hope you find it of benefit.

Measuring Organic Success in the Age of Personalized Search (Please feel free to share any additions to the outline)

• Everybody’s Google Results are different now
  • When you search and click, Google learns what you like & personalizes results to please you and return more “relevant” results.
  • Your “vanity” searches & clicks (for your own site) are rewarded, resulting in higher ranking in your own personalized results.
  • This means YOUR results for your own site are probably candy-coated, since you visit your site all the time.
  • Real-world average results are NOT necessarily as good. Bummer…
  • Your searches & clicks for competitors affect your personalized results too, further skewing your perception.
• Last-generation reports like WebPosition don’t work any more.
  • There is no way to absolutely associate a URL with a keyword ranking in Google
  • The same applies, to varying degrees, to all mainstream search engines.
  • Anyone who tells you otherwise is either incompetent, a liar, or both.
• The only true way to measure organic prominence is by traffic from keywords as revealed by analytics.
  1. Undertake classic keyword research.
  2. Install great analytics (Google Analytics, ClickTracks, etc…)
  3. Report which keywords are currently driving traffic & to a page and/or site-or not.
  4. Optimize the page
  5. Build links to the page
  6. Repeat from step 3
• Professional search marketers also measure conversion from organic traffic.
  • A conversion can be a lead, a sale or whatever goals we set together.
  • Quantity of organic traffic matters but not as much as quality. Good quality traffic converts.
  • Set goals for organic traffic
  • Tweak usability to nurture conversion

  “Rankings on the brain” means refusal to accept this new reality. Symptoms include:

  • Feeling bad because your site does not show up #1 in your own searches
  • Feeling great because your site shows up #1 in your own searches
  • Forgetting that organic traffic and conversion are all that matters

Clients all do it! They check Google franticly for some indication of how their sites rank for crucial keywords. We SEOs need to teach our clients that the method of Googling yourself and basing perceptions of success on personalized results is nearly useless in the bigger scheme. Analytics, conversion tracking and reporting are the new rank-checkers..

Facebook is marketing social PPC to those who’s “chatter” on the social graph reflects involvement in search. The ad says “Reach your customers BEFORE they start searching Pay per click.” Using their own demographic targeting tools, FB is taking on Google by marketing to Google’s very best foot solders and salespeople….search marketing professionals.

The ad in the above screen capture appears in the left hand column 1/3 down the page when I check my in-box. Make no mistake, Social PPC is paid search, not social media, and the Facebook sales team is using the social graph on us to vie for our clients’ dollars. Given that nobody actually “searches” in FB, this flavor of “interrupt” advertising is an extreme targeting method, “PERSONAL Match.” It sure is right up MY snoot.

That said, I’m sure it does not take much of an algorithm to determine what MY interests and affinities are from behavior on FB .

Common channels include television, radio, print, and now search and social media. As nearly every media channel folds into the dashboard, search marketing firms have grown indigenous capabilities which overlap and even exceed many traditional advertising agency’s capabilities. This totally blurs the lines of who does what.

The best advertising agencies lead their clients through rigorous analytic evaluation and conversion tracking to quantify ongoing success and justify marketing investments, especially in these times of quasi-recession. Account executives, creative directors, art directors, designers, production artists, copywriters and keen technical minds craft the message and delivery mechanisms. PR buckaroos prognosticate about lighting up buzz pockets.

Gee, that sounds a lot like what search marketing firms do.

Advertising Agencies & Search Marketing
In the early 90’s “search” was nascent and a mostly technical endeavor. Born to military brainiac parents, technologies like Internet Relay Chat (IRC), newsgroups, email, and early web browsing facilitated individual connections online. Yahoo personals made it easy to get a date. Mid-decade, visionary companies were beginning to figure out the allure and promise of a networked planet. Advertising agencies had NO idea what to do.

IT fiefdoms (not marketing departments) ran the show. Advertising agencies’ first impressions of the Internet were that the medium was yet another place to post brochures and pretty branded pictures amidst snippy catch phrases. Most had a difficult time wrapping their arms around the basic premises of search. To many of us the circa 2001 ad agency Internet perspective seemed empirical, uninformed and akin to an ostrich burying it’s head in the sand.

