To figure this out you must go deeper than just looking at what’s happening on your own social media turf. You need to analyze data from the larger social media ecosystem.

But try to sort out the various social media analytics offerings on the market today and you’ll find each platform is so distinct you can’t make an apples to apples comparison. Certain tools are fine for basic PR analysis but they may not do much in terms of in-depth market research.

One way to help decide which tool best suits your needs is to read Marshall Sponder’s Social Media Analytics. It goes under the hoods of major platforms as well as offers insights about challenges within the industry.

Marshall and I recently had a long conversation, and clearly, this man has a passion for his subject matter. We discussed a range of issues that affect social media analytics. Here are excerpts from our conversation.

Interview with Marshall Sponder: Web Metrics Guru

There are numerous books and blog posts about social media analytics; how is your book different from what’s already out there?

Marshall: It’s not a how-to book. It’s more a book about the industry, and then it’s a book by someone inside the industry who’s talking about the problems the industry has.

Also it’s a book about making choices, which are difficult for people to make if they don’t have the information to make it. The other books out there don’t really do that.

Of course, the social media analytics industry is evolving.  Even if you decide on a tool today, you have to keep on top of what’s new, because things change pretty fast. Correct?

Marshall: The tools are changing. They are getting a lot better. But one thing I was thinking about today is there’s a big disconnect about what these tools provide, the nature of the data, and the willingness of people to pay for it. Because other types of business intelligence data are usually really expensive… With social data it’s a little harder for people to understand what the value of it is.

It’s difficult for people to rationalize large investments in IT infrastructure and training and dashboard development when they don’t understand number one, why they need it and number two, they haven’t figured out a version of social success that makes sense. So they wouldn’t want to invest money into something that is so dynamic and changing.

With social data it’s impossible to capture everything. It’s a moving target… and it does take a lot of money to take this river of data and turn it into something that is useful to people.

I think we’re sort of getting past the question, is it worth it and getting to what do I need to do now to know how to choose and who do I hire? Do I hire myself or do I look for someone else to do it for me?

To someone who’s not in this business it’s hard to determine authentic points of differentiation between the platforms. There’s no consistency in terminology and it’s hard to know if the data that they can give you is going to be meaningful.

Marshall: What my book does, it blows open the whole question of do you even know which one to choose? … The [systems] are misrepresented by the vendors, and the agencies are out there trying to cost it out, and the client doesn’t know how to make a decision because they didn’t have the right information. Your ability to use this data has a lot to do with your sophistication to value and pay for it. That is something people haven’t considered in the social space.

In many instances social media falls under the purview of marketing. There may be other departments that are also involved, but marketing and PR are often the primary owners. But you argue that they’re not the right people to handle social media analytics.  

Marshall: The right people, in this environment, today, tend to be pure analysts with the platform. They’re often familiar names, and they often have the higher price tag, because they’re also the ones who can eliminate a lot of uncertainty: Nielson, Buzzmetrics, Brandtology, Synthesio, and Integrasco in the European market.

The reason they can do a lot better is they control their own data culling. They also have customized platforms. I’m not saying that’s the total answer but for a discriminating sophisticated client they’re often cheaper in the long run. They’re cheaper because what you’re getting is clean data, a trained analyst and a customized dashboard… The communications people should really focus on communications and let the market research be done by somebody else. That’s my fundamental belief.

It can be tough to a parse it out, so much depends on your specific business use case.

Marshall: That’s why you need someone like me. If you think about, let’s say you have a legal case, well then you hire a lawyer. If you have a database implementation, you hire a data architect team.

Do you think you want to start making these kinds of decisions off the cuff, or do you want to have someone that really understands and can figure out and can work through what you really want to know and can tell you how to do it?

In the book you talk about ultraviolet data and ultraviolet activity. Can you explain what you mean by those terms?

Marshall: There’s a ton of information out there but we may not be able to gather it. There can be 500 people at a conference and a lot of them may have Twitter handles, but if you didn’t collect that information you might not know everybody there who’s tweeting.

A restaurant have a lot of people checking in [with a location-based app] but it would be hard to qualify the value of that, because unless you’re tracking all those people and their friends and how much they buy on a tab, and unless you incentivize people who work at the restaurant to reach out to people who check in and open up a tab; in other words you have a business process, which is linked to the measurement process; if you don’t have those two linked, you can’t really measure what’s happening.

The ultraviolet means that data was there. The people came in and they checked in and they spent $50 or $100 and some of their friends came in, but you don’t have any way of tracking it, because you have no business process or collection methodology to get the data into something you can perform discreet metrics on.

How is that different from me seeing an ad and my buying a car based on the ad. You can’t track that, either.

Marshall: But people were willing to accept that. You can have an ad in a magazine and the magazine will say I’ve got 3 million people reading my magazine, Here’s my rates. You’ve accepted that, there’s no way to know who saw your ad. But with digital media, one was always told everything is measureable.

I think the difference is because it’s digital, because it’s online, someone should be tracking that…The assumption always was the web created a closed feedback loop so that you could measure it. So the thing is, there are massive reams of data out there, but the devices to capture it and assemble it and then use it as a marketing formula haven’t really been assembled.

And the people who are doing it right probably aren’t talking about it. The people in Las Vegas know. From the minute you land, they’re tracking everything. There are businesses out there that have probably figured out the ROI riddle, but they’re the last people in the world who want to talk about it.

Another thing you talk about is the integration of social media analytics with other types of business analytics, including search engine optimization and web analytics. You feel that’s the next wave.

