So what’s the next logical step, for both the mobile sector and Facebook? To move Open Graph capabilities to mobile devices. Duh. Facebook is always blazing a new path, so in the wake of mobile advertising, they decided to follow suite with something new.

You may have noticed my slight obsession with following Facebook Open Graph trends. This is no mistake. I think Facebook is making some extremely smart marketing and innovation moves- and this is one of them.

So what is this? Facebook ‘Like’ on my mobile phone or something?

Somewhat. Facebook “like” will be a symptom of having Open Graph capabilities, but it won’t be the end all of what can (and probably will) come. All the social tools that come with Facebook, via Open Graph, will be essentially mirrored in the mobile space.

How important will this be?

This can bring a lot of really interesting features into our lives. Since Facebook essentially knows so much about its millions upon millions of users, we may as well use them to our benefits. With the majority of users using social networks on their mobile phones now, this is a new market to share and spread content and items that we’re interested in.

As you can see from the graph to the right (from Mashable.com) mobile Facebook use has increased by 112% from January 2009 –  people are using Facebook more than ever for communicating while out and about. I see this as being a trend that sticks around for a long time- and one that morphs and changes as new technology and capabilities surface. Facebook is in it for the long-haul, and so is Open Graph.

So what the heck kind of benefits can I expect?

So you, the mobile device user (and I know you probably have a smart phone, you can’t fool me) can benefit in an abundance of ways from this. Think about your daily life- you’re walking through town, and you stop into a local café. We’ll call this, “Café Awesome”. You have the MOST delicious cup of coffee (you knew coffee would get included in this article somehow) and sit down for a few minutes.

With the capabilities that Open Graph could provide, you could:

• Find the Facebook fan page, and “Like It”
• From there, it would show up on your news/live feed.
• You could then find the actual website for the café- and “Recommend” it  (given the feature is there)
• Your “recommendation” would then show up in your Facebook stream
• You will give “Café Awesome” the ability to update you with their status updates
• You will then be able to also receive location aware updates from said café

What’s even better, is you’ll also be able to see what friends of yours have already liked the place you’re either investigating, trying out, or have already decided to like. The power of this is endless. Recommendations from friends are highly regarded- hence why social media and social interactions on the web can have a great impact on our decisions.

Another scenario:

You’re walking into an Apple store, because you’re a total Apple fan boy (girl) like me, and you haven’t gotten a chance to hop online and see what deals might be available. Lucky for you, Apple may be making location-aware updates available- so you can see what deals are going on while you’re actually there.

Why should I, a business owner, care about this ‘Open Graph Facebook’ stuff?

Three words. Social beats anti-social. If you, as a business owner, are able to offers promotions and deals to people who are “liking” and “recommending” your Facebook page, you’ll be engaging your customers in a new and exciting way.

Businesses should get pumped about the mobile Open Graph because:

• The ability to offer special deals to fans will create brand advocates and loyalty
• Loyal customers will recommend the business to their friends
• You don’t want to be an after-thought. Allow customers to be in the moment and recommend you while they’re there

A real example of what could come, please?

A good example of a company that’s using Facebook in an awesome way right now, is Burger Monger. If you “Like” them, you’ll see status updates like this-

Imagine if Burger Monger could take advantage of mobile Open Graph capabilities? They are clearly very understanding of the amazing benefits of social media for business – I can only imagine how quickly they would jump on offering promotions and deals through location aware updates to the user.

They could send out updates over lunch hour, to people in the area that “like” them, to coax them with both promotions, and their tantalizing burgers, to get customers to stop in for some food.

So… what’s the downside?

With every positive thing, there has to be a negative view. I may as well put it out there for you guys now- since you’re probably already thinking about it. Obviously when using Open Graph through your mobile device, you’re allowing Facebook and other websites to access your data, information and possibly location (if you have your geo-location turned on).

I feel like this shouldn’t deter anybody from being super stoked about Open Graph going mobile. We (well most of us) have already accepted the privacy-type issues associated with it online. If we’re truly accepting of innovation, and if we really want to see where this amazing industry can take us, we’ll continue to be excited and follow Facebook and Open Graph more closely.

Embrace it. It’s better to be social- not anti-social.

What other benefits do you see, with the impending premiere of Facebook Open Graph for mobile devices? Will you be excited? Or will you be thinking, “Yeah. Another thing Facebook did. Hooray.”

PS: Since I know you love Facebook so much, you should probably keep up with our fun updates on our BlueGlass fan page

First let’s briefly and clearly define what community page really is. The Facebook Community Page is meant to be the collection of knowledge around some concept, phenomenon or aspect of life. What makes it dangerous for brands is that those aspects of life can be popular brands as well. The community page can be of two types: (1) automatically generated by Facebook and (2) user-created.

• (1) The automatically created community page is the mix of user-generated and Wiki content: it is pulled from Wikipedia (general info, logo) and shared-with-everyone member updates.
• (2) The user-created community page is (almost) exactly the same as the regular Facebook page with easier creation process (fewer limitations and TOS to bypass when creating one). The huge difference between the user-generated community page and the fan page is that once the community page gets too popular, it becomes the property of the community: you lose your admin rights.

So to make the long story short, here’s the quick recap of differences between the three types of pages within Facebook:

So why are they being so actively discussed? The first and the most serious problem is that community pages and official “brand” pages get mixed up. They both appear in Facebook search side by side and there’s no way to tell which of the two is the “community” page and which is the official page the marketer wants you to connect to. The widely discussed example of this is JCPenney search on Facebook which pulls both the page types (and the official one is not necessarily goes #1 though it is much more popular).

