blogging Archives - Page 3 of 16 by Mark Murnahan

Can You Value Each Blog Post at $10,000?

It takes less than a single minute to find somebody willing to write a blog for under $10 per article. There are thousands of writers begging for business. Not unlike the phenomena that anybody with a camera can be a photographer, it seems that anybody with a computer is an eloquent writer. That’s fine, but with such a low cost to have a blog, it is easy to confuse cost with value.

What is the value of a blog article? There are obviously some variables, right? Do you know the variables, and do you value them appropriately? Some important considerations are the time or money to produce the article, its usefulness to the public, the accuracy and experience of the writer, and the longevity of its circulation. These are easy factors for many people to overlook, and can inspire a lot of confusion about the value of a blog.

When you consider your business efforts, we can all surely agree it is important to stop doing things that do not benefit the company. Doing things that cost the company more than they benefit the company is popular, and we see it every day. When done in enough volume, that kind of math will break even the biggest bank account.

Whether the benefit you seek from a blog is improved customer relations, brand awareness, attracting investors, increased sales, or otherwise; if you spend more money on blogging than its potential benefit, then it is time to stop it! This means blogging is worth some evaluation and serious consideration of the downsides, weighed with the potential benefits. Many companies fail to consider the benefits, and so there should be little wonder why some companies still do not have a blog.

I have written about good reasons to blog, and it is not filled with a bunch of talk about making money, but it does address the importance of value. Many bloggers will agree that it is important to give more value than we take. That absolutely does not mean to imply we should give more value than we receive … and there is the confusing part.

Providing more value than you take is just as simple as providing value. If somebody receives benefit from it, and you have not taken anything from them, except perhaps an email address, you have met this value objective. You gave more than you took, as it should be. At the same time, you have added potential for your own benefit. At least it should happen that way.

Value of a Blog Article From a Longevity Perspective

Many of the best blog articles remain useful for years, and it is why smart bloggers keep them around in a blog archive. Some people like to assume the latest is the greatest, but this is very often not the case at all.

I spend a lot of time preparing each of my blog articles, but I also expect them to perform very well for a long time. It would be easier to just whip out my thought of the moment and keep my fingers crossed, but that would not be worth as much to others, or to me.

I value the average article on my blog at over $10,000. This may sound totally absurd to some people, but only on the surface. If you look a little closer, it makes sense. Of course, the exact amount is between me, some taxation fellas, and my wife. The exact dollar value I place on a blog post is irrelevant for this example, but I’ll explain.

I should add that this is about business blogs, and not blogs about where your family spent their holiday. This is also about blogs, like most, that do not charge a subscription fee.

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In my instance, the math is easier, because I have been here on this Internet a long time, but each of us must begin somewhere. On this particular blog, this is the 77th article I have written in 2011, and the 334th since I re-purposed it in 2008. If I did not believe what I have written in 2011 is worth a minimum return of $770,000 ($10,000 each), I would not have done it. It took a lot of effort, a lot of time, and a lot of experience.

Here’s the part where people often get confused: That’s not just to say these 77 articles of 2011 will yield an immediate return on investment of $770,000 … but they will.

Consider how I look at this. There is an article I wrote about H1 tags on another of my websites. H1 tags are in the programming code of a website, and they are a web page heading. The topic relates directly to my industry, and most people who search for and find that article have an actual need for my services. That particular article has been there for over 10 years, and still consistently receives over 2,000 unique visitors per month from search engines.

Another instance is a little piece I wrote about screen resolution. I wrote an article explaining screen resolution, and also a handy javascript to help users open their website in a browser at different sizes to see how it may look to others. That particular piece receives well over 3,000 visitors per month … every month … for over ten years!

In a more recent instance, I wrote an article titled “How Much Does SEO Cost?” is The Wrong Question. I wrote that one in February 2011, and in the past week alone, I have received enough telephone calls from people who found that article by searching “how much does SEO cost” that I wrote new business proposals totaling over $50,000. Yes, just as a direct result of that single article … this week alone.

