Facebook Archives - Page 4 of 11 by Mark Murnahan

Are There Any Dumb SEO Questions?

I want to introduce you to Michael Colemire, a Kentucky artist, and newly initiated asker of dumb SEO questions.

I talk to a lot of people about SEO and social media marketing. It is my job, so that makes perfect sense. I answer a lot of questions, debunk a lot of myths, and develop a lot of ideas. I brainstorm with industry know-it-alls, and I brainstorm with people who know little or nothing about these topics, but want to grow their business.

Something I found interesting while I recently visited on the phone with my friend and long-time reader of my blog was that he was afraid of asking dumb questions. His name is Michael Colemire, and he is a very talented sculptor and wood carver. He is not a marketing guy, but he has some great works of art to market, so he wants to learn.

Michael said that the reason he often hesitates to comment on my blog is that he didn’t want to bother me with dumb questions. Also, being such a nice guy, he did not want to feel like he was taking advantage of me. After I picked my jaw back up and thought for a moment, I realized that he had expressed a pretty common and legitimate sentiment. I want to shatter any misconceptions about this.

You see, I have a pretty tricky task of writing a blog about SEO and social media marketing. These are topics which reach people from every different skill level and many different schools of thought about best practices. I try to produce something useful that will cover many skill levels, and that is the trickiest thing.

Why I Want Your Dumb SEO Questions

Reader’s comments are very important to me, because they help me to understand what people already know, or want to know more about. Comments (including “dumb” questions) help to keep me sharp with an appropriate answer, and they give other readers opportunities to look at things from other angles, and cultivate their thoughts.

Let’s take a break for an Internet truth:

A sad truth of the Internet is that it is very easy for people to be selfish. A lot of people will not do something for other people “just because”. It is common that if people think it may benefit you, more than it does them, they will just pass on by. They won’t comment, they won’t retweet it, and they won’t share it on Facebook … unless there is more in it for them than for you.

Something I shared with Michael, and I’ll tell you, is that those “dumb questions” also provide other benefits to me, such as better ranking and recognition in lists that measure a blog’s value to readers. No, it doesn’t pay me money, but it does bring me a bit closer, and it is like a big warm hug and a pat on the butt. I think that every writer needs a pat on the butt and an “attaboy” now and then.

I guess you could say that your comments and dumb SEO questions directly benefit me in a lot of ways, but what about how they benefit you?

Afraid of a Dumb SEO Question or Comment? Think Again!

I know that a lot of people will totally overlook this, but when you add your comment to my blog, it will probably benefit you even more than it does me. This is because when you add your comment, you can add a link to your website, which can have a real benefit to your search engine rankings. It also comes with networking benefits as I described in a recent article titled “Why Disqus May Be The Best Social Network of 2011“,

Do you know what a link from a high-traffic and well ranked blog can do to help your search engine rankings? Well, I’ll just say that it is why I delete a constant flow of spam comments from people who want no more than a link from this blog. Yes, I kill the useless spammy comments, but the legitimate stuff stays here.

Your sincere questions and useful answers deserve to be rewarded, and that reward comes in the form of the number one highest valued SEO treasure there is … a link to your website. Not to mention a great opportunity to network with other readers who may decide you are pretty cool.

One more thing: If you are a super great person like Michael Colemire, I may even credit an article to you.

Thanks for the dumb questions and for taking advantage of me, sculptor and artist Michael Colemire.

What SEO Questions are Dumb?

There are a lot of things which I may think are obvious, but then, this is the work I do every day to earn a living and feed my family. These things are supposed to be obvious to me, after about 15 years in the industry. Let me assure you that they were not always so obvious. I have worked hard and spent a lot of time to develop a solid understanding of my job. Practice makes a world of difference.

I can’t carve or sculpt like Michael Colemire, and I probably never will. If I asked him how to carve a piece of wood into an intricate design, my questions may sound really basic to him, but only because I don’t know the answers.

