Check out the transcript of our conversation with Michael Caruso.

The world known as the internet has the potential for an infinite amount of possibilities. These possibilities aren’t limited to who you are or what you do. Anyone and everyone can tap into the internet and leave their footprint. One of the major pushes the internet is seeing is the dominance of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. These social media websites can be utilized both by individuals and companies in various effective ways.

One individual, who has shifted his gears to mastering internet and social media marketing, is Michael Angelo Caruso. He is a professional speaker, who has made a career out of public speaking, sales training, and now internet and social media marketing. Caruso is the President of Edison House LLC, which is a communications consulting service based out of Detroit, Michigan. He has delivered thousands and thousands of speeches all that deal with a topic in communications.

We had a chance to sit down with Caruso for our Trademark Productions podcast to discuss his current endeavors and to gain some of his insight on social media. Caruso will also be speaking with our own, Dwight Zahringer at the Internet Marketing Conference, October 22nd in Beverly Hills, Michigan. This conference will be an all day seminar that is designed for anyone and everyone that wants to learn about how to utilize the internet and internet marketing.

“This conference was developed to open the door for people to see all of the potential and possibilities that internet has. I think about 10 or 12 years ago I read a statistic that said the average person only uses about 19 percent of his computer’s capacity. Maybe 80 percent of the computer’s capability goes unused,” said Caruso.

People are only using their computer for basic stuff such as; surfing the internet, writing an e-mail, creating a word document, and etc. Caruso believes the same statement can be made about the internet. Sure people use Mapquest, Google, and Wikipedia as resources, but the internet has a lot more to off to the average person. There is not just financial benefit here, although that’s what internet marketing is all about, but there is also a whole lot more. The internet has the ability to connect people and allow us to learn a lot more than we already do.

“I think internet marketing is just a place that someone can not only supplement their income; they could create a whole new career from applications online,” stated Caruso.

With all those possibilities surely people are going to have questions on how they can bring this idea to fruition.  The Internet Marketing Conference is designed to do just that. Answer all of these questions and open up the minds of individuals to utilize the internet as a tool, a resource, and a form of income.

Caruso has become a master of communication consulting under his company Edison House. “The idea is that under this umbrella, Edison House, I have three revenue streams. They are speaking, publishing and consulting,” stated Caruso. Being able to fully understand and teach others how to understand these three aspects of communication has allowed Caruso to dive into the depths of internet and social media marketing.

“The hottest, freshest, newest and most exciting form of marketing is social media marketing such as Facebook and Twitter. Surprisingly a lot of people still don’t know what that’s about, but they should because it’s not going to go away.”

Caruso is right the Facebook and Twitter databases continue to grow daily. More and more people are getting connected and making these social media sites ritualistic to their day. These social media sites allow users to help create an internet presence which is one of the things people don’t usually use the computer for. The internet gives you the ability to lay down your own internet footprint. This footprint represents some sort of internet presence that allows you to be recognized by the click of a mouse. People can just Google your name and if you are using the internet correctly something will come up.

“They better see more than just a birth certificate if they search your name online.  What have you been doing with your time?” says Caruso.

People want to see what you are doing, how you are using the internet, and if nothing is there you are not visible. The simple name search is turning into an addition of that one-page resume you submit to companies. This explains why it is important and beneficial to have an internet footprint.

“That’s not a good thing.  In today’s world you don’t want to be average,” stated Caruso.

Caruso believes that everyone has something they are good at. Everybody has a talent and that talent can allow them to stick out and be anything, but average if utilized correctly. The problem is, not everyone knows how to assess their talent or in some cases talents. Everybody has intellectual property value. What it is they are missing is the delivery system needed to capitalize and to start earning money. The analogy used by Caruso was becoming an author. You use to have to go to a major city, get the deal, and get a distributor in order to get something published. Now you don’t have to have any of those things. Caruso explains, “All you have to do is have an internet presence and a delivery system online like a blog.”

