Last week I did my “Art of Social Media” workshop presentation to a new professional group I’ve joined, the PPA (Pride Professional Alliance) – and I made a mistake that needs correcting.
First off, Google HotPot was Google’s way of one-upping Yelp! since Yelp! turned Google’s purchase offer away. The way you got to Google HotPot was through Google Places – and now, that’s where Google has decided to reside HotPot and drop the name. There weren’t a ton of fans of the name HotPot anyway, so fair enough.
My mistake was skimming two articles on HotPot that said, “Google turns Cold Shoulder to HotPot” and claimed they were shutting it down, much like many of Google’s experiments. During my presentation I referred to this after I introduced HotPot to the group and of course heard grumbles, “Why tell us about it if it isn’t going to be there anymore?” Well, I did mention that just because there are mentions of its demise on the web doesn’t really mean it’s dead.
I was right, but I was wrong. Yes, HotPot the name is gone, but the service is still within Google; it’s just now residing within Places. Confused yet? This is one of the reasons people go nuts when trying to do SEO work on their own. All SEO and Google’s algorythms change constantly…they’re alive, breathing an morphing all the time – that’s why you should be wary of businesses claiming they can get you to the top spot on Google searches. What works one month, may not work another.
My advice? Get on Google Places and claim your business…Now! The service is still there and if you have an address, then by all means, use it to your advantage!
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization; the practice of optimizing your website to come up near the top of search results in Google (or other search engines.) Ideally it is the result of the web community seeing you as the expert in your profession, therefore the trustworthy source of information on your particular field of work. As a business person, it is no different than what you do when you network, and especially if you’re a solopreneur. In essence SEO is networking on a much larger scale than you can do in person. The goal with online and in the real world is to make you the expert in your field of expertise, raising your visibility to great levels.
How do you do it?
There are many ways to do SEO; either on your own, or with a professional like myself that can create a strategy for you. One thing you have to know about Google and SEO in general is that it is fluid, consistently changing. It lives and breathes, morphing into a different shape every six to 12 months. However, if you follow some basics principles, you can be sure to succeed over time.
As with many things, it is a process and takes time. Be wary of any company telling you otherwise. Just as you’ve invested time and energy into your business plan, logo and website, your SEO is also an investment of time and energy, but the results are well worth it.
Buyer Beware
There are a lot of companies that have made a mint on SEO; some good but most use shady tactics to get their “results.” In the SEo community practices are in two camps: White Hat and Black Hat SEO. Here’s what you should know:
White Hat – Organic, Clean SEO – This is how I choose to do SEO work for my clients. Organic means that I haven’t tried to rig the system to get you empty and short lived results. As I said earlier, SEO is about networking. If you network and become visible in a clean, organic way, it means you’ve connected with your community, you’ve done plenty of article and blog publishing (establishing you as the expert,) and many people link back to you within their network. There are extra aspects that play into this, including your activity on social media. Mix all of this together with some specific tailoring for your field of work and you have organic, clean results. Lastly, I don’t claim to be an expert, all I can do is assist you with what I know works and adjust our plan as we view the results.
Black Hat - This camp of companies and SEO “experts” take lots of money to game the system. One practice I have seen is link-baiting. yes, links going in and out of your site does help with SEO, but those links have to go to a source with relevant information. I’ve seen some of these experts create a page with local links, say a link for every county in their state. These links go to a page with a couple of sentences that may be a tiny bit relevant, but they’re basically empty calories. Google sniffs this out and can black list your site for this practice. Another tactic is hyperlinking dozens of words within an article or blog post. The recommended choice is to hyperlink a word, place, brand or company once, usually the first time it is mentioned in the content. The post is a good example – I didn’t link all of the instances that I have mentioned SEO, just the first time. Black Hat folks would hyperlink every time it is mentioned.
There are also what is known in the SEO community as “Content Farms.” These are websites or directories with some aspects that are legitimate, but once again, they are gaming the system. They employ a large number of freelance writers to create massive quantities of written content. the content is designed to satisfy Google and other search engines algorithms of automated “search bots.” (Search Bots are what retrieves search results.) These farms tend to also poach articles from other sites for their own use, often without permission.
So, as you see there is a lot to SEO. I hope I’ve answered a few of your questions and made a complex topic a little more approachable. I’ll continue to write more on the subject, but for now, I think this is a pretty good start. Anything you’d like to add?
One thing that is a lost art on most business people are hand written notes; thank you cards are no exception. I have tried my best to send a thank you card to people I have met with. Whether prospective clients or with networking colleagues, it’s a nice touch to add to your repertoire of professionalism and branding. From my own experience it’s great to get in the habit of doing, even if you fall off course a few times.
It is ideal to have thank you cards that are made for your company, with your logo printed on them, however regular thank you cards work just as well. I have found Target has great options available. In my town, we’re fortunate to have small shops that specialize in unique thank you card box sets, or individual selections for almost every occasion.