Marshall: That’s beginning to happen, but even beyond that you need to have a measurement strategy. When you figure out what your business goals are, you then need to go back into your business processes. You may have to change something on the business side in order to get the measurement right. A lot of people have lost sight of that. They think you can just graft measurement on top of business, but in a lot of ways, just making subtle changes in the way people do something, or how they store their data, or some middleware they use to communicate with each other when some event needs to be tracked… in other words there has to be business tactics to support the measurement strategy.  You may have data gaps, and you may have a lot of data, but you can’t do anything about it unless you do additional operations on it.

This is an emerging field that requires research and knowledge. A lot of companies don’t realize all that’s involved.

Marshall: That’s why I say the full service platforms, that do the crawling, analyzing, the specialized dashboards, usually give you a better result because they’re limiting the amount of uncertainty involved and they have more control over the process. There are so many things out there that can make this process noisy and distracting. At this stage that we are today, when you use a do it yourself tool it’s kind of like you’re going out into the ocean without having a compass or know where you are going.

More from Marshall

Many thanks for Marshall for sharing his time and thoughts. If you’d like to stay current with what he’s up to, visit his blog WebMetricsGuru, follow him on Twitter.

So what do you think of Marshall’s views on social media analytics? Do you have your own insights on this topic? Please share your comments.

- Deni Kasrel

It’s social media.

These very same folks were also asked “What is the most underrated trend in business today?” Now take a stab at what tops that list.

It’s social media.

If you work in social media on a daily basis, as I do, it’s easy to see why there is such a wide discrepancy within the business community about the value of social media. There’s much confusion and hyperbole about social media.

It’s not a silver bullet. And it’s not a passing fad.

Beware of Shiny Object Syndrome

I frequently talk to people who want advice on how to leverage social media for their organization. I’ll ask basic questions, the answers to which are important to know prior to creating a social media strategy. These questions include: What do you want to use social media for and why? Who are you trying to reach using social media? How do your customers use social media?

Oftentimes, responses to these questions are pretty flimsy. For instance, when asked “Why do you want to use social media?” people will say things like:

a) Everyone else is doing it

b) Our competitors use social media so we need to use it, too

c) My boss told me we need to start doing social media

d) I keep reading and hearing about social media, so it must be something we need to get into

Not one of those reasons speaks to any substantive purpose. And yes, I really have heard all of the above. Many times.

Just being there is not enough

Like any business program, to see success through social media, you need a plan of action. You must establish goals and objectives, create strategies and tactics, and follow through on what you set out to do.

There is no auto-pilot mode in social media. Simply populating your Facebook page or Twitter stream with links to press releases or stories that appear about your company in the news isn’t social.

One of the key things you’ll want to do with social media is provide meaningful content that resonates and ultimately motivates people to respond and take action. You also want to engage with fans and followers on your own social media sites as well as on other sites that relate to your industry in general, and to your business, in particular.

Fail to actively engage on social media and you won’t get much back in return. This can cause you to think social media is overrated, but really it’s just that you’re doing it wrong.

Don’t let lack of knowledge hold you back

Now, perhaps you have put thought into what you want to accomplish through social media, but you don’t know how to reach those objectives. Fair enough. We’re still in the early stages of the social media continuum — you’ve got time to learn and try things out to see what works best for your purposes.

There are lots of books about social media. A few that I have found to be most valuable are: Content Rules, by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman, Real-Time Marketing and PR, by David Meerman Scott and The Facebook Era, by Clara Shih.

The real test is in the follow-through

Once you have an idea of how to use social media, then it’s time to get out there and do it. You won’t always hit the bullseye. It takes time to discover what ultimately works for your needs. Even then, what works best will change over time. This is an evolving medium.

Still, when properly executed you’ll find social media is neither an overrated or underrated trend in business. It’s one more tool to help grow your business.

- Deni Kasrel

What do YOU think? Is social media overrated? Please share your thoughts.

Urgency.

There’s some sort of information we need, immediately.

We want our news instantly, and our shopping, too.

Once we get the info we’re looking for, we’re motivated to take action. If it’s related to shopping we’ll buy something, right then and there, via our smartphone, or, if it’s a local search, we’re likely go to the place we just found online to make an in-store transaction.

Simple, right? Indeed, however, for companies and organizations there’s more to it.

From a business standpoint, the best way to capitalize on this user behavior is to understand how people search, and buy, while on a smartphone.  Don’t assume it’s the same as happens while surfing the web via a desktop computer. Because it’s not.

A new report by Google and Ipsos OTX MediaCT, called the Mobile Movement, Understanding Smartphone Users offers insights into our smartphone habits. The study polled more than 5000 smartphone owners about their smartphone usage in general, and shopping habits, in particular.

The ubiquity of smartphones in our everyday lives

The study looked into general smartphone usage. Here are some of its findings:

Where do you use your smartphone?

93% home

87%  on-the-go, commuting or walking

77% in a store

73% in a restaurant

72% work

66% at a social gathering

54% café or coffee shop

53% doctor’s office

50% airport

32% library

29% school

What media related activities do you do while also using your smartphone

44% listen to music

33% watch TV

29% use the internet on a computer

27% play video games

22% read newspaper or magazine

16% read a book

What activities do you do while using a smartphone

59% wait (in line at the market, at a doctor’s office, for a bus, etc.)

