Tony Adam: Innovating Products & Online Marketing

AJAX & SEO: A strategic approach to rankings

2010-08-28T16:32:41Z

Dealing with the limitations of AJAX and Flash can be an SEOs worst nightmare. There are so many issues that come into play & usually you can deal with many AJAX SEO issues by developing Progressively Enhanced code. While, I’ve written about how to address crawling and indexing with AJAX and SEO. I wanted to take a little bit of a deep dive into this again, along with the bigger issue, ranking.

The URL Problem:

As the web becomes more and more dynamic, especially with the introduction of the stream, real-time updates, etc., the ability to crawl and index that content becomes a problem. AJAX introduced a problem to search engines by dynamically changing page or website content with URL Fragments, or hash marks, “#”. this becomes a problem because traditionally (esp. in web 1.0 days) hash marks were used as an anchors to content on a single page. Since search engines would already crawl the page, they would ignore the URL fragments (“#”) because they were already crawling the page.

For example, these two URLs would be seen as the same and would have no reason to crawl the url fragment because it was already being done.:

http://www.tonyadam.com/faq
http://www.tonyadam.com/faq#question-10

Fixing Crawling and Indexing through Progressive Enhancement

While AJAX is not new to the web, there is a problem that it introduces to search engine crawlability and indexing that wasn’t around way back when. We now have websites that dynamically generate content within it’s current page architecture. So, sites started implementing AJAX as a way to dynamically change the page content without page refreshes and therefore create much nicer (and sexier) user experiences, as they wouldn’t have to wait for a new page to load, etc.

That said, you are left with this URL fragment that a search engine was not built to crawl and index. So, it becomes increasingly important to use web standard techniques like Progressive Enhancement and leveraging the Hijax method. Most technology teams adopt these methods and should be standard practice across technology and engineering functions.

Relevancy and Ranking Problems that arise

As more and more of the web becomes dynamic, being strategic in the uses of the dynamic content is important. The way we rewrite URLs and change page content is extremely important to having relevant content show up in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Just like building an entire site in Flash can be detrimental to your organic search traffic, building an entire site in AJAX can do the same thing. The reason being is that you end up with URL structures that contain #’s (URL Fragments) all over the place.

The drawbacks with #’s and rankings
This becomes a problem when people like bloggers, writers, site owners, etc. start linking to your content with #’s in the URLs. Search engines would ignore everything after the # and assume all links go to the homepage. For example,If I decide to build an entire site on basketball, so, assuming I want to rank for terms like basketball news, basketball scores, etc., I would probably have them in my top nav.

If I was to have the content refresh using AJAX, here is what my URL structure would look like:

http://www.basketball.com/
http://www.basketball.com/#/news/
http://www.basketball.com/#/scores/
http://www.basketball.com/#/players/
http://www.basketball.com/#/stats/

Or deeper sections of the site like

http://www.basketball.com/#/players/ray-allen/stats/
http://www.basketball.com/#/players/phil-jackson/awards/

Do you see the problem with the URL Structure? If this site was purely built with AJAX, as mentioned above, anybody that links to my site would link to http://www.basketball.com/ and I would get no deep content links. If I get links to my homepage with obscure keywords like “Ray Allen player stats” or “Phil Jackson coaching awards” and since everything after the # is ignored, those keywords would then be pointed at the homepage, which is not search engine relevant.

Using #’s and AJAX to your advantage
Alternatively, there are situations where it makes more sense not to have unique URLs on content to conserve link equity and target at one main page. For example, I would not want a URL for various filters on a users stream in their profile because I would dilute the link equity to those stream items.

If I was to have a unique URL and link to the following, I would dilute link equity:

http://www.myspace.com/tonyadam/stream/all
http://www.myspace.com/tonyadam/stream/photos
http://www.myspace.com/tonyadam/stream/videos

In this situation, I would rather have URLs that conserve the link equity to the main profile url:

http://www.myspace.com/tonyadam/#/stream/all
http://www.myspace.com/tonyadam/#/stream/photos
http://www.myspace.com/tonyadam/#/stream/videos

By doing so, links to the # URLs will then all be targeted at the main URL http://www.myspace.com/tonyadam/ which will create more link equity to a stronger, more relevant page.

Now, we could sit here all day and talk about all the ways to manipulate results by sending links to versions of the URL that are rewritten, but, that is not a scalable tactic, is temporary, and could lead to search penalties. At the end of the day, the goal should be to create a dynamic website that is relevant search engines and users, that creates the most holistic experience.