Anyway, you as a marketer can be very disappointed and even scared by the move. You can blog and talk about the feature in public in a hope you will be heard and something will change. But while you are doing that, make sure you are still doing something actionable to protect your brand and promote it.

So let’s talk about what and why you need to do to make sure the Facebook Community pages won’t hurt your brand.

1. Search Rankings

The Anatomy of Facebook PAGE Search

To search within Facebook pages, you need to click through PAGES tab – while pages do rank high in “General” Facebook search as well, we only look at Page-specific search here to get a clearer understanding of its anatomy:

So looking at search results returned for your query, you will be able to instantly see:

• Each page name;
• The number of people who “liked” each page;
• The category of the page.

Tip! You can easily tell the community page from the “traditional” page in Facebook internal search by looking at the category. Community pages have no categories; they are labeled simply as “Page”:

Note: Thanks to integration with Facebook’s Open Graph protocol, sites like TripAdvisor.com and Yelp are now showing up in Facebook’s search results, with links back to their website. So chances are you may see “external” (non-Facebook) results in Facebook page search results. You can tell those by looking at their domains:

So what are the rankings factors?

That would be too easy if the number of “Likes” was the only parameter to rank pages in search results. Unfortunately, this is not the case:

If we start speaking logically, we can assume that the combined “relevance” is the factor: for example, a person who talks all about traveling, has plenty of photos about his traveling experience and “Likes” the Allegiant Air page in “Traveling” category, his “vote” may be much more powerful than a vote from a random Facebook user who knows almost nothing about traveling. But these are all just assumptions. It is unlikely that we ever be able to figure the exact algorithm.

What we need to know now is how to handle Facebook search results given the current state of things.

So let’s see what we can do.

Community Pages and Your Marketing Efforts

1. Monitor ALL community pages related to your brand.

What this means is the following:

• Find all community pages created for your business and sign up for them. Facebook allows to sign up to put yourself on the list of possible administrators, and also suggest your site to be featured on the page and become the source of content:



• Find all related community pages (on the same topic) and “Like” them. Remember that Community pages were created to tightly connect and organize the users’ interests. So the more relevant things you like, the stronger your vote might be.

To create the list of all related and relevant community pages, use both Facebook and Google search as Google indexes the wide range of Facebook pages.

2. Make sure your Wikipedia page content is accurate and complete: Remember that the massive amount of the auto-generated community page content is pulled from Wikipedia (including the logo and the general information tab):

3. Keep promoting your official Facebook page: The number of “Likes” and interactions must be playing the great role in Facebook ranking algorithm.

4. Use Facebook search regularly to get an idea of how your official page positions move up and down in the search results depending on your efforts.

Lastly, don’t get desperate. In the end, you don’t (and don’t have to) own Facebook search results. In the end, Facebook search is no worse than Google search where plenty of third-party results (like Wikipedia, popular blogs and review aggregators) may rank high and even outrank official sources. The key is not to own the results, the key is to keep everything monitored to be able to react to changing algorithms and rankings.

Speaking of Facebook, be sure to join our BlueGlass Facebook Page here and I’d follow us on Twitter here.

This weekend, I was unwinding from the trip out to LA and reading over a good amount of the live blogging, webcasts (here’s one from SEM Synergy), and other coverage of the event and thought that not only would it be an awesome idea to list all of the coverage, but also the give you my key takeaways from the conference.

In terms of live blogging of BlueGlass LA, Alan Bleiweiss was a one man wrecking crew covering the event at Search Engine Journal and Virginia Nussey & Susan Esparza crushed the BlueGlass coverage on the Bruce Clay Blog.

Here’s a rundown of the sessions and the coverage for each :

• Blueglass LA Session: Marketing Metrics for your Business
• Analytics: Marketing Metrics for your Business – BlueGlass LA

• Blueglass LA Session: How to not FAIL at getting search traffic
• SEO: How to not FAIL at getting search traffic – BlueGlass LA

• When to raise money and when to bootstrap – BlueGlass LA

• Blueglass LA Session: Social Media Marketing
• Social Media Marketing – BlueGlass LA

• Landing Killer Deals – BlueGlass LA

• Blueglass LA Session: Building Communities that People Love
• Building Communities that People Love – BlueGlass LA

• Blueglass LA Session: Marketing Strategy: Don’t forget search
• Marketing Strategy: Don’t Forget Search – BlueGlass LA

• Blueglass LA Session: Links matter: How to measure and attain them
• Links Matter: How to Measure and Attain Them – BlueGlass LA

• Blueglass LA Session: InHouse SEO
• InHouse SEO – BlueGlass LA

5 Takeaways Which Were Pure GOLD

(and you have never heard them before):

1. Pay attention to meaningful metrics. This is NOT unregistered uniques or monthly subscribers. But the people who come in and view 2+ pages or stay 10+ secs, etc – those are the people who care – those who you want to pay attention to (by Dave McClure, Angel Investor, Session – Analytics: Marketing Metrics for your Business).
2. Every page of the site is the home page with search because you don’t know where people will first come to your site. You need to have an explanation and call to action on every page. State who you are, what the page is about. (by Vanessa Fox, Founder, Nine by Blue, Session – SEO: How to not FAIL at getting search traffic).
3. Don’t focus on active users only: You need to grow both the commenters and the people who don’t talk. That’s the whole community. Your community is not just the people who generate content: it’s the people who read and use it. (Ben Huh, CEO, Cheezburger Network, Session – Building Communities that People Love)
4. {Related to #3) Communities are made of up delicate layers of users. If you market to them as a monolithic thing, you’ll lose the ability to grow. Offer various ways to participate as well: active users comment, “silent” users prefer anonymous ranking or voting systems. (Ben Huh, CEO, Cheezburger Network, Session – Building Communities that People Love)
5. Get targeted feedback: If you get it from all the people who visit, feedback is useless. Lots of people who visit your site are not your target market so you get useless feedback. By getting feedback from returning visitors, you’re getting better information. (Neil Patel, Co-Founder, Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, Session – Marketing Metrics for your Business)

