I just came out of the session on SEO and Social Media Marketing. Although I wanted to slam my head against table because the chummy, clubby-ness of the panelists, I did manage to get one nagging question answered.

On the surface, social media seems like a natural fit for service professionals. If you write good content, people vote for it which gets exposure for your website. The problem with social media is that the “linksters” voting on social media sites are typically young men (and to a lesser degree women) who are highly technically savvy. My client’s target markets are usually C level executives who don’t have the time or inclination to dink around on the internet. The question become “How can my grown up clients use social media to reach their target markets?”

The answer is one of targeting content to the social media audience. If you can find something related to your business or the concerns of your clients and find something about it that appeals to the social media demographic, you can cross the divide. Linksters link to your site which improves rankings so it’s more likely to come up in the search results when your target markets are looking for your service.

It also helps if you refocus the purpose of social media from getting your target market to read your article to focusing on getting links to the site; especially links from bloggers. It’s more reasonable to expect that C level executives are reading blogs than voting on social networking sites.

I’m at the Search Marketing Expo in Santa Clara this week. Most of the seminars and panels are biased toward product driven companies so I will be posting short blog entries on material that with be of use to professional service companies.

This morning at a panel discuss “The Blended Search Revoultion”*, Raju Mathotra of Microsoft, discussed the three main ways people search.
Find – The searcher is looking for a specific answer to a specific question. i.e. driving directions or movie times.
Discover – The searcher has a clear need but is uncertain about next steps.
Explore – The searcher is interested in a topic and is noodling around on the internet. (I know I often do my research this way.)

In both discovery and exploration, the searcher tends to have multiple, search sessions.
What does this mean for service professionals? I think it means they need to consider all these types of searching when creating quality content on their blog and website. An FAQ page could be a way to attract the Finders. Focusing text on problems and solutions can be a way to attract the Discovers and “How To” articles can be a way to attract explorers.
But before you do any of this, you need to think about what questions do my target markets want answered, what problems do they have and what do I know that they’d be interested in? If you’re not clear on what your target markets are looking for, you wind up missing the mark and that great content turns out to be charity work. (Nothing wrong with charity work but it’s best to be clear that that’s your intention.)

* The Blended Search Revolution - The first generation of search engines ranked pages based on the content of those pages alone -- the words on the page. The second generation increased relevancy by analyzing links. The third generation, Search 3.0, is upon us now in full force. Google Universal Search, Ask.com's Morph, Microsoft Live Search Scopes and Yahoo Shortcuts are different names for the same core concept -- automatically blending in results from specialized or "vertical" search engines such as video search or local search. This session looks at the revolutionary change happening with blended search and how search marketers can ride the wave to success.

I once had a boss who had so many piles of paper in his office that once a year, one of the three secretaries in the office would spend a couple of days in his office with him sorting through it all. The running gag was that we had to tie a rope around the unlucky secretary's waste so we could pull her out when she got buried under an avalanche of paper.

Fortunately, I’m much more organized than that so when I cleaned out my office last weekend, it only took about half a day. Once I had all my papers filed and put away, I had two file drawers. That’s it. Two.

That’s not necessarily a good thing. Why? Because it made me realize how much information I have stored on my computer. For years I didn’t worry too much about that because all the websites I’ve done and the related files are stored on servers out on the internet. Then I thought about the Word docs representing hundreds of hours of research I’ve done, the irreplaceable digital photos and the lifeblood of my day-to-day business: email. Wow. And I thought I was bummed when my wallet got stolen. At least with my wallet all I had to do was shut down credit and debit cards. If I lost all the stuff on my computer, my business would be seriously debilitated for several weeks if not months or years.

So why haven’t I done anything about this yet? I’ve looked into backing up my computer data but each time I did it quickly turned into a Pandora’s Box of technological questions I couldn’t answer and exorbitant expense. First of all, more than one computer guy has told me that “All you need to do is” and then describes a multi-step process completely outside the realm of probability. Secondly, when I first looked into online data backup in 2003, it cost about $100 a month. $1200 a year made that impractical backup process sound reasonable; but still, I didn’t do it.

So after I cleaned out my office, I researched “reviews of online back up systems” and came across a very helpful article on InformationWeek called “Review: Five Online Backup Services Keep Your Data Safe.” In the article, they describe five different online backup systems tested by someone who knows what they’re doing. I thought I was going to go for Carbonite but after reading about Mozy, I tried them out.

