websense

In the last several years Social media has barged onto the marketing scene in a big way. Some might say it just sneaked up on them when they least expected it – while die hard web users will maintain that it has been a little while in coming. Some platforms have come and gone of course (MySpace, anyone?) – and some have really taken off (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn). With this explosion in the use of social media, many search engine specialists have said that “social media is how marketing is done now”. I have to say, I both agree and disagree.

Social Media can be great for your business – great opportunities for marketing. Awesome with local search, etc. But do I think this is now the one and only way to market your business? No way. Do I think that Search Marketing, in a more general sense, that includes social is the one and only way to market your business? No, but it is the best, most cost effective and targeted way to market your business.

Just a couple of the more salient points in the argument – search engine marketing helps people who are actively looking for your product or service to find it – they don’t have to know who you are first. Social media primarily helps spread the word among friends and followers. Someone has to know who you are first, even if you initiate the relationship – it’s not going to go anywhere if no one knows who you are – so search engine marking needs to be the first priority when planning a marketing budget for your web site. This will lay the ground work for any social media and local search. I mean, if you are gonna use local search, you should probably optimize for it, especially if you are offering goods and services that are locally based, as in they can’t be shipped. If you are a dentist or install pools, you’ll want to optimize for your locality as well as the goods and services you are offering. Once you have that all in place, or concurrently, you’ll want to get into social media to “spread the word” – social media really is the new word of mouth advertising – so you should use it to your advantage as much as possible – and track what is being said about you online. People are much faster to complain about a restaurant or other business via Twitter or Facebook, than they are to promote it – so if you want it to be used to your benefit, make sure you are paying attention to what’s being said so you can rectify any complaints or issues ASAP.

This will continue to be an discussion as social media gets bigger and bigger. Social media has absolutely changed the way every size of business markets – of course it did – it’s cheap, it’s relatively easy, and it gets some results. It’s essentially put marketing in the hands of the consumer – which is great – more power to the consumer – but this is also why you really have to pay attention to reputation management – it’s essential to know what people are saying about you – the good and the bad. Social media has made it essential that you be friendly, outstanding, and special, or you are going to be tweeted about. If you are rude – tweet, tweet. If you are ordinary, no tweet. If you go above and beyond, likely tweet. Gotta go for the above and beyond – and really that makes everyone work harder, try to be nicer – win win, right?

There’s a great article over at Mashable with some tips on how Social Media has changed Marketing, as well as some things you can do to get started. The author recommends getting your employees tweeting and using social media to promote your company. This is a great idea – but I’d keep in mind that it is the first place they will turn sour on you if you part ways in an unfriendly manner – just sayin’. We’ve all seen it happen a time or two.

If you’ve read here for very long, you know that finding talent is always a challenge. We’re lucky to have a couple of great tech schools nearby who churn out some gifted folks, but we are always on the lookout. This week Fox News has an article on three ways to find the talent you need for your business.

The article actually cites Akron, Ohio as potentially having fewer job candidates than other techy hotspots, at least, this was the case a decade ago. As technology has grown, so has the ability to recruit from anywhere in the country. Fortunately for TKG, we have not had to look much past our own backyard for great people. Besides the tech schools in the area, TKG has offered training in the form of the TKG Institute in the past. This gave us the ability to train and hire from a group of people with skill sets we needed – and we knew what they could do, because we taught them how to do it. I think this sort of training is going to become more and more popular. We have an employee who also teaches at the premiere university, Full Sail Academy in Florida. He says that the students know that if you go after a four year degree in any sort of computer related technology, your degree will be outdated by the time you hit your junior year. So, faster, more flexible training needs to be taking place for people to have the skill set they need to find a job when they graduate. I think this is going to mean that at least these particular degree programs are going to have to change and become more flexible – 18 month degrees, and so on. Get in, get the skill set and get to work.

Anyway, back to the article – the steps given are as follows:
1. Making use of the Human Cloud – hiring freelance worker who work from home – programming, copy writing, etc.
2. Become proficient at managing workers both in your office, and potentially, across the country or globe. TKG has employees in several states. We make that work by many methods, but utilizing so many forms of instant communication – texting, messaging, email, etc. enables TKG to have a presence in several states without the need for an actual office in several states.
3. Being a good manager means knowing how to create a relationship with people you might never meet in person. Knowing how to compile enough information from various platforms to make a hire, build trust with that individual, etc. are all going to be skills needed in this new business world.

The article was pretty good – give it a look if you’d like more information. I think what it all boils down to is that employers are going to have to be ready to get creative if they want the best folks working for them. Fortunately, the Web makes it possible to find the best person for your business anywhere in the world. You are no longer constrained to your own backyard…but sometimes, that’s where you find the best folks. My advice? Check the backyard – it will often have everything you need, but if necessary, be ready to branch out. It’s a strange new world out there, but it’s exciting.

It has been noted on several blogs, most notably TechCrunch, that Google seems to be letting go (at least internally)of the term “search”. They have appointed the previously named “search” product group as the “knowledge” product group. Google has seven product groups, and up until now, of course, “Search” had been it’s number one product. The other groups are Advertising, Commerce & Local, Mobile (Android), Social, Chrome and YouTube.