Unfortunately the Internet’s economic clout grew at a somewhat slower rate than hype and actual revenue, resulting in the .com crash. Many inflated-IPO paper millionaires lost their mojo, even here in Duluth, Minnesota. Our local advertising agency friends were temporarily safe in their house of cards. Media buyers bought local television, radio, billboards and account executives gleefully called for expensive printed brochures. Things were about to change.

Wikipedia defines advertising agency as:

“a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising (and sometimes other forms of promotion) for its clients. An ad agency is independent from the client and provides an outside point of view to the effort of selling the client’s products or services. An agency can also handle overall marketing and branding strategies and sales promotions for its clients.”

Call It What It Is
Our tasks on behalf of clients include deep and absolute market research, strategic brand consulting, public relations, and media planning. Ad placements including video, radio, search engines, online yellow pages, newspapers and social channels following creative and campaign design.

We lead our clients though intensive evaluative analytics to justify the success of their investments. Our account execs’, designers, strategic thinkers and PR team proffer advertising messages highly targeted to individuals, communities, and mass markets.

Let’s call it what it is. The Other Word For Search Marketing is “Advertising Agency.”

Anyone active in social media knows, with certainly, the compounding annoyances of those who utilize mainstream social communities to network inappropriately. In a rapidly expanding universe where procuring a few influential “authority” players’ support can deliver oodles of traffic, valuable links and scads of motivated customers to the door, it’s clear why sites like Facebook, StumbleUpon, and Digg are rife for potential abuse.

Though unwritten there are implied rights and rules of engagement regarding friendship, set and enforced by the mob’s wisdom. I think we should make them official.

But first, it’s true that healthy mutual promotion among friends is what makes the world go ’round and such behavior is encouraged as a fundamental precept of various social site models. Digg offers the much maligned “shout” feature which facilitates users in contacting friends to promote bookmarked content. The StumbleUpon toolbar “send” function places one’s entire friends-list at fingertips to contact pals one-at-a-time with recommended pages.

Facebook and Twitter are possibly the noisiest communities of all, as they allow for instant broadcast-blasts of “suggested” content to one’s entire list with one button push. Pundits speaking at social media conferences counsel attendees to proactively utilize any method at their disposal to rally votes and recommendations.

When wielded respectfully these tools are really useful and fun mechanisms for play and profit. However, too often inexperienced (or downright cutthroat users) cross the line. Such behavior is infuriating, dillutes community quality and ironically cheapens the medium as a forum for professionals to holistically promote content and wares.

One is Silver & The Other’s Gold
Obviously the solution is to choose friends wisely and un-friend them as the noise level ratchets skyward. That’s a holistic ideal, easy to articulate but rather difficult to actually pull off in the real world. You see in Web 2.0 environs, the word “friends” doesn’t really mean “friends,” as classically defined by previous generations. “Friends” has come to include casual, professional, and in many cases nearly blind acquaintances.

By and large solicitations to connect and engage come from sincere folks who actually want to know you for sharing and networking. Others, some of whom are even shrewdly concocted fake avatars, size you up as worthy prey and target your profile as part of a broader campaign. Still others are unfortunate morons who just don’t get it.

Either way before you know it, cleaning the ol’ buddies-list involves hours upon hours of picking through hundreds of “friends,” some of whom are symbiotic leeches by now. Most of us learn to be more discerning only after being seduced by hundreds of folks we barely know or have never heard of. Some invite us into their lives, queue us up and blast us with noise after we took the bait like suckers. Nobody enjoys unfriending someone and that plays directly into the hands of unfeeling spammers.

The Social Media Friendship Bill of Rights
In an effort to engage others in a dialog regarding expectations and rights surrounding the curious and quaint social media ritual of friending,” I offer this list as a starting point:

1. When solicited for friendship, we have the inalienable right to respectfully ask who the friender is before accepting. It’s not that the newly-friended-one is being a snot, snob or all that. It’s just that controlling the noise and even achieving serenity is important to some, even in light of today’s fantastically frenetic pace.
2. Everyone has the right to say “no” to a friend-request, without the exchange being a referendum on anyone’s quality or personal-worthiness. It is not rejection. Rather the declination should be considered a prudent exercises of mature discretion to save everyone involved potential aggravation.
3. Friends have the right to receive content informed by by the sender’s knowledge of what the receiving-friend actually likes. With today’s networking tools it’s easy enough to research any user’s personal affinities. Tell ya’ what, research mine and send me stuff that you think matters to ME. Use the research tools and find out what I like.Be a good friend. This is especially important if the sending-friend happens to be a manufactured persona. (Personally, I don’t mind having avatar-friends if the result is my becoming aware of great content I would have otherwise missed, informed by someone who has taken the time to research my personal preferences.)
4. When a friend requests not to receive content recommendations by certain methods, it is their right to have the appeal honored. Some sites like Facebook have outbound filtering tools to control who gets what. Use them.If there is no applicable tool to accomplish such filtering, preserve the friendship by suggesting receiver-side tools which might help. If anyone asks you to stop sending content by Digg Shouts, StumbleUpon “sends,” Facebook messages, Sphinn contacts or any other method QUIT doing it. Give a hoot. Don’t pollute.
5. Friends have the right to whatever level of anonymity they desire. I have one friend I respect a lot who only gave me her real first name after months of my asking and against her better judgment. Anonymity is her personal boundary. One of the very cool aspects of social media is getting to take different visions and versions of yourself for a spin. Respect others’ desire to do so.
6. NEVER reveal anyone’s private messages sent to you. In StumbleUpon this is about the only TOS violation that can actually get you kicked out. “Personal” means just that. Ask permission before revealing anyone’s PM’s in any way, shape or form.
7. It is everyone’s right to un-friend. Period. All of us only have so-much available bandwidth. Though codependence gets you nowhere fast in social media, be as polite as possible when doing the disconnect-deed. Keep in mind how rotten rejection feels at any level.

A social media “friend” can mean many things, including folks who mass-solicit relationships for selfish exploitation. Anyone active has experienced at least some measure of frustration at the hands of so-called friends who cross the line. In an environment fertile for abuse, claim your personal space and don’t settle for less than acquaintances who play the game respectfully.

Choose friends carefully and approach others with respect yourself. Lose friends who make way too much noise. Set an example for your community with the content you bookmark, recommend, and traffic for amusement and profit. Keep The Social Media Friendship Bill of Rights in mind on both sides of the friendship aisle.

What is projected to be a massive 3-day spring blizzard is now affecting Internet access and power to the City of Duluth, Minnesota (aimClear’s home). At least one large regional ISP has been taken down by the outage which is city and region-wide.

Over 10,000 electric customers and thousands of Internet users (including websites) are without service at this time. Weather conditions are so serious that one ISP, with over 20,000 customers, was down for over an hour in the pre-dawn light whilst crews hacked accumulated ice from an outdoor generator enclosure for proper exhausting.

The blizzard continues to rage with wind gusts of 50-55 MPH, restricted visibility down to a 1/8 mile and violent thunderstorm cells moving through the area. Lightning is flashing outside intermittently. At this writing city plows have been pulled from the road due to extreme conditions. There is no power or Internet to my home and we have personal Internet access only because Sprint is still providing EVDO service at this time. At least one television station has been knocked off the air.

aimClear will keep clients informed to the extent that my laptop batteries and then Blackberry will sustain communication. Clients expecting to meet with me in Minneapolis today: I will not be making the trip until the roads are passable and power/Internet is restored here.

I had no idea whatsoever the depth of lessons to learn and (most of all) benefits to my writing.

In consecutive conversations @ SES New York with both Danny Sullivan and Kevin Heisler (it IS small world after all), I surprised myself in articulating what I’ve come to believe is the true booty for those months of total immersion in the “social news” model. The holistic nature of the revelation seemed to catch both gentleman off guard in-the-moment so I made a mental note to share the thinking in these threads. So here we go…

For readers unfamiliar with the social news model, community members post bookmarks linking to current news items, which are eligible (for a short period) to be “voted hot” (promoted) to the community’s homepage. Landing on the homepage can drive tons of traffic to the original article, which often results in traffic, feed subscriptions, links, and friends. There are huge sites like Digg and many smaller niche’ social news sites, which can be terrific demographics to connect with for fun and profit.