Carbonite might be perfectly good but I’m pretty happy with Mozy. Two things really stood out with Mozy. First, their phone support was excellent. I called twice about separate issues and each time I didn’t have to wait more than a minute to talk to someone who was very helpful and treated me like I was a sentient human being. Each time, they stayed on the line while I figured things out and even anticipated future issues and offered solutions to potential problems I might have. Second, I really like that the Mozy online back up system scanned my computer and created a suggested list of folders I would probably want to back up. I didn’t have to figure out what to back up; they did.

Beware: purchasing and setting up an online backup system is not the same as buying a book on Amazon. It’s definitely more involved but it’s not rocket science. If you’re fairly comfortable with buying things online, aren’t in a rush, and understand how folders work on your computer, you can do it. If you feel like an internet newbie, you might want to do this with a more tech savvy person handy so they can help you answer some questions and configure the set up process.

Ready to give online back up a try? Here are a couple of tips to help streamline the process:

• Be sure to check how big your folders are. When I purchased my plan, I thought 2 GB of space would be enough. Little did I realize that the folders I wanted to back up were closer to 16 GB! (Here’s how to check your folder size: Assuming you have a PC, right click on the folder, then click on Properties, and then select the General tab.)
• It’s certainly not a requirement but you also might want to clean up the files on your computer first. I didn’t realize that I had a bunch of music files I didn’t want that where taking up a bunch of space.
• Music files and pictures are WAY bigger files than your Word docs, spreadsheets or PDF files so if you’re looking to reduce files, clean those out first.
• Don’t forget to clean out your email! If you’re one of those people who pride yourself on keeping every email you ever received, get over it. There’s a good chance your Outlook file is going to be pretty big. My general rule of thumb is to delete emails older than a year unless they relate to financial stuff or important decisions made by clients.

I got the most obnoxious SPAM email this weekend. It wasn’t the product they were pushing that was so offensive. It was the statement at the end of the email that started with a claim that if I were getting this email, I signed up to receive it (which I most certainly did not because I couldn’t care less about another “make money at home opportunity”) and ended with “Any person who make a false report of alleged spam IS GUILTY OF BOTH FRAUD AND A CIVIL CRIME.” (The emphasis is theirs.)

That made me mad. Don’t send me SPAM and then make vague threats about being guilty of fraud and civil crime if I complain. So I decided to do something about it.

The email was supposedly from mybizathome@gmail.com. Hmmm. Sending an email from an address that is obviously not your regular email address. Now that doesn’t look spammy at all! When I looked at the email header information* I could tell that the spammer was spoofing this email address because it didn’t come from Google’s mail server but from an Earthlink mail server. (Spoofing is when a sender hides the real email address their sending the message from and makes it look like it’s coming from another and is a huge red flag that the email is spam.)

Fortunately, there are forces of good on the internet as well as bad. So, I went over to SpamCop.net, created an account and filed a complaint. Spamcop is a free service that figures out the origin of an email and sends a report to the relevant ISP. They sent my complaint to Earthlink’s network administrators and the whole thing only took a few minutes. Will this guy get shut down because of it? Probably not. But if enough people complain he might. At the very least I feel a lot better for having done something about it.

*Email Header Information

1. Click on the email to highlight it but don’t open it.
   Then right click on the message.
   It will pull up a screen that should look something like this:

This information in the box I’ve highlighted is the information you will need when making a spam complaint.

Tom Pick of Web Market Central tagged me to create a list of my biggest influencers. It was fun to write and made me cry. (Okay. That's not exactly hard to do. I'm kinda leaky.) This list is in order of how long I’ve known the person, not in order of importance.

Grandma Ruby
I had a pretty chaotic childhood but my sister and I could always rely on Grandma Ruby to be there. She and grandpa would show up at our house every other Friday at 5:00 and take us for the weekend. Those visits were the one stable thing we could count on growing up. Grandma Ruby was born on a farm in Kansas and was a young adult during the depression. She’s always lived simply and enjoyed what she had. She’s also embraced aging. Because of her example, I couldn’t imagine doing all those silly things women do to “fight the aging process.” I’m too busy enjoying life to waste the mental energy on that stuff.

