For those of you who missed it, here’s a quick summary. You can catch the complete, detail-filled update at this year’s Summit, August 15-17, 2012, at the gorgeous Driskill Hotel, Austin, Texas.

What’s Hot in Search Marketing

To start, Google continues to rule the roost with over 66% of all search rankings in the US…and almost that much worldwide. Baidu may be the top search engine in China, but Google is still in the game and they rank at the top for a majority of other countries. So this year the talk is all about Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm updates.

The Panda update, released in February 2012, focuses on quality content. The goal is to reduce the rank of sites with poor quality content and increase the rank of sites with high quality content. Here are some of the things that will get you in trouble:
– High % of duplicate content
– Low amount of original content
– High # pages with low amount of original content
– Unnatural or heavy-handed SEO

And you need to be checking your site analytics. If you don’t have Google Analytics installed by now, what the heck? It’s incredibly rich software that improves day by day…and it’s free. Just do it already! Then look for the following problems:
– High bounce rate on page or site
– Low visit times on page or site
– Low % of users returning to a site
– Low click-through % from Google SERPs

Google also wants to see you have a presence on the social media sites. So let’s get that program off and running already.

The Penguin update, released in April 2012, is all about linking. If you are part of a link farm or have gotten involved in some other “share links with sites unrelated to your business” scam, your rankings are going to suffer. Google sees links as important votes about the usefulness and popularity of a site. But they have to be earned links. You’re in trouble if you’re using paid text links that use exact match anchor text, comment spam, guest posts on questionable sites, or article marketing sites (the ones that pay anyone to write about your product, whether or not they understand the product or the industry).

Where Do You Start?

First, you need keyword rich content throughout your site. Identify the top keywords, 2-3 per page, and use them naturally in the visible content, then tweak the keyword density to use them another time or two on that page. Finally, use those keywords in meta tags: titles, content headers, URLs, file names. Try to work some keywords into your link text; don’t just link to the phrase “click here.”

Next, you need a search friendly site architecture that’s easy for the search spiders to navigate, crawl, and index. Optimize your site code to make sure the relevant meta tags are in the top third of the page code.

Get linking! The best place to generate solid, relevant links from respected sites is with a PR program. Links to you from trade journals and associations are like gold.

Finally, set up a Google Webmaster Tools account and check their recommendations. They’ll tell you if you’re missing title tags or have duplicates or too short or too long, etc.

You can download the full What’s Hot in Search Marketing presentation here.

Here was my ten cents on where to post what:

LinkedIn Company Page – all company news, tools, developments, training, events. People subscribe and can opt in or out.

LinkedIn Groups – information as it relates to the audience in that group  - webinars, white papers, conferences/training, general articles/events of interest (not company specific), jobs, partner opps, etc. Video links can go here, but the platform doesn’t lend itself well to sharing videos.

If you manage a LI Group, there is a little more leeway. If you are just a member, each group has rules and you will need to follow them. Post Promotional items in that section, Jobs in that section, etc. Share useful information as it relates. Be a good member, honor your place there.

Facebook Pages (that you manage): Company news, tools, developments, events, general articles of interest not company related. Videos work great here. People subscribe and can opt in or out. But also, Follow other FB Pages in your market, share their items that they post. It’s a two way street here and will help with engagement on your page as well as expanding your audience.

Twitter – Since its a fast moving information stream, you can post just about everything here. You can post press release links, but if that’s all you post it is a waste of time. You need a mix of useful industry wide information with your own company information. 80/20 rule holds true here – where 20% is your company stuff.

Slideshare – Post all public PPTs, PDFs, white papers, video, webinar recordings here (but video and recordings require a paid subscription).

YouTube/Vimeo – videos, webinar recordings

Company Blog: Focus on producing your own good technical content, sharing others good technical content, educational and training, webinars and other event-related information. Press releases are a No here. Videos, sharing PPTs, white papers, tools, are all good content fodder for the blog. You can leverage and integrate your outposts such as YouTube, SlideShare, Vimeo here.

I may have forgotten something, but feel free to chime in and add your ten cents!

Image source

What if we had changed our blog title to: Infographics: A Look at the Subtleties of Messaging. Let’s consider that the subtitle for this post.

Recently, we posted the “Should Taxes be MORE than Company Profits” graphic. The leading question in the title is less emotion-invoking than the “greedy” title above. But the goal is the same…to get people to stop and think about how much of business earnings should be given to the government vs invested back in operations (jobs, equipment, new facilities) and dividends (gotta keep the stockholders happy to have access to capital for future needs).

Of course, how we pose the leading question has a lot to do with what people we’re trying to reach. The above title is asked fairly matter-of-factly, even though we added a little emphasis to MORE. But it’s not positioned to be an activist’s spin tool.