I guess my point here is that the dumbest questions about SEO are simply the ones you neglect to ask. I would love to say that there are no dumb questions, but I am not ready to commit to that, just yet. I have heard some pretty damn dumb stuff over the years. Most of the questions about the work I do, and the things I write about are just kind of like the questions I would ask Michael. Not dumb at all, just inexperienced.

On the topic of SEO questions, I have listed some of the most common SEO questions, created lists of things people should know about SEO, and have a pretty lengthy blog archive. I welcome you to read these, but in any case, I hope that you will never hesitate to add your comment or question about an article I write. After all, answering questions a primary goal of this blog.

So, what are your dumb SEO questions? Bring it on!

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The Biggest Fallacy of Social Media: More is Better

I want to discuss the biggest fallacy of social media for a moment. It surrounds a tightly held misconception that many people will refuse to let go of, because somebody with perceived authority told them it is “how social media is done.”

It is made worse every day because of all the people who have the mentality that “if they are doing it, it must be OK.”

People often want examples to follow. It makes them more comfortable with their decisions. Sometimes it turns out just great, but it often leads to a whole lot of “imitation marketing” with horrible results. Didn’t your dad ever use the line about your friends and a cliff with you?

“If they were all jumping off a cliff without parachutes, would you just follow along with them?”

–Dad

Enough of the crescendo, let me explain this famously popular trap that has become the biggest fallacy of social media. Did somebody tell you that you need whole bunch of people to “follow” you, “like” you, and “friend” you? The odds are great that the person saying that is full of crap about other things, too.

The truth about the biggest social media successes, and in fact, the way that things actually become “viral” is quite the opposite from what it seems. It does not happen because of a huge number of followers, friends, and fans. Success happens because of thinking, creating, and doing something amazing enough that your dearest core group of true listeners, who care what you have to say, share it with emphasis. Before you even consider anything else, it is important to concentrate on the “amazing” part.

Who are those “core listeners” I am referring to? They are the people who like what you have to say, enough that they subscribe to your blog, follow you on Twitter, Like your Facebook page, and link with you on LinkedIn. They pay attention because they want to know what you have to share, and not because they just want you to add to their numbers. They are often great people to have as your friends, too!

This topic was inspired by a discussion on Mark Harai’s blog, in an article titled “How to Build Online Influence“. My comment there was as follows:

“It is absolutely true about the numbers. I have enough “followers” in some circles to properly seed a new landfill. Without bilateral communication, that is where those relationships are.

I even wrote a book that gave strong caution to the big numbers game of social media. People really want so badly to believe in big numbers, unless they have big numbers, and then they understand.

The mentality is not so unlike like desire for wealth. Many people want it badly but they use it unwisely if they get it.”

What most people do is called “conventional”. Convention is lazy, and conventional will not make you stand out! It is why “The Pareto Principle“, also known as the 80/20 rule, always holds true.

No, I am not that guy who will tell you that successful marketing is only about building relationships to make your social media marketing successful. It takes a lot of other things, too. If you want my “short list” of things that make social media marketing successful, go to my blog archive. The list includes 267 (often lengthy) topics I have written about. Not a single one of them says to get more followers, but many of them certainly do address the importance of relationship building.

Social Media’s Hardest Lesson to Learn

I have argued against the mentality that more followers is the key, but it seems that as with most other things, people just have to learn it for themselves. They learn it the hard way, just like people dying to win a lottery who are broke a year after they collect their squillion dollar jackpot.

If you just can’t stand it, and you need proof that I am right about this, let me show you some numbers: 24 28 45 49 52 2

Those are your Murnahan lottery picks for this week. That will be easier for a lot of people to understand and accept than what I would say about the horribly over-valued hype about big follower numbers. By the way, this is last week’s winning Powerball Lottery numbers. Maybe they will “hit” again, you never know!

If you really want to know what I think, I offer you these previous articles which address the matter.

Social Media is Not Just Who You Know … It’s Who They Know!

I urge people to remember that social media is not just about you, and who you know, or who follows you. I know very well that I can bore the heck out of some people with things they have no interest in. I also know which people will find value in things which I produce, and I know which ones may be a good match to connect with other people in my circle of friends and “core listeners”. My friends and “core listeners” know these things about me, too. It is called networking, and it trumps all that you may hear about having a massive number of followers.