“One of the things that a lot of people don’t know is the search engines like blogs better than websites.  I could say for some time, blogs are the new websites,” stated Caruso.

Search engines love new content and blogs are always being updated. Blogs can find themselves up there on the first page of Google searches. Websites take longer to update and can be considered more general or static than blogs. This makes blogs a great place to start when you are trying to lay your internet footprint down. This is evident according to Caruso, but companies should both have a blog and website. Knowing the importance of blogs in social internet marketing, along with Facebook and Twitter, there has to be the next big idea brewing somewhere.

“One of the things that I know that a lot of people are feverishly working on is merging Facebook with legitimate business tools,” stated Caruso.

It is hard to get people to divert their attention or even time on Facebook to any businesses’ personal websites. Lets face it people are not on Facebook to be bombarded by companies with attention seeking missiles. They are on there to have fun and enjoy themselves. However, if businesses can utilize an opt-in box on their Facebook page causal visitors would be able to interact with the business right on Facebook.

Facebook is just one of the social internet giants. Two other vehicles of social internet marketing that are becoming very popular in their own right, is Twitter and LinkedIn. To use these websites effectively you have to develop a relationship.

According to Caruso the key to doing this is, “On all three of the social media platforms, you must first be interested, and then second you should be interesting.  If you’re interested, that means you’re asking questions.” Instead of posting just close ended statements for example, “I had fun at the zoo.” Try posting statements that will create dialogue for example, “I had fun at the zoo. What’s your favorite animal?”

Twitter has become very prolific and is used by numerous individuals as a social media outlet. The problem with Twitter is that it is complicated to monetize all the work being done.  Twitter gives you the ability to share links with people which can put you in a position of authority. If someone is posting a few times a day on a specific topic such as fishing, they will begin to be recognized as someone who knows something about fishing. Eventually their internet presence or footprint will grow.

“Over time, what happens as you build your internet profile, your internet presence, your internet footprint, people will start to perceive you as somebody who actually knows what they’re talking about,” stated Caruso.

Caruso is very passionate about teaching and sharing personal advice to help someone out. To learn more about Caruso and his ideas visit Edison House LLC. If you are interested in hearing him speak along with our own Dwight Zahringer, check out the Internet Marketing Conference on October 22nd in Beverly Hills, Michigan.

Check out the transcript of our conversation with Neil Patel.

One of the many luring topics in the online marketing world is the fate of SEO. Search Engine Optimization in the past 5 to 10 years has been a growing business that has allowed companies  to maintain and increase traffic to their website.  SEO conferences  are designed to help businesses educate themselves on SEO strategies and current trends happening in the industry. One of the all-stars on the SEO circuit is Neil Patel, a 24 year old who has achieved tremendous success in this  industry at such a young age.

TM recently sat  down with Neil Patel and discussed several topics pertaining to the SEO industry. One of the most important issues discussed was the fate of SEO and the direction the industry is heading in.

Neil Patel is an entrepreneur at heart, but is more widely known for his extensive work with SEO, as he is an avid speaker at many of the SEO conferences. Patel is also the co-founder of two different internet companies, most recently Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics. Prior to that Patel owned a SEO company, Advantage Consulting Services, which he sold to concur future endeavors.  Patel has worked with major corporations that include AOL, General Motors, Hewlett Packard and Viacom.  By the age of 21 Patel was considered one of the top 100 bloggers by Technorati and one of the top web influencers of the web according to the The Wall Street Journal.

KISSmetrics is run by a team of designers, developers, and entrepreneurs that basically help online businesses measure, grow, and monetize their online presence. The mission of KISSmetrics is to give all businesses the tools and technology so that they can grow and measure and see what’s happening, and tune into the users’ experience, and keep it really simple. Crazy Egg is also an internet company that is helping businesses supplement their analytics with visuals and actionable date.