48% eat

44% shop

40% socialize/entertain

39% use the bathroom

27% cook or do household chores

20% drive a vehicle

17% walk my dog

14% pump gas

13% play sports or exercise

8% take a shower or bath

Design your mobile website for multitasking

Basically, the majority of us will use our smartphone just about anywhere we can get a signal.  And when we’re goin’ mobile we’re usually multitasking. Our minds are only paying partial attention to our phone activity.

This has serious consequences for a business’ mobile web presence — one of the top ones being, your mobile site should be streamlined to readily enable users to find what they want, and complete tasks, in as few steps as possible. And yes, this is true for any website, but it’s even more critical in the mobile format.

You want a site where after someone clicks through to it from search results, the most important info is viewable at a glance. For one good example see how Burger King does it. And better still, the Burger King web server recognizes when a user is on a smartphone and automatically delivers the mobile site version:

As opposed to this, from Coca Cola, which serves up about a ¾ version of its main website just like you’d get through a desktop computer. Note, some items on the lower right corner don’t even show up if you’re using an iPhone. Seriously Coke, you should know better:

Mobile phone as personal shopping assistant

Of course, it’s no surprise to find out smartphones are used much like a mini netbook computer — after all, that is what they are, albeit one that has a phone attached to it. When in shopping mode a smartphone is our handy-dandy combination phone book, GPS, online catalog and price comparison device.  Of the 5000-plus people who participated in the Mobile Movement study:

74% used a smartphone to make a purchase

70% used a smartphone while shopping in a store

27% bought something via a mobile website

22% bought a product or service through an app

After finding that local info via a smartphone users were ready to swing into action:

61% called a business

59% visited a business

58% looked up business on a map or got directions

54% visited the website of a business

36% made a purchase from a business online

22% recommended a business/service to someone

20% read or wrote a review about a business

19% marked or added a business to my favorite list

Mobile search and sharing

These stats are a good indicator of how important it is for a business to optimize for local search. Also, it’s interesting to see how many users are recommending a business or service, writing a review or adding a business as a favorite. This is part of a growing trend where we want our web experience to be more personal and social. That’s why you want to make it easy for people to share and like your site.

For businesses the signal is coming in loud and clear: the time is now for mobile.

- Deni Kasrel

Have you seen good or bad examples of mobile websites? What are they? Your comments welcome.

Not much, if you’re documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, whose latest movie, Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, explores the world of branding, advertising and product placement.

It’s Spurlock’s personal statement, albeit an irreverent one, about how we’re pummeled with advertising throughout our daily lives.

Just because it’s obvious doesn’t mean you can’t make a point

The point of this flick is admittedly obvious, however, Spurlock likes to examine the obvious in unexpected ways.

The film that first brought Spurlock to national attention, Supersize Me, is about how eating lots of McDonald’s food is unhealthy and leads to obesity. In it, the filmmaker serves as a human guinea pig who only eats McDonald’s food for 30 days straight. That he gains weight is to be expected; what’s surprising is the drastic dangerous toll the dietary experiment takes on Spurlock’s health and psychological well-being.

With Pom Wonderful, the director gets super cheeky: He’s making a film about product placement and advertising that’s all about how he’s financing the film solely through product placement and advertising. He calls hundreds of brands, and 22 sign on. In return for their money, the brands get to have Spurlock shamelessly promote them throughout his movie. The biggest sponsors have full-fledged commercials inserted right into the documentary.

Spurlock records the meetings where he tries to get companies to support his concepts. He’s an energetic pitchman who’s full of ideas. Some of his most outlandish ideas get shot down. No matter: Spurlock is a paid shill who gladly lets the brands control their message (though he delivers these lines with a big sly wink).

Along with the mischievous encounters with sponsors Spurlock delves into the world of manipulation, er marketing. He talks to experts in brand integration, co-promotion, brand collateral, brand personality, media placement and neuro-marketing. He chats with movie directors, TV execs, Donald Trump, Noam Chomsky, as well as Ralph Nader, who comes up with one of the movies more memorable lines when he says the only time we can avoid branding is in our sleep.

Two examples on the extremes of advertising (or not)

For the most part, Spurlock’s tongue is set firmly in his cheek, yet there are exceptions. Like when he heads to Florida’s Broward County to investigate how sponsors have infiltrated its public schools — an area even the educators agree should be off limits, but with budgets being cut to the bone, the school system is forced to find money however it can.

It all begs the question, where do we draw the line? For the right price, will we let consumer culture infiltrate every aspect of our lives?

Apparently, at least one place on earth isn’t buying in: Sao Paulo. The Brazilian city passed a law banning all forms of outdoor advertising. City officials say they passed the law to rid Sao Paulo of “visual pollution,” and when the camera pans its streets, we see what the city looks like with nary an ad in sight. In interviews with Spurlock, shop owners and residents all agree that Sao Paulo is now more attractive and they “notice a lot more” without the “distraction” of ads.

Powerful personal branding

Spurlock is transparent about irony of his efforts. He’s clearly practicing what he’s preaching against. Or is he? He claims he’s not selling out, but rather, buying in.

Of course, the biggest product placement of all in Pom Wonderful is for Mr. Spurlock himself. It’s an inspired piece of personal branding.

The movie has sparked demand for Spurlock’s bon mots. Fast Company featured him in a lengthy piece called I’m With the Brand and Forbes did a Q & A with him called This Space for Rent. He did a talk for TED called Morgan Spurlock: The Greatest TED Talk Ever Told and wrote a guest column for Entertainment Weekly called The Filmmakers Guide to Making the Perfect Pitch.