5 Useful Things You Need to Take Note Of:

1. Great content doesn’t guarantee traffic. Great content + great user experience + SEO = increased traffic. (Adam Audette, President/CEO, AudetteMedia, Session – SEO: How to not FAIL at getting search traffic);
2. You need to be authentic to successfully build a community. How many really big and powerful communities were created by a corporate brand? Yahoo and Google couldn’t have built Facebook. Corporations lack the authenticity. (JR Johnson, CEO and Founder, Lunch.com, Session – Building Communities that People Love)
3. Best solutions are simple: Human nature has a tendency to admire complexity but reward simplicity. Don’t overengineer things. (Ben Huh, CEO, Cheezburger Network, Session – Building Communities that People Love)
4. People link to things that they respond to emotionally: if I trust the source (Wikipedia), I’ll link to it. People will link to conspiracy theories – fear. It all relates to emotional response. So before creating content, define which emotion you want to evoke (Dave Snyder, SVP of Search at BlueGlass Interactive, Session – Links Matter: How to Measure and Attain Them)
5. Social media evolution: Power users are no longer power users, they’re influencers. It’s not submission based any more. All of your actions are visible to everyone. Every time you vote, comment, participate, it’s not distributed to a selective few, but to everyone that follows you. So now you have to be more careful about how you participate. (Brent Csutoras, SVP of Viral Marketing at BlueGlass Interactive, Session – Social Media Marketing)

5 things You Need to Know for Building an Efficient SEO Team or Business:

1. The single biggest problem in SEO is things not getting done: Get designers who know SEO. Give SEO teams their own dev resources.
2. Good SEO team accepts risks and encourages failure. SEO should fail quickly to succeed long term - Do It Wrong Quickly (Adam Audette, President/CEO, AudetteMedia, Session – SEO: How to not FAIL at getting search traffic)
3. Set up lines of defense incorporate SEO into every day activities. Push back when SEO isn’t included in deliverables sent to you.
4. Make sure the SEO is involved in company guidelines and standards. Incorporate them into the organizations overall standards so the organization is held accountable (Jessica Bowman, Founder, SEOinhouse.com, Session – InHouse SEO)
5. SEO should support the resource or product value, it shouldn’t drive it (Adam Audette, President, CEO AudetteMedia, Session – How to not FAIL at getting search traffic)

Other great conference coverage :

• Breaking Through The BlueGlass Ceiling of Search Marketing – Entrepreneur.com’s Jon Rognerud
• BlueGlassLA Goes Full Circle & Drops Knowledge – Joanna Lord or SEOmoz
• Blueglass LA Internet Marketing Conference Session Notes – Brian Chappell of Ignite Social Media
• Dana Does BlueGlass : Dana Lookadoo’s Coverage on SEO Dojo Radio
• Forget Search: Let’s Go Social – Yahoo’s Dave Roth on Search Engine Land
• Yahoo, Microsoft Search Update This Afternoon – MediaPost’s Laurie Sullivan

Again, I’d like to thank everyone who made BlueGlass LA possible, especially Tony Adam – who’s LA presence and connections made BlueGlass LA even more successful (and fun!). We’ll have more videos and multimedia conference coverage published soon enough. In the meantime, stay tuned for our next BlueGlass Conference announcement, which is right around the corner

I’d recommend following us on Twitter here or joining the fun on Facebook here (we’ll also be announcing everything there first)….

The man your man could smell like has given us all a high – metaphorically, as the internet is buzzing with commentary about the award winning campaign, and literally as we all rush to pharmacies and sniff the product from the isles. Old Spice reminds us not only of the characteristics we wish we could find in our men, but also the traits we desire from our agencies, clients and campaigns.

Based on a superficial analysis, it may appear as if the success of the viral Old Spice campaign is the result of a traditional recipe: hot sauce (model Isaiah Mustafa) + very little dressing (no shirt), blended with new appliances (Twitter and YouTube).  Yet the genius lies not in its ingredients but the concepts behind them.

1) Form Meets Content

With any piece of writing or art, magic can be created by matching form and content.  Just as good perfume should last through the long hours of a day, so should a marketing campaign cling to viewers’ memories despite the never-ending competition for attention online. Beyond the entertaining and fast-paced commercial, Old Spice took over the web in a day by seeding out real-time information and floating at the surface of the Twitter Sea, thus remaining relevant.

2) NonFiction Advertising

Sure we all love the world behind the computer and TV screens – but don’t we all secretly wish we could hug Hugh Grant when he looks bewildered… or just speaks in general with that cute British accent of his? By responding to Twitter requests in real time by video, Old Spice takes the character out of the studio and brings him to the audience in flesh and bone. And how much easier is it for the target audience to identify with someone who’s real?

3) Personalization

The age of the template is coming to a quick end. With TIME magazine picking YOU as person of the year, everyone wants everything tailored – why shouldn’t they? The guys over at Old Spice really hit the nail on the head by providing each blogger or tweeter with a personalized video tailored to address their specific question. Who wouldn’t want to share this with friends or embed it on their blog? I would, you would, and so would Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore – who did just that.

4) Transparency

This is obviously our favorite one here at BlueGLASS – clarity. Real-time is tricky as it involves producing content extremely fast and making it accessible to the public. It opens the door to all kinds of possible bloopers but most importantly, it portrays sincerity.