The “greedy” title, and the subject of this blog post, “Is ExxonMobil Greedier Than the Government?” refers to the same graphic, same data, but notice how your reaction changes when we introduce a word like greedy.

Hmmm, maybe I’ve found a new calling in life — to expose the spin in politics and hopefully desensitize the public to its effects.

7th Annual ISA Marketing & Sales Summit
August 15-17, 2012
Driskoll Hotel
Austin, Texas

The New Rules of Customer Engagement: Riding the Winds of Change
Keynote: Jane Lansing, VP Marketing, Emerson Process Management

Early bird registration discounts through MAY 1st:
• ISA Member: $475
• ISA Non-member: $595
• Workshops: $195

Regular Conference pricing
• ISA Member: $555
• ISA Non-member: $695
• Workshops: $225

REGISTER TODAY: http://marketingsalessummit.com

Download the Summit agenda here. Summit2012_Agenda3

Whether you’ve been dabbling with social media for years or are just starting out, there’s a reason “content is king!” keeps popping up. In B2B marketing, the biggest challenge is to establish credibility and trust so prospects and the industry at large will consider you a viable resource for whatever you’re peddling.

Then there’s the issue of which social outlet to choose. The Mass Small Business Development Center (MSBDC) at Clark University invited me to give a talk last week to business owners about how to use social media for marketing and sales. We covered a lot of good stuff: setting goals, listening to get the swing of conversing cuz each network is different, developing a content calendar, etc. Every time I give a social marketing talk, the most popular question is the same:

WHERE DO I START?

The answer is simple. If you’re just starting out…FOCUS. Talk to your customers, distributors, experts in the industry. Find out what social media networks and tools they use. Then choose from the commonly mentioned ones and start listening.

>> For CONSUMER marketing, Facebook and YouTube are good places to start. Tread carefully on Facebook because it’s primarily a network for personal communications. Be engaging, be fun, don’t be in their virtual faces constantly trying to make a sales pitch.

>> For TECH / INDUSTRIAL marketing, you’re going to want to start in a different place, probably blogging and/or LinkedIn. Be interesting, be smart, and have some fun. Same rule as above, don’t be in constant pitch mode.

Get your act together on that first social media project BEFORE you start jumping into other networks / tools. If you’re creating a social media program in-house, with limited bandwidth, you need to spend a few months getting your process and content development in place on one network before you can do a decent job handling another. It will take a bit more time up front to get things running smoothly, then you’ll settle into a regular routine. You’ll know when you’re ready to take on more.

That’s one of the gotchas with social media. The conversation is fast and fleeting. You need to contribute something meaningful regularly. For LinkedIn or a blog, that can be weekly; for Twitter it’s multiple times a day. If you want obvious results, be ready for that commitment. If you just want to experiment, that’s fine, just don’t expect big things. Another gotcha is that it takes time to build your social voice and a following, regardless of the network.

Before you take that social marketing step, make sure you have your web site in really, really good shape (lots of content, updated regularly) or your social media program could end up a lot of effort for little or no return.

But now, as many of you know, I have a thing about using the word “solution” in any context beyond chemistry. I’m concerned that the word has been overused and misused along the way. The big questions are… Do our customers know what we’re talking about when we say we provide “solutions”? How do we prevent further erosion of the term and maybe even build up a context that better defines its use? To get to that point, we need to understand what’s going on with use of the word.

A new report from Solutions Insights, ITSMA, and ISA takes the first step in that journey. Anatomy of a Solutions Marketer is based on a February 2012 survey of 133 representatives of mostly technology companies. The report defines “solutions” as a combination of products and/or services with intellectual capital, focused on a particular problem and driving measurable business value.

I started out in Product Management oh so many years ago. The biggest challenge was we PMs had all the responsibility for a product line and no direct authority over the different departments we had to work with: engineering, manufacturing, sales, marcom. If there was a glitch in the product launch timeline — say engineering needed another month to debug — it pushed everyone’s plans out the window. I remember a number of heated conversations in the halls when schedules started to slip. It seems Solutions Marketing is following in PM’s footsteps.

Findings of the survey include:

· Solutions marketing is more challenging than either product or services marketing.

· Successful solutions marketers are not born. It takes experience, knowledge, and ability to foster relationships across the organization.

· Solutions marketers are a very experienced group of professionals, averaging 16 years in marketing!

· Nearly all solutions marketers were either product or services marketers (or both!) prior to their stints in solutions.

· Respondents identified a host of challenges–the top two are internally focused (enabling the sales force and working across organizational silos).

· When asked to rank the difficulty of solutions-related challenges, changing culture and behavior far outranked selling solutions. This seems silly. Why are we fighting ourselves when the important thing is the customer?