These are just a tiny sample to consider, but what about the many other hundreds like them which support them? They are not so shabby either, and each one provides value to readers, and also returns a value to me. Looking at it like this, doesn’t it begin to make sense what the value of an article may become, over time?

I count on each and every article on my blog to return its cost in multiples, and they do. Sometimes the exact dollar value is not obvious at the time you publish something, but if you are doing it well, the value will become clear, in time.

To answer my opening question of “Can You Value Each Blog Post at $10,000?”, my answer is yes! I believe you can, too, if you give it the appropriate effort, usefulness, and longevity.

Blogs Provide Compounded Value

We surely all heard how popular the Internet has become. When it comes to blogging, there is value on top of value. Aside from the value to me as a blog owner, the value to any given subscriber is often far greater than $10,000 if they implement the experience I share freely … even if they don’t pay me a penny. I feel really good about that!

Although many businesses may think of blogs as a burden, or that they must only be for purely altruistic purposes, they are an excellent source of additional business. This holds true for nearly any type of industry. For example, in my job role, this blog is the primary way people get to know what I do, and to discover if they want to hire my services.

Some people who believe that blogs are only for giving away free information and that nobody ever actually receives any business benefit from them may hate me for valuing this article at over $10,000. Some may even think I am evil or conniving for seeking a profit from my hard work. In their mind, it should just be about providing information for free … you know, like it’s a hobby.

I believe in giving away a lot for free, but the fact is that most people cannot implement everything I know by themselves. After all, I do this professionally, day in and day out, and I have done so for many years. Some of those few who do not know everything there is to know about online marketing call me to help them. The value to me of that minuscule few who do become customers is more than $10,000 per instance. So, again … my answer is an emphatic “Yes!”

What about you? Do you think a blog is an altruistic burden? How do you value a blog article? Go ahead … add your thoughts to my blog.

Strategic Marketing Failure: Are You Giving it Up Too Easy?

Good sense tells us to not give it all away upfront. If you kiss on the first date, anticipation often fades, and there may never be a second date. It may get you into their fantasies, or even into their bed, but this will seldom get you into their hearts, where trust and loyalty thrive. I find it easy to apply this to concepts of marketing.

I really believe in giving away a lot of great ideas for free. Sharing useful thought is one of the best reasons to blog. In fact, there should be little wonder why some of the most popular blogs are popular. It is because they are giving away great information that people want.

A free sample is great, but can it go too far? I believe it can, and I think it is likely why there are so many people like my example of “Pete and The Amazing Pee-Pants Pizza Parlor” in my recent article titled “Marketing Clients vs. Crybaby Sissy Bed-Wetters“ who think marketing should be cheap … or free … and easy.

The concern of giving away too much information for free is not limited to my field of marketing. There are a good number of idea-based and information-focused industries where there is a legitimate need to balance enough information to show credibility without inspiring people to do it themselves or shop for a “cheaper” option. Of course, there is always somebody to do it cheaper, but shoppers often forget there is a difference between good and bad in any industry.

There is a line to be drawn between sharing concepts, and giving away the things which should and must be paid for. It is a blurry line for some people. Of course it is very blurry from the client side, but I also find it to be blurry for people on the selling side.

People Understand Value of Items … But Ignore the Value of Information

Information is one of the most valued assets to a company. So how can it be so easy for people to neglect this fact from a buyer’s perspective?

I think of it along the lines of a recent freebie I received from Subway. Subway sent me a $10 gift card to try out their new pulled pork sub. When I used that freebie, I bought more than $10 from them. I’ll go back, too. It was a freebie associated with a promotion through Klout, a company I wrote about recently, and it gave me incentive to walk through Subway’s door, become a more active customer, and potentially bring others.

Since they are giving away tangible goods with a defined cost, people understand they cannot just give away the whole restaurant. When the freebie is something that comes right out of somebody’s thoughts or research, there is a common perception that it does not still have a cost. I guess you could think that way, but when my three kids get hungry because Daddy gave away the whole restaurant, I am inclined to disagree. There is a cost, and there is a point when you have to stop giving everything away. I know that point, and I intend to illustrate it.