Pop (aka my step dad)
I am the first person in my biological family to graduate college and oddly enough, that’s because of my step dad. He graduated high school and got a scholarship to MIT when he was 16. He also did ABD (all but dissertation) PhD work at UC Berkeley. Fortunately he married my mom when I was pretty young and set the expectation that I would graduate from college. I don’t think he ever said “You HAVE TO graduate from college!” it was just a forgone conclusion. I doubt I would have graduated college if he hadn’t come into our lives.

My Pop’s also the most successful entrepreneur I’ve ever known. He’s worked incredibly hard for over 30 years to be successful and watching him made me feel like it was possible for me to do what I love and be successful too. Last but not least, he’s the most generous person I know. He spends his money on quality time with his family. I’ve seen the joy it’s brought him to help out deserving people and if I ever get rich, that’s what I want to do with my money too.

Master Lloyd Francis
I didn’t realize it at the time but studying a martial art in my early twenties was about the best thing I could have done to build the self confidence I would need as an adult. Master Francis literally taught me how to take a hit and not cry. As a result, I am a much less fearful person than I would have been otherwise. Also, starting out as white belt, then going through the various levels to black belt taught me not to get complacent. It taught me that if you want to make progress in life you have to get used to feeling like a beginner and getting your ass kicked for a while.

Carol Proudfoot-Edgar
I’ve been a student of Native American Shamanism for about 20 years now and Carol has been my teacher for most of those years. Shamanism is not something I talk much about because I don’t want people to assume I’m a “woo-woo” person and to me, a spiritual practice is a very personal thing not to be discussed lightly. But I have to mention it here because I can’t even begin to enumerate the lessons I’ve learned in my work with Carol that have made me a better person. Two major lessons come to mind. First, I now know that the answers I seek are within me. I don’t need external things or a mediary to have a connection and dialogue with God/Spirit. Second, I KNOW Spirit has my best interest at heart and is looking out for me. That doesn’t mean life is easy and pain free. It means that if I chose to access it, I have the strength to survive and thrive.

Arati Prabhakar, PhD
Arati (pronounced “Arthee”) was my last boss in the corporate world. I was her Executive Assistant when she was the CEO of Interval Research. She was an amazing example of how a woman could be extremely smart (She was appointed as the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology by President Clinton.), tough, compassionate and feminine all at the same time. She showed me that it is possible to balance a demanding career and a family. Arati was CEO at a very stressful and chaotic time but she never let them see her sweat and she never lost her cool.

Kathie Nelson, Connectworks
I met Kathie in the closing minutes of a Robert Middleton seminar. In hindsight, it was one of those things that at the time seem minor but turn out to be a touchstone event in your life. It’s not an overstatement to say I would not be in business if it weren’t for Kathie. She’s helped me more than anyone else to build my business. Heck, she even came up with the name eMarketing Strategist! Kathie is the most focused person I know. She has built a successful business while overcoming events that would have wiped out a weaker person. Kathie is also adept at seeing the positive in a potentially negative situation. She’s taught me that by asking myself “How do I want to see this?” I can take a potentially negative situation and turn it into a positive situation. I often find myself asking “What would Kathie do?”

eNewsletters get a bum rap these days. As blogs have become more popular, I see more and more on the internet about how much better blogs are than eNewsletters. I hear things like “Anyone can add a blog post and you don’t have to know HTML to do it.” and “You can add a blog post whenever inspiration strikes.” But just because adding to a blog is easier than sending a eNewsletter doesn’t make them better. Here’s why I think the predicted demise of the eNewsletter is greatly exaggerated.

It all Boils Down to Your Target Market(s)
The debate between eNewsletters and blogs boils down to knowing your target market and what they are comfortable with. For example, my clients and prospects are corporate executives and small business owners. They tend to be service providers such as coaches, accountants and lawyers. Since it’s my job to help them connect with their clients via the internet, I have to know just as much about their target markets as they do.

One thing I can safely say about my clients and their clients is that they tend to use the internet in similar ways. They do not consider themselves to be “technology savvy.” They are not early adopters of technologies and don’t care to be. They’re too busy running their business to spend time diddling around on the internet. In general, they prefer to stick with what is currently working for them and email works for them. Signing up for an eNewsletter is a process they are comfortable with. They only have to make that decision one time and they are on your list until they unsubscribe.