· Solutions marketers have to master not only marketing skills but also interpersonal skills to become change agents and work effectively across the silos.

Read the abbreviated report, Anatomy of a Solutions Marketer.

For more information, contact Steve Hurley at Solutions Insights.

Quick quiz. Did you know…

• In 2011, ExxonMobil made profits after taxes of $41.4 billion on sales of $486.4 billion.
>> That’s ~ 8.5 cents in profits per dollar of sales.

• Combined taxes for ExxonMobil last year were $104.5 billion.
>> That’s ~ 21.5 cents in taxes per dollar of sales.

ExxonMobil takes the risks and the government makes 2.5 times more than the company does. This leads me to ask…

Should the government’s take be more than a company’s profits?

When the numbers stack up like this, the state becomes the majority partner in the company’s profits. Wait…what? We are still in America, right?

An important question is, “where do we get the most value?”

People need jobs. ExxonMobil provides 82,100 jobs at the moment. People also need affordable ways to move about…get to work, take care of family members, get the kids to school. If the government wasn’t taking 1/5th of the operating revenue of the company, gas prices could drop by 1/5th. That would be a price decline of MORE THAN $0.80 PER GALLON at current prices., which are over $4 a gallon.

It’s not just a numbers game, but the numbers are telling a disconcerting story about give and take. Businesses give, the government takes.

Does this mean social media in business has hit the skids? Let’s take a closer look at what’s happening.

The details are part of a longitudinal study of corporate use of social media by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. The first results of this research were released in 2007 where it was shown that 8% of Fortune 500 companies were blogging compared to 19% of the Inc. 500. The numbers increased over the years with 2010 data showing that 23% of Fortune 500 blogged vs about half of the Inc. 500.

In the 2011 study, the numbers were down: 37% of the Inc. 500 (34% responded to the survey) maintained corporate blogs vs a steady 23% of the Fortune 500.

Which types of social media does your company currently use?

But what does this really mean? Fortune 500 companies are showing the same percentage of blog use.

Growth in blogging, Inc 500 vs Fortune 500

Why do they continue to blog at the same pace? Because it’s working. According to eMarketer, 53% of Internet users will read blogs this year.

53.5% of Internet Users Will Read Blogs This Year

Corroborating the forecast, the Center for Market Research found the same thing. 92% of the Inc 500 said blogging has been successful.

If you have been using social media, have they been successful?

Well, that’s strange. An overwhelming number say blogging has been successful, but use trended down this year. Why? I have a few thoughts.

1. Blogging is hard work. Well, blogging the right way is hard. Producing insightful and useful blog posts requires research, expertise, and a lot of thought. Taking the easy way out and blogging about any inane but slightly related topic is easy.

HubSpot, for instance, found this out when they started a manufacturing blog to increase their presence in search engines…like they advise their clients. (We advise blogging as well, but the customer should come first when you blog. Search engine rankings are an added bonus.) Unfortunately, HubSpot was all over the place on topics: lean manufacturing, safety footwear, John Deere, tin manufacturing, ceramic bearings. Who’s going to be interested in a lightweight overview of random manufacturing news? No manufacturer that I know. Not surprisingly, the last post on the blog as of today was July 19, 2011. At least they realized it wasn’t the right approach and turned their efforts elsewhere.

2. Inc 500 companies are on a hell-bent growth curve. This is great news! We love to see companies innovate and, as a result, rise to new heights. But that means they have to make some very hard choices about how to use their resources. Did I mention that good blogging is hard? I’d rather see them spend time Tweeting and interacting on LinkedIn, which almost half Inc 500 are doing (see above, and successfully, see below), then jump in and blog half-heartedly. The more bad corporate blogs out there, the more readers are going to be discouraged and stop reading.

If you have been using social media have they been successful?

Here is an example of a good corporate blog. For those of you who know Telesian, you know we have great respect for the work Jim Cahill of Emerson Process Experts is doing. Jim is focused on process control and does a deep dive into relevant technologies and markets, such as continuous process verification, advanced biofuels, and Fieldbus. Occasionally his internal marketer overcomes his internal engineer and he comes up with titles like, “Achieving Potash-stic Results.” Emerson Process Experts is an example of one of those 23% of Fortune 500 companies who continue to blog. Why? Because it works. Jim attests to the fact they they see millions of dollars in opportunities based on the interactions via the blog.

I’ll end with a link to a little data from eMarketer on what makes a good corporate blog. Note: comments won’t happen as often in the B2B world, but that doesn’t mean the blog posts aren’t being read. Check your blog analytics report so you know what’s working and what’s not.

Attributes that make a great corporate blog

Let’s start with “bricklet.” These are customizable chunks of web content, usually set off in a box or other such enclosure. They may contain an ad or a piece of content that you want to break apart, with the hope of emphasizing its contents for faster recognition.