Think of it this way, after all your hardwork and innovation, if you can’t get users to your website, what does the shiny new object matter anyway?

Digg 4.0: Is it coming sooner than expected?

2010-08-03T15:51:37Z

Last week I was working with someone and showing her the ropes of social media marketing and other general topics. I had showed her how to sign up for Digg, StumbleUpon, and various other Social Networks, but, we stumbled on the fact that they are no longer accepting new sign ups because the new digg is coming.

Here is a screenshot from the sign up page. You’ll see they are asking users to submit their email addresses and get notified when the new digg launches.

Along with that, user profile settings have been temporarily limited as well:

Thanks Rob Woods for pointing that out

So, what does this mean? Does this mean that the new Digg will be launching sooner than expected? There has been much speculation about what Digg 4.0 will have in store for us and also an extremely comprehensive breakdown by Brent Csutoras of the new Digg Version 4.0 Alpha.

If you haven’t done so yet, request an invite at: http://new.digg.com/.

What do you think will happen with the new Digg? Do you think it will be coming out soon? Sooner than expected??

Site Speed: Reducing Page Load Times and Increasing Pages Crawled

2010-07-29T17:31:20Z

I’ve always been a big fan of quick page load times on sites from overall User Experience standpoint. But, ever since Google announced that they were using site speed in web search ranking I have become a big time stickler about this. After watching this for the last couple months, I’ve realized that my peskiness about the whole thing warranted just cause.

Proving that Site Speed is directly correlated Pages Crawled

I tend to keep an eye on Google Webmaster tools to see any blips in crawl rate, pages crawled, etc. I don’t want any big issues to show up that catch me by surprise. When Google made the announcement I made sure to keep an eye on site speed. Here are a couple examples of the DIRECT CORRELATION

Website 1: Page Load times shoot up, Pages Crawled drops:
First look at graph three and notice the massive upswing in the page load times or as google titles it “time spent downloading a page.” Then, from there, look at the top two graphics and notice the massive drop off in the number of pages crawled per day and the amount of content downloaded per day.

Website 2: Page Load times go down, Pages Crawled dramatically increases:
On the flip side of the above chart, looking at another site, check out graph three again first. Notice that the time spent downloading a page (thus page load time) has decreased dramatically. Now, as you look at graphs one and two, notice the massive uptick in the number of pages crawled and amount of content downloaded daily.

I can tell you that this was a big positive for website 2, to notice a HUGE positive in the number of pages crawled daily.

What this means for SEO and User Experience

Understanding how to diagnose and address these issues is extremely important to any SEO and Webmaster now at days. I was a huge advocate of this at PayPal and lent a helping hand in diagnosing this and addressing it in hopes of increasing the user experience. Again though, we now know what a big part this obviously plays, as I’ve shown the direct correlation above with the number of pages crawled increasing or decreasing based on the page load times.

I was very happy to see this as it does increase the overall user and searcher experience by coming to sites that are loading pages faster. But, it is extremely important for an SEO to note and understand the importance of site speed, especially with sites that have extremely large indexes.

Diagnosing Site Speed in Google Webmaster Tools

Start by logging into webmaster tools and talking a look at the Diagnostics -> Crawl Stats section and make note of any increases or decreases in the third graph about page download times. If there are any big rises or drops, check out the above two graphs to see if it had an effect on your pages crawled. If you are seeing relatively steady movement, move on to the Labs -> Site Performance section.

On the Site Performance page you’ll notice a few things. To start with the graph that represents the avg. number of seconds it takes to load your pages. Something to take note of that they’ve highlighted the optimal time to download a page as 1.5 seconds or faster. Depending on your site, they’ll list about 10 URLs and their respective page load time. Finally, they provide some very useful info (which I’ll get to in a minute) on how to address these concerns.

There are a couple tools that you can use to diagnose site speed and page load times. My favorite is yslow and Google recently released their Page Speed tool, both of these plug directly into my favorite Firefox Plugin: Firebug.