Most of my clients find their clients by face-to-face networking, speaking engagements and professional conferences. It is a rare case when they get a client from the internet. The main benefit to them of having a website, blog and eNewsletter is to stay in front of prospects and build the perception of being an expert in their industry. As a result, I advise my clients when networking face-to-face to ask the person they are talking to if they would like to receive their eNewsletter. If they are asking the prospect questions about the issues they are facing instead of babbling on about what they do, it can seem very natural. I have several clients who have gotten the majority of their subscribers from doing this. Somehow, asking people to sign up for an RSS feed of your blog doesn’t seem like it would work nearly as well.

Multiple Target Markets
Another benefit of eNewsletters is that you can control who gets what content. For instance, I have a client who hosts local networking events in addition to selling informational products and teleclasses on her website. Obviously people outside her geographic area are not going to be interested in information about her face-to-face networking events. So, she has two lists on her eNewsletter sign up form to accommodate these different groups. She sends to networking events to the local people and her informational eNewsletter to everybody. You can’t break down content this way with a blog.

Push vs. Pull Technologies
The main difference between eNewsletters and blogs is how the recipient receives the information. An eNewsletters is a “push technology” while a blog is most commonly used as a “pull technology.” With an eNewsletter, you are in charge of when they receive it; while with a blog, they are in charge of when they read it. Yes, people can easily delete your newsletter email but it’s even easier not to visit your blog. Personally, I prefer to send people content than wait for them to find it

Sure, a blog can be a push technology too if your readers sign up for the blog’s RSS feed. However, few people know what an RSS feed is, how to sign up for it, how to use a blog aggregator and then remember to check the aggregator regularly. For my clients and their clients, it’s just too high a bar to jump over. It’s far easier to sign up for a eNewsletter. (I know. It is now possible to sign up to receive blog posts via email but in my experience far fewer choose this option than signing up for an eNewsletter.)

Internet User Does Not Equal Blogger
The proponents of blogs over eNewsletters tend to assume that everyone else is on the “Blog Bandwagon” too. They seem to think that everyone loves to spend hours poking around on the internet to see what others are saying. They don’t realize that while there are millions (if not billions) of people on the internet, only a fraction of those people care about blogs at all.

So What if Anyone Can write a Blog?
The #1 claim to fame for blogs is that anyone can set one up and add posts to it. So what? If all you do is write blog posts, you quickly realize that you’re talking to yourself. If the purpose of your blog is to make connections and ultimately get clients, this is a huge waste of time. What the Blog Gurus don’t tell you is that writing content is only half the battle. You also have to put just as much effort into attracting readers. Since most people have no idea how to do that, they have to hire someone to help them publicize their blog and build readership which kind of negates the benefit of being able to do it yourself. (Plus, how many of us have time to write a blog post twice a week?)

Beyond Information Overload
Another argument I see against eNewsletters is the claim that subscription rates are down. The Blog Bandwagon assumption is that as blogs become more popular, eNewsletters become less popular. This is an erroneous assumption about cause and effect. I think the decrease in subscription rates has more to do with the quality of eNewsletter content.

For the first time in human history we live in an age of too much information. Where the challenge used to be in finding information, today’s challenge is to sort through it all, figure out what’s important and what to do with it. In my experience, popular eNewsletters not only provide pertinent information, they also tell the reader why they should care and what to do with it. General trends about subscription rates are not your problem and should not deter you from having an eNewsletter. If you provide quality information, you will get more subscribers.

It’s Not an Either/Or Situation
I realize I sound like I’m coming down on blogs but I’m not. I really enjoy working on my blog and it has made me a better writer. Because of my blog, I have made professional connections I wouldn’t have made otherwise. I also find that writing for my blog generates ideas for eNewsletter articles and articles I can submit to other publications.

My purpose in writing this article is to help you make the decision that’s right for you when deciding whether to have an eNewsletter, blog or both. The most important criteria in this decision has to be who is your reader and what are they willing to do to get your content.

I’m a big fan of reading and commenting on other blogs as a way to network online with an eye toward building readership for your own blog. While blogs on technology and politics abound, it’s tough to find good business blogs; especially ones with a large enough readership to expect that your target audiences might actually be reading them.