Try Asking Somebody Close Enough to Know

When I recently asked my wife for her opinion of a project I am strongly interested in, she said something I guess I should have expected. Her chilling words were “You know the routine, Mark. You give people enough information that they think they know all they need to go shopping for somebody to do it cheaper.”

Of course, I stammer to inject the notion “but they cannot implement it like I can, and they can’t make a meal from a free sample of caviar.” Yes, and I can make that argument until I am blue in the face and holding my breath for the next soul-sucking chance to send another great marketing client to the wolves for a price comparison. It does not change the facts.

You see, I am literally the guy rocket scientists ask when they need a better strategy. They are in an industry that sells flights for over 200 million dollars per seat, and mistakes in their industry are expensive. These are bright people, but social media strategy is not their area of expertise. If I give them a big hunk of brain candy to munch on, it is easy for them to imagine that mister “SuperheroUnderpants” marketing guru in his mom’s basement can do the same job by promoting them on his MySpaceyTwitterBook.

The reality is that far too many of the people I share my brain-samples with use what I give them and go shopping for price. Sure, I can resent that, but it is my own fault. I kiss on the first date, like a sophomore girl hoping to be loved. Actually, I think I do worse than that … I get naked for the whole football team to come and enjoy. I do it all the time, but I am a lot better about it than I used to be. These days, I at least get them to buy me dinner and a movie before I strip myself naked.

I Hate Marketing Marketing!

I love marketing, but I hate selling the services of marketing. I am over-the-top, and almost autistically good at marketing “something else”. I can prove it, and I have earned millions of dollars because of it, but asking me to sell it is like asking to borrow a couple of my teeth.

Yes, marketing is awesome fun, but it feels like a daily trip to the dentist for a colonoscopy to promote and sell it. This is why I have often explained that When I Go to Hell, They Will Have Me Selling SEO.

I can man-up enough to admit that it actually made my chest hurt as I internalized my wife’s insight, but not because it was insulting or untrue. It was very true, and she went on to remind me about other stunning examples when giving too much killed my hopes. It has not just happened once or twice, either. Somebody attempts to brain-rob me every day, but I stick up for myself these days. It is because I have learned the hard way, and forgone great projects and sent them to SuperheroUnderpants who will work for a case of Red Bull and a pirated copy of the next Nintendo game.

A True Story of Giving Too Much for Free

One such project was with a company where I really felt I belonged. I already felt an emotional attachment to the brand and the people. In fact, I was prepared to uproot my family and move to a different city for them. We were already shopping for schools and homes. I wrote about it in the article titled “99 Percent of Marketing Fails, But Eleanor Can Fly!“ and a follow-up titled “How Good SEO Becomes Great SEO: Feed the Gorillas!” It was the perfect scenario … or so it seemed.

Where the ugly part came in was after I returned from our meeting in Chicago where they had wanted me to bring my vision and build a new marketing crew for them. As I look back, I suspect that even before my plane landed, they were seeking somebody who would try and implement my ideas for a fraction of the salary. They found one, too … but wait for the real kicker!

That “somebody” totally destroyed the campaign, and in fact, destroyed it so badly that it is hard to even describe. Let me give you the quick version. They sent a $70,000 motorcycle and a $5,000 guitar on tour with a Grammy award winning band to promote a giveaway. It was to have a significant social media marketing push behind it, and the company said they were very dedicated to my ideas. They already had a significant investment leading up to it. How significant? They bought the company that made the motorcycle, because they thought it fit well with their brand … the brand that I was to build.

Now get this: By the time they gave away that $75,000 in prizes, their Twitter account had under 350 followers, their Facebook account had about the same, and their YouTube account did not have a single upload. Not one video of the band, the motorcycle, the fans, the guitar … nothing!