Addressing Site Speed and Page Load time Concerns

Google Webmaster Tools and their Page Speed tool, along with YSlow provide you ample amounts of information to start addressing the site speed concerns one step at a time. Some of the biggest mistakes that people make run into is the size of images and image optimization, number of HTTP request and number of external JavaScript and CSS files. Here is a list of issues and how to address them:

Making fewer HTTP Requests
The number of HTTP requests you make can put a massive strain on the page load times. As mentioned in the screenshot below, try to combine external files to a very minimal amount. I’ve seen sites that have as many as 20 external JavaScript files and some of those files with only 1-4 lines of code. That is the type of thing that can be combined to reduce the number of http requests. The same goes with CSS files and optimizing the number of CSS calls into one main CSS document.

JavaScript Minification and Compression
Yahoo!’s Developer Network blog has a post dedicated to how to minify javascript. The main reason for doing this is to shrink the overall size of the JavaScript file by getting rid of comments, new lines, etc. that aren’t necessary for the JavaScript to process. There are a couple tools out there to do this, JSMin and YUI Compressor.

Using Gzip to compress components
You can drastically reduce the HTTP Requests and Responses using Gzip compression, and, it is the most popular and effective form right now. In Apache you can use mod_gzip and in IIS you can do this through IIS Manager and adding a Web Service extension using these IIS compression tips.

CSS Sprites
CSS Sprites are extremely useful for reducing the number of image requests (thus lowering http requests). Having your background images in one large image and using CSS for the background image and positions you can use a single image for many purposes. A List Apart has a great resource that goes into the details of the HTML Markup and CSS that is necessary to make this dream a reality.

Much much more!
There are a ton more ways of improving site performance and reducing page load time to not only help your page crawl rate and pages crawled on your site, but also, increase the user experience. Some of the things I didn’t even get to touch on like adding expires headers, reducing the number of DNS lookups, using a CDN (Content Delivery Network), etc. are all very important to reducing page load times.

Have you noticed similar things with page load times and pages crawled? How are you dealing with Site Speed concerns for both SEO and User Experience?

Creating Relationships vs. Selling and Closing: It’s all about Partnerships

2010-07-27T18:38:14Z

If you know anything at all about me, it’s likely that it’s this- I’m ALL about the relationships that I create. I’ll never blatantly walk up to someone and tell them they should be buying a product or service. It’s just not my style. Granted I’ll shamelessly self-promote something, but that’s typically just for the sake of shits and giggles.

For me, it’s never been and never will be about trying to win a client for the sake of numbers. It’s about creating an everlasting relationship that’s going to benefit everyone. Now that doesn’t mean I can’t close deals or win clients over, I’m just not direct and blatant about it. Again, I’m ALL about relationships.

Relationships are how I do business

For the first few years of my career, I worked for a small computer company and much of my time was dedicated to Client Services and Management. My boss was a total sales guy. He could close anything and everything. I swear, that guy could sell ice to Eskimos in Arctic if he wanted to. And the funny thing is, he would do it and get off on doing it! It wasn’t me though. I felt dirty every time I tried to make a deal happen that way. I closed a lot of deals and landed a lot of projects, but it wasn’t just about the win for me. It was more about one question and one question only: “Were my clients happy and satisfied?”

Because this was my top priority, I spent a lot time that wasn’t billable talking to clients, visiting their offices unexpectedly, setting up lunch meetings, coffee, happy hours, etc. I didn’t care that I wasn’t billing and making my commission on the deal. I didn’t care that I was spending my own money (I’ll talk about this a bit more in a minute). I did this because I knew that building an everlasting relationship creates a much stronger bond than a few dollars on a small deal. I did it because I am a very sincere person that cares about people and relationships.

Again, for me it wasn’t about the quick buck or closing a sales deal. It was about building relationships with clients and ensuring satisfaction. I had my proposals out there for these clients, but we never talked about them initially. That was never the intent. The intent was creating a bond and looking at the situation as a partnership.

So I did this for many years. I talked to clients regularly, bought them lunch on my way to their office, coffee, etc. I did a great job at this and increased consulting revenue by 5x in under a year, turning a 2 person team into almost half a million in profits. Yes, I said PROFITS. Now to some of you that might not be a big deal, but to a couple of 21 yr. olds it was pretty damn rewarding.

Something that bothers me until this very day though is that I didn’t learn how to KEEP a relationship going after that. I never kept in touch with any of those clients after I stopped working with them. There was no LinkedIn and MySpace wasn’t really a good place for “business networking”. The point is, I made some good contacts and dropped the ball. I’ve learned not to do that anymore, and now more than ever I understand the importance of staying in touch with the people that I meet, be it at any level or situation.