5) Curiosity

Perhaps the most important element in any marketing effort is to lure new customers to try out a new product. As I joked earlier, I suspect a very large number of people have flocked to Walgreens to sniff the deodorant and find out what this desirable smell is like. Yet this campaign induces curiosity on various levels. Not only do I want to smell that smell, I want to know how the people behind the Old Spice campaign is managing to produce so much content in such short amount of time, if they have a team writing or just a hot man and an intern behind a camera, I want to know what’s behind the towel (metaphorically!)…

All of these interests ultimately lead to the desire for interactivity – the want to become a part of the experience and interact with the brand in ways other than merely buying a product. This, my friends, is what social media marketing is about.

Finally, let us not forget the level of trust necessary between client and agency to allow for such efforts to take place. Beyond innovation, opening up the possibility to (near) real-time interaction is frightening in terms of possible control loss. Yet being great inevitably involves taking creative risks.

An Explosion of Manliness: How the Campaign Swandove Into The Best Time Of Its Life

OK, enough with the theory already – these are all wonderful but what is it that made THIS campaign so popular? Certainly not every campaign that can check those elements off a list will go viral – in fact the current Old Spice campaign has quite a long history including very interesting videos with similar characteristics that did not become nearly as popular. In fact, you can read about the entire retrospective right here. What differentiated the current campaign featuring Isaiah Mustafa are a few practical elements:

First, we all know that the integration of various channels of communication made this campaign particularly holistic and attention-grabbing. But what truly ignited the buzz explosion was the team’s very wise selection of response targets.  In this intriguing interview, the team behind the campaign explains that they chose people of all levels of influence in devising responses. While this helped them maintain the videos’ image as sincere and real, it must be said that it was their conversations with celebrities that most efficiently spread the manly seeds across the web.

The campaign really hit viral status when Digg CEO Kevin Rose tweeted about getting over his pneumonia.

By closely monitoring Twitter chatter, the team managed to involve Mr. Rose by kindly offering him “get well” wishes in the form of a studly video, along with some neat information about ears and their immunity against fevers.

This subsequently got his pal Ashton Kutcher involved. On Twitter, @aplusk wrote:

“If you don’t feel better after this @kevinrose I don’t know what will help http://bit.ly/bZn4hu”

Mr. Kutcher happens to have kind of a big following on Twitter… of “1.2 gagillion” to be exact.

Involved celebrities didn’t just share content – they participated. Another notable case was the exchange with Alyssa Milano, who complemented the campaign and received 4 different personalized videos.

Topics addressed included nose CPR and an allusion to a bouquet of roses that actually made it to Alyssa’s doorstep – yes, in the real world.

Alyssa responded to the act of shameless flirtation (that ended with “So tell me what to do next”) by asking him / the agency in the Old Spice ethnic attire – a bath towel – to donate money to charity.

Suddenly the conversation transcended marketing, humor or fun – it was about a real interaction that affected the offline world in very tangible ways.

Other “influential” characters who had the honor of receiving a personalized video include Ellen Degeneres, the beautiful Mrs. Kutcher (Demi Moore), Perez Hilton, actress Rose McGowan and celebrity Digger Andrew Sorcini (aka Mr. BabyMan) – which brought the story to Digg’s front page even though he didn’t submit it himself.

Speaking of hitting a flock of Twitter birds with one stone (via ReTweets), another factor that truly differentiates the Mustafa Old Spice series from its predecessors is its target audience. Earlier videos included elements deemed awesome by males but disgusting to their counterparts – see for yourself. Yet Mustafa appeals to both audiences, succeeding at manliness in its every sense.

The final element to have differentiated the Old Spice campaign from any other is actually completely separate from the product and agency. Due to the sum of elements outlined above, the light at the end of the tunnel was an unparalleled treasure chest of User Generated Content.  First, a group of Reddit users took the initiative to create the Old Spice voice mail, available in multiple versions for males and females. Beyond the short commercials and genius set of videos, this allows for the Old Spice manly man to live forever as the representative of individuals who either love the campaign or want to be like him.

And now that the video responses craze is over, the campaign lives on in the form of parody videos. Here are some of our favorites:

Even though there has been a significant amount of buzz regarding the campaign’s failure at directly increasing sales, the genius of this campaign lies in its huge success at rebranding Old Spice as modern, sexy, manly, and most importantly – recognized by people all over the globe. Morever, it opens up the way to what may be the new world order of marketing – one where everything is targeted beyond keywords.

What were your overall impressions of the campaign? Any lessons you learned that weren’t mentioned – comments, critiques? Share with us below!

Oh, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for real-time industry commentary.

Earlier this month, Newsweek declared that America is facing a “Creativity Crisis”. According to some researchers, there is evidence that creative potential in young Americans has dropped for the first time in generations…and that might be an early warning sign of cultural decline.

I’m calling shenanigans on you, Newsweek. From where I’m standing, Americans are more creative today than ever before. Ideas travel halfway around the world in an instant, people can get advice on the best ways to solve their most pressing problems any time of the day or night, and innovative entrepreneurs are doing their part to help pull us out of the recession.

Heck, I cross paths with at least a dozen creative minds before breakfast, and not all of them work with me at BlueGlass. I live with an incredibly talented composer. My neighbor across the street is a mixed-media artist. And my local restaurant scene is filled with creative cooks and chefs who love to combine new flavors and ingredients.

But being creative doesn’t always come easily, even to people who consider themselves imaginative. Anybody can get “writer’s block”, whether you’re struggling to come up with a catchy headline for an article that’s due tomorrow, or trying to devise the best way to increase traffic to your client’s homepage.

No matter what your profession may be, fostering your own creativity is essential for growing your business, completing your projects, and exceeding client expectations. Want to maximize your creative potential? Here are some tips and tricks that I put to use every day…

1. Make an outline.

Okay, I know it seems counter-intuitive to create an outline. After all, by setting up a framework for your project, aren’t you limiting your scope?