They failed, and I know, with mathematics and two decades of very successful experience on my side, that they caused their own demise. Although you could call me guilty for not explaining that great plans fail without implementation and the right crew, I don’t feel guilty. I just feel bad for giving too much for free.

Defining Free vs. Paid Knowledge

Each of us will have ways to define giving away “too much”, but here are a few of mine. I hope they will inspire you to think about yours.

First and foremost … a client only needs to know enough about me to realize that I have sufficient marketing creativity, experience, and talent to make them more successful. Period! If they are unwilling to consume enough of my freebies to realize these things, they will not be the kind of client I can work with, because they will second-guess my advice. That is a true recipe for failure, the likes of which I refuse to be a part of.

Another key is anybody indicating they are still shopping around for price. When that is the case, there are no freebies beyond my blog. If they are looking for price above value, they are not the paying type. Even if they pay, they will stand in their own way. They simply are not ready. They are the ones who search Google for “How much does SEO cost?” (where I am listed on the top), and then email me because they were too rushed to get numbers to actually read the correct answer. If they don’t hire me today, they will come back in a year or two, jaded by the failure I tried to warn them about. Both scenarios are like a bad case of herpes … I don’t put my love there!

If they say they are interested in meeting in person, that is not going to happen without their dollars. I don’t pack bags for free. If somebody needs to shake my hand, they need to pay me for it. They are a buyer, and I am not about to turn them into a looker. There is always a reason to ask me to meet with them, and it always involves custom brain-work. The custom stuff is never free.

I have a long list of things which define what is free versus paid, but I want to know what you think.

Should We Give Away Less Brainflow?

It really isn’t so different from the restaurant or sporting goods store giving away a freebie. It cannot all be free, or the company is not sustainable.

I will never stop giving away free ideas, but those are the ones like the $10 Subway gift card to bring buyers through the door. I give enough that people understand my knowledge, creativity, and credibility. I also do it for the people who need help, but cannot afford to hire my services, and I feel good about that, too. I believe in altruism, but I also recognize that even Mother Teresa, Ghandi, and others do things for well-intentioned but calculated reasons, and that altruism in its purest sense, is not what people told you.

I have learned the hard way. If you are giving away something better than the stuff other people are selling for money, you will damn yourself to lackluster clients if you cannot bring them to understand that there is a lot more where the freebies came from … and it’s for sale!

I know that I’m not alone in this battle. I’ve heard it from many respected others in my line of work. If you can relate to this, I want to hear your stories. I would also love to hear from you about where you draw the line between free ideas and the ideas you count on to buy your lunch.

If you are giving away too much, I’d also be curious to hear how your back feels after sleeping on the couch because you bought into the myth that information is “free”. I’m sleeping in the big bed tonight. Later sucker!

Photo Credit:
Birthday Present by Christopher Matson via Flickr

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Google+ and Other Ways to Avoid Blog Comments

One great benefit of social media is the ability to communicate with others in the format and space they want to communicate. Some people will choose to discuss a topic on Facebook, while others choose LinkedIn, Twitter, Digg, Reddit, Amplify, or a squillion others. Many people will pick a handful of networks to focus their attention, based on their interests or their intended audience, and monitor them vigilantly. Google+ is climbing the ranks of preferred networks very quickly!

Blog readers and writers take note: You probably don’t notice this challenge much from a reader standpoint, but if you are a blogger who is paying attention to where your content is being discussed, you probably see this all the time. Do you ever notice that there are comments in about 37 different contexts spread across a handful of networks, all related to a single blog post?

As a blog article spreads, it is threaded into a lot of places with a lot of different conversations. Although they usually include a link back to the original article, very few of those outside conversations really do a good job of connecting the audience to the central conversation, or vice versa. After all, those comments somewhere else are seldom seen by the people reading the article, so they don’t get the benefit of those other peoples’ thoughts and opinions … and it squelches opportunities for them to network together with those other like-minded people. Sometimes that is a real shame.