These days I regularly send out emails, Facebook messages, LinkedIn messages, etc. to keep in touch with the people I meet and work with. I set up time to catch up over drinks, coffee, lunch, etc. to see how people are doing. I do this because I want to make sure there is always an open line of communication with the people I’m connected to.

Remember, it’s not about the number of contacts you have, it’s the relationships you create.

Creating relationships has an opportunity cost

What most people don’t realize when it comes to sales and business development is that the latter is about partnering to create a relationship. To this day, I always tell my clients or people that I’m working with that I’m looking to create a partnership and become an extension of their business. This holds true in everything that I do. I want the client and/or person to feel like I’ve become an extension of their business, their family, their way of life…and that I’m not just some guy that came in, made a quick buck or fixed a situation and moved on. That doesn’t live on forever. A genuine relationship, however, is everlasting.

Another thing that a lot of people don’t realize is that nothing comes for free, not even a relationship. When you’re trying to reach individuals and trying to identify business development opportunities, you’re going to have to invest one of two things: Time or Money

I do a lot of things for free. I’ve spent many a lunch time offering free SEO services and/or allowing people to pick my brain regarding online marketing. Even as recently as BlueGlass LA, my intent was NEVER to make a penny off of the conference. And I didn’t. I never asked for a single dollar and never took one. I buy people lunch, I take people to dinners, I buy drinks for our team at work during a happy hour…all because I want to create relationships with everyone I meet. I never get reimbursed for this and I never want to. It’s more personal to me that way and is much more rewarding.

Neil Patel talks about this in his Beginner’s Guide to Attending Conferences, mentioning that taking people out to dinner is a good way to create a one-on-one connection. I love doing this, and I replicate this on an even broader scale by finding a few key people I want to meet and connect with and buying the group dinner.

The reason I do this is that I know connecting with people and creating that relationship can lead to future business opportunities. This almost always proves to be very beneficial in the long run. I totally believe that if you do something good for others you will get taken care of somewhere down the road. Maybe not immediately, but at some point in your career. And it’s important to always have that long-term outlook.

Relationships are more beneficial

THIS is the moral of this story: Pitching a sales deal will end up working and I can close a deal with the best of them. But treating people with respect, like a human being, like a partner, is more important and beneficial. Creating a relationship is always going to pay off ten fold, both professionally and personally.

Job Hopping: A resume doesn’t tell the whole story

2010-04-25T19:38:38Z

I’ll start by saying this, I agree with Mark Suster’s points to never hire job hoppers, but, sometimes there is more to a story than a resume holds. And, according to Jason Calacanis, I might be a Gen Y Trophy Kid, but, in my opinion, there is more to it than meets the eye in some cases. My thoughts and opinions are those of my own and I will always stand behind them, but I do apologize in advance if this post offends anyone or is in fact unhappy with the stance.

Hopping: Sometimes, there are good reasons

I’ve had a few jobs in my career, actually, I’ve had a few more jobs than I would say that I actually would have liked to have. The first company I worked at when I was real young, I was there for almost 5 years, learned a lot, earned a lot, and needed a new challenge. To be quite honest, I had to leave that company because I hit a ceiling and wanted to pursue bigger and better things. I needed to take a risk and I was young and not many jobs were being waved at a 23 year old from a small tech school with 5 years experience in technology consulting and leading sales and marketing. So, I joined one organization, that started to tank and another that inevitably was not the right fight.

Just as employers don’t see certain individuals as the right fit after a couple months, I’ve been on the flip side where I’ve noticed that it was no where near the right opportunity for me and called it a day. It goes both ways.

At a Dealmaker Media event recently about hiring, that sentiment echoed loud and clear: If someone isn’t working out, it’s time to let that person go and move on, rather than trying to make it work, because it never does.

I completely agree with that, if it’s not working out, let that person go, otherwise, you would be wasting time trying to make a bad situation work, and it NEVER does. I’ve been in that situation before and had to let people go. But, I think the one thing that we have to recognize is that it has to go both ways, employers have to be loyal to an extent and employees really need to stop hopping from jobs.

We’ve seen companies like Yahoo!, Microsoft, etc. lay off hundreds, if not thousands of workers at a time. During times like those, and watching departments get phased out, it is hard to sit there and think that you are not going to be the next one. This is especially true when see more than 10 people (or 50%) on a team cut, or even worse, everyone sitting around you get cut. It is a very depressing and lonely feeling that does not help morale when you are sitting in a cubicle farm with no one around, feeling like you are the only one on an island. It is the killer of all momentum and I’ve heard and watched people become complacent because of it.