It’s been my experience that the best place to find business blogs is not the blog directories but the websites of major newspapers and magazines. It makes sense. We’ve all heard the stories about how circulation numbers are down. I can’t think of a better way to stay relevant. Not only are newspapers and magazines finding and reporting the news, they are using blogs to enable readers to create more content by participating in the process.

So, with this in mind, I’ve started compiling the following list of good business blogs my coaching and consulting clients can reasonably hope their target audiences are reading.

Got a recommendation? Let me know! I'd be glad to add it to the Squidoo Lens I'm creating on business blogs.

NY Times: Floyd Norris – Notions on High and Low Finance
http://norris.blogs.nytimes.com/

International Herald Tribune: Daniel Altman - Managing Globalization
http://blogs.iht.com/tribtalk/business/globalization/

The Big Picture
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/

White Collar Crime Blog
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/whitecollarcrime_blog/

Washington Post – Small Business blog
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/small-business/

Jeff Matthews Is Not Making This Up
http://jeffmatthewsisnotmakingthisup.blogspot.com/
One of the few blogs I’ve read where every post is great!

Shifting Careers
http://shiftingcareers.blogs.nytimes.com/

Entrepreneur Magazine Blog
http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/index.html

Fast Company Blog
http://blog.fastcompany.com/
(Be sure to peruse their extensive blog roll.)

In a recent issue of High Rankings Advisor, Jill Whelan answered a question from a reader who was worried about potential ramifications from changing the page names of his company website. He was changing them so they would include keywords in the name in the expectation that keywords in the URL’s would improve the website’s rankings.

(For those of you new to search engine optimization, DO NOT change the page names of your website without consulting a professional. It is not a decision to take lightly. It would be the same as if you changed your phone number on a whim and didn’t tell anyone. That would make it tough for clients and prospects to find you wouldn’t it?)

In Jill’s reply she cautioned the reader against it for several reasons most of which boiled down to her belief that the perceived benefits of keywords in page names were actually due to other factors that got ascribed to the new page names. I think the most valid point she makes is that although web pages in the top of the search results often have key words in the page name, someone is intentionally trying to get that page to rank well and are probably doing many things to improve its rankings.

Now I’m not entirely sure I agree with her but Jill is a well respected expert in SEO so I definitely have to give her opinion a lot of credence. One thing I did learn from the post was that if you’re going to use keywords in your page names, separate them with hyphens instead of underscores. Rats. I’ve been using underscores. I think they make the page name easier to read but apparently Google doesn’t read an underscore as a word separator but they do with hyphens. Oh well, what Google wants, Google gets.

I recently got a Zune (Microsoft's version of the iPod.) and I really like it. Being a long time NPR listener, I've heard about Audible for downloading audio files and decided to try it out. They have a one month free trial. (Or so they make it sound. Read the fine print.)

First Red Flag
Audible required a credit card for this "free" offer. They're hardly the first company to do this but it still says to me, "We're going to try to get every penny we can out of you. Please forget when you signed up for this service."

Second Red Flag
In order to get the book I wanted, I had to download special software to download the book. That's baloney. You shouldn't need special software to download an MP3 file. (I've already got all the usual programs used for downloading audio files.)

Third Red Flag
I wasn't downloading an MP3 file or any other commonly used file type. I was downloading a file type proprietary to Audible. They do this so they can control what you do with your purchase.

Fourth Red Flag
Once I installed their special software and then downloaded the file I wanted, I was asked what device I wanted to download it to. My new Zune was not one of the options on their list. Granted, a Zune isn't an iPod but it's made by Microsoft for heaven's sake! There are more than five of them out there!

I'm not going to describe how I finally got my "free" download onto my Zune. What's important is that it took another hour and a half to do.

The Final Straw
Since it required an advanced degree to download files from Audible to my Zune, I obviously wanted to cancel my account. Once I logged in and re-confirmed my password (Fortunately I keep track of passwords because they didn't send it to me when I created my account.) I was able to find the directions for canceling my account. In the cancellation process, I was asked why I was canceling my account. The first time I selected "unhappy with service." I was then sent to a screen telling me to call an 800 number during East Coast business hours to cancel my account. I then selected "technical issue" as the reason for canceling my account. I got the same screen. On the third try, I selected "financial" as the reason for canceling my account. I was then taken to a screen offering me a reduced rate for the next three months. I had to decline that offer to actually close my account.