Spurlock even got the city of Altoona, Pa to change its name for 60 days, to Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, in exchange for $25,000. Altoona is the home-base one of the movie’s sponsor’s Sheetz, Inc. The name change is ceremonial, still the city figures to get publicity out of the deal.

All of which goes to show, as is stated in the movie, “At the end of the day, marketing works.”

Wanna peek at the picture? Here’s the movie trailer

Your Comments Welcome

What do YOU think? Have you seen Spurlock’s latest movie? Is he really buying in, or selling out?

Necessity is the mother of invention

Clara saw there was a big unmet need for corporate-local companies, which are enterprises with many local branches and representatives, such as franchisees and agents. These companies want to maintain a strong corporate brand while also giving reps freedom to do what’s best for their local customer base. But when your reps have their own Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts it’s tough to manage messaging, not to mention compliance with company guidelines and industry regulations.

So Clara left her job at Salesforce (where she was working while writing The Facebook Era) and teamed up with several savvy digital technology pros to start a company, Hearsay, which recently launched Hearsay Social, a tool that enables corporate-local companies to centrally oversee social media activity for all of its branches and reps.

Interview with Clara Shih, CEO of Hearsay Corp.

Clara gave me look at the Hearsay Social platform. It includes tools for social media compliance, content, workflow and analytics. I was truly impressed by the platform’s functionality and user-friendly dashboard — you don’t need technical know-how to figure it out.

While taking the tour of the platform Clara and I had nice long chat. Here are excerpts from our conversation.

Your management team has got a lot of depth. How did you put it together?

Silicon Valley has so much incredible talent. Being here and having worked at companies like Google and Salesforce gave all of us a terrific network. My co-founder Steve [Garrity] and I were classmates at Stanford in undergrad and graduate school.

After leaving school we always knew we wanted to start a company together but when we graduated we weren’t ready quite yet. We didn’t have a good idea. So he worked at Fortify Software, which is an enterprise security company, and then at Microsoft, where he worked on mobile. I went to Google and Salesforce, and when it came time to start my company he was one of the first people I called, because he’s incredibly smart and has a very good vision for how technologies change.

You designed Hearsay for a specific market. Why did you choose it, and how did you cater your product to that market?

The whole point of Hearsay is to focus on corporate-local. We looked at the Fortune 1000 and there’s a huge number of companies that fit this model, which is everything from banking, insurance and real estate, to restaurant and retail franchises and direct-selling organizations like Avon or Mary Kay. Our focus has allowed us to go very deep and be very comprehensive in the solution that we provide.

We were very thoughtful about how we architected the solution. We realize, at the end of the day, the most important thing to our target audience is visibility. When you’re a corporate organization you might have franchisees and local stores feeding pages and profiles every day that you might not know about. So number one, how does corporate have visibility? And from there, how does corporate manage brand compliance?

The third thing is, as a counterbalance to the need for brand guidelines compliance, how do you empower your local reps to express a unique and authentic voice? Knowing that’s what makes social media powerful. We know cookie-cutter messages don’t work.

So we built a content workflow system where corporate marketing can come in and feed content or suggest content and campaigns into the field, and then these small business owners, these franchisees, can choose which messages and campaigns they think will resonate with the local audience, personalize it in their own words and be able to do a one-click post out to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

How does it go all across the company system?

Basically, corporate will suggest a piece of content through our portal and then the local reps can receive those suggestions, either by email, and you can enable a one-click post from that email, or, they can log into their own portal which many people like to do because it’s a community of other franchisees in their network.

How does the company determine how well the suggested content is received?

You can see a content library of all that you’ve sent out to the field and can sort by categories, all of which are custom definable.

You can write a post and choose what region you want it to go too, and choose where it goes; to Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn. You can tag it as a corporate suggestion and it will go to a local user who will see that message, along with a link. The local user can personalize the message and then just click the link. Corporate can then see what gets a response.

Can you give me an example of real world usage?

State Farm has 18,000 agents across the country and last year they came to us [while we were in beta] and said, we realize a lot of our agents are getting on these social network sites, which is a good thing. The reason State Farm is so successful is our agents are good social networkers, and we know that these websites makes them effective. But there are challenges we need to solve. From a federal regulations standpoint there are compliance issues, so how do we protect these small business owners, these franchisees, from legal liabilities?

With insurance and banking, there’s an industry guideline called FINRA, which requires all messages to be archived in case of a subpoena down the road. That’s the motivation behind archiving. Facebook and Twitter don’t provide archiving. We do and in fact we’ve partnered with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to be able to provide the archiving. We’re the only company that has access to LinkedIn’s private message API. We’re the only company that can provide this.

And then another challenge State Farm had was small business owners find it very easy to create a Facebook page or Twitter profile but then it’s hard to maintain. As a business owner or a franchisee you’re busy enough running the day-to-day operations. You don’t have time to spend hours figuring out what to say on social media…That’s why we built this content workflow system, so the agents didn’t have to spend hours coming up with good content. Corporate marketing could do it, and it would only take an agent a couple of minutes to add it to their social networks.

With the compliance part, say I’m a company that’s highly distributed. How do I manage monitoring all my rep’s posts? It would be overwhelming to keep track of every tweet and every Facebook post.

We only show when there’s a compliance infraction. We sat down with a lot of corporations that did feel overwhelmed and they didn’t feel like they needed to read every message.

Does the item show up because it’s been flagged through keywords?

Yes. They can specify what the keywords are. And we have ones that we recommend for our financial services customers, because you’re not allowed to talk about securities in a public forum. They can also choose from our standard set of filters, like for profanity.