All it really takes to make something extremely popular is about 150 people who are connected to you the way I have described. Ironically, and conveniently, 150 is also the number that is commonly referenced as Dunbar’s Number. If you can focus on those people, the rest comes down to simply having brilliance, and you probably have a lot more than you are using.

Social Media Backlash of Extended Reach

Social media is a funny thing. Most people can figure out the basics of how to use social media websites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, and the squillion others. A few can figure out how to use social media well, and enhance their business. A tiny fraction of those people will use social media in a way that does not irritate or offend somebody, somewhere, for some reason.

Yes, social media popularity has its drawbacks, and there will always be some people who hate you, just for breathing. I have often said that if I don’t get a death threat now and then, I must not be reaching enough people. Even the littlest things can set some people off, but it is not my job to make everybody happy. I just want to make a few of the right people happy. Would you believe I actually had a death threat come as a result of this humorous article titled “Hookers Write the Best Blogs“?

You don’t need “death threat” levels of popularity to get all that you want and need from social media … nobody does. You just have to concentrate on your core listeners, and the awesomeness you can create for and with them. Let the rest of it come into place naturally and those followers will come to your awesomeness like a Murnahan to a plate of bacon.

Photo credit to scorpio58 via Flickr

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Facebook Advertisement Declined: Is Facebook Nitpicking?

I have heard people question how Facebook can support 650 million accounts and remain free to users. Some people have even held the absurd notion that Facebook will someday charge users.

Funding Facebook is something that most users don’t give a lot of thought to, as they connect and have fun with their friends. Most people will easily overlook the huge volume of advertisement dollars Facebook generates from their ads. Advertising is a very successful business model on the Internet (REF: Google, YouTube, Facebook, and etcetera). It is how Facebook makes money, and those advertisements facilitate Facebook’s bloated $50 Billion valuation in January 2011.

Internet users are very accustomed to seeing advertisements. Many of us became relatively immune to much of the advertising, years ago. Yesteryear’s ads were not very well targeted, and many still are not, but that is not because of the tools.

As the Internet grew smarter, ad targeting platforms became smarter. Advertising targeting and reporting is vital to a campaign’s success, and so the tools have evolved to meet the challenges. Facebook has done extremely well in this area, and I commend them. Their system provides for excellent demographic, geographic, and psychographic modeling and targeting, and should not be underestimated.

Facebook advertising can be an excellent tool for business. Make no mistake about that! The information you can learn from Facebook’s ad reporting can provide great insight to a marketing campaign. I explained more about the value and usage of Facebook advertising in a previous article titled “Facebook Marketing: Pages, Customer Modeling, Promoting, and Awesomeness“. That article is great reading for anybody who wants to understand the value of Facebook marketing.

I like Facebook, and I even like the new Facebook profile.

An Unqualified Rant About Facebook Ads

Here is my unqualified rant. OK, maybe it is a little bit qualified, but I realize that some people will whine, snivel, and argue that I am wrong. I do that to people. I give them something to talk about.

I know Facebook ads well. I have used the Facebook ad system for client projects of many types, and I have had a mostly great experience with it. Facebook reviews each ad submitted to their system, and either approves or declines it, and they are doing a good job of it. When a friend recently complained of having his ads declined by Facebook, I thought he must be doing something wrong. After all, I never had an ad declined, but now that has changed.

I finally had my first declined Facebook ad a couple days ago. At first, I thought it was no big deal. Then I realized how silly their reason was for declining the ad. I will show you the ad, explain why it was declined, and also why I think it was nit-picking on Facebook’s part.

First, I will explain that this ad was intended to reach a targeted group of people as a part of my campaign to stop providing marketing consulting services. You see, I am not-so-secretly tired of selling what I do. I love doing what I do, but I do not enjoy the short-sightedness and lack of strategy that I witness with so many companies when it comes to their marketing. I said it well when I wrote “When I Go to Hell, They Will Have Me Selling SEO“. That is because selling the kind of marketing services I provide often makes me feel like I am trying to explain quantum physics to third graders. Perhaps more to the point, it feels like explaining the color blue to blind people.