I don't know what Super Genius thought is up but they need to be fired. This is no way to build a business. A service I really wanted to like, I now hate. And now I'm telling you about it. That's not good for business.

P.S. I sent Audible customer support and email about this experience. If I hear back f rom them, I'll let you know.

P.P.S. The next day I got a very nice reply from an Audible customer service rep letting me know that she personally didn't know that it was so difficult to cancel your account. She was going to bring it up to her supervisor. I wanted to send her a reply but noticed that they Reply To email address was a generic email address and probably wouldn't have gotten to her which is another pet peeve I have about big company customer service departments. It's kind of hard to build rapport when your customers have to talk to a different person each time the contact you about the same problem.

If you've read my artilce about Google Alerts, you know that I've got alerts set up for my name and business name. A few days ago I got an alert directing me to Tom Pick's Web Market Central blog. His post was about the Top 100 Social Media & Social Networking Blogs for 2007 according to VirtualHosting.com's blog. Although mine didn't make the list, Tom was kind enough to suggest that maybe it should have.

Thanks Tom. Right back at'cha!

The Newbiew Guide to Social Networking - This is a good primer on social networking. It does a good job describing how to find niche social networks and things to consider when setting up your account.

The Blogger’s Guide to SEO - I don't agree with everything they say in this guide (sucha s telling you not to use a service like Blogger) but it does give you good info for how to think of your blog from an SEO perspective.

SEO Digger - With this SEO tool you can find out for which keywords your site ranks high enough to be in Google Top 20. You can analyze your own sites as well as sites of your competition. The only problem is that you can't tell it which key words to search for.

Tips for Using Digg - I'm doing reserach for an article on social media and came across this video on SEOmoz. I had to watch it several times to understand the points Matt makes but it's worth the effort.

No matter how much we wish it were true, you can’t just hang out a shingle and wait for clients to show up. Yes, it’s anxiety provoking but in order to find clients you have to network face-to-face. Even if there isn’t an entrance fee, networking isn’t free. At the very least it costs you time; the time in attending the event and the time in preparation. So when attending a face-to-face networking event you wouldn’t put on your best suit, get a haircut, make sure you’ve got your business cards, practice your elevator speech – and then go stand in the corner. So why do you do it on the internet?

You don’t think you do that, eh? I bet you put dozens of hours and hundreds if not thousands of dollars into your website. Then when that didn’t get your phone ringing, you spent more time and money on search engine optimization, a newsletter and maybe a blog. Phone ringing yet? If it is, it’s probably not enough to cover the expense of all that work.

Maybe you’ve come to the conclusion that you can’t find clients via the internet. That’s not true. The reason why you “can’t” find clients via the internet is that you’re lurking in the background.

You Are a Wall Flower.

Don’t think you’re a wall flower? Let’s start by looking at your blog. (This example could apply to your website and your newsletter too.) Here’s the litmus test: of the two questions below, which did you spend more time thinking about?
What will I write about?
How will I get people to read this?

If you spent more time on the first question, you are a wall flower. It’s easy to do. You spend more time thinking about infrastructure than connecting. You ask yourself: What blogging system or newsletter system will I use? When will I post to my blog or send my newsletter? What will I say? How does it look?

Not that these questions aren’t important, but in these questions you have focused on what you can directly control instead of what seems nebulous i.e. getting people to read your blog, sign up for your newsletter or visit your website. That’s only half the equation.

“If You Build It They Will Come” Only Applies to the Movies

Yes. You have to build a website, blog and newsletter. But, that’s not enough. You have to think about “Who do I want to read this?” and “How do I get them here?” The answers to those questions are longer than I fit in this post. But you can start to answer those questions by asking yourself “Where does my target market hang out on the internet?” Then go there. Really. It’s that easy. Stop being a wall flower and go say “Hi.” If you can do it in person, you can do it on the internet.

I live in a house built in 1935. It was built for mail sent in 1935. My mailbox is a hole in the wall next to my front door that takes a sharp downward turn. It’s great for expending expensive heat and terrible for accepting mail. My magazines get mangled and my important mail winds up hanging in the breeze waiting for anyone who wants it.

Now that the Holiday Season is approaching, I know the mail hole is going to get really bad. I do most of my shopping online. Unfortunately retailers assume that because I buy things online I buy from catalogs. I don’t. But these “savvy” retailers send me catalogs which clog up my 1935 mail box.