Because this is an extension of your personal and professional branding, be creative about your choices if you can. Today I purchased a set of cards you see to the left from Jane Hancock Papers, an Etsy store and colleague of mine in the graphic design field. I chose them for being unique and whimsical. The tricky thing for me will be parting with them! They are so beautiful and top-knotch, I’ll have to keep one as a reminder of how wonderful the creator is in skill and presentation.
What happens though, if you make a mistake with a client’s project? Saying, “I’m sorry” can be just as creative. Also to the left is a box from Cupcake Jones (a great bakery in Portland,) in which it reads, “My Bad”. What a great way to reach out and acknowledge your mistake than to give a cupcake in a box like this!
So there you have it, my little tip for you that if done consistently can become a great asset to your branding. Putting it into practice can be a hurdle, but begin by just trying it out. You can get into the routine of it by keeping some cards in your bag, briefcase or purse with envelopes already stamped, ready to go right after your meeting. Just fill it out, address it, and bam…you’re ready to drop it into the mail.
Last weekend, I facilitated a workshop, “The Art of Blogging” – a workshop for those who know they need to blog, but don’t know where to start. One of the items that came up was which blogging platform is the best. It really depends on you and what your online situation is. Fortunately in 2010, there have been many blogging platforms that have been birthed and by now are mature enough to be taken seriously with the likes of Google’s Blogger or open-source juggernaut, WordPress.
Most people are in two camps:
A.) You have a website that is hosted with a company like GoDaddy.com, BlueHost.com, or any local host you’ve selected. Because you already have a website, it is in your best interest to launch your blog within your current website. Google and other search engines LOVE consistently refreshed and new content. For you, I would choose WordPress. You will need to know if your host has a one-click WordPress option (most do by now.) If they don’t, you will need help setting that up from your website creator or administrator.
B.) You don’t have a website right now, or the website you have doesn’t align with the type of blog you want to launch. For this group, I would suggest you take a look at the options you have available; most are free though they have their limits. Within this camp includes people who don’t know if a blog is for them. If that’s you, then the free choices are a great way to experiment. There are also those who will use blogging as more of an online journal (the original reasons people started blogging back in the day.) Again, for you folks, the free options can be the best.
First, I’ll address why WordPress is my choice for camp A. WordPress is open source, meaning it is available to anyone who wants to use it. Being open source also means that is supported by a huge community of web developers, web designers, and the open source community. This means there are a ton of people writing themes and plug-ins for this platform.
What are themes and plug-ins? Themes are the way your blog looks, the way it is structured and many have extra included functions. The theme you pick will determine if you have three columns (one on the left and right of the main content = three) or two (the main content and one column on either the left or right side -but not on both sides.) It will also determine what your blog looks like which include: background colors and/or photos, link colors, ability to have affiliate banner ads, and where/how your navigation menu is presented.
This can get a bit dicey to attempt to do on your own, so most of the time it is best to either ask the community, or get an hour of assistance from a web designer or developer.
Plug-ins are little “apps” that do particular things you need within your blog. There are plug-ins that: allow you to have a safe and secure contact form that doesn’t get displayed to spam-bots looking for e-mail addresses to exploit, provide an events calendar that you and others on your team can edit, provide a much richer commenting experience than the default WordPress commenting system, and well, the list goes on for miles. If you can think of something you need to perform on your blog, you can bet a plug-in has been created to fill that need.
Next up – for the B camp…I’ll be posting part 2 soon
Gedeon Maheux resurrected a post he did on October 6, after the show he mentions, Caprica, was officially cancelled yesterday. Caprica is the prequel to the smash hit re -make of Battlestar Gallactica (BSG). I had been at a dinner party Sunday where the show was a topic of discussion, and those who watched it loved it. Yes, feel bad for those folks.
First – the pilot was shown centuries ago (in TV programming time) around April of 2009. I was pretty excited about it, because my partner and I had finished up watching the entire BSG series, and had become hardcore fans. As you may know, being a fan of a TV show that is riveting, you tend to want more…and don’t want it to end. That was us, and we were delighted to see the first part of the pilot. But then, boom…it went on mid-season hiatus and we had to wait to Fall of this year. After all that time, we became uninterested. So goes the perils of TV scheduling schizophrenia. We went through a similar situation with LOST and Heroes. Great shows, but writer’s strike and a choppy schedule disenfranchised us.
Maheux points out that TV executives don’t give sci-fi TV shows enough time to get their legs and truly build an audience. This is his reason for not watching most o the new shows geared towards geeks, why waste the time when you’re almost certain they’ll be cancelled within the first season? That makes sense…
What can we as entrepreneurs learn from this? When it comes to blogging, the answer is simple: Don’t give up on or take for granted the audience you’ve built, even if you think you’re the only one reading your blog. Chances are, there are people who do like what you write and enjoy your point of view; yet maybe they aren’t visible through your RSS feed subscribers.
Building a blog audience takes time, patience and energy. There will be those trigger-happy days where you: A.) Feel like giving up, B.) Think the week is too busy to post anything, or C.) Get too busy you forget about at least checking in with your audience. I’ve done all three, so I’m certainly no saint there, and I’m learning from my own missteps; which then turns into key items that will be provided at my workshops for blogging.