It’s all about the writing. Summarizing posts to garner votes often requires a new headline or subtle modifications to the original article title. Social news sites also require a description which can be copied and pasted from the original article or be totally new. Writing these descriptions requires copywriting instincts which become sharply honed with repetitive social news experience. These skills are directly associated with just about any copywriting endeavor you can think of. Compulsive participation in social news truly helps grow writing instincts on all fronts.

In an environment where other users are literally competing to bookmark up-and-coming news, speed often matters or someone beats you to the punch. Composing compelling titles and descriptions takes a lot of concentration and skill. I’m sharing examples from Sphinn because aimClear has enjoyed a little success on the site. Also it would be the kiss of death to associate being a professional SEM with the “personas” we blog with on Digg, Stumbleupon and other sites aimClear participates in for fun and on behalf of our clients.

Headline Writing
Social news success requires seriously growing one’s headline writing chops. Sometimes the changes we make to original article’s titles are radical. “Can I Speak To The Proprietor Of the (Island) Blog?” became “Dude: Nobody CARES About Your Blog!” and screamed hot. “Is SEO Last Year’s News?” was voted to the homepage in a flash with the new title “SEO Is NOT Dinosaur Bait For Vanishing Organic SERPs. Changing “Free eBook from Google: AdWords Textbook” to “Teach New SEM Employees to Use AdWords RIGHT” brought terrific content from Clix to the attention of the Sphinn community, homepage-hot.

Sometimes the changes are more subtle. “Google Maps Category Mystery Part 3: Solved?” became ” Daunting Secrets of Google Map Categories Finally Revealed! “Selling CEOs on Search Engine Marketing” was promoted quickly with the bookmark “Use Eye Tracking To Convince Dubious Clients.” “Social Media Marketing Tactics & Resources” was a Sphinn success as “Luminaries Reveal Social Media Marketing Tactics & Resources.”

Of course when dealing with articles from masters like Jennifer Laycock or Andy Beard, often no changes are necessary. ” From Twits to Tweeple, Why I Embraced Twitter and You Should Too-Part Two:” and “Nofollow Killed Google Social Graph API 3 Years Ago”, worked perfectly on Sphinn with no modifications. Knowing when to rewrite the title is a skill in itself.

Regardless of whether headline changes are subtle, radical or none–make sure the headline makes a promise the article keeps. I’ve not always been perfect along those lines but (trust me) Sphinn members and other communities make it known really quickly that one better sharpen the pencil and not write crappy hyperbolic headlines that oversell bad content.

Descriptions
In all of social media, writing descriptions for social news sites is my favorite endeavor. The ART of summarizing an article in a few words is a wonderful challenge. There’s always a limited amount of space to match readers’ limited amount of focus. Many pundits believe that community members vote after reading the headline and a couple of words of the description.

I usually start by copying a couple of paragraphs and reducing them to just a few words. Any great article gives up the main dirt in the first few sentences for easy harvest. Also, scanning for cute, clever, or hyperbolic adjectives in the article can yield interesting descriptions. Change the “ands” to “&”, lose unnecessary “the” or “that” words, and make your description pay with just a few sentences. It’s amazing how little verbiage is actually required to communicate the essence of an article.

Here’s a few case studies that we’re proud of:

Original Article: Dumbass of the Week: Web Propeller
Sphinn Headline: EVIL Site Scraping BASTARDS = “Web Propeller”
Description: Wicked MAD = Dumbass of the Week by Ask Kalena: “EVIL site scraping bastards STEAL content from this blog within hour of me posting it. They scrape Marty & Neil Kennedy’s blog and others, listing us all as “contributors” F’Wads. WTF?

Original Article: Links For Sex
Sphinn Headline: Will Trade Links For Sex
Description: It’s come to this…
Original Article: Video: A Pallet of Soda, 54 rolls of Toilet Paper, & Sam’s Club SEO

Sphinn Headline: 54 Toilet Paper Rolls, A Pallet of Soda, & Sams Club SEO
Description: Sam’s Club is partnered with “Innuity” for small business $25 “SEO!” Will the affiliation increase the public’s perception of SEO or ruin our reputation? Another SearchEngineGuide video-rant.

Original Article: How to Develop a Hit Facebook App: 29 Essential Tools and Tutorials
Sphinn Headline: Develop HIT Facebook Apps: 29 Essential Tools and Tutorials
Description: Get the one-stop down and dirty facebook API programming skinny. From technical to tactical this softwareDeveloper.com masterpiece is a blow away how-to-tutorial! I printed it and distributed to our staff. This is the hottest topic on the Internet.