A relatively recent blog post written by Jeremy “ShoeMoney” Schoemaker discusses how SEO’s  Need to Adapt or Die in order to survive in this industry.  We invited Patel to come on our show, since he was mentioned in the blog as someone who believes there is no future for SEO.

“The problem with SEO, is it’s a industry in which it’s getting saturated. If you were in SEO five years ago or, or ten years, or even a few years ago, it was much easier to get clients at a higher price point,” stated Patel.

That’s not to say it isn’t doable today, but with the recession many companies are making cutbacks. These companies are losing money and money is getting tight which results in SEO being cutback from the budget. People can still make money off of it, but when it is a dying industry it makes it’s not that get rich quick scheme. That’s not say it ever was, but professionals could make a great business lifestyle working with SEO. It still has the potential to let people create great lifestyles and businesses ,mbut it’s just not as easy these days to create a SEO company that makes a million dollars a year.

“What people don’t realize in the SEO space is there’s the rock starslike Oil Man, Bozer, Ramfishkin, and, Aaron Wall that are all great at what they do, however the people that are really making the money off of SEO aren’t any of these guys. The people that are making the money off SEO are the iCrossings and iProspects.”

Even though these “rock stars” may be the best in the SEO business it is hard for them to compete against the sales-driven companies. The bigger companies are obtaining the bigger contacts, where exactly all the money is in SEO. You have the contract, you have the money. This makes it a lot hard for these “rock stars” in the industry to be making millions and millions of dollars when the ad agencies are the ones in control of the budget. These agencies are going to end up with the bigger companies because when it comes down to it they know how to pitch themselves to other large companies. Companies want to make sure that the process is laid out for them, ensuring that the quantity and volume makes up their margins is in front of them.

“The way we ended up getting them was doing the whole ad agency route package pitches….So we would go in there, look at their numbers, look at their average price per product, profit margin and so forth,  Everything’s out there…It would be a cut and dried pitch. SEO is usually not pitched that way, but if you want the money in SEO, which most of these SEO’s out there aren’t doing, that’s how you really get the big fish,” stated Patel.

The big companies are not concerned with the ins and outs of SEO or even exactly how it functions. When it comes down to it they just want to know what you can do and how is it going to bring in more money for their cause. When it comes to rankings in SEO it comes from a lot of blogs which are more small SEO shops. Business executives are not out there reading these blogs and they are the ones that sign off on the decision. They are not too concern with the rankings whether they are number one or number two, these businesses are more concern with how much money they are making.

” I do think there’s a future for a lot of the bigger players, like the ad agencies.  I don’t think there is much of a future for the small mom and pops.  Yeah, they can make a decent living, but they’re nowhere near many of these guys are who are going to become millionaires doing it, ” stated Patel.

The SEO business is becoming more convoluted and quite frankly if you are not one of the major players there isn’t any long term dollars to be made. Despite the fact the SEO has a lot of educational points that businesses could use. Even if SEO allows you to think out of the box, and not just utilizing mathematical process or off the shelf software to evaluate rankings. Companies aren’t interested in that, they are the ones who write the check and all they care about is how much money you are going to make them, how to reduce cost, and how to increase profit.

“I think the SEO industry will be around for a very long time.  It’s just in my perspective for SEOs to make quick money from it, or build a business that’s going to be able to help them buy that $5 million house,”stated Patel.

Patel still believes you can make a great living off of SEO for the next 5 to 10 years, but it is not going to be easy to climb up the ladder within the industry to get those big dollars. Those days in most cases are going to be gone unless you are one of the big ad agencies.

After our discussion on SEO and its future, we decided to change gears and see what kind of insight Patel had on social media and its effects on SERP (search engines result page).