Well yeah, but that’s a good thing. There’s an old saying that for a writer, the most intimidating thing in the world is a blank sheet of paper. A sheet of paper is brimming with possibilities; the story can literally go in any direction. But sometimes, too many options can be overwhelming.

Creating an outline structure for your project ensures that your mind will be better able to focus on the project and not be overwhelmed by unlimited possibilities.

2. Keep a journal.

Or a bookmarks tab. Or a pile of sticky notes. You never know when a passing thought or casual observation can become your next great idea.

3. Get a fresh perspective.

Have a friend, co-worker, or colleague take a look at your progress so far. Two minds are better than one, so get a fresh pair of eyes to give you some honest feedback on your creative efforts.

4.  Stop thinking so hard.

Sometimes the best ideas come to us when we aren’t trying to think of them. When you’re stumped for a creative way to solve a problem, take your mind off the project by doing something else. The answer to your creative quagmire will probably present itself when you least expect it.

5. Collaborate with the rest of your team

Creating an atmosphere where you entire team can brainstorm creative solutions to your problems can produce some surprising results. People in accounting might have great ideas for marketing, and people in marketing might have great ideas for building relationships with clients. Open the floor to your entire workforce, and you are bound to get some creative juices flowing!

6. Research

Some people don’t like to do research. They worry that seeing what other people have done in a similar vein will stifle their creativity.

To me, that’s like an actor passing on the chance to see Laurence Olivier in Hamlet because they wouldn’t want to mimic his performance. Sure, you might pick up a few of his mannerisms, but what you learn from the experience is worth the risk of mimicry.

That’s what editing is for, folks.

7. Take a cue from your dreams.

Okay, this sounds completely cornball, but it works. Dreams are sort of a dress rehearsal for our minds; a time when our brains can try to anticipate and solve problems that you might face in real life.

If you’re stuck on a project, your brain might work out the answer while you’re asleep. Keeping a notepad or voice recorder by your bed is a great way to help you catch late-night flashes of inspiration.

8. Eat something.

Thinking is hard work. In fact, between 20 and 30 percent of your daily caloric intake is used to regulate your brain’s functions. Skip a meal, and your brain might not work so well. If you want to be working at your creative best, nibble on a stream of small snacks: fruits, nuts, crackers, or veggies are all a good bet.

9. Twist it

Creativity doesn’t stop when you’ve come up with a great idea. Trying making that idea even better by thinking about the solution from a new angle, or by adding an unexpected twist. For example, an article about fire safety can be pretty hum-drum. But if you can find a way to incorporate pop-culture references or current events, then suddenly you have something special.

10. Make time for creative pursuits.

Set aside some time every day (at the same time each day!) that is dedicated to creative thinking, innovative problem solving, or free thinking. Giving yourself that freedom each day can lead to some great ideas, and gives your brain permission to come out and play!

11. Think two ways.

There are two types of creative thinking. The first is “divergent” (thinking of lots of different ideas). The other form is called “convergent” (bringing disparate ideas together in a way that makes sense). When you get stuck on a project, try switching to a different type of creative thought, and see where that takes you.

12. Naps are awesome.

Creative types tend to burn the midnight oil (or wake up before sunrise to have some time for quiet reflection and uninterrupted thought). But burning the candle at both ends can burn you out completely if you aren’t careful.

If you want to be at your creative best, do yourself a favor and take a 20 minute nap. It will recharge your batteries, clear your mind, and works better than a latte or a can of Monster.

13. Let your first draft percolate.

If you have the time, set the first draft of your project (an infographic, a budget, a proposed client agreement) aside for at least a day. Coming back to it with fresh eyes will help you be more creative with it. plus, you’ll be more likely to catch omissions or mistakes that you missed the first time around.

Don’t have 24 hours to spare? Update your Twitter feed, check your stocks, or do anything that takes your mind off the project for five minutes, and then take a second look at your draft.

14. Track your time.

Giving yourself deadlines and keeping track of how long you work on a project helps you stay accountable to yourself, and also helps you to manage your time more effectively. It’s one thing to dedicate some time to brainstorming, it’s quite another to realize two hours later that you’ve only generated 2 semi-formed ideas in that time.

Before starting a creative session, set clear goals for yourself: “I want to have 5 solid ideas to pitch to a client by 2:30” or “In the next 30 minutes, I want to come up with 8 creative ways to raise brand awareness for this client”.

15. Cut stress out of the equation.

Some people work best under pressure. But sometimes the stress of an impending deadline can cause you to freeze up.

The solution? Go for a run. Have a cup of chamomile tea. Shoot up a bunch of zombies in your favorite video game. Do whatever it takes for you to blow off some steam and reclaim your ability to focus on the creative task at hand.

Creativity isn’t just for writers. Thinking outside of the box is essential for every modern professional, whether you build cars, computers, or brand reputations. Without creativity, there would be no innovation, no social change, no entrepreneurial spirit driving our economy.

Developing your capacity for creativity is one of the most rewarding forms of professional growth. Master the art of innovative thinking, and you can secure your future (and of course, the future of your company).

We’re still facing some tough economic times, but I’m fully convinced that fresh, creative ideas from pioneering social media moguls are going to help get things back on track. If you want to stay on the cutting edge of your industry, you’ve got to master the art of thinking creatively…or else you’re just gonna get left in the dust.

Educate Yourself : Collect the Discussions

Besides being an essential networking tool, a conference is also an awesome way to exchange knowledge and information.

Twitter will help you find what people have been talking within and about the event. You can collect Tweets, summarize them, write reports on the event and what has been shared there.