Though success in social news sites can yield terrific benefits for the content you promote and personal stature in the community, the hidden benefit is to one’s writing. On-the-fly headlines and descriptions force a brevity and style which transcends the genre and sharpens copywriting skills across the board forever. Take the social news challenge and watch the positive benefits in any area of your career dependent on writing skills!

The ability to identify the passionate interests of community site-users is a modern media miracle. Conversational marketing is the true promise of demographic research embodied and a pillar of social media. That’s the beauty of SMO. The specificity of networking site tools facilitates stunningly detailed research into the habits of individuals for friend-making and holistic exploitation.

Same As It Ever Was
The art of grass roots promotion is timeless. Throughout the history of humanity, relationships have been forged one by one. We meet each other on the street, at the gym, poolside, trailside, waiting for the bus, at a party, and on double blind dates over Gruyère.

When one person has something the other wants, connections are made. As we promote our personal or corporate agendas & wares, we strive to mingle where potential converts hang out. It’s only natural to do so. The interplay begins. Friends are made, evangelists are recruited, and widgets are sold.

It used to be more difficult to identify potential customers. The 1950’a vacuum cleaner salesman went house to house and door to door, selling with semi-confidence and verve. This Mr. Suit & Tie American Salesman sold Hoovers with conviction, by working to find potential customers who actually needed vacuum cleaners. Each household was hit or miss, the epitome of “walk by” traffic.

Sell by Saying “Thank You”
These days Mr. Social Media Marketer personally contacts 12 authority StumbleUpon users known to have tagged 10+ posts with the keyword “New York.” These individuals are KNOWN New-York-lovers as expressed by their behavior and bookmarking patterns.

Mr. Social Media Marketer writes, “I really enjoy the New York posts you bookmark in your SU profile. Thanks for the resources you share with our community.” Mr. Social Media Marketer asks for absolutely nothing as he leaves his smiling avatar badge behind with the private thank you message.

Nearly every SU New-York-lover contacted WILL follow the private message to check out Mr. Social Media Marketer’s SU blog, where (conveniently) the “New York” content he is promoting is conspicuously posted at the top-just about a beautiful picture of…you guessed it… New York. The New-York lover can’t help but click through and further propagates the promoted content’s viral future. It’s a beautiful thing.

Manipulate to Serve
Manipulative? Yes… It is true that the contact initiated was manipulative. However the engagement was truly designed to serve all parties. We KNOW what people are interested in by the profiles they keep, content bookmarked, and friends made. Like a vacuum salesperson that can predetermine which house has dirty floors, we make our SMO way and choose our grass roots targets.

The well-researched human connection always has and always will be the ultimate target for brand evangelists. Manipulate to serve by identifying and initiating respectful contact with susceptible individuals. THAT’S the Holy Grail for conversational marketing. It has always been and will forever be.

March 2008 marks the 1 year anniversary of aimClear Blog and WHAT an amazing year it’s been! We covered 7 major SES, SMX, and PhocusWright shows, immersed in Sphinn, I became an ongoing contributor to SearchEngineWatch Blog and recently posted my inaugural article regarding reputation management in SearchEngineLand.

This year we took on StumbleTrolls, discussed social rock star rules for little people, mingled with giants, discussed the evaporating yellow line between SEO & social media, and learned the ropes from consummate professionals. Tamar taught me not to Pee in the Pool.

As a company, aimClear is growing quickly-our client base expanding in a measured way. We’ve mined buzz pockets, made new friends, helped save Christmas, fell in love with StumbleUpon, and were accused of being “craven whores.” Holy smoke Batman, WOW, what a year! (Hey we even have the organic #2 right now for “craven whores.”)

Thank You
The entire aimClear family of employees and strategic partners is grateful to SearchEngineLand, Sphinn, SEO RoundTable, and SearchEngineWatch communities for support, provocative dialog, links, blogging lessons, press passes, interviews, ideas and pure expressions of SEM guile. Thanks to our wonderful readers. You are priceless to us.

We’re truly humbled for the privilege of sharing. THANK you to our amazing clients who put trust in us every day. You guys ROCK!