Biznology

Photo credit: Wikipedia

A few numbers for your consideration:

• 80% of visitors to a website begin by typing keywords in the query box of a search engine
• 42% click on the website in the #1 position on the search page
• 90% click a website on the first page

These facts prove, if your brand is on the internet, a high rank on the search engines is a requirement to generate business. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a website by remaining high on the list of results returned by a search engine. It is the single, most measurable, profitable and predictable activity a business can pursue in digital marketing. Many are fooled because they believe, to get to a top rank, you need to know the right tools, tricks and people. You don’t have to be one of those getting fooled. Read the remainder of this entry »

Photo credit: ayalan

Is your internal social business platform shaping up to become just a slightly better intranet or a good-looking SharePoint site? Is most of your content held in private communities? Are your online conversations happening predominantly in the form of direct messages or private discussions? Are status updates an under-utilized resource in your organization? If that’s the way your social business platform is being rolled out, you may have unknowingly become a hostage of deeply ingrained mental models, shaped by the use of paper, email and shared files, or just became the last victim of the faster horse syndrome.

Read the remainder of this entry »

Online reputation is a marathon and not a sprint. One thing I have learned over time is that you cannot treat your online reputation like a barn-raising — you can’t construct an entire online reputation in a long weekend by just getting “all hands on deck,” throwing money, availability, strong shoulders, and resources at it all at once; rather, it’s more like building a wooden boat from scratch — you can spend a weekend designing it, sourcing your materials, and collecting all your tools, but some things take time; and, in boat-building, some things take longer than others (stains and waterproofing take time to dry, bending and curving and shaping wood also requires wetting and careful molding).

Read the remainder of this entry »

I have spent years blogging forth everything I know about online brand promotion in the form of social media marketing and digital PR; now, I will be focusing primarily on online brand protection in the form of online reputation management and online privacy protection.

As some of you may know, I recently onboarded as Team Lead, Special Projects, over at Reputation.com. While 20% of my practice at my last agency included ORM, 100% of my world at Reputation.com is focused on defending the reputations of individuals and businesses from the mad proliferation of online databases rife with intimate personal details and search engines chock full of the spore of what trolls and haters have left behind. Read the remainder of this entry »

Photo credit: Wikipedia

If you try to keep up with the Internet and social media marketing industry throughout the week, you already know that there is too much information for people to ingest let alone digest (that is unless you don’t have a job or a family or hobbies or a life in general). People like to talk about signal to noise ratios which sounds really cool but if you would like to hear it in layman’s terms I’ll spell it out for you. Most of what passes as news these days is C-R-A-P. I should know, I add to it as the managing editor of Marketing Pilgrim. I try not to, but every day I get caught up in passing things along to my readers that are really a distraction and don’t do anything to help them understand Internet and social media marketing better or, even more importantly, apply it to their business. Guilty as charged but I am trying to make it better. Read the remainder of this entry »