It is great when your article is being shared and discussed. It would be foolish to discourage it, but when the conversation … the very genesis of the topic … begins with a blog article, it can also have some downsides. The message can become very muddled, and the conversations often stray far from the original topic. I have seen it a squillion times that the conversations do not even touch on the topic of the original blog article beyond the headline or description.

Again, this can be great in some ways. The evolution of a topic can be fascinating as it is morphed through enough various groups’ brain filters. However, even in the best scenario that it does not lose all of the author’s well-crafted thought provoking intent, this can still lead to a pretty messy challenge for the originator to keep up with the many conversations. When it comes to blogs, either reading them or writing them, those opinions count. Sometimes the best part of a blog article is in the comments that build upon the topic.

Native Blog Comments vs. Off-Blog Comments

When conversations are broken apart, each of the individual discussions will often lose a lot of the best and most well thought out responses from the smartest and most worthwhile participants. Also, as I already mentioned, it significantly discounts many opportunities for others with like minds to network together.

In the end, let’s face it … more people are going to see the original article in its native environment than they will on any given reader’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+ profile. With that in mind, if you really have something to say, you will do the author, yourself, and other readers a much greater service by including your comments on that blog article. Best of all, your comment is usually just as convenient, and can often even be shared in duplicate, with a single click, to your other social networks if you should choose. That way, others can see what you thought of the topic even before they go and read the article.

Some social networks have helped to make accommodations for this challenge, but others still have some work to do. I am hopeful that this will be a part of future Google+ improvements.

An example of a huge leap forward toward connecting blogs with outside conversations was in Facebook comments, which allow for comments to be shared both on the originating blog and on Facebook simultaneously. This is one way I think that Facebook is still whipping Google+ in a huge way, although I expect that to change.

Similarly, Disqus does a fantastic job of connecting conversations across networks, although it could still be better at pulling in off-blog comments with higher accuracy. BackType used to fit this need by bringing in conversations from all over the place, but they kind of wrecked that system in favor of other money-making hopes.

If you are not familiar with the usage and benefits of Facebook comments, there is more about the platform in my earlier article titled “How to Add Facebook Comments to a Blog and Improve Search Ranking“. If you are not familiar with Disqus, you may enjoy the article titled “Why Disqus May Be The Best Social Network of 2011“.

In any case, I think that making a greater connection with those off-blog comments is a responsibility of the blog owner, and should always be taken seriously. There are a lot of ways to monitor those conversations, and none of them are a perfect magic bullet. It takes a lot of attention, but should not be overlooked.

Google+ vs. Blog Comments

Google+ is an excellent platform. I really like it for many reasons, and not the least of which is the high level of interactivity that I have encountered there. It seems that people are really enjoying a lot of conversation on Google+.

Of course, some of that active engagement may be because it is still a bit of a novelty. It could also be that, although it is a much different type of platform, people are seeing it as a chance for a “do-over” by handling it differently than they handled their Twitter or Facebook. Whatever the case, it seems to me that people are using it in great ways, and it is far less spam-riddled and spam-prone than many other networks.

Sadly, Google+ also poses a greater challenge for monitoring and participating in the outside conversations about your topics. I hope it will change, but in the meantime, I think it is worth being aware and attentive to as many as possible.

What Makes Sense to You?

It is an extreme example, but do you ever see a comment on an outside network about a blog article and it shows without a doubt that the person responding did not even give a passing glance at the original context, beyond the headline? It could frustrate the originating author, but for me, I mostly just chock it up to another brainiac trying to sound smart without the will to actually be smart. You know, like reading beyond the headline before replying. Yes, this is an extreme example, but here is something I find to be common: comments directly on a blog will nearly always be more on-topic and more beneficial to the community.

The greatest variable across all of this wonderful technology is you. Nobody is going to tell you how to use a blog, either as a commenter or an author. The best I can hope for is to give you some encouragement … you know, a nudge. Where you take it from there is up to you. In my opinion, as well as my actual usage, I find it beneficial that if I am making a comment about a blog article, I duplicate it with a simple copy and paste from the original article to whatever network I am sharing it on. That is, if that option is not already a part of the blog itself, which it often is.