Do you think companies that have been holding off on mounting social media campaigns due to concerns about compliance issues may now engage in social media with more confidence because of your platform?

There’s that. But there is the reality that needs to be acknowledged; which is, the corporate level may not be comfortable going out on social media, but their employees don’t feel the same way. It’s very easy to find agents and employees that are on Facebook and have LinkedIn profiles who are talking to clients and are out of compliance. That’s been a real wake-up call for these organizations.

How do your analytics help a business know what action to take once they view the metrics?

Our customers are very focused on two things. One is agent engagement and the other one is fan or follower engagement. So what they’ll typically look for is when there are spikes in agent activity. That’s usually when corporate makes a content suggestion. The agents post it and then there’s a slight lag on the fan and follower side as measured by likes, comments and retweets… The content that you put out there, you want it to be interactive and engaging. If people aren’t sharing or responding, that means it’s not resonating for some reason. Our customers use this real-time feedback to continually refine their content and campaigns.

So they can correlate response and make the connection.

Yeah… I wondered for a long time why there are so many corporate local organizations. Why are so many of these small businesses that are part of a larger corporate entity? Instead of being a McDonald’s franchisee or a Dunkin’ Doughnuts franchisee, why don’t they just start their own burger or donut place? We thought about this a lot at Hearsay and the reason is brands are extremely powerful. And not only that, a lot of small business owners, don’t know branding and packaging and operations and sales. Being part of a franchise, you get a lot of support in the offline world. So if you’re a McDonald’s franchises, every quarter you get new marketing collateral. But when it comes to the online world, there hasn’t been that same level of support. And social media in particular has been the Wild West for these small business owners. They’re left to their own devices. They’ve had no choice but to create their own Facebook page and figure out how it all works. So one way you can look at Hearsay Social is, we’re providing that level of infrastructure and local support that chains and franchisees have always had in the physical world — we’re providing the analog in social media.

Now hear about it direct from Hearsay (the company video)

Related Posts

Recommended Reading: The Facebook Era

How Social Networks Are Changing How We Do Business

Clara Shih On Ambient Intimacy and Appvertising

What do you think of Hearsay Social?  How do you see it fitting into corporate social media programs? Comments welcome.

You would not expect that company to use unethical tactics to boost your search rank.

But if they did, and you secured the number one search result, would you care?

You should, because if Google catches you using black hat SEO — tricks that skirt the search engine’s guidelines—they’ll knock you off your high perch. You could be in for a steep fall, to include being removed from search index results, altogether.

The dark side of search engine optimization

A recent incident of SEO gone bad made for an intriguing story in the Sunday New York Times, where an article called The Dirty Little Secrets of Search revealed how the retailer J. C. Penney engaged in shady SEO. Or rather, a company J.C. Penny hired engaged in unscrupulous SEO.

This SEO outfit’s tactics led to J.C. Penney.com netting the number one organic search result for a host of search queries, including popular terms (“dresses,” “furniture”) as well as many others that lie on the long tail of search (“grommet top curtains”).

The primary black hat tactic used was to buy inbound links for JCPenney.com. An inbound link is a link on another website that points back to your site.

Not all inbound links are created equal

Inbound links can make a big difference in your Google search rank, because Google reads links from relevant sites that go to your site as a kind of endorsement. The more links leading from other sites to yours, the more points you get. If a linking site is perceived as a relevant authority on a given subject matter, then you get extra credit. For example, if you have a blog about investing, and the Wall Street Journal website links to yours, you get bonus points.

The SEO company hired by J.C. Penney hatched a scheme that garnered thousands of inbound links from websites that have no plausible reason to connect to the retailer — they paid low-end spammy sites to post links to JCPenney.com.

See no evil?

Penney’s reportedly fired those SEO shysters; after the New York Times contacted Google about their investigation that uncovered the scam, and, shortly thereafter, JCPenney.com’s organic search rank plummeted.

There’s been speculation as to whether Google knew about this link scheme but chose to let it slide, because Penney’s pours lots of money into its paid search program. Google swears paid search does not affect organic search results.

Meanwhile, J.C. Penney says it had no knowledge of the black hat scheme conducted on its behalf.  Not sure I buy that, but if it is true, then shame on the management for not having better oversight of their SEO efforts. The spectacular scope of all those number one search results should have raised a red flag.

Tips to avoid getting burned by black hat SEO

If you’re planning to outsource SEO efforts, here are tips to help ensure you don’t fall prey to nefarious operators:

1. Steer clear of anyone who guarantees the #1 spot on Google

While good SEO can get you a top rank, it can’t be guaranteed. Some companies go so far as to claim they have an “inside deal” with Google that can secure you special priority ranking. There is no such thing. If you hear this boast, give that business the boot.

2. Avoid companies that engage in link-buying schemes

This is what got J.C. Penney in hot water. Link buying is unethical. It may raise your rank in the short run, but once you’re found out, you suffer the consequences.

3. Beware of companies that offer to create fake “doorways” to your site

Certain black hat SEOers like to create lots of single page websites stuffed with relevant keywords and inbound links to your site. Because these pages exist solely to steer traffic to your website they offer no real value to web users. Expect a harsh penalty if Google sniffs out your dubious game.

4. Find out what information the company is willing to disclose

Prior to hiring an SEO provider, find out what information they’ll share. Will they tell you exactly what strategies they intend to employ? What keywords are they going to optimize for? What reporting statistics will they provide? Will they help you interpret the data?