This ad was targeted at headhunters. You know, those executive recruiting folks. It was to lead them to my aWebGuy Facebook page. Specifically, it was to lead them to the “My Tools” tab of the aWebGuy Facebook page.

I am not applying to companies for open jobs, but I am interested in a long-term objective outside of independent consulting. I know, it may sound like a big step backward. I just want to enjoy my work without having to feel like a third grade teacher while talking with new clients.

I moved far beyond the typical marketing job ages ago, and the type of work that I am qualified for is often not advertised on job boards. It takes a slow-burn approach, and so I want to be sure that headhunters recognize my name when they find themselves seeking to place a new Director of Marketing or VP of Marketing.

The image above is my proposed ad, and Facebook’s reason for declining the ad was explained as follows:

“The image included in your ad is not suitable to appear on Facebook. Before resubmitting your ad, please visit our Help Center for additional tips and examples compliant with our Advertising Guidelines.”

At first, I thought “It is just a picture of my birthday cake. How could that be so offensive?” Then I realized that it was declined for a violation of Facebook Advertising Guidelines section 5 d iii. You may wonder, “What is 5 d iii?” Well here you go:

5. Prohibited Content

d. Ads cannot contain, facilitate, promote, or reference the following:

iii. Tobacco products;

Stand Up for Facebook Ad Rebels!

Here comes the silly part. Based on the targeting criteria, and Facebook’s advertising guidelines, I could have used a couple hookers and a bottle of Scotch, but not my birthday cake. I guess I must just be a real life badass if my birthday cake is banned from Facebook ads, but that’s how I roll!

I love marketing for clients, and I serve them very well, but there is a unique challenge to marketing myself and my future. When it comes to marketing myself, the approach is quite long-sighted. That is because I must be selective about the buyer. This is where you come in, and I am asking you to stand up for my rebelion. Do you know any of those headhunters who should be aware of me? Pass my name along, will you?

If you think Facebook was nitpicking, please click my “Like” button and share this to show that even the rebels have a place on Facebook. Otherwise, you can “Lump” it and just keep reading my blog.

One More Thing! Do you find my birthday cake to be offensive? Go to the aWebGuy Facebook page to see the entertaining back story.

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New Facebook Profile Employer Information Catches Users Off Guard

Update Facebook Employer Information

Facebook recently made a big move with their latest profile updates, but it seems that a lot of people are slow to accept the change. Without a doubt, Facebook’s new profile design includes some pretty significant changes which will impact businesses. The impact can be very positive, but only for people who are paying attention.

Many people are reluctant to adopt the new Facebook profile, but what they often do not realize is what each of the people who did make the change see when they look at a profile. Whether you have updated yours or not, users of the new profile design will see your profile in a way that you, or your company may regret.

I wrote about changes and things to be aware of in a previous article titled “Facebook Profile Changes: Updates to Make Before Switching!“ with cautions of what users should know. Yes, some people listened, especially about the tagged images displayed at the top of the profile, but there is an even more profound matter at hand for businesses.

If you are unfamiliar with Facebook’s new profile changes, I suggest that you see what Facebook says, and also discover how many of your friends have already updated. To date, only 100 of my Facebook friends have updated their profile, but the only view that I have for all friends is the new version.

New Facebook Profiles Display Employers Prominently

The latest update of our favorite social network comes with significant implications for businesses. I think this was a really smart move for Facebook’s reach into business networking, but it will also come with some “growing pains” for users. Those pains can affect employees and employers, alike.

Whether you have updated to the new profile or not, if you have an employer listed with Facebook, it is likely being misrepresented to users of the new profile design. I see examples of this all day long, so if you care how your employment or your company is being represented, you should really pay attention to this matter. The new profile has been made optional, but we will all use the new profiles very soon. You should also note that once you switch, you cannot change back.