I’m not saying either side is right or wrong during a layoff, but rather, my point is that employees now at days don’t feel as loyal to larger and “safe” organization. Especially those that are hungry and want to make an impact, it is draining and the killer of career momentum.

Looking to the future: Foresight is crucial

Having foresight is important, it is what helps people find business, job, and investment opportunities. It is what makes many of the Silicon Valley elite who they are and as successful as they are. Which is why it is unbelievably important to know when it is time to join and when it is time to leave a company.

Foresight can be clouded though when money is thrown at you and/or the opportunity of being part of a startup that sells.

It is important to know when to join a company, look to your mentors for advice, and important to see past the $$$. And yes, we all make mistakes and bad decisions sometimes, but, it’s important to learn from them.

Aside from that though, it is important to know when a job has reached a ceiling for you and there is no movement, no learning, no progression and no way to advance, at that point, there are no options BUT to pursue another opportunity. Sure, you could attempt to move around in a large organization like a Yahoo! or PayPal, I did it with PayPal. But, at the end of the day, you’re not taking leaps, your not making jumps, you’re taking baby steps horizontally.

When you stop learning and when you stop growing as an individual and professional, it is time to go, bottom line. Otherwise, you are caught being complacent for multiple years with nothing to show.

Being complacent and comfortable is what kills many people from actually making major career moves. I’ve talked to many former colleagues that were laser locked on the fact that they had a stable job of 3-4 years, only to get lost in the mix, be cut during a round of layoffs or be looked past during a promotion. The end up being left laid off or quitting after some time with a proprietary skill set and/or lack of knowledge of new technology, leaving them in a dead end.

Staying Power: I get it.

The one thing that I completely get and understand is the thought of staying power. I will end it on this because it is something that I feel is extremely important. There are many reasons to leave an organization. I’ve mentioned them all above. I have left organization for fear of losing a job and being left with nothing and left because I was at my ceiling. But, what I have never done, is leave an organization for the sole reason that I was going to make more money. I’ve taken 2 pay cuts in my career because of my thirst for knowledge and I would take another in the distant future for a great opportunity of a startup of my own. But, it is important not to make dollars the only decision to moving on to a new opportunity, because that is where you get caught job hopping too much to make a quick buck. It is not a long term strategy. Leaving a job for a better opportunity to learn more, obtain more visibility, and long term career growth is understandable, and, if you are going to get a big salary jump doing so, more power to you. But, don’t make that your soul reason, ever.

When you are young and talented, jobs come at you constantly. Recruiters constantly hound you, startups want your talent, and people can sense a hunger for growth. Bigger companies will throw tons of money at talented individuals to fill gaps and even help lead teams. The important thing is not to let this blur your long term vision and hurt your career growth. Think about 10 years down the line or even 20 and how that opportunity will play a roll in your overall career.

The Story: A Resume can’t speak to you

There are definitely situations where recommendations are taken into account and track record. Many times the personal story is already known by the hiring manager or startup CEO. But, I can tell you that there are definitely a few diamonds in the rough when it comes to talented individuals who have changed a few jobs before the age of thirty, or even after. If your gut says no, then stick to it. But, it might be worth a phone screen sometimes, you might learn something you didn’t know. Or better yet, find something unexpected out in a story that a resume just doesn’t tell.

Please follow me on twitter to keep the conversation going.

What do you think about job hoppers? What is your story with hiring a job hopper or being one? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Setting goals and executing with social media marketing

2010-03-21T20:27:56Z

While at SXSW, Chris Winfield and I had our presentation on “Social media marketing for your business.” My biggest focus for the presentation was to help people realize the power of creating a plan, setting goals, and executing them. Overall, creating a marketing plan or strategy should not just involve trying to get some traffic or a few links. There needs to be an end result that helps the business bottom line, like getting new users.

I covered a lot of examples of how to create online visibility in social media and ROI goals. An example of this is using niche social media sites to reach bloggers and journalists. Even though the session was meant to look beyond Facebook and Twitter, I couldn’t ignore the increases in branding and engagement that I’ve seen. Overall though, creating a campaign, setting goals and executing on them has been the most valuable.