However you do know that Twitter Search spans the last 30 days only, do you? So archiving Tweets around a really useful conference and sessions would be a great idea.

There are only a couple of tools that will also help you save the Tweeted information for further reference. You may want to try both of them:

1. The Archivist is a nice desktop application (Windows-only) that lets you run any search within Twitter database and lets you export the results to Excel. You can then use Excel columns to:

• Search within the topical Tweets,
• Grab the column listing all the Twitter users and create the list via Tweepl (to follow all of them with one click and let others follow them as well), etc
• Filter and sort Tweets, etc, etc

The tool is very easy to use. Just get it installed, run the search and Save the file to further update it with latest Tweets.

The View menus allows you to view the chart of the search results history and the pie to visualize the Tweeting users:

2. TwapperKeeper is rather a handy tool that allows to create the permanent archive of all Tweets around a (conference) hashtag. With help of this tool, you can thus create a one-reference source of knowledge exchange around any event.

To create an event, first login with your Twitter account (using Twitter authentication) and then simply provide the hashtag, description and tags:

As soon as you create the archive, the tool will send a public Tweet using its official Twitter account linking to your new archive:

Here’s our conference Twitter archive by the way.

As you can see, the archive can be sorted by date, filtered by user or a keyword and set to exclude all the Retweets. No matter which sorting and filtering options you choose, you will be able to get the direct URL of the new archive to link to. For example, here’s our archive excluding all the RTs.

You can also export your archive to save it locally and analyze the collection.

Network: Connect to the Conference Participants

Visiting industry conferences is by far the most effective way to build valuable connections with partners and clients. However if you couldn’t make it to the event, it doesn’t have to mean you can’t get connected to people who were there.

BlastFollow is a handy tool that lets you create the list of all Twitter users who use the official conference hashtag and follow them all with one click. While the tool may be potentially dangerous in the wrong hands, it works like a charm as the “remote” conference networking tool.

To use BlastFollow, simply enter a favorite hashtag (in our case that’s #blueglassla) and click the “Get Users!” button. After a few seconds, you will see the number of users who tweeted with that hashtag recently.

Important note: the tool doesn’t use the Twitter auth to access your account. You will need to provide your login data, so use for your own discretion!

Let’s get the most out of the SEO conferences even though we can’t make it to all of them!

Color Palettes

Seeing blocks of solid color next to one another can give you a good feel as to the overall mood a group of colors creates. There are tons of social/community sites that help others create and share ideas. Whether the palette is analogous, complimentary, neutral or monochromatic palettes are a great place to start when fleshing out an idea for color. Check out the color palette used in the BlueGlass logo on kuler.

Logo Design

Website Design

I am assuming we have all seen some of the more obvious sites using blue as a major color, like Facebook, Twitter and LinkdIn, so let’s check out some others getting creative with blue.

Print

Video

Painting

Blue Nude, c.1902 by Pablo Picasso

The Blue Paintings by Damien Hirst

Blue Nude IV by Henri Matisse

There you have it, inspired by the color… blue. Blue is a cool color that draws you in and cools things off. It can be both mesmerizing as the sky and as solid and strong as the ocean. As this post theme of color inspirations expands I will add more categories. If there are any categories or industries you would like to see added to the list please let me know!

So his last two albums have been really disappointing to me.   But the whole point of this post is to show you the lessons that you can learn from his ‘comeback’.

The reality is – he probably didn’t need a comeback. Eminem has sold over 80 Million records world-wide.  That puts him up there with the best selling artists of all-time.  He could have easily rested on his laurels and just went into retirement.  But as any good Internet marketer knows, that is easier said than done.  It seems like the ideal situation but after a few months you get antsy and want to start banging away again (whether it’s a new start-up, as an investor or even venturing into something completely different).

I talk to people from big agencies everyday who have become complacent.  They know they have big clients and they think that they can just do just ‘enough’ to keep these clients happy.  The reality is – they could probably do this for years but how does this help those clients or the industry as a whole?

Build back your credibility. Before Em released ‘Recovery’ he started doing songs with some of the best (and most popular) rappers in the world.   He contributed to sick songs by Drake, Lil’ Wayne and people who were at the top of their game.  Even with these songs, he would usually be the best part of each song.

Don’t be afraid to partner with people that can help you.  You can’t do everything on your own.  To me the stuff that Eminem did before this new album was the same as putting the best possible content on high profile blogs in your industry.

Even if you’re at the top, admit when you’ve put out something mediocre. One of the reoccurring themes of ‘Recovery’ is that he knows that his last two albums basically sucked.  He admits this.  Multiple times.

If your pride or ego prevents you from admitting that you didn’t perform your best work – you’re screwed.  If you can’t admit that you’re not working as hard as you should be – you’re screwed.  If you’re not doing your best work for your clients – THEY WILL LEAVE YOU.

Don’t be a hater. In the song, Talkin to Myself, Em admits that he was basically hating on guys like Lil’ Wayne, Kanye West & T.I.  The reason?  They were more popular than him and they were better than him at that point.  He wanted to attack them but he luckily deep down, he knew that if he did, they would wreck him (due to the state he was in).  “It isn’t them, it’s you, you fucking baby.  Quit worrying about what they do and do Shady….”

This is probably one of the most prevalent problems in the Internet marketing industry and something that holds us all back.  Somehow we have created a culture of jealousy.  Competition is great but jealousy is destructive.  Focus on yourself and what you & your company can do.  Keep an eye on your competitors but move on from the jealousy bullshit….