SEO is not an undercover operation, and whomever you choose must be willing to divulge specifics about tactics and how they plan to measure success.

5. Don’t look the other way if you suspect shady business

If your SEO results seem too good to be true, they probably are. If you believe the firm you hired is using black hat tactics, show them the door, report them to The FTC, and take steps to correct any deceptive practices. Don’t just let it be.

As noted in Google’s search engine optimization webmaster tools, “Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire”.

So what do YOU think? Have you ever come across anyone who deals in crooked SEO? Please share your stories.

These things happen.

No matter how good the search engine, it’s not a mind reader. Only you know exactly what’s most relevant for your particular purposes.

Goggle Instant Previews helps boost the relevance of click-throughs

It would be nice to only click-through to webpages that meet your needs, and apparently Google thinks so, too. That’s why it rolled out Instant Previews, which gives you a sneak peek of your search results.

You’ve likely seen the preview tool; it’s a magnifying glass that appears next to title links in Google search results. Click on the magnifying glass, and presto, you get a graphical representation of that webpage while you’re still viewing search results. With some webpages the preview may also highlight text items relating to your search terms. Between the visual sneak peek and those text highlights, you can quickly compare all your search results to help determine which ones are best for you.

Here’s an example of results for the search query “best restaurants in Philadelphia” where I’ve highlighted the Instant Previews icon:

If you click on the magnifying glass next to the link for Le Bec Fin, you see the homepage to its website, with an announcement about the menu, plus a quote from a food critic.

FYI, Google decides if text appears in a preview. In this case, it’s a kudo from a food writer, which makes for a nice plug that can influence your decision on whether or not to visit this fancy French eatery. Right away, you have a positive impression.

Now, suppose you want to preview the other sites. Well, then your results vary. Take a look at what comes up when you preview Morimoto:

Not much to go by there. That’s because the site is built with Flash, which Instant Previews does not currently support. It doesn’t read Java applets or Silverlight, either.

Any areas Instant Previews can’t read on a website appear blank. If it can’t read any of your site, it looks like Morimoto’s. Then you’ll miss out on any potential benefit that comes from Instant Previews. And you may even forfeit business to an enterprise with a website that renders properly in preview.

Think about it: If you have several choices, and you’re deciding which to pick based solely on what you can glean from the web, and one choice instantly offers a better presentation, don’t you think you might favor the place that gives you the most confidence from the start?

Give your website an Instant Previews check-up

Google claims Instant Previews will “match your query with an index of the entire web, identify the relevant parts of each webpage, stitch them together and serve the resulting preview completely customized to your search—usually in under one-tenth of a second.”

That’s darn fast. Any website takes longer than one-tenth of a second to load. Once you get into the habit of previewing, you’re likely to keep at it. I use previews a lot, and I am surely not alone in this regard.

Which means, if you have a website, you need to pay attention to how it renders in Google Instant Previews. And not just the homepage, but all of the pages, because people can enter your site in any number of ways when coming through a search engine.

In fact, check it right now. See if there are any problems. If so, you should consider making changes to your site’s code so that it can play well with previews. Anything that diminishes your search result can hurt your click-through rate.

Can Instant Previews affect your site’s search rank?

I first found out about the potential for problems with Google Instant Previews from an article by my Twitter pal, internet marketing and SEO consultant, Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe). In his post, Google Instant Previews — Great Functionality or a Signal Back to the Mothership, Glenn suggests that Google might even use previews for its own purposes. He writes:

“It’s hard to ignore the fact that instant previews can send a powerful signal back to Google about the relevancy of the search results. For example, if a page is ranking near the top of the search results, but really shouldn’t (because it’s spammy, the page owner gamed Google’s algorithm to get there, etc.), then Google could start to identify these pages via monitoring low click-through rate via instant previews. For example, imagine a page with 175K impressions in organic search, with 3500 instant preview triggers, but no click-through. That very well could raise a red flag to Google.”

If Google does wind up utilizing Instant Previews as yet another way to determine relevance for certain keywords, that’s just one more reason to be sure your site is up to preview snuff.

More information on Google Instant Previews

For website owners:

Google has a FAQ about instant previews that can help you understand how it works and how you can adjust your website so that it renders properly in preview mode.

For the general web user:

Google provides a good explanation of instant previews, including a short video, on its official blog.

Have you used Google Instant Previews? Has it changed the way you search the web? Please share your thoughts and  comments.

The online web is intricate. That goes double when you factor in social networks, which by design expand as they interconnect.

When you consider how social networks are just a subset of a much larger Web 2.0 system, things get really complicated.

To begin the Web 2.0 journey you have to start somewhere

The scope of Web 2.0 is wide and ever-growing. It can be daunting to know where to begin. Yet you have to start somewhere.  It’s like another famous saying, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

If you want to wind up at a specified end-point, it helps to get oriented before beginning those many steps. For a real-life trip, you’d use a map or a GPS device for guidance. The byways of Web 2.0 are less cut and dry — the optimal route is determined by your particular goals, strategies and resources.

Still, there are some excellent instruments for overall guidance, including the infographic you see below, created by A-list blogger, best selling author and new media business strategy consultant Brian Solis, and JESS3, a creative agency that specializes in data visualization.

Big picture view of the social ecosystem

In his recent post, The Social Compass is the GPS for Adaptive Business, Brian notes this infographic “points a brand in a physical and experiential direction to genuinely and effectively connect with customers, peers, and influencers, where they interact and seek guidance online.”

The Social Compass enables you to see how various components relate to one another in a big picture kind of way. If you’re not quite sure what it all means, read Brain’s post, where he explains all the labels and how they entwine.