When you think you don’t have something to write, don’t have enough time, or get too busy…think about what I’ve just done here: A post I found on my Church of The Apple Mind Twitter stream just became this post you’re reading here. Took me all of 20 minutes. Boom…
If you’ve followed this blog, you’ll notice I’ve been wanting to get into doing t-shirt graphics – I think they are great venues for wearing artwork, and awesome for conversation starters at networking events (yes, you can wear a t-shirt with a jacket.) There was one artist that inspired me and although I’d love to “Get The T-shirt” of her works, I may just buy some of her work and create my own, using hers as inspiration.
Introducing Stinna Persson! Based in Stockholm, Sweden; she has garnered a great portfolio working with giants like Coca-Cola, Sony Music, Target, and DKNY – just to name a few…Truly talented!
I am so inspired by this collage artist, even if he does do his work by computer software…it’s still amazing. I’ve picked up collage as an art form that I can practice outside of my job.
That is one very important thing for you to make sure you have in your work-life balance; if you’re a creative, maybe even if you’re not (even if you aren’t able to say, “I’m an artist.”
So for this Friday, that is my gift to all of you…go outside, window shop, visit an art gallery…and give yourself permission to be creative! There are no limits – I’ve even heard that cooking is a form of collage, so that isn’t out of the realm of creativity.
Go forth and create!
P.S. I’ll be posting a series of short posts on creativity and how you can release the ties that bind so many of us. I can only speak form my own experience, but I’m not alone in my quest to create and do it freely, with no inhabitions.
I’ve been blogging for many years and since then I have learned a thing or two about the process and its blocks we all can hit once in a while. That’s why I’m facilitating a workshop at Tabor Space on October 30th, The Art of Blogging.
I’ve experienced my own blocks that I either have created for myself or they truly are blocks that I may not be able to control. However, I have learned how to move these blocks. Things that come up like, I’m totally blank…I don’t have anything to write about, I don’t have the time…I’m too busy as it is, or nobody wants to read about this dribble I’m writing. Often there is one tiny step that, once taken, breaks you through your block.
Here’s an excerpt form the description:
Have you wanted to create a blog for your art or business?
Has something held you back from jumping in?
Many people in all walks of life and industry have had a want to launch a blog but, have stalled in some fashion for numerous reasons. There is an art to blogging, one that is inspiring, manageable and efficient. If you have ever wanted to launch a blog, have launched a blog but are stalled, or want to build your community then this workshop is for you!
Posted by Christian Messer on September 30th, 2010
I find inspiration for my work all over in my little corner of the world. I keep things that are truly inspiring and shelve them for those moments when I feel I need some spark boosters. Fortunately too I have my iPhone (now the iPhone 4 with better camera!) and I take photos of artwork, billboards and believe it or not, artwork that is stapled on a telephone pole (that’s Portland, Oregon for you.)
I have had a love affair with one piece in particular for years – the wedding invitation you see on the left. I was lucky enough to get a hardcopy of it form the groom who designed it. In the design world there are few magazines that we enjoy immensely…HOW is one of them, and I’ve been a part of their HOW Design online community for years. It was here that I have “met” my digital deign family; and where I came across the wedding invitation.
Since receiving it, I have put it away and taken it out so many times…that now I have lost track of where it is in the attic. I was lucky once again to be able to find it on the web (and now the link doesn’t work any more.)
Why do I love it so? The color palette is one thing…it’s so rich and delicious, but not overbearing. I’ve used this palette twice now for projects I have worked on. The other aspect of course is the design: simple, yet I know it took forever to complete. Finding the right balance with all of the circles and the colors is no easy task. Not only that, but they also created a wax seal with their initials that matched the rest of the pieces…brilliant.
Posted by Christian Messer on September 23rd, 2010
“Sip Soda Co. is a local Vancouver brewing company offering all-natural gourmet sodas— a fresh and low-sugar alternative that appeals to foodies and socialites alike.
These distinct labels for Sip sodas use slim sipping straws to illustrate their unique flavor profiles, paired with a strong, clean word-mark that commands shelf presence.” Description from Lovely Package
My only worry is that they look fantastic photographed here, against a white background…what happens when they are on the shelf? What’s behind them will count, and if it is just the grocery store shelf backing, would that detract? I’m guessing yes…and since I can’t hunt down their site, I don’t know what their paper packaging looks like, but I sure can guess…simplicity, guaranteed.
One important fact: this beautiful, simple, clean design was executed after many, many hours of research and hard work…it doesn’t happen in a vacuum. This is one element many don’t understand about branding and graphic design. It really is an art form and takes many weeks, months and sometimes, years to finalize a successful, winning cohesive package.
Last week I did my “Art of Social Media” workshop presentation to a new professional group I’ve joined, the PPA (Pride Professional Alliance) – and I made a mistake that needs correcting.