“I think it’s going to actually be very similar to how it is now.  It’s when you get on some of these social sites.  You get an immense amount of links, and you rank better in Google,” stated Patel

According to Patel, there is going to be a way to devalue links. They’re probably is already something, but it is going to take a long time until they can finally get down to it. It is hard to say exactly where all the links came from based on what one person is doing in social media. A lot of times people were linking before from an algorithm perspective and although it may be doable it’s going to take some work to figure out the links and backlinks of each user.

We asked Patel what he thought the importance of backlinks was from a 1 to 10 scale and if they will be influential for the next couple of years. “I  think backlinks are where it’s at. I think it’s a ten and that’s why I still do some, but that’s what I specialized in,”stated Patel. According to him  there is still a place for them and hopefully social media will find a way to utilize them.

“I think social media is changed to be more custom-tailored towards people’s interests,” stated Patel.

The popularity of social media outlets like Twitter has changed the internet industry. Now businesses are utilizing Twitter to reach specific audiences to help expand their business.  Social Media takes away from the community aspect where everyone votes, and allows the user to be autonomous and follow who he/she wants. This could lead to a combination of social news and social networking. On one side you have sites like Digg that allow everyone to vote and then you have Facebook to connect with your friends. Twitter takes angles from both of these concepts and is sparking ideas making it hard for people to not love it.

After hearing what Patel had to say about social media and how it will be utilized in the future, we decided to discuss the FTC initiative against payola. Which is basically the FTC coming out in hopes to implement regulations upon bloggers like they do on commercial TV and radio, where you have to state that it is a paid advertisement.

“So the first thing that always comes to mind is the government wants their cut, their money. Right? Nothing wrong with it, everyone wants a piece of the pie.  It also provides a better user experience for most users,” stated Patel.

It’s not totally out of this world to promote or develop a more transparent outline of what is being talked about online especially when it comes to the value of back links and subliminally promoting products or services. This is easier said than done. It is going to be hard to catch everyone and determine what is paid and not paid, which will allow a lot of people to still get away with it.

Overall, Patel feels that SEO is a dying, but says it is too soon to tell. Even if SEO is considered a possible dying industry, that does not mean it cannot and should not be utilized. The big ad agencies will continue to market SEO  to gain those big contracts with the big companies. With the emergence of social media and the possible FTC regulations there will be a lot of changes in the SEO world some which could rejuvenate it, other which could hinder it. Nonetheless SEO still has it place, it may get lost along the way but it just has to be found and utilized correctly.

Check out the transcript of our conversation with Debra Northart.

Earlier this year Microsoft sought out to tackle their latest endeavor in the search engine industry and introduced “Bing”. Looking to take a stand against the powerhouse that Google has become, Bing hopes to make an effective impact on the search engine industry. The introduction of Bing has raised the eyebrows of many in the search engine community, which is why TM felt it was necessary to retrieve some professional insight on the topic.

TM recently sat down with someone very knowledgeable, in the search engine industry, Debra Northart to discuss what she thinks about the advent of Bing and how it will fit in the search engine culture.

Debra is Director of Media Operations for the company WebVisible. They provide software solutions to help small companies develop their interactive advertising online. WebVisible has received numerous awards, in 2007/2008 they received engineering software company of the year, and internet product of the year. She has also done extensive work for the New York Times, AT&T, and local insight media representing more than 85,000 small businesses to medium enterprise initiatives.

Debra is also a writer for Search Engine Land, where she wrote an article that was titled “Can Bing change the culture of online search?” which tackles issues of how Microsoft is trying to find its way in the search industry.

Debra started out by discussing her experience at SMX Advanced, which was held in Seattle at the beginning of June. SMX Advanced directly corresponded with the release of Bing. At the conference Microsoft set up displays that demonstrated how Bing worked on big screens. While standing next to a woman Debra asked her, “What do you think?” The woman seemed intrigued gazing at the demonstration and replied, “It’s pretty neat, but it’s Microsoft so it probably isn’t going anywhere.” She then paused turned her head toward Debra and said, “Now if it were Google,” and left it hanging in the air.