What do you have to say about this? Go ahead … put it on some other network where nobody but a few of your friends will see it. Otherwise, feel free to join in and stop being so damn elusive. What are you afraid of? These people don’t bite!

P.S. Biters please refrain from biting other respondents … just this once. 😉

Related Articles: You didn’t think this was my first go at an article about blogging, did you? I think these will give you some really good food for thought!

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Confession of a Workaholic and Benefits of Unplugging

Have you ever been told that you work too much, or that your work seems to follow you everywhere? If so, I just want to offer up a thought that it may be because you are doing it wrong. Maybe I’m wrong, but what if I am actually right? Stick around and judge that for yourself.

I “unplugged” myself over the weekend, and it felt great. I spent very little time at a computer, and I only used my cell phone enough to be sure nothing was on fire in my professional life.

I remember times when I would feel guilty for taking a break like that, and I find that sometimes social media emphasizes the “rat race” feeling of having to be everywhere at once. Fortunately for myself and everybody around me, I learned how and why to let go of those guilty feelings.

I generally feel very proud of my work ethic. Doing my job well is important to me, and I know that a lot of other people must feel this way, too. I hope you do. A hazard that is easy to overlook is when you become so engrossed in work that you chase productivity right off a cliff. That is when the term “workaholic” generally applies. What workaholics often do not realize is when it is happening, or when to step back and take a fresh look. Allow me to share some thoughts and experience with you.

What if I Miss an Important Call?

Tell me if this sounds familiar. If you nod your head even once, I hope you have learned when and how to unplug. If not, maybe I can encourage you a bit.

I have been plugged into my job with the latest productivity tools that technology has to offer and remain that way year after year. I have carried smart phones since they first became available, and I have had mobile Internet at my side since its earliest availability. My job has always required it, and delegating the really important tasks to somebody else has often seemed impossible, or marginally possible but terrifying at best.

My example may be a bit extreme, but I know it will resonate with some micro-managers and other workaholics. You see, aside from being a marketing guy, I am also the CEO of a company that provides Internet services to service providers. Since 2000, I have been responsible for more servers operating in more data centers across America, and Internet connectivity to more end-consumers than all but very small number of people. When there are millions of dollars riding on things working perfectly 99.999 percent of the time, somebody has to hold ultimate accountability and make decisions in the event that thousands of websites or Internet connections are affected by a DOS attack or a router going bad. That is usually the guy with chest pains and a death grip on his cell phone.

Even long before that, I remember keeping a “bag phone” no more than a few feet away back in the 1980’s. You know, because a consulting client may have had some brilliant idea to run by me at any minute of the day. Yikes … it has actually been decades now. Time sure can slip by fast when you are running a business, and all that time, I have been just a bit uncomfortable that I may miss an important call.

My willingness to work harder and keep pushing my capabilities against all odds has served me well. I have grown some great companies, and I have had an exciting career. Like any career, it has had its ups and downs. Whenever it seems to become a bit lackluster, I start looking back into my career history to try and find patterns and to figure out what I am doing wrong … or what I am just not doing right.

A common reason I found for the productivity downturns is when I pushed a little too far beyond my optimal productivity and lost focus on the purpose of my career.

I think of it in terms of a Gaussian function … you know, like a bell curve. If you sit at the top of your productivity bell curve, you are doing it right. Pushing beyond that, you quickly enter a point of diminishing returns, and the productivity outcome is no longer worth the effort.

Yes, I am a math geek. Since I am a marketing guy, and a computer programmer on top of that, it should be expected. Don’t worry though, I will not drag you into a mathematical discussion of probability distribution.

Has Somebody Warned You About Workaholism?

Has anybody ever questioned how you keep on doing what you are doing? Maybe you have heard somebody ask “Do you ever sleep?” I have heard this a lot, but I always used to take it as a compliment. What I eventually realized is that it is sometimes better to take it as a caution.

