SEO Visual Guide to Success

I found this great SEO visual guide layout for anyone planning a campaign for the first time. Its also a handy guide to keep on hand at all times. You can drill down the tree limbs and get more detailed and plan out milestones, etc. The guide came from Dave Chaffey at e-consultancy.

Before you begin any SEO campaign (organic or paid) its imparitive to know how search engines operate and how people interact with them. There are many guides out there where you can learn the "basics" of search engine friendly design and development (or you can hire a consultant). Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is arguably THE most cost-effective digital marketing technique, but also the most challenging to get right. It can get overwhelming with keyword research, link building, usability, and tweaking content. In the end, always keep measuring and tracking the data (sucess) and build off of whats working, and whats not working. If your site cannot be found by search engines or your content cannot be put into their databases, you miss out on the incredible opportunities available to websites provided via search - people who want what you have visiting your site. Always keep in mind not to go too overboard with content optimization or you will get labeled a "spammer" ot a "content farmer" which will designate you as a low-quality website/publisher.

How Not To Ruin Your Brand On Twitter

Don't........

1. Twitter about how drunk you were last night. You will ruin your brand name. Bottom line = don’t get to personal. Think of Twitter more like a blog.
2. Don't Twit your everyday micro actions. No one cares if you just went to the bathroom or thinking about a dream you had last night.
3. If you can’t Twit your thoughts in 140 characters.....create a blog!
4. Don't get to "into" Twitter i.e., it consumes your life and you never leave the house.
5. Don't use profanity in your Tweets. Never.

This is just a very short list. I'm beginning to see these trends among professionals that I'm following. If it’s a complete distraction I just "unfollow" them and their off my radar. Just be a Pro. Own you brand online and don't get distracted. Don't push your business and SPAM at every opportunity. Post quality sound bites and interesting links. Use tinyurl.com for those long URL's. Also, don’t ask for more followers. If you tweet quality content, follows shall come!

How To Monetize Twitter - Update

Sell the real time generated data. Keyword data.

Real Time Data = $

Real Time Search ads = $

What about sponsored tweets? Commercial accounts? Possible e-commerce tie-in?

Issues: Will sponsored tweets piss the Twitter community off? Probably.

How to Monetize Twitter

Rumor has it that 2009 is the year Twitter finally will monetize its website. This chatter has been growing the last few months from Internet Industry experts and media pundits. The latest rumor has it by end of Q1 2009, Twitter will debut its monetization plan.

For newbie’s, here is a quick review of Twitter. According to Wikipedia, Twitter is a "free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length". But this doesn’t tell half the story. Twitter is much more than a micro blogging platform. Twitter has morphed into a new media channel where you can gossip, opinionated interaction, news reporting, info (web) commercials, links to news and articles. With old Media dying a slow death (today only four in 10 households subscribe to a daily newspaper compared to a more than 100% household penetration in 1950), Twitter has emerged as a new powerful media channel. Twitter is also useful for small to large corporations i.e., from media relations to product technical support.

New uses of Twitter arise every day.

How would you monetize Twitter? Easier said than done. Being a big fan of Twitter, I'm getting a bit restless waiting for them to announce or roll out an idea or platform they can generate revenue from. My guess is that the plan will be this year and management (and their VCs) are not ready to show their hand yet. So with that, I’d like to give my 2 cents and show them the money!

First, you want to monetize the Twitter network while at the same time increase its user base. My overall idea centers on giving each new and existing user a small amount (%) of ad revenue. What! Am I crazy?! Nope. Let me explain. The new ad section would focus on user’s profiles (tweets). Only ads that are “click thru” on the individual user profile will get a % payout. Rectangle box at the end of Twit section will serve as ad section.

Ad section:
- Simple box
- Contextual advertising in tweet box. Figure users psychographic profile. Useful in Market segmentation in serving up individual ads.
- Use entire Twit section background as some sort of a movable ad or movie preview clip with twit text clearly outlined as to make it the focus first, background ad second. No Ads in every single consecutive tweet. Make them appear in every other Tweet or every "third" tweet. Look at psychographic and behavioral variables so as to not lose the focus of Twitter.

*For hard-core twitter users (traditionalists), create a box upper right corner "Ads OFF/ON" switch. Twitters annoyed with ads, click =ADS OFF. Twitters who want to participate in ads = ADS ON. The Ad revenue system inside Twitter is the killer app. New Twitter register users can opt into participating in ads or not. Existing Twitters will receive a note, email, or Twit to ask them if they want to participate. They can turn on or turn off the ads. Hard core Twitter enthusiasts could choose to not run ads.

Why would a Twitter user want to choose to run ads? Twitter users allowing ads to roll on their profile would get (for example) anywhere from 1 cent to 10 cents for every unique click thru. Revenue sharing (Twit ad sharing). This would depend on how popular your profile is at the time (just like buying keywords). Revenue would be payable through PayPal or check when revenue hits say $25.00. Paid out monthly. This is just the basic idea.

Results: More users will sign up for Twitter and this free ad money giveaway will go viral. Everyone will want to sign up. Profile/User base will approach MySpace and Facebook user numbers.

Benefits to Twitter:
1. Increased user base
2. Real Revenue
3. Ad options will satisfy the Twitter hard core base (no backlash)

Infrastructure strategy and costs? Depends. Twitter can build their own ad server infrastructure or get a third party ad server company to help integrate (much cheaper). One thing’s for sure, the ruby on rails platform will have to go. Make this new ad-centric platform more robust = no more predictable downtime. The Google Adsense and Adwords platform would be easy to implement inside Twitter. Of course, once this has been implemented, Google (maybe even Yahoo now that it’s under a new CEO) will have to pay a higher price to acquire Twitter.

Random thoughts: Since this is a “web 2.0” company, why not…
1. Ask their users to provide feedback on monetizing ideas (harness the collaborative feedback loop).
2. Roll out a preview or beta and ask the Twitter community to test (bugs). Again, harness the collaborative feedback loop.
3. Give the Twitter user control over the ad content on their profile tweets.

2009 Prediction: Twitter Will Finally Come of Age

2009 will be the make or break year of Twitter. I believe it will be the make year as the company (CEO) will finally come out with his plan to monetize it by Q1. I've watched users develop Twitter strategies this last year from branding to company giveaways. Sports & Music stars are starting to really get into it. I wonder if the next wave will be movie and television stars getting Twitter to help their shows and careers? Whatever this New Year brings, Twitter has to now step up its game and finally prove its going to be a strong media channel and start monetizing it.

New Twitter Developments

Announced today, Twitter has chose Google Friend Connect over Facebook's Friend Connect service. This means Twitter account holders can use their login ID on any other site also integrated with Google Friend Connect. Google wants their users to sign up for the connect service so they can better keep tabs on how users behave across the web. Whats this all mean? This data can be used now to lead to better, more profitable ads and ad networks in the future.


The score: Google 1 Facebook 0

Twitter musings

Traditional carpet bombing advertising does not work well in social media networks. Heavy PR (one on one) conversational marketing is too costly. Your spending too much money, time and resources to get to the influencers. Brands who want to be effective with their scarce resources (budgets & marketing department personal), NEED to find out who is the top 5-10 influencer in their market and focus their one on one (conversational) marketing primarily on them.


A few examples of brands & Influencers taking advantage of Twitter: Shaq (THE_REAL_SHAQ), Lance Armstrong (lancearmstrong), MC Hammer (MCHammer), Walt Mossberg (waltmossberg). Get to these guys be it product reviews or endorsements, the larger the social media ROI. Have you seen how many "followers" these guys have on Twitter? It’s ridiculous.