Don’t Do the Same Stuff As Everyone Else. In the opening track Cold Wind Blows, he spits this line: “I put that on everything, like everyone does with auto-tune.”   He’s talking about the growing trend in the music business for artists to use auto-tune to make themselves sound better.  The thing with auto-tune is that yes – it can make you sound better.  But it also makes you (1) the same as everyone else using it (2) masks your weaknesses (until someone calls you out).

There is a tendency for Internet marketers to ‘follow the herd’.  Ask yourself – what makes you better than everyone else?  What can you do that is better than your competitors?  Focus on that.  Don’t take the lazy route and use autotune.

Show Your Skills. It’s easy to say “I’m Back” but you need to convince people that you really are.  In the song Won’t Back Down – Eminem goes OFF.  He raps like there is no tomorrow.  He’s at the top of his game and he knows it.  People can’t touch the rhymes in this song.

It’s hard for Internet marketers to prove what they can really do because everyone always wants to have a competitive advantage (you don’t want to show your bag of tricks).  But forget proving anything to other people.  Be able to prove to yourself and to your company that you can kick ass and take names.  Be able to back your stuff up in presentations, comments or when chatting with someone at the bar/pub.

Find the Right People to Partner With. One of the things that I loved about ‘Recovery’ was the fact that Eminem partnered up with a bunch of artists that I would never have expected.  People like Lil’ Wayne, Pink, Rihanna and the little known Kobe.  All of these collaborations work and many of them surprised people.

You can’t do everything on your own.  Whether you are a solo warrior or someone from a big company – look for people that are going to complement your skills and can help make you better.  Look for partnerships that can be mutually beneficial.  This has been one of the most important lessons that I ever learned in my career.

Don’t Forget the People that Helped You (or Hurt You). On ‘No Love’ (which somehow uses one of the cheesiest songs of all time in hook and makes it work) Em and Weezy talk about the people who ‘kicked them when they were down’.  But now people are begging them “don’t hurt me”.  But at the end of the day – those people weren’t there for them – so they get “NO LOVE”.

There’s lots of people that are there for you when it’s convenient for them.  But remember that part “when it’s convenient for them”.  It has nothing to do with you.  As soon as you slip – they’re going to do whatever to keep you down.  Rise above them and don’t forget them.  Be better than them.

Don’t Chase Fame for the Sake of Fame. On ‘Almost Famous’ Em talks about how he wanted to be famous so badly.  This has been a recurring theme is so many of Eminem’s albums.  He wanted to be famous and put everything above that but he found out that it’s not everything it’s cracked up to be.  “I just want to be Famous, But, Be careful what you wish for….”

One of the biggest problems that I have noticed in the Internet marketing community is people putting ‘fame’ above anything else.  People call other people out for no reason (other than just to gain attention).   People post things on their blog that give away tactics that work (and as soon as they do – you can bet they never will work again).  People speak at conferences on stuff they have no idea about.  It goes on and on.  A lot of times it seems like people will choose ‘fame’ (or recognition) instead of money or business success.  It baffles me….

Obviously I have been listening to this album a lot and it struck a chord with me.   Whether you love or hate Eminem (he has done a lot to justify both) – you can’t argue with the fact that he is a survivor and knows how to succeed.   The parallels with this album and the industry that I so deeply love and respect amazed me and really helped teach me a few things.  I hope this post did the same for you….

There is an art to Guest Blogging, and it’s about building long term brand loyalty and reciprocity. Guest blogging is never a band-aid for link building, and will generate business for your company if done correctly.

This being said, guest blogging is one of the most effective ways to promote your brand and build a strong online presence. The benefits of guest blogging include:

1. Achieve Targeted Exposure

Exposure is no good unless it’s targeted. Guest posts should be published on highly-relevant blogs whose readers are most likely to be interested in the topic AND your company. Besides, visitors that click through to the author’s site are interested in learning more about you and your site. As a result, a much higher percentage go on to become RSS subscribers or customers- which will increase your site’s conversion rate and return readers.

2. Build Reputation of an Expert in Your Niche

By sharing your expertise with a highly-targeted audience, you will soon notice your opinion holds a higher value and your work is cited more and more often.

The enhanced reputation that it brings can help to increase conversions in product/service sales or when recruiting advertisers. Being seen as a “thought leader” in your industry certainly has its advantages. As an expert, you’ll attract the top-tier clients who are willing to pay more to get the services of an industry leader. You’ll also have an easier time earning the trust of new customers, which is a huge challenge for all online businesses.

Guest blogging builds trust and authority to your brand.

3. Influence the Influencers

Many of the top bloggers in your niche will be power users and writing a post for them is a fantastic way to bring your service or product to their attention.

Readers of these bloggers look up to them and follow them because they have already established long-standing authority. The fact that you are allowed (and welcomed) to share your opinion using these platforms make your brand much more trustworthy by association.

Let’s also not forget that blogs are SOCIAL MEDIA, and social media gives you the change to engage your audience and customers. So, publishing a blog post is only half of the equation, the other half is following up in the comments field and continuing the shaping and forming of the conversation. One of those commenters could be your next client!

4. Achieve Social Media Exposure

It is very difficult to achieve exposure in Digg or any other top social media network, especially if you own a commercial site. A high-quality guest post published in a popular blog is an effective “indirect” way to get your brand to the front page of Digg or other targeted social networks.

Readers are always eager to share great content that comes from a trusted source that they frequent on their own. Letting your content naturally pick up exposure because it’s highly targeted on a niche website will boost social media exposure through all channels that sharing occurs.

Here are some hardcore examples :

• One guest blogging spot we established last month got 2,900+ natural retweets in two days
• That same guest blog spot hit the front page of Digg 12 hours later.
• It now has over 250 incoming links, and according to Google Analytics (the publisher provided to me) is still seen by hundreds of users a day

5. Build Links

Guest posts are published on high-authority blogs- which means links from them are gold. You can’t buy them. You can only deserve them by bringing excellent content.