“It made me think how I’ve encountered a lot of people who, while they love using Google as a search engine, also ran into concerns or various issues about the tremendous attention that’s paid to Google almost exclusively,” stated Northart.

Northart stated that when trying to buy media, if all of her customers only know about Google than this makes it tough for her to buy cost efficiently, cost effectively, across a variety of different platforms, such as, Bing. If it were not for change in the industry we wouldn’t have things like Google. How do you begin to shake up the mindset so that people are more receptive to new opportunities, new ideas, new innovations, and something that is so concrete?

“Well I think that if Bing is really going to be successful it’s got a couple of pretty significant tasks before it. It’s got to persuade people that using Bing is going to provide them something that’s different and better than what Google can currently provide,” stated Northart.

Right now may not be the most opportune time for Bing to dive into the search engine world, depending on different perspectives. However, one has to look at Bing the way their searches are produced and the differences between using it as an everyday search engine opposed to how a publisher might use it for a website, based on performance. The differences their have to be significant enough to cancel out the misconceptions and intrigue users to come back to use it again.

“I think anything is a potential threat. But I think that anything that Bing has to offer is a potential threat. The operative word there is potential because if they cannot get users to go to Bing and to discover what is there, all of the wonderful features in the world are going to be unimportant,” stated Northart.

The big obstacle that stands in the way of Bing, is getting people to pay attention to it. Microsoft is promoting Bing as something more than a search engine despite the buzz Google has in the consumer market. Everyone wants to Google; the search engine has turned itself into a direct synonym for search. Instead of someone saying, “Can you search for a restaurant?” You might here them say, “Can you Google a restaurant?” People just aren’t Yahooing and Binging as much as they are Googling.

“I think that Microsoft needs to consistently promote the usage and the benefits of Bing as a really basic service before they can truly expect people to look at the more enhanced features that they may be able to provide. Because if nobody’s going there it won’t matter,” stated Northart.

Bing is referring to itself more as the decision engine than a search engine. This could cause problems for people who might get confused on what exactly a decision engine is. However, everyone knows what a search engine is and that is where Google hits the spot. It is going to be very hard for Bing to educate consumers and help them relearn, when they already know Google.

“It’s differentiated, or should be differentiated from people who work in online advertising, such as the company I work for. We’re trying to put ad placements on Google and Yahoo and Bing and other providers in order to generate traffic to merchant websites so that they get business. And so you have sort of a twofold component, two different constituencies that are interested in using and talking about Google and Bing, for example,” stated Northart.

While one market attack with Bing is to reach out and get to the consumers, the other one may need to take a look at people like Debra Northart and TM. The people who are asking, “How much does it cost for an ad here? And how much advertising is going to be generated for a client?” If the traffic is not being generated then a client is not going to want their advertisement placed there. Clients want their advertisements to be where they know consumers are going to see them and if all the consumers are looking at Google, then the ads have to be placed there.

“Now for volume of searches for the month of August, Google is sitting at just over 70%. And Bing is just under 10%. Yahoo falls in there at just about 17%. So there’s an enormous disparity between the kind of search volume that each of those engines are generating,” stated Northart who got these percentages from Hitwise.

The merger between Microsoft and Yahoo hopes to raise their search volume somewhere in the vicinity of 26-30% in attempt to compete with Google. If those numbers can be reached than it will require a little bit more attention in terms of media buying. If the consumers are strictly just paying attention to Google than that is where most media dollars are going to be spent unless there is path to buying media elsewhere that will be beneficial to them. But it is going to have to be something that is demonstrated and shown to work before businesses and consumers can be convinced Bing is a viable alternative to Google.

