hugh from gapingvoid says:

blogroll

You can now find a blogroll on the right nav bar. See these five quality blogs:

• Client Service Insights
• Conversation Marketing
• Service Untitled
• Seth Godin’s blog
• Web Strategy by Jeremiah

They are the ones I try to read every day. Enjoy.

Also, by a fluke of Google, for today (and today only?) if you search google for ‘fastest growing blog’ you will find me in the #1 and #2 spot. Sort of neat.

thank you jerman

Jerman Rose is the best teacher I have ever had. There are a few who get close, but over the one and a half years in his class, he was more inspirational and taught me more about what mattered (personal and group communication skills) than anyone else in college.

Then he goes further. He says, call me up anytime you need help. And he means it. I am looking for people to recruit into the Client Services department I am building. Jerman is helping me connect with the people at WSU and the University of Washington who can directly help me find people.

I have no question that he will be happy to help me in a year, or next month. A week ago we sat down for lunch and talked about the business I am in. That 50 minutes of intense advice and discussion- I am trying to think of a value comparison, and I am failing.

How can you leave your clients feeling so good, and keep them feeling so good after the business relationship has ended, that they will keep on ranting and raving about you?

Jerman Rose, teacher and adviser, thank you.

And in case you are wondering, yes, I have tagged this post so, in a week, in should be in the top of google. With the opening line “Jerman Rose is the best teacher I have ever had.” At which point I will send him a link that takes him to the google results page. I am so sappy.

2 blog posts + one week = #1 in google

I posted about the WSU Honors College here and here. I tagged the posts ‘honors college blog.’ Now I am #1 in google for the search ‘honors college blog.’

I called up a professor buddy at the WSU Honors College to draw his attention to it, in case my rankings drop. 2 blog posts is not a firm foundation in any way, shape, or form. But it is a beginning.

How many people search for ‘honors college blog?’ I can tell you right now- almost none.

But those few who do, are a highly targeted audience. What highly targeted audiences exist in your industry that you would love to have the attention of?

Let’s try again. I am going to tag this post ‘tax return analysis.’ I am going to wait one week. Any bets?

Note: this only works if there are not any big players in your space. Tag your post ‘google’ and see if anyone cares. They won’t. But for your highly targeted audience, if no competitors are paying attention, that top space can be yours in one week.

metanews

I blogged a bit ago about how, for Dove, Youtube had a better ROI than the superbowl. I got the info from Mike at Digital Agency.

Mike liked my entry enough to screenshot me.

Now the google page for ‘youtube beats superbowl‘ is 70% owned by the two of us. This is fair how?

think less, make more

What’s a click worth? If you use pay per click advertising, you pay for every click, but that does not mean you know what each click is worth.

Ian comes to the rescue by creating a worksheet where you enter the numbers, and it spits out how much each click is worth.

You need to know what percentage of clicks become leads, and what percentage of leads become sales, and what a sale is worth. Compare that to how much you are spending per click, and you know whether you are making money or not.

news that lasts

How do you write news that keeps you on the first page of Google?

So far, I have written posts on 3 topics that have gotten dramatically more traffic than all the rest. For two of them, they still own good space on google. The third cannot be found on the first 5 pages.

First, I was the first to publish the results of the Puget Sound Business Journal’s list of the 100 Fastest Growing Companies in Washington State. You can find it in google under almost any permutation involving ‘100 fastest growing companies,’ and I provide a list of search terms in this previous post.

I still own the top 3 spots, above the Puget Sound Business Journal itself, and even the 6th spot.

The second topic I talked about that still gets traffic is transferring content from wordpress to blogger, where I own the 3rd and 4th spot.

The third topic is when I posted about the bomb exploding at Paypal. I saved the results page on another computer, so you will have to believe me that I was number 1 in the world for 2 days. Yes, that generates some traffic.

Now, for two of these three topics, I still hold decent search real estate. 3 things have to happen for the news you write to last. You have to a) say something important, b) say it first, and c) blog it appropriately.

Say Something Important
All three topics, fastest growing companies, wordpress vs. blogger, and the paypal bomb were important. But, I did not add a lot of value with my post on the paypal bomb.

On the fastest growing companies, I listed all 100 with their ranks, and then talked about them later. With wordpress vs. blogger, I talked about the issues. With the paypal bomb, I said, look at wikinews. That is not helpful longterm.

Say It First
I was the first (and only) person to post a list of the 100 fastest growing companies for this year. The PSBJ themselves did not publish their own list.

I am far from the first person to talk about wordpress vs. blogger, but I still own real estate because of c).

I was the first person to report the paypal bomb on wordpress and tag it appropriately.

Blog It Appropriately
WordPress gave you tags, now use them right. For the 100 fastest growing companies, look again at the search results above. The top 2 results are in fact a wordpress tag page, not a direct link to my blog. So learn how to tag pages.

For paypal, it was the same deal- I got all the links through tags, not a direct link from google to my blog.

For wordpress, notice in the results above that it is a direct link to my page, but that that requires a very specific search query to get there.

So, to write news that lasts, say something important, say it first, and use tags. If you want to get your name in front of your clients, then write news for them that matters and helps them in their businesses. For example, if your clients would be helped by blogging, then write a post on how to blog better.

how the wsu honors college can increase their visibility: if they can do it, so can you

Promoting an Honors College and selling salt are intimately linked, in that google is prime search real estate. Also, people may search in very specific ways.

I posted yesterday about recruiting for Portent Interactive, where I work. In that post I mentioned the WSU honors college, and I tagged the post with ‘wsu honors,’ ‘wsu honors college,’ and ‘honors college blog.’

Today, one day later, I am result #19 for the search ‘honors college blog.’ And note that this result is straight to my blog, not to a wordpress tag page, as with my high results for ‘100 fastest growing companies Puget Sound Business Journal‘ or similar searches.

Within a day or two I expect my post to appear higher up, and under the wordpress tag page.

Here is the point- 1 day and 1 blog post put the Washington State University Honors College on the second page of google for the ‘honors college blog’ search. As you would expect, I will be tagging this post appropriately. Now what if Kim and Jessica decided to start a regular WSU Honors College blog? They could easily be high in the rankings.

Just by blogging.

Now, that is for ‘honors college blog,’ a fairly specific term. How about this term: ‘honors chemistry.’ Search it. Not a blog on the first page. So if you are an honors college, and you have an honors chemistry class, you could talk about it on a blog and get on the second page at the least, within a few days.

So: salt. Search for ’sea salt.’ Our client Saltworks is number one. Now seach ’salish smoked sea salt.’ That is one heck of a specific search term. And Saltworks owns it, and their ad is on top, and the have a product search.

Combine Honors chemistry, honors college blog, and salish smoked sea salt, and what you get is a clear reason to a) start blogging now and b) go after those specific, rare terms in your blog.

Not sure what terms matter for what you do? Use google’s keyword tool to help you find what people are looking for. I had no idea ‘honors chemistry’ was important till I used their tool.

man burns himself alive in protest of iraq war

Isn’t this what some Chinese monks were doing to protest the Communists? The Wikinews article, and his suicide note.

Yes, there is a very important lesson here for client services, and no, I am not going to cheapen this by expounding on it.

hacking youtube- how to annotate videos

Lifehacker tells us about Mojiti, a program that lets you annotate youtube videos, among others. This should make making your own video ads/commentaries a lot easier.