So, Guy Kawasaki, I’m sorry you had two hours to kill in the Monterrey Airport, but you’ve probably saved my sanity this holiday season with your mention of www.CatalogChoice.org/. I signed up for it. It was easy. And now I won’t have to put these catalogs in the recycling pile.

I'm working on an article about blog promotion and needed a definition of "social media" so of course I looked it up on Wikipedia where I found the following message:

So, if you're an expert on social media, you might want to sign up to be a Wikipedia editor. (Personally, I wouldn't want to paint such a big target on my back but maybe you're braver than me!)

It seems like every service professional has either written a book or is planning to write a book. They’ve heard time and again that writing a book will build credibility and attract new clients. And increasingly, they are turning to self-publishing or print-on-demand as a way to publish their book.

It seems to me that professionals turn to alternative types of publishing because it’s less intimating than the traditional publishing process. When you self publish you don’t have to write a book proposal, you don’t have to pitch your book and you don’t have to deal with rejection. However, there are real drawbacks to self publishing you need to consider before you inadvertently waste all the hard work that goes into writing a book.

Mike Schultz of “The Service Insider Blog” has an excellent article “The Self Publishing Fascination” that includes points to consider about self publishing. He also writes about at what sales point you can expect various business benefits. I strongly recommend reading this article if you are considering writing a book.

When RainToday published my article "How to Blog Without Having a Blog” earlier this month, they requested a few edits and called it “Using Blogs to Attract Attention”. Prior to publication, the editor asked me to address the question of whether or not links in blog comments help your website’s rankings.

I posted the question to a trusted SEO forum and while I didn’t get a definitive answer, no one said “No. They don’t count.” So in the article I made the claim “You can improve your website’s rankings with links from blogs.” My reasoning was that when you either put a link in your comment or put your domain name in your signature, the links will be counted by the search engines. It seems reasonable, right? A link to your website counts as a link to the search engines. That’s where I was wrong.

I should have realized that the search engine spammers had already thought of this, abused the hell out of it and Google had to put a stop to it. To prevent “comment spam” Google uses the “no follow” tag. The “no follow” tag tells the search engine spider not to follow a link which prevents the search engine from counting the link toward a website’s rank. So while humans can click on the links, they don’t help your website’s rankings after all.

It’s not all bad news though. Links in the blog post still count; just not the links in the comments. Also, humans can still click on the links and wind up on your website which is the ultimate purpose of SEO after all. In the quest for better rankings, we tend to lose sight of the fact that SEO is not an end in itself. The purpose of SEO is to get visitors to your website. It doesn’t matter if they got from doing a search on Google or if they got there from a blog as long as they get there.

I'm testing out www.BlogRolling.com to see if it really is an easy way to add blogs and websites to my blogroll and I came across the BlogRolling.com Hot 500. This is a list of the 500 most linked to by other BlogRoll.com members.

Check it out if you’re interested in seeing what others are reading. Keep in mind this is not a list of the 500 blogs on the internet; just the blogs most often linked to by other BlogRolling.com members.

Earlier this week I had the great pleasure of attending a lecture on personal branding by Thom Walters of Coraggio Group. Mr. Walters, formerly of Wieden & Kennedy, has worked with several Fortune 500 companies on building and promoting their brand.

I came to the lecture skeptical about the whole concept of branding. The landscape is littered with failed attempts to influence brand and it seemed to me that controlling or driving brand is akin to pushing the river. You can try but you’re just going to get all wet. Mr. Walters’ lecture was the first time I had a sense that maybe it is possible to build and influence brand in a way that actually works. More about that later.

At the beginning of his speech, Mr. Walters mentioned that he was working on book. By the end of the speech I was so excited to learn more that I just couldn’t wait a year for the book to come out. I wanted to explore these ideas right now! After the lecture, I waited around to talk to him and when I got the chance I suggested he start a blog about branding while he was working on the book. Fortunately, he liked the idea and I’m crossing my fingers that he actually does it.

Turning a blog into a book is not a new idea. You just have to do a Google search on “turning a blog into a book” to find several programs ready to show you how to do it. Considering the content of many blogs, that’s a scary idea. The internet does not need more useless content. However, there is at least one example of a blog that became a book that is worth knowing about and learning from.