Overall, Debra Northart believes it is too soon to say exactly how much impact Bing is going to have on the search engine culture. The variables are overwhelming, but that does not mean they cannot be conquered. It is all tied together and at this point is going to be very difficult to untangle the threads of what will happen, based on speculation. In the end it is going to come down to the proven results whether Bing has a chance with Google. These results will rely on a variety of information such as, analytics, who is going where to get what they want, and how cost effective it is. At this point all we can do is wait and see if Bing can find their niche to compete with Google.

Check out the transcript of TM’s conversation with Matt McGee.

Social media has become a hot topic in the search industry over the past year. Several businesses are experimenting with social media, yet there are still reservations about diving into this unknown territory. Will social media really produce results? To answer this question, we asked Matt McGee, an independent online marketing consultant, to share his thoughts about social media and its affects on small businesses.

Matt McGee became involved with SEO and social media to meet the demands of his clients. He explained how during the 90’s he was involved in website design and development, when Yahoo!, Excite and Lycos were very popular and his clients became interested in knowing how people could actually visit their sites.

“It’s nice to have a professionally done website, but it doesn’t serve any purpose if people aren’t coming to visit it,” states McGee.

Recently, McGee has also developed Hyperlocalblogger, which is a blog targeted to help small businesses do some marketing online and is also Assignment Editor at Search Engine Land.

Why has Social Media become such a HOT topic in the search industry?

McGee sates that the reason people are discussing social media right now is because “it is what people are doing.” A recent Forrester survey claims that more than 4 out of 5 adults are active in social media in some way at least once a month. That is a hard number to ignore, which is why businesses began asking themselves how they could get involved in this.

Companies may be interested in developing a social media campaign, but are concerned about whether it can actually produce results and be an affective marketing tool. So how should a small business get involved in social media? There is not a template or secret formula to follow, that guarantees success for all types of business, however, Matt McGee does help shed some light on this issue and offers his advice for small businesses who are considering a social media marketing campaign.

Definition of a Small Business

Since the term small business is pretty broad it becomes difficult to generalize what social media strategies work for all types. A small business can range from someone that works out of their home to someone that might have 10, 15, 20 or 100 employees. The more localized companies seem to have the greatest success with social media since they are connecting with local customers in their area. The larger businesses have a more difficult time achieving that personal connection with their consumers.

“What works for a one-man band may not work for larger small business,” states McGee.

Where are your customers?

Find out where your customers and how you can best reach them. If you do not think your customers are using social media on a regular basis, then this might not be something worth investing in. However, if you know your customers are active in social media then it is essential for your business to determine which social media channels they are using to try and capture that audience.

“If your customers are on Facebook, then that’s where you need to be. If your customers are on Twitter then that’s where you need to be,” states McGee.

Social Media Plan & Goals

The most common mistake businesses make when experimenting with social media for the first time is not establishing a specific plan and goals that should be achieved by using social media.

It is essential for businesses to establish a plan before they launch a social media campaign to make sure they are reaching out to the right people and sending the right message. The problem with not setting up a plan is that most businesses tend to use it as more of a sales channel or they only use it as merely a social tool to connect with friends and family. In order to enhance your businesses’ chance of success with social media, it is important to create a balance between being social and trying to promote your business.

“Knowing how to balance the personal side verses the business side can make a big difference in your success,” states McGee, “There needs to be more education on what the right balance is.”

Social Media Benefits for Small Business

As stated previously McGee created HyperlocalBlogger to help local businesses connect with their consumers. The intent of Hyperlocalblogger is to allow businesses “to write about stuff that traditional media usually ignores.”

“Hyperlocal blogging is a great way to show off your knowledge of your area,” states McGee. “There are a lot of benefits for a local business to get involved in social media because you can have these conversations with people that are directly in your area, which is a great opportunity to gain visibility, name recognition and brand recognition,” states McGee.

McGee gave an example of how social media results can create an impact. His wife is a real estate that uses Facebook to make local connections with other real estate agents and potential clients. He’s advised her to take down the Facebook quizzes  because he thinks she is actually going to turn away potential clients, however, it seems to be working for her. McGee believes that her method of utilizing Facebook has allowed people to see her personality and connect with her on personal level.