Enough of my rambling, here is the presentation:

Social Media Marketing for your Business

Business Development Opportunities: Find and Close Them

2010-07-28T07:06:16Z

Having spent a lot of my career doing a lot more than just SEO, I’ve had to wear many different hats. One of my favorite hats to wear is actually the Business Development one. I’m total people person and I love the sales process. The feeling of closing a deal to me is almost as good as sex. (Sorry, I had to set the bar high).

So, rather than actually sitting here and writing another useless “SEO Tips” type post, I wanted to give to put together something a little more business focused, so I came up with the idea that I would write about how I find and close biz dev opportunities.

The Analysis:

The first thing that you need to do with any sales, marketing, and partnership funnel is analysis. Start looking at the competition and look at other products or services in your vertical that offer complimentary services.

Some good competitive questions to ask: Who are your competitors and whom are they partnering ? Are they guest blogging? Are they swapping links? Do they have an open source platform, affiliate program, or API that you could build and offer to their partners?

Then, think through all the sites that offer complimentary services. If you are in the personal finance space, it might be smart to partner with sites that offer coupons or discounts to shoppers. You could then partner with each on exchanging widgets, guest blogging, or other product and services offerings.

At the end of the day, I look for sites and opportunities with larger audiences or more traffic, and try to find a mutually beneficial partnership.

The Connections:

Now that you know who the companies are, it’s time to find out who you need to talk to at those companies. Find your connection and or “in” at the company. Who do you know there? Who do you know that knows someone? etc.

It’s important to note that a lot of the time, this is the hardest part of the entire process. A lot of times you will run into situations where you think you are talking to the right person and it’s literally a dead end.

I’m a huge fan of checking out LinkedIn right away when I am looking for connections, because you can trim through a lot of fat, so-to-speak. Starting looking through your Social Graph to find people as well, or, just do some searches in Google to find people. It’s pretty likely within the technology and internet marketing world that somehow, someway, you are only 1 or 2 degrees of separation away from that person.

Planning, Position, and Conversation:

At this point, you should have an idea of the company and the players involved. Now it’s time to start thinking of what the partnership would look like in the perfect world for you. That doesn’t mean that you are going to reach out to someone and flat out propose something right away. But, rather, you want to figure out what it is that you want to gain, what your value proposition is and be ready to present that at a moment’s notice.

Start by having a conversation with someone and get to know their goals. Ask them what their biggest pain points are? What they are trying to achieve? Are they partnering with others? Take notes, mental or physical, but remember what it is they are driving for.

At this point, let’s be honest, this is going to be straight up salesmanship on your part. You need to positioning yourself and how you deliver value to their organization, if at all. If you don’t, you better be a killer salesman who gets what you want. Inspire the person you are talking to by making them believe the value you deliver is imperative to their business

Salesmanship:

I use to have a boss that would always tell me this quote about sales, closing deals, and finding a pain point:
“Sales is all about finding the pain of a customer or partner. Prostitutes have really figured it out, they know the male pain point — getting laid — so you need to dig deep and find theirs.”

At Twistup 7, I was able to witness Dave McClure give his Startup Metrics for Pirates presentation. During the session Dave had one side of the crowd screaming “FUCK” and the other side “KILL”. The point was to get everyone to realize that it’s all about those two senses that drive our nature – the need to kill for sustenance and the sexual nature of human being, for procreation or not.

As marketers, when marketing products, services, etc., it’s important to remember to tap into that in order to get people to convert. But, as a salesman, remember that people have a needs that must be fulfilled. Finding that pain point early during your analysis or planning will set you up for success as you try to close the deal.

Find out what that pain point is and exploit it with further analysis and conversations. Show them competitive concerns, product and/or content issues, etc. Comfort them with validation points of current/former clients, partnerships, and/or re-affirm the value addition.

Keep conversations going:

There are obviously going to be issues that come up that will either kill or delay deals. During delays, just be patient, many Fortune 500 companies have vendor and partner processes that are required. But, remember to continue to push the envelope and conversations moving forward. Having an open communication channel and forum for discussion will make sure not to kill the deal, but rather, to possibly come to a mutually beneficial agreement that works.

Moving back to Los Angeles for MySpace!

2010-03-12T16:26:05Z

For the last couple weeks, I’ve been tweeting a ton about “big decisions” that are on the horizon. The truth is I came to a major cross roads career wise and geographically. I had to evaluate where I was going and what I was doing career wise, but, also had to look at personal happiness. With that, came the decision to leave BillShrink to join MySpace.