This datapoint helps to establish link differentiation from your competition. If you are in an industry where everyone depends on paid link networks or links from blogs no one reads, taking the time to put together quality content on top influencing blogs will make a massive difference in your inbound link and authority portfolio.

I have seen many companies and clients obtain such accounts on blogs seemed untouchable, but with a solid and transparent approach, and not trying to take advantage of the relationship with spammy links, they have set up reoccurring columns on Technoratio Top 100 blogs that are TOP INFLUENCERS.

NOTE: A blogger will only accept content from an author that is of the utmost quality. Their brand and reputation could be jeopardized, so you know your content will be surrounded by top-tier posts by other authors as well- thus keeping high authority status on the blog itself and your links.

6. Think of Long-Term Effects

Brand Loyalty is not only built with the audience of the blog you are contributing to, but also with the influencial blog itself. The networking benefit of guest blogging means that its value shouldn’t be judged on a short term basis. Building relationships with the bloggers, you ensure you have effective media and venues to spread your idea or help your projects go viral.

Blogs are the Magazines of the Web, and contributing to multiple influencial blogs within your niche is like having your brand across the entire newsstand.

Next time you have some important news to share, or a new promotion to get exposure to, you will already know which high-traffic blog owners will be happy and willing to help. You already have these relationships … now it’s time to leverage them. And VICE VERSA. Personally, I take about 5 to 8 hours out of my week helping out bloggers, to make sure that if I see an issue with their blog, I help them address it.

This is for two reasons :

1. The better their blog’s SEO and readership is, the better the Guest Blogging column will perform for my clients.
2. I’ve been professional blogging for 7 years since I created Search Engine Journal, and I have a lot of experience to share

It’s easy to push out average content on a one time basis – but eventually you’ll run out of those “average” blogs that are willing to accept “average” content. Building trusted and long lasting relationships with high quality content is absolutely key in the long run for your reputation. Seeing your name and brand on the same blog multiple times will allow your customer to view you as consistent and trustworthy.

Traditionally, Facebook Pages have been used to promote a business, band, shop, etc while Facebook groups have been used to promote a common interest. Over the past two years, Facebook has focused their efforts in promoting Facebook Pages as the strongest marketing vehicle of the three by by creating embedded widgets and thus providing marketers with effective tools to promote their pages externally and build the fan base.

Nevertheless, these lack functionality as networking tools. Pages are less effective than profiles in building relationships and simultaneously less powerful than groups for promoting discussions and having two-way interactions with your following.

This post offers a comprehensive comparison in marketing capabilities between all three vehicles on Facebook.

Note: Profile pages aren’t directly comparable to Groups and Fan Pages given they’re compulsory in the creation of the latter two.

Sharing Options and Visibility

Your profile, fan page and group all have privacy settings that enable you to control sharing permissions and visibility. Here is how these differ among the three:

Note: There’s one weird thing about sharing for admins within the page: when you (as admin) are trying to post something at you page wall, you get “non-personalized” – posting as a page (not as yourself).

Promotion Tools

Facebook Pages are known to have more visibility and (viral) marketing potential than groups due to these important features:

• They are displayed in each fan’s profile “Info” tab
• They are public and can be linked to externally
• They have various widgets that allow for external promotion (e.g. from a company blog)
• They can be added added as your “Page favorites”

In this case the page thumbnail will be added to the “Favorites” box of another Fan page you manage:

To make a long story short, here’s a quick recap of page versus group versus profile (viral) marketing-friendliness:

Important note: This section wouldn’t be complete if I missed the important difference in diction:

• Profiles “add” each other as “friends“
• Members “join” groups
• Members “like” fan pages (Which is easy to do from the embedded widget, yet “unliking” is just as easy.)

In this perspective, fan pages imply the lowest rate of active participation. You don’t join (to participate), you “like” (=express your approval or appreciation) and may unlike any time.

Branding Options

In some cases, the two of these can’t be compared: for example when it comes to branding, both the profile and the page are necessary. You need a profile to network and promote your personal brand while you need a fan page to promote your company (that is, a profile gives you visibility as a person while a page links to your website).

Note: The ability to install awesome applications to a page as well as set different landing pages for the “default tab” makes Fan Pages much more flexible and customizable than profiles and groups.

Connecting to Members, Fans and Friends

The main (and perhaps only) advantage of a Group is that these offer the ability to message all the members via Facebook mail (and therefore to reach them, most often, by e-mail).  In comparison, a Facebook Page’s mass message will come as an “Update” which is much harder to notice:

Another important difference (if not a bug) is how Groups and Pages treat Facebook Events: While you can create related Events with a Page, you cannot invite all your Fans with a click. This means you have to manually add guests from your friends list (NOT the fan list). Groups allow you to host an event and automatically invite all Group members.

Another weird thing worthy of a mention is that as the Event creator and the Admin of a Fan Page, you cannot message your Event guests. Instead, you are obligated to appoint someone else to be the Admin of the event and have them message your guests-to-be.

All in all, the major communication differences are briefly outlined in this table:

Important note: You will NOT be able to invite the members of a host Group to an Eevent if the group has over 5,000 members.

Conclusions

It is unclear why Facebook decided to go with two limited functionalities instead of making at least one complete tool. Having tried both and discussed them multiple times in various communities, I have come to the conclusion that in order to make the most of your Facebook marketing efforts, both a Fan Page and Group should be created. Given each has its own unique advantages, a creative approach that tackles each of these will bring the most visibility. For example, you can create a traditional Fan Page for your business and a Group for relevant discussions – and analyze how each one contributes to your campaign goals.