Take a sentimental journey to social media success

Of course, the bottom line is, even when used for business purposes, social media is about people engaging with one another. The tools and technology are important, but if you are not establishing personal and emotional connections, you’re missing the point.

So pay special attention to the outer ring of the Social Compass. Notice how it’s got words like empathy, empowerment, honesty, sincerity, reciprocation and reward. By living up to these sentiments you build genuine affinity and devotion to your brand. You’re creating meaningful relationships and goodwill that people will want to share with others. When you walk that talk, your social media activities are headed in the right direction.

- Deni Kasrel

What’s YOUR view of the Social Compass? Comments welcome.

Of course the trick is in the doing. How do you come up with a creative idea that sets you apart from the crowd?

I’ll answer by showing, rather than telling. Watch this video, Husky Dog Sings with iPad Better than Bieber!, which has more than 2 million views and serves to illustrate how you can break out of the pack.

Can you really learn marketing tricks from a dog?

How does this video cut through the clutter? Let’s count the ways…

1. The video falls into a favored category. Videos of pets doing a cool tricks are incredibly popular. Right from the get-go, this one plays to the crowd in the space in which it’s offered — in this case, YouTube.

2. It has a catchy keyword rich title. The video is named Husky Dog Sings with iPad Better than Bieber! This title is clever on its own, and if you parse it out, between “dog sings,” “iPad” and “Bieber” you’re picking up on a few popular keywords for web searches.

Including the words iPad and Bieber helps attract viewers who are ultimately searching for something quite different than what this video is about, yet plenty of people may click on the link in their search results just because the video sounds like it could be fun to watch. Random entertainment opportunities are one of the many aspects that make the web experience special.

3. There’s no obvious sales pitch. There’s an embedded hat-tip at the end of the video for LaDiDa, an iPhone app. The app is not by the person who made Husky Dog Sings, so this mention appears to be just a nod to the technology that helps make its concept work in the first place.

Meanwhile, there is a direct sales component here. Under the video screen (when viewed on the YouTube site) there’s a link to Mishka on iTunes. Turns out, this singing dog is named Mishka, and she has her own iTunes single.

Click on the link to video’s creator, Matt Gardea, identified on YouYube as gardea23, and you go to Mishka The Talking Husky’s YouTube channel. Here’s where you see that Mishka is a canine celebrity. Her channel has more than 84,000 subscribers. She’s been featured on news media throughout the world and she has a thriving Facebook page, Twitter account and line of clothing.

One channel feeds into the other and if you read the posts to Facebook or Twitter you’ll note there’s plenty of personality behind it all.

4. The tone is homegrown. Husky Dog Sings vibe is warm and welcoming. Mishka’s owners are clearly out to promote their pet, however, they go about it in a friendly down-to-earth way. Most any dog owner can relate to Matt’s friendly encouragement of Mishka as he repeatedly says “good girl” to coach the husky through her duet with the iPad.

5. This is the real deal. Social media presents a particular kind of environment where hard-sell flashy marketing falls out of favor. After all, being pushy isn’t social. You want to be real, and this video is genuine. When Mishka is doing her thing, a child and another dog briefly enter the picture. There’s no attempt to hide this extraneous action, which only adds to our amusement.

More tricks to come?

This is one cool trick. It’s warm and cozy yet also a pretty slick package.  In late December Mishka tweeted that there’s more in store:

Hmm, wonder what she’s got up her paws.

- Deni Kasrel

What do YOU think? Your comments welcome.

How would you feel if your internet service provider limited the websites you could get to, or charged you extra to do things like watch a video and send an instant message?

Well, there’s been talk about how companies that provide internet connectivity are now looking to limit what you can access online.

This topic will soon be dealt with at a meeting by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. This week, the FCC is scheduled to vote on net neutrality, a thorny topic that’s getting pricklier by the day.

I spoke with Rachel Colyer of the Media and Democracy Coalition about net neutrality. She explained why her organization is advocating for an open internet.

A conversation about net neutrality

Many people don’t know about net neutrality. What does this term mean?

Net neutrality principles are sort of these rules of the road to protect an open internet. The open internet is the way the internet currently operates. When a user goes online they are free to access the web the way that they choose to. There aren’t gatekeepers. Once you pay for your access you can go wherever you want. You have the right to explore things within the law.

If you want to watch video, or you want to upload a video to YouTube, or you want to surf the web, or you want to shop — you control the experience. And that’s what we want to protect… Net neutrality rules would say internet service providers can’t discriminate against websites or applications. So they would carry Hulu as equally as they would carry Netflix. Or they would carry Amazon as equally as they would carry eBay. Or they would carry Yankee Candle equal to a small business company. That’s the idea — that there is this equal access.

What would be different if we didn’t have net neutrality?

It could create this very unlevel playing field. Internet service providers could potentially speed up access to companies that they have a deal with. Or companies that they own.

For instance Comcast, the largest internet service provider, is currently trying to merge with NBC Universal, which also owns Hulu. We can anticipate that they would want to prioritize their Hulu service over Netflix or YouTube. So this is one real danger we can anticipate.

We have seen some pushing the boundaries on this role. Comcast decided it wasn’t going to carry files from BitTorrent and it was dropping transfers between BitTorrent… The FCC stepped in and said “Hey, you can’t do that,” and fined Comcast.

Comcast took the FCC to court and said “You actually don’t have the authority to fine us on that.” And the court ruled that the FCC, as the rule is written, does not have the authority to regulate broadband.