Why leave BillShrink?

First, why am I leaving BillShrink even though they are one of the hottest startups I know? I joined because I was dying for an opportunity to really help impact the growth of a business. Of course, there were challenges (nothing is all cupcakes, sunshine, and rainbows, contrary to popular belief), which led to a post on Inhouse SEO Resource Constraints. But, the biggest driver of me leaving BillShrink was that I miss Los Angeles and the technology ecosystem way more than any other city.

I have had the ability to truly impact the BillShrink business from a marketing standpoint in regards to SEO, Social Media, and content. More importantly, I had the opportunity to meet and work with some amazingly talented people. BillShrink truly is one of the coolest technology products I have seen in some time.

MySpace?!?!

Some of you have already asked the question (in your head or even out loud): “Why MySpace?!” I thought long and hard about building out my Internet Marketing and Incubation consulting practice of Visible Factors. But, at the end of the day, the best opportunity was one that I was excited about 6 months ago when I first started talking to MySpace and still am to this day.

There are many people I truly respect, former colleagues, and friends that I’ll be able to work with at MySpace. And, I am excited to have an opportunity be a part of the rejuvenation of the brand, confident about where things are going, and hope to make a massive impact on their business. The post about their youthful reincarnation in USA today with Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn talking about the company, only solidified to me that this was the right move with the right leadership.

Finally, I am VERY excited to be back in Los Angeles and a part of the Technology ecosystem that I grew up with and came to truly love while I was working at Yahoo!. I’m also very excited to get more time to writing (both marketing/technology and creative) and working on interesting projects that I have been putting off.

Are Google’s real time and latest results REALLY based on relevance?

2010-02-03T03:20:31Z

I’ve had a few colleagues and friends lately ask me about Google’s real time search results since they launched real time search about two months ago. To some of you, this might be an obvious post, as Rae from Outspoken Media pointed out with her post about Google enabling real time spam.

I was then alerted by a friend that apparently Google is filtering people based on relevance and followers and all that jazz. He pointed to an article talking about how Google ranks tweets. Which the author talks about hashtags, followers, relevance and all that jazz to get you to think that the real time results are actually influenced by these attributes in search.

Being the investigative person that I am, I decided that I needed to see this for myself and figured that American Idol would be something that is somewhat trending, it would be the right opportunity to test out the real time spam that Google enabled.

First, I did a search for American Idol and noticed some real time results. So, it was time for me to tweet away and see if I could get some results in there. Now, remember, I NEVER talk about Idol, I could care less about American Idol, and honestly, I know I’m entirely irrelevant to idol, but then I saw this rank:

So that was just a test…now some of you might say, well, that was because it was just talking about American Idol and only relevant to American Idol. Fine, I thought through that and figured it might be interesting to see what would happen if I posted a link to the Kindle in Amazon to see if you could spam affiliate offers via the real time results:

Done deal! Granted, I didn’t get any clicks from Google to that link, but it just goes to show that you can pretty much game the real time results fairly easily at this point. The more people look at those results and the more intertwined they become to the search experience, the more you could figure out ways to game it.

I could essentially create bots via twitter or hire overseas labor extremely cheap to go out there and just tweet all day with a bunch of affiliate links to trending topics and such with real time and maybe get some VERY minimal to no results. Then again, it makes me wonder if/when people will start clicking on those results that are relevant to the original searcher intent of their query? At that point, you’ve opened a flood gate of people that could do what I just mentioned above.

Just something to think about. Again, like I said, for some of us, this is pretty obvious stuff, but, thought it would just be interesting to run the analysis and post about it.

What are your thoughts about real time search results? Do you think they will be gamed and spammed more and more?

foursquare: The arrival of the location based business “game”

2010-01-17T18:55:19Z

I’ve been on this huge kick of creating visibility for products online lately. All I can think about is how to gain visibility for an online brand. Along with that, I’ve been really interested in two other things: Local and Location Aware applications. I’ve had my eye on Yelp for a bit, but even more so lately as the mobile market is growing. But, even more than Yelp, I’m a huge fan of foursquare since I jumped on the bandwagon back at SXSW. Something I really like is that, like any smart business, they are adapting the product to the market and use. They’ve created a product that included Social Game features and recently launched foursquare everywhere. Now, don’t get me wrong, Yelp adding checkins could totally change the face of the game and knock foursquare out of the Mayor spot, so-to-speak (I had to do it!).