I’ll give you an example. In about 2004, my wife told me that I was working too hard and that I needed to take more time for myself. She encouraged a hobby, so I began taking more time for an old passion of motorcycles. That carried on, and moved me on to my life-long passion for cars. Not just cars, but really fast cars, and racing them.

I took more time to unplug myself just enough to see why I worked so hard in the first place. When it came to the real purpose of my career, it had an emphasis in providing security for my family, and to enjoy some leisure. Realizing it enough to rejuvenate myself with the original passion required me to take a step back and see it as a part of the picture and not the whole picture.

Once I realized the important reasons I was working so hard, things went gangbusters. My business went crazy! Things were better at home, and we had more babies. As crazy as this may seem, each baby gave me a pay raise. It happened because I worked smarter instead of working harder, and I learned the value of balance. Don’t get me wrong, I was still carrying all the technology and productivity tools with me. I have still been on-call 24 hours per day since the 1990’s, but once I realized that my career was just a part of the bigger job of being happy … I got happier!

The power of a refreshed mind, and the power of happiness may seem mythical at times. The common wisdom is that you must keep your nose to the grindstone, walk on fire, and a whole lot of other uncomfortable things. If you really believe it when people tell you these things are the keys to having a successful career, I believe you are doing yourself a disservice. Endurance is extremely important, and unplugging can provide huge benefits. It is not all about how much pain and tragedy you can endure.

Business and Career Require Endurance, But Not a Grindstone!

Having peace in your career, and realizing that it is an endurance race and not a short sprint is a big step toward succeeding. Enjoying what you do, and looking closer at why you are doing it is far more valuable than grinding your nose and burning your feet. I am saying this from experience, and what I truly believe.

In a look-back, I find things I have known for years and told myself I would never forget, but I still seem to forget them somehow. One of them is the wisdom of knowing when to disconnect, and actually having the courage to do it. “Unplugging” can be a great chance to reboot and resume greater productivity, but easy to neglect until later.

I have been taking a closer look at myself and my career history recently. I look at some of the peaks in my own career, and I find that some of the most productive times have been when I realized when to push less. Sometimes the timing did not seem logical, because conventional wisdom says that when you are riding a huge wave, it is the time to surf with all you’ve got. Unconventional, but often more productive wisdom says that if you are not careful, burnout can set in even faster than expected.

My best times ever have come after remembering to relax just a little more and stop punishing myself. It has been a little while since I felt this way, but when I knew it and remembered it, I got happy. In fact, I got happy enough that I was earning more money every week or two than an average American family was per year … all while struggling less, working fewer hours, and enjoying everything a lot more than before.

Maybe you’ve heard the term “hindsight is 20/20”. Of course, that means you can see the past perfectly clearly. I don’t think it is quite that perfect, but it holds a lot of predictive data, along with all of that great stuff we call experience.

I pushed like crazy to build a company to pay me enough to feel satisfied. I kept pushing for as long as I saw continual progress, but then I learned when it was time to unplug, and even face my fears to delegate a few tasks when it was appropriate.

I think I’ll try that again. It was sure more fun than feeling guilty to take in a little leisure. It was more profitable, too!

I have just one more bug to put in your ear. If you know somebody needing to delegate their marketing more wisely, I will be delighted to hear from them. Oh, or a race team looking for a wining driver … I am well-qualified for that, too! 😉

Coming Soon: Maybe you’ll think it is completely nuts to unplug and take a step back. I will soon share something that gave me a good reminder to pull the plug. I think you’ll like it. I hope you’ll be sure to return.

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Google Acquires Fridge, PittPatt, and PostRank, But What Does it Mean?

Google acquires many companies, but do you ever notice which ones, and do you ever speculate on why Google wants these start-up companies? I think it makes for some great water cooler gossip, but I also think it begins to form a picture of where our Internet is, and where it is moving.