The Long Tail – a Book that Started as a Blog

The book “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson started out as an article in Wired magazine. Mr. Anderson started his blog The Long Tail when he began writing the book. If you’re not familiar with the book, here’s a brief description from the blog:

“The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.”

I doubt Mr. Anderson realized what an important component of writing the book the blog would become. As he wrote the book, he posted sections on the blog and solicited feedback about it. Since the theory of the book is based on some pretty heady science and is a new theory in need of testing, I’m sure the feedback he got helped strengthen the content and make it more robust. Readers also connected him with sources and information he might not have found on his own.

Another equally important way the blog helped is that Mr. Anderson was able to build an audience ready to buy the book when it came out. I know several published authors who had a painful learning experience when they realize the publisher expected them to handle the bulk of the marketing. It takes months if not years to build an audience and having one in place when the book comes out can profoundly impact sales.


Did You Know There’s an Award for Blogs that Became a Book?

Something I learned while researching other books that started as a blog is that there is now an award for such books called the Blooker Awards . I’m not familiar with any of this year’s winners but if you’re considering turning your blog into a book, you might find some inspiration.

There are hundreds of companies doing search engine optimization; many of which are on the up-and-up. However, because the industry is so competitive, many make guarantees about results that sound good but are often of little or no value. They use linguistic smoke and mirrors to make it sound like you’re getting a good deal but in reality they are doing very little for the money they are charging you. So how do you tell a valuable guarantee from a useless one with out having to become an expert in search engine optimization?

Today’s issue of the RainMaker Report has a good article “Leprechaun Repellent And Other Meaningless SEO Guarantees,” by Scott Buresh of Medium Blue Search Engine Marketing, that tells you what to look for when evaluating the guarantees made by search engine companies.

The one point I would add to the article is about local versus national search engine optimization. My sister owns a tattoo shop in San Francisco and she recently got a sales call from a scammy SEO company. They claimed they would get her top rakings for phrases like "tattoo shop." Sounds good right? Wrong! Her shop is in San Francisco. Why should she pay hundreds of dollars every month to rank #1 for "tattoo shop" across the country? It’s not like people in New York or Boston are going to fly across the country to go to her shop. For a fraction of what this company was going to charge her, she could rank well for “tattoo shop San Francisco” which is much more likely to drive qualified traffic to her website and her business than the general phrase “tattoo shop.”

In my travels on the Net today, I came across a very good article about podcasting called "The Art & Science of Podcasting". Podcasting might seem too cutting edge right now but I'm willing to bet many of you will be seriously considering giving it a try in the next few years.

I’ve been looking for an inexpensive online shopping cart for clients who want to sell ebooks and accept payment for workshops and seminars via their websites. Sure, you can install a shopping cart on a website but that costs hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars and just isn’t a practical solution for most small businesses. Additionally, you have to have a merchant account which is complicated and time consuming to set up. So what options do you have if you’re just testing the waters of selling informational products online?

Paypal looked promising at first because you don’t need to have a merchant account to use it. However, it’s got a major drawback. You can’t customize the message the purchaser receives once they’ve completed their order which means you can’t automatically deliver the ebook. You have to do it manually order-by-order. Web based shopping carts such as 1Shoppingcart.com enable you to automatically deliver ebooks but it starts at $50 a month and you have to have a merchant account to use it.

I mentioned my dilemma to Franz Mura, the owner of Concrete CMS, and he suggested I check out the Google shopping cart. My first reaction was “What?! Google has a shopping cart?”

I’d heard about Google Checkout but I hadn’t heard that Google had a shopping cart. Google Checkout is geared toward shoppers. It enables them to store their purchasing info and have one-click check out capabilities.

Alas, it was too good to be true. Google shopping cart doesn’t appear to be coming any time soon. There was a flurry of blog posts about Google trying to take a bite out of Paypal’s business in June of 2006 but there hasn’t been any news since.

See these blogs posts for the full story:
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060612-100806
http://business2.blogs.com/business2blog/2006/06/google_adds_a_s.html

I sure hope Google launches Gbuy because Paypal doesn’t get what an opportunity they’re missing in going after the information products line of business.

Got a suggestion? I’m all ears! If I wind up using it, I’ll donate $50 to your favorite charity.

Need a reminder why the direct approach is less likely to make you look like a jerk? Check out www.PassiveAggressiveNotes.com for inspiration.