The FCC under a previous chairman classified the internet as Title I, which is an ancillary service. The way they classified the internet essentially deregulated it. This has created a situation where we need some rules. Someone needs to have authority. The FCC is the best agency to do that. If they were to classify the internet under Title II, as a telecommunications service, which we think there is a fair case to be made, the FCC would have very clear authority to be a watchdog on the internet.

We want to make sure there are strong non-discrimination rules in place. So this unlevel playing field can’t be created.

What is happening now with the FCC?

The FCC has been taking comments for over a year now and it has put the open internet principles on the December agenda. On Dec 22 there is going to be an order that would enshrine open internet principles. Between now and December 21 we have an opportunity to push to strengthen these rules. To advocate on behalf of the public interest to shape those rules before they come up for a vote.

What about Comcast’s claim that the FCC does not have the authority to regulate the internet?

We think Title II is cut and dry. We’re concerned that anything not based on Title II is going to be a court battle. My understanding of it is the FCC thinks the way it has written the rules, certain sections of the Telecommunications Act give it standing on specific rules. The FCC feels they can make a strong case and they have the authority. We anticipate there will be some challenges.

Some of the opponents of Title II have called it the nuclear option, and their efforts have been successful in lobbying support against net neutrality.

To play devil’s advocate, cable companies have packages that give you access to different channels for different amounts of money. It’s a tiered system and it’s legal. How is this different?

I think the internet is a different medium. Cable and television are a passive medium, where they push content to you. The internet is an interactive medium where we can seek information and we can post information. It’s utilized in a much different way than cable television.

Cable television is a way for specific industries to make money. The internet is a way for so many businesses to make money across wide spectrums. It’s used for social discourse. It’s used for education.

It’s a different medium. And while its infrastructure is similar to that of cable, or the telephone, which is why we advocate that it be regulated as a telecommunications service, the utilization of the medium is dramatically different.

The example you gave is a business case, where Comcast might favor its business properties. Are there other types of reasons for favoritism?

Sure, political speech…. Right now with the internet if you have an idea you can put it up there. We need to have someone in authority so that we can make sure our free speech is protected… If we just allow our internet service providers to police themselves, we’ll have no way of knowing if they are blocking sites and stifling free speech and no recourse to correct it.

What do mean you would not know if something was blocked? An organization can post its web address, so you would know it exists, right?

Well you might not be able to get there. It could just say “server error.”  It’s tough to know if something is not being offered to you.

You raise a good point, and honestly, we don’t know that sites are being blocked. It took a very tech-savvy person to figure out that Comcast was blocking the use of BitTorrent… you, as a user, would not know they were blocking BitTorrent. You would just see a file transfer error every time you would use it. Someone tracked [the problem] and found out that their ISP was blocking BitTorrent.

The internet service providers are pushing for managed service loopholes and we want to make sure there is strong language that says they can’t create this pay-to-play fast lane and everyone else is moving slowly.

The companies that paid to lay the pipes enabling us to use the internet believe they should be allowed to regulate what goes through those pipes. What’s wrong with that?

The infrastructure of the internet is similar to cable and telephone in that the infrastructure is pipes that are laid. But the medium itself is different from cable, because it is interactive. The telephone is more similar. Would it be OK for your telephone company to listen in and block calls to certain regions?

We would not stand for it if calls to certain places were blocked by our telephone providers. It’s the same thing on the internet. Why would we allow our internet service provider to block content or certain applications?

Are there other aspects of net neutrality that we should know about?

We want to make sure there is net neutrality for both wireless and wireline and the industry wants to treat them differently. There would be two sets of rules. Internet service providers are making the argument that wireless should be treated differently and they say certain phones are bandwidth hogs so they want to be able to block them from wireless networks.

We think wireless and wireline should be treated similarly. One reason is, if they’re treated differently it will have more of an impact on rural areas that don’t have access to wireline. It will change the user experience of low income folks and people of color who are more likely to access the internet through wireless, such as their cell phones. So there are real socio-economic concerns. With some rural areas wireless is their only option to connect to the internet.

There are many arguments to be made about why net neutrality is important. There’s a very good free speech argument. There’s a good economic argument that closing off the web is going to harm businesses that use the web. The internet is a very open and free market where a small business with a very good idea can go on there and prosper. Blocking off sections of the internet, or discriminating against websites or applications can do real him to these business and entreprenuers…. we could really be stifling the next eBay or Amazon.

What to do if you want to maintain net neutrality

There is still a wee bit of time for you to file comments, write letters, or call the FCC and tell them what they want to see in their upcoming order about net neutrality.

You can:

• Visit http://bit.ly/SBAction to send an email to the chairman. You can edit your message to the FCC and tell them why an open internet is important to you.
• Visit www.FCC.Gov and on the left sidebar use the “Filing Public Comments” link to express your views.

The FCC decision is not (likely) the end of it

Although the FCC will soon render its decision on net neutrality, odds are good it will be challenged in court. There are many interested parties and much money at stake. If you care about your right to a free and open internet — to maintain net neutrality — stay informed on the issue and visit sites like the Media and Democracy Coalition to learn about how you can have your voice heard by policy makers.

Related links

Net Neutrality 101 (Save the Internet)

Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality, by Tim Berners-Lee

Broadband Network Management (FCC site)

Telecommunications Act of 1996 (Wikipedia)

Telecommunications Act of 1996 (IT Law Wiki)

What’s your take on net neutrality? Please share your thoughts. Comments welcome.