“There is a lot of value in having an open mind and being somewhat experimental in seeing what is going to work for the situation you are in,” states McGee.

Investing in the way you use social media is your own personal preference. It depends on how you want others to perceive you on the social media channels. If you feel like showing more of your personality can benefit your business, then maybe this is the direction you should go. There are not any set guidelines as to how achieve the best results.

McGee believes Twitter offers the best opportunity for small businesses because Twitter seemed to  immediately recognize the business potential for their product. McGee believes Twitter is the way of the future and that businesses should take advantage of it.

“It provides an opportunity, like all social media channels, to create a personal connection and a human element that will resonate with people and help your business improve its visibility,” states McGee.

What does this mean for your business?

When it comes down to determining whether a social media campaign is right for your business, it is necessary, just like any other marketing strategy, to develop a plan and a set of goals you wish to achieve. Find out where your target consumers are and determine if they actually use social media on a regular basis and which social media outlet(s) they utilize the most.

The main objective with social media is to create a personal connection with people in your network and create visibility for your company. It is important to remember that fact so that your business does not come across as “selling” information.

Since there is not a template on how all businesses should use social media, the best advice Matt could offer was to learn and research as much as you can about social media before you dive head first into the unknown.

Check Out TM’s Transcript on FTC Blog Regulations

Earlier this year news about how the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) will start to regulate web blogs began surfacing. This announcement has stirred up some controversy in the blogging community, which is why TM felt it was necessary to provide some professional insight on the topic.

A blog by definition is a personal journal that is written online. Blogs were originally intended for people to write about anything they felt compelled to say. The main responsibility of the FTC is to protect consumers against false claims presented in advertisements. So what does it mean if the FTC regulates blogs? If the FTC regulates blogs then bloggers will need to disclose any information they present to the public, in regards to products or anything where they mention specific information and receive particular benefits for blogging about it.

Up until now there have not been regulations for the blogging community. Web blogs, sponsored links, were designed to be self-regulated, however, some web bloggers took advantage of that freedom and wrote about fancy trips they went on to certain resorts or new products that were about to be launched while receiving benefits from the companies, without disclosing. The FTC is concerned because they feel that this is false advertising and delivering inaccurate information to the public. They have stepped in to protect online consumers & regulate blogs that are making these outrageous claims.

TM recently sat down with two leaders in the sponsored conversation industry online, Ted Murphy and Michael Gray, to discuss what they think about the FTC regulations that are planned to be enforced on bloggers and how they see these regulations impacting the blogging community.

Ted Murphy is largely recognized as the father of paid blogging and the catalyst behind the sponsored conversation industry. He is currently the CEO of a large social media company, IZEA. To learn more about IZEA’s newest innovation, Sponsored Tweets, continue reading.

Michael Gray runs his own company, Atlas Web Services, where he helps private clients with their web strategies that include development, SEO and social media. Michael’s blog, Graywolf, discusses events going on in these industries. TM brought these two together to discuss this topic because of their backgrounds in social media, SEO, and blogging in general, in hopes of shedding some light on this issue.

Gray and Murphy both agree that some kind of universal disclosure policy will be welcomed in the blogging community. A universal disclosure policy would level the playing field for everyone involved and create a more honest business environment online. People will be able to make decisions easier, if they can trust bloggers when they are discussing a particular product, event or whatever it is they are blogging about.

Murphy discussed how IZEA has been very cautious about disclosing information on their web blogs. SocialSpark, an IZEA Innovation, is a blog marketing network that connects advertisers with bloggers through an online marketplace, where they enforce their universal disclosure policy. Interestingly enough, Murphy recently met with the FTC to discuss the regulations that are intended to be enforced on blogs and he believes that they are taking the “right approach.” How people will be penalized and what the guidelines actually are, is undecided for now, but Murphy discussed how the FTC regulations for blogs are more like guidelines for people to follow, and says the bloggers who will be penalized are the ones who do not follow those guidelines and who are trying to be deceptive.