But here’s the big question. What actually gets people’s attention faster?

According to Djamasbi and colleagues, “Visual hierarchy is a cognitive approach to user-centered design. In practice, web pages with a strong visual hierarchy will have contrasting perceptual elements of varying visual importance. Without the variation in emphasis, Tufte states, ‘nothing is emphasized; the design will be noisy, cluttered, and informationally flat.’ By creating a visual hierarchy, companies can naturally guide users in viewing their web pages in an effective and meaningful way.”

But what form should this emphasis take? This study tested size, graphics, color, and location with users ranging from age 23 to 60.

We assume a LARGER SIZE area will attract attention faster than a smaller size. The eye-tracking study showed that doesn’t seem to make much difference, even with a bricklet that’s twice as large.

We assume a bricklet containing a GRAPHIC will attract attention faster than one without. The study showed a tiny increase in noticeability, but it’s not clear how significant that difference is. This study may have not differentiated the two ads clearly enough, as I consider the green box with $500 to be a graphical element as much as the actual graph. More research required here.

We assume CONTRASTING BACKGROUNDS will attract attention faster than areas without a contrasting background. This one is interesting because we have to take into account “banner blindness” before we got any further.

What is banner blindness? As banners have become more prevalent, mostly for advertising, site visitors have learned to ignore those parts of a site that look like colorful ads. We see this in the advertising work we do for clients. Graphic display banners are not a good lead generation device. They can be used to support your branding efforts, but there are better ways to generate leads online.

Back to contrasting backgrounds. The research showed that background color made a BIG difference in viewing time. The backgrounds WITHOUT contrasting colors were much more quickly noticed. If you stop and think about it, it’s not that surprising. Advertisers have always tried to find ways to make their messages look more like editorial content. Same principle applies here.

Lastly, the study looked at LOCATION. We assume content on left hand side of a page is noticed faster than on the right side in Western countries where we read left to right. Turns out, location doesn’t seem to make any difference.

Download the full research report from Dr. Soussan Djamasbi at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, “Designing Noticeable Bricklets by Tracking Users’ Eye Movements.”

This week, the questions all relate to search and mobile marketing. These are complex topics; if anyone tells you either are easy, they’re lying or they don’t know what they’re doing. It’s incredibly easy to waste a lot of money on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, search optimization of web sites, and mobile marketing.

Today let’s focus on Blogsvertise as this is a sink hole for technology marketers. (No, I’m not going to link to it to give it any inbound link points; it doesn’t deserve them.) This site has a dual purpose:

(1) They pay bloggers to blog about advertisers’ products and services, and to run PPC ads from same on their blogs.

(2) They take money from advertisers who want their products blogged about to raise their search rankings, and/or who want to run PPC ads on blogs.

If this sets off your warning bells, there’s good reason. First, why all this focus on blogs? Because Google has taken steps to give blogs more visibility in search rankings. So Blogvertise has come up with a way to talk unwary marketers into parting with their Internet marketing dollars by claiming to help you get higher search rankings. ThomasNet and GlobalSpec say the same thing, but at least they are in the technology / engineering / manufacturing space and their site visitors are engineers and purchasing agents. Who knows what you’re getting with this other site?!

Kinda reminds you of link farms, eh? If you don’t already know, search engines don’t like link farms cuz they only exist to trick them into thinking you have more incoming links than you deserve so you get higher search rankings. But search algorithms are looking for RELEVANT incoming links, not random ones. For more info, see the article “How Google Works.”

Second, who are these bloggers? From what I’ve seen so far, they are mostly people looking to make a few bucks. I’m a big fan of capitalism, but when it comes to talking about my product, I want someone who comes out of the industry and is familiar with the underlying technology. If they aren’t, I run the risk of associating with people who can undermine the brand I’ve so carefully built (another strike against link farms, too).

Third, this approach undermines the whole world of blogging. The money is lousy unless the bloggers do a lot of these paid gigs. That means their blogs will, over time, end up being one big advertisement…either a copy/paste of press releases or a hatchet job on a lot of different topics. But for you, the marketer, blogging is like public relations — its power lies in its IMPARTIALITY & CREDIBILITY. As soon as you lose those, the blogger loses all reason for anyone to read his/her blog.

On a related note, there are still a few 3rd-tier tech magazines out there that will run your press release for a fee. Most are out of business because quality readers abandoned them, but I still get the occasional request for $$.

Last, let’s look at the PPC advertising side. Yes, there is a time and a place for advertising. Oh look, Blogvertise offers PPC ads, too. But why would you want to pay for a random blogger to run your ad when you can find a higher quality blogger via Google’s AdWords / AdSense PPC program?

Ok, rant over…for today