Fascinating and tied to the recent Wired article about the growth of the walled off Facebook network. Here’s the full article listing how total search queries grew in Facebook, but drop in Google.

I had a great time on a panel yesterday about social media organized by the DC Chapter of the American Marketing Association. I pulled together slides of useful online marketing tools and wanted to share them here. It was tons of fun getting folks excited about social media and web measurement.

Google has changed its policy on javascript & can now crawl javascript links.

Unveiled at SMX Advanced and explained by Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land, I felt it was important to share:

… Google’s new handling of JavaScript’s “onClick” function. To fully understand it, read Vanessa Fox’s in-depth report from last week, Google I/O: New Advances In The Searchability of JavaScript and Flash, But Is It Enough?…

Links in JavaScript that were invisible to Google before are now being read. And some people have used JavaScript as a way to deliver paid links in a way that don’t violate Google’s guidelines may not technically on the wrong side of the Google law. It’s been a long accepted practice that this was a “safe” way to deal with paid links, once that Google’s suggested itself.

The times they are a changin’…

I’m on an AMA panel this week about social media. The panel is unbelievably diverse, so it should be an interesting conversation and lunch is served!

Here’s the info:
What do a university medical center, a woodworking tools manufacturer, and an environmental nonprofit organization have in common? They’re all using social media to great effect…and they’re all ready to tell us more about it.

Be on hand as three articulate and energetic innovators–Ed Bennett from the University of Maryland Medical Center, Ted Hall from ShopBot Tools, and Katherine Watier from Environmental Working Group–join serial entrepreneur Casey Golden, founder and president of Small Act Network, in a stimulating and informative panel discussion. As always, it’s a wonderful networking opportunity and a great lunch!

WHAT: Executive Marketing Roundtable, sponsored by the American Marketing Assn.

TITLE: Putting Social Media in the Mix—How to Choose It, When to Use It

DATE: Thursday, June 25

TIME: 11:30 am – 2:00 pm

PLACE: Morrison & Foerster, 2000 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Sixth Floor

COST: $50 Members
$65 Non-members

To register or find out more: http://www.amadc.org/events/event_calendar.html#0625

Register now online—limited seating!

Senior Marketing Executives Only, Please.

Had to share an interesting article about how Google’s new ability to crawl javascript is resulting in unintended consequences.

Ok. I realize that this blog is related to non-profit marketing, but I had share that my new dog Sammy & I are graduates of basic obedience class. It’s a horrible picture of me, but a great one of him!

Sammy dog obedience graduation

I’m deep into getting my master certification from Market Motive in web analytics, so you should start to see more analytical post from me soon!

In the meantime, I would encourage you to read my “professors” blog: Occam’s Razor

Blogs that run off of WordPress and have set up SEO plugins are generally more naturally SEO friendly than pages generated by a CMS system, but there are unique technical challenges that you should be aware of to make sure your blog is as SEO friendly as it can be.

I stumbled on these series of videos which I think do a great job of explaining the challenges of optimizing your blog for search.

I wanted to share the news! Previously, nonprofits were not able to link back to their website call to action page in YouTube – only display a Google Checkout button for donations or their main website URL.

Now you can create a call to action overlay for particular videos which will link back to your particular call to action page.

Here are the instructions from YouTube:

Just go to the “Edit Video” section of your video, then
fill out the fields in the section marked “Call to Action overlay.”
Then insert:
* A short headline
* Ad text
* Destination URL
* An image
…and you’re set to go. Now the Call to Action overlay will appear
whenever someone watches that video.

Every nonprofit that has a video running on YouTube that is related to an active campaign, should turn on this feature.

Stumbled onto a great webinar I wanted to share: http://www.slideshare.net/toprank/using-online-news-to-drive-seo

It has some great tips about items that should be in your online newsroom.