“If all bloggers were forced to disclose then it would level the playing field,” stated Murphy.

Gray stated how the FTC regulations for blogs are an “overreaction”, but said he feels universal disclosure is a good idea. He gave an example about a particular situation with Guy Kawasaki, a venture capitalist and well-known blogger, who has blogged about sports cars that have been loaned to him for an extended period of time. Guy Kawasaki is a popular online blogger, but is not a car expert. The only reason he was loaned these cars was to blog about it.

“Is he (Guy Kawasaki) the right guy to be reviewing a sports car? I necessarily don’t think so, but the people who are doing it, they’re doing it for public relations to try and get people aware of their cars,” stated Gray about this issue.

This is when it becomes a gray area for the FTC to regulate. Should Kawasaki be penalized for putting this on his blog? He does state that it was loaned to him in his blog and even mentions how a sports car is not for him since he is a family man. Does that mean Kawasaki is following the regulations?

“Google chooses not to go after him because he’s someone high profile,”stated Gray.

“I don’t think we are going to see that type of special treatment moving forward. Based on the conversations I’ve had (with the FTC) I think that you are going to see a more level playing field,” stated Murphy. “What does it mean to be celebrity? Is it someone that has a huge following on Twitter or U-Tube? Or are movie and TV stars the only celebrities? They all need to be all in the same bucket and treated the same way.”

Gray believes the bloggers that will be targeted will be the bloggers who make outrageous claims verses the ones who occasionally blog. It depends on the volume of blogs that the person produces. If they are everyday bloggers then they need to establish a disclosure policy.

“They’re just trying to get rid of the people who are making unsubstantiated, completely made up claims just so that they can turn a buck,” stated Gray.

The debate over what constitutes a paid link has been widely discussed by both Murphy and Gray in regards to Matt Cutts. What constitutes a paid link is a bit of a gray area because it seems that certain people are being penalized while others are not. Michael Gray discusses this issue on Graywolf saying that if Matt Cutts is going to go after paid links, then he should be fair about it. In our conversation he stated how,

“People like Robert Scoble and Sarah Lacey. They come out and they’re very big advocates of full disclosure, yet I know they all just – have gone on several all-expense-paid trips to Israel. And yet you know, Google sort of turns a blind eye to them because they’re saying oh, okay, what they’re doing is okay. We’ve decided that it’s for public relations and not for links. But yet everybody who they went and saw on that trip or who sponsored that trip definitely got links out of that. So how does that not constitute a paid link?”

Gray’s suggestion is to apply the same rules they enforce on marketers to A-list bloggers to level the playing field. Gray believes that Google should start employing nofollow on all the links you see on Google pages, to demonstrate how they follow their own regulations.

Google takes the weaknesses of their own algorithm and forces everyone else to do things differently because their algorithm isn’t smart enough to figure things out.

Murphy mentioned how he feels about the nofollow concept saying it is “ridiculous” and how requiring certain bloggers to include nofollow and others not to is unfair.

We asked Murphy how he felt about Twitter and how it will be impacted by the FTC regulations. He told us that IZEA is actually launching a new “innovation” called Sponsored Tweets that will be open to the public later this year. “We’ve actually done quite a few sponsored tweets, and some of those actually we’re going to have celebrities in the platform,” said Murphy. He sees this as a big opportunity, since Twitter has become such a major social media tool that reaches a variety of audiences.

Overall both Ted Murphy and Michael Gray agreed the universal disclosure is a good idea, since up to this point self regulating has not worked. They do not see how the FTC regulations can do any harm to the blogging community, but if anything they hope that it will force everyone to “play by the same rules” and create a stronger and more trustworthy blogging community. At this point all we can do is just to see how this all plays out.