So, that all said, it’s important to note, that I wanted to take a look at foursquare from a perspective outside what everyone else is talking about with how cool the app is, but rather, talk about how it is great for marketing/monetization opportunities going forward.

1. Building Social Capital with Mayorship & Badges

As I mentioned opening this up, they added social gaming to the local mix and understand that social capital is an asset that is ever so important in todays online world. With the creation of Mayors and Badges, it creates an opportunity for individuals obtain a larger amount of social capital within their local cities/neighborhoods.

As a local business owner, wouldn’t you want to know who the people are that frequent your business and have an online presence. I know I would if I was a local business owner, I’d want to know who the people are that have the ability to talk up my business.

We’ve all heard Tara Hunt talk about The Whuffie Factor, and, it’s all very true, social capital is very important now and will continue to be moving forward. I think as local businesses understand that, they will start figuring out ways to market via channels like foursquare. Furthermore, smart local marketers will start figuring out ways to leverage foursquare when working with clients. Also, think about all the chain restaurants that have the ability to build this as a nationwide local targeted marketing initiative as more and more users adopt this.

2. Local Advertising with a real revenue model

I’m a marketer and I look for revenue models as a sign of a product taking that next step into the major leagues. I see foursquare having a major opportunity to create sponsored events, sponsored or featured locations, etc.

Now, before you say, “Why would they do that! Businesses paying to be listed is not authentic!” Think about it, when banners on the web came out, people threw up their arms, when Google Adwords came out, people yelled from rooftops, and when ad.ly (one of my fav. startups, btw) came out, people were outraged via Twitter…do you see a pattern??

It is inevitable for sponsored and premium/featured listings to be highlighted within the content that we see on a daily basis. Saying that it is evil and not right, is thinking without logic. Businesses can not live on without REAL revenue models. Here is how I could see something like this playout:

3. The ego is more important than you think

I’ll bring up Mayors and Badges for the second time in this post because it is worth the mention again. I think something we have failed to see in most Social Media products is the ability to touch the human Id and ego boosting. While we choose to ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist, it is the base for all human activity. When we feel better about ourselves through any sort of ego-stroking, we tend to do that activity more: championships and trophies in sports, awards in entertainment, etc. Gaming companies do a great job of this, and you have to give credit to Zynga for recognizing this and on their platform with Mafia Wars and Farmville:

But, look at other Social Media platforms, Digg removed it’s top diggers list years ago because they didn’t want the users having more power than the product. Twitter has yet to introduce any sort of ego-boosting platform, (outside of the retweeting functionality), and Facebook really doesn’t have any way of producing this either at this moment. But, introduce foursquare in the mix and you’ve got a real tool for ever so important ego-stroking that we all choose to ignore. Becoming a mayor makes people feel self important, it provides a feeling of self worth. We shouldn’t think of it as a bad thing, it’s human nature for christ’s sake.

Whenever I tell people about foursquare, the first I find friends get excited about: becoming a mayor or getting badges.

4. Capturing local search results:

Being that I’m someone that understands SEO and the search game, I’m always going to look at opportunities to drive traffic. Now, while Yelp does have this market pretty cornered, as they have tons of authority in the local/review market, within a short period, I’ve seen foursquare locations show up top 10 and even top 5 in many situations for local results:

5. Customer Service has never been more important!

Consumers are now subconsciously advocating companies or they are talking about their complete dissatisfaction for another company. Remember, more than 50% of people will make a purchase or purchasing decision based on the reviews of that brand. If I see someone checkin via foursquare is talking about how horrible a location is, I’m probably not going to want to check it out. At the same time, if people really enjoyed their experience, it will make me add it as a to-do item in Foursquare.

This basically is the flip-side to what I talked about when it came to local/in-stream advertising. Customer Service is ever so important, because, even if you are paying for prime placement and top dollar for sponsorships, you can’t fake the overall customer experience.

The truth is, without even knowing it, consumers are becoming what I’ve dubbed: “Subconscious Advocates.” Consumers are revolutionizing the way they tout the brands, restaurants and shops that they love via the tips they leave or the shouts they make when they check-in to a location. Because of this, businesses need to create opportunities to “wow” these customers and influencers daily, otherwise, I believe they will start to feel it as the market starts to adopt these services more and more.

What do you of the location aware model and/or foursquare? Where do you think it will end up or how will it play out?

Keep the conversation going on twitter, follow me: @tonyadam!