As is widely known, Google’s mission statement so far has been: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. I guess it makes sense that Google’s product is, in more accurate terms is actually knowledge. They are compiling knowledge and making it easier for users to find. I don’t think too many people are going to be switching all the terminology associated with ‘search’ right away, but who knows down the line? Google, for the foreseeable future, owns 70% of the market share in what we now call ‘search’. Perhaps down the road the terminology will switch to Knowledge Engine Optimization – rather than Search Engine Optimization. This change in terminology could have a desirable effect on some site owners. If they know that they need to provide information…i.e. – knowledge, it may make them more likely to produce more relevant sites, copy, etc.

As Michael Arrington from TechCrunch pointed out ‘The problem is, “search” still means “search.”’ Google hasn’t really promoted this change, and they have made some internal personnel changes along with this name change. I think what it gets down to is specifics. Search will always be search, but that will become known as the user end, not the provider end. Google is making these subtle but purposeful changes to let their staff, and later, the public know that they are in the business of providing knowledge. If your site does not provide knowledge, it probably won’t do too well in Google’s “Knowledge” rankings. At least, that’s where this is headed, in my opinion. Not a drastic change in actuality. Google has always maintained that relevance was key. If you have a highly relevant site for your niche, topic or keyphrase, then you will do well. If not, then your site might not rank as well as you would like. Google, in it’s massive book scanning, map making, etc., etc….has been on a knowledge gathering spree all along. Perhaps they have decided that it’s time to drive the focus on making that knowledge as accessible to the public as possible. Or maybe they are just being incredibly arrogant. What’s your call?

Hopefully you’ve been wondering where I’ve been for the last few weeks. As you are probably aware there was a global cyber attack a few weeks ago and millions of sites were affected.

Apparently some evil folks with not enough to keep them occupied found ways to put malicious code onto literally millions of websites. For the most part, this code was spammers trying creative ways to get links to their products or services (to mainly reputable sites whose owners have apparently employed more black hat SEOs – You’d think they’d learn after the whole Overstock/JC Penny fiasco). So, TKG has taken opportunity to greatly improve network security and believe that we have eliminated the threat entirely (at least for us and our clients).

(The following is from the email TKG sent out to clients, letting them know the steps we had taken.)
Here are the steps we’ve taken to ramp up security: (Warning: what follows is a bunch of geek-speak. For those not fluent in “geek,” the short version is that we did a bunch of stuff to make our websites much more secure):
• Put more stringent restrictions on FTP access to the server resources
• Tightened security on “open source” site management (WordPress, Joomla, XCART, OSCommerce)
• Implemented site-by-site security screens for current sites
• Performed file system audits to ensure file access is reduced to it’s most common operational denominator
• Performed data audits to ensure sensitive data is not being maintained on our database system
• Implemented server side application firewalls that evaluate and eliminate known threats
• Changed procedures for incoming site transfers to include audits on all of the above (TKG created sites were already secure)

The TKG blogs, being WordPress blogs, were among the sites affected. And as we say so often around here, TKG’s sites and blogs are like the cobbler’s children – they wait to get new “shoes” until after all client work has been taken care of.

WordPress has holes in it’s programming, and if you know how to work around the programming, you can spam the living daylights out of a blog with Trackbacks and spammy comments. When we got Websense and the other blogs back up, they were immediately SLAMMED with tons of spam – some of which was not family friendly, if you know what I mean. So, we took the blogs down again, added some of our own tweaks to “harden” the blogs and now we should be back in action!

Glad to be back! What have you been up to?

You know that I am not exactly the big promoter of all things Facebook. I think there are other SEO and Social Media marketing strategies that can prove much more beneficial. That being said, I want to take a quick look at Facebook’s new Questions and Answers. It’s kinda cool, and I think there are a variety of ways it can be leveraged to gain some insight into the buying habits of not just your companies current customers, but their friends as well, since the Questions feature is open to all of Facebook, and therefore will be seen by the friends of people who respond to your questions. So, here are a few questions you can ask your customers/fans/friends to gain a little marketing knowledge of your customer base.

1. Regional questions pertaining to local activities and restaurants
a. What’s your favorite night to eat out?
b. What is your favorite restaurant?
c. Do you buy more chicken or beef?
d. Do you buy the same groceries every week, or shop the sales?
e. Would you rather see a baseball game or a football game?

2. Fundamental Brand Questions
a. Coke or Pepsi? (just kidding)
b. Do you buy car parts from the dealer or an auto parts store?
c. Do you still buy CDs, or just download music?
d. Old Navy for price or Gap for quality?

As you can see, the possibilities are endless, and I think have the potential to reveal some pretty good buying trends. Take advantage of the trends with specials and coupons. A restaurant owner may tweak his menu based on responses. Local store owner might have a better real time understanding of food buying trends (look for low heat homogenized milk to be a growing trend in foods).

People are funny. You can watch the Food Network and almost predict what the next big grocery item is going to by, just by what the chefs use in their shows. Very subtle marketing. Now Panko breadcrumbs are everywhere. Same with olive oil. Ten years ago, that was Popeye’s girlfriend’s name. Now many American households just can’t be without the stuff – mine included. Pomegranates seem to be the next big thing. The same thing will start to appear with the FB Questions (just as Twitter has trends, so will Questions). A good marketer will watch these questions for clues to the next big things, but business owners will be able to employ this easily to gain knowledge in real time about customer wants. It will be interesting to watch.

Have you tried out FB Questions yet? What question did you pose?