Some of the recent Google acquisitions have been Fridge, which has a focus on security in social sharing, and PittPatt (Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition), a facial recognition developer. With only minimal creativity, one can imagine how these could each be useful to Google. I am confident that we will see influence from these technologies as Google continues to enhance the Google+ platform and other Google products.

In fact, if you have used Google+ at all, you can see some uncanny similarities between Google+ and Fridge.

Google and PostRank: An Obvious Match

I think perhaps one of the most telling of Google’s recent acquisitions is when they picked up PostRank in June. I wrote about PostRank back in 2010 in an article titled “Social Media Measurement Tools: What Do They Know About You?” Something I stated in that article was as follows: “PostRank pulls data from many sources, which makes it far less fallible than others which only measure single points of data.” It seems that Google noticed the value in this as well.

The image below shows an example of a PostRank score for a given article and indicates what PostRank knows about it. PostRank data can still be flawed, due to network restrictions and the sheer volume of data, but it does a good job.

We obviously know that Google has been very keen on social media for a long time. In fact, I have often said that Google is the ultimate king of social media. I do not mean because of their efforts with relative non-starters like Google Wave and Google Buzz, or the social feed in Google search results.

When I say that Google is the king of social media, I mean that because they have always made extraordinary strides toward measuring and delivering the information that is deemed important by social interaction. That social interaction has historically been in the form of websites linking to other websites. Google not only measures links from website to website, but they qualify it with the more popular websites providing amplification to the signal. This principle is not changing, but the methods and complexities of measurement are changing. In my estimation, Google is not missing a beat, and the acquisition of PostRank further adds to their reach.

People have tried to argue that Google’s measurement of links from one website to another is not social media, but let’s have a look at “social”. Social means, literally, “Of or relating to society or its organization” and it doesn’t just mean the microcosmic view of making buddies or socializing in the “let’s grab a beer” sense. By measuring website links, Google has used a social response from others to determine what people want, and what they are looking for.

So, let’s look at how the modern use of social media changed things. Google’s historical measurement of links is still just as social-based as what we see in modern social networks. The overall factors of separating the popular from the unpopular are similar. The difference today is that the simplicity of sharing those links is much easier for the non-technical “John and Mary Lunchbucket” type who don’t know anything about websites or HTML. Accordingly, it is much faster, and the amount of information to sort through is huge. There are a lot of factors to assimilate, and far more data points than ever before. Google is extremely efficient at this, but now Google has even more help gathering that data.

Since you may wonder how Google’s acquisition of PostRank really makes sense, or how it can help Google, here is a brief statement about PostRank in their own words:

What is PostRank?
The social web connects people where they share, critique and interact with content and each other. PostRank is the largest aggregator of social engagement data in the industry.

Our platform tracks where and how users engage, and what they pay attention to — in real-time. PostRank social engagement data measures actual user activity, the most accurate indicator of the relevance and influence of a site, story, or author.

PostRank provides useful data for publishers, and now that data will be useful to Google as well. I have heard a lot of people confused about how Google views the usage of modern social networks. I think it is absurd that a person could actually think they are not making efficient use of this information. For anybody who doubts the degree to which Google gives attention to modern social signals, the acquisition of PostRank should give a further indication that they are serious.

What Google Says About PostRank

According to an article on TechCrunch, Google made the statement about their acquisition of PostRank as follows:

“We’re always looking for new ways to measure and analyze data, and as social analytics become increasingly important for online businesses, we’re excited to work with the PostRank team to make this data more actionable and accountable. They have developed an innovative approach to measuring web engagement, and we think they can help us improve our products for our users and advertisers.”

As I said in my recent article about Klout, “I don’t think it is a good idea to become obsessed about statistics such as these, but I do believe it is valuable to be aware.”

If you are curious about how it works, or what PostRank knows about your presence on the web, I would encourage you to take a closer look and get familiar with PostRank.

This further emphasizes what I have always claimed, which is that SEO and social media marketing are entirely intertwined, and always will be. Through it all, I think it is important to note that Google wants to index your website, and they even go to great lengths to help you help yourself.

Please tell me what you think.

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