Facebook Employer Display in New Profile

In the new design, Facebook places your employer information just below your name. It also includes a link to that employer, and this is where a problem arises for many users. The link, which is automatically created from the employer name listed in your profile, points to a Facebook page which is generated based on the company name. Since it would be worse if Facebook guessed at whether it is the right company, it cannot just link to the actual Facebook page of a company.

Imagine how bad it could be if they linked all of the people who listed an employer name to a given page, and it was the wrong page. Somebody at First National Bank in Spokane could have their employer’s link point to the Facebook page of First National Bank in New Orleans. That would be really bad, but what happens instead is a page that is inaccurate, rather than the company’s existing Facebook page.

When I noticed that my wife’s employer link listed her cakes and confections work as “Owner / Chef at Mad Eliza’s”, I clicked on it to discover that, although we already have an existing Facebook page, there were a few people who had clicked “Like” on the made-up page created by Facebook. Now wouldn’t it be a shame to not take a moment and fix that?

The best way to fix the employer link is to delete the employer(s) and re-add them. Facebook will then allow you to select your employer’s Facebook page, and link to it accordingly. Here is the link to edit your employers. If you have already updated to the new profile, but you are not quite certain about this, just try clicking on the link listed as your employer. If it does not actually link to your company Facebook page, you should probably change that. It is a common mistake, and I have actually even seen this on a respected Facebook marketer’s profile.

If you are an employer, you would be wise to point this out to employees and encourage them to update their profiles. It may benefit both employee and employer to do so. This is especially true in cases where employer and employee are the same person.

How to Change the Employer Listed on Your Facebook Profile

For people with multiple jobs listed, Facebook does not provide an option to select which employer is displayed below your name, but it can be changed. I will give an example of what I found when I updated to the new profile.

Like a lot of people, I wear multiple hats. Yes, I work a bunch of jobs, and while you sleep, I am here keeping this Internet thing we all love up and running. When I switched to the new Facebook, my profile showed things all wrong. Not only did it reflect one of my “less important” jobs right at the top of my profile, it also linked to a non-existent page that Facebook created to represent the company name I had listed in my profile.

To explain how I encountered it, I will explain my jobs. I am the CEO of a wholesale Internet services corporation (2001-present), I am the co-owner of a cakes and confections company (2009-present), and I independently provide marketing consulting services to people who appreciate my marketing talent enough to pay me for it (2000-present). Before that, I was the bearded lady in a circus, but I didn’t include that.

Facebook looks at the most recent employer that is listed as current, then uses the text entered as the employer’s name and represents it as a link in the new profile view. Since Facebook’s system will use the most recent employer as the one to list just below your name on the main profile page, it may not be what you want. In my case, they are all present employers, but Facebook will use the one which started most recently. This makes perfect sense, in a résumé, but what if you want your favorite job represented on your profile home page?

To get the order the way I wanted it, I actually had to put a more recent starting date on my marketing consulting work, and even delete my cakes and confections company from the list. Yes, I lied by shortening my time on the job and deleting a couple of companies I own or have owned … I feel awful, just awful! The truth is that I really only feel a need to go back a decade, except in my formal résumé.

In my case, the most recent addition was “Mad Eliza’s Cakes and Confections“, which is a company my wife runs, but I am just a co-owner and taste-tester. I don’t want to represent myself as a cake guy … I am a web guy.

It is still important to leave some of the other jobs there, but I don’t want them staring everybody in the face. I just wanted my new Facebook profile to say what it does now: “Marketing Consultant at awebguy”, but it took a little tweaking.

It brings up a few questions for me. Have you had to deal with this, too? If so, what did you do? If you have not already switched to the new Facebook profile, do you know what people are seeing? Let’s discuss this … add your comments and let’s see what others have to say about it.

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Social Media Measurement Tools: What Do They Know About You?

Social Media Measurement is Big Business

How much do people know about you? This is an important question to a lot of people, and particularly businesses. Another perhaps even greater question is “how much do they know about you that gives false indications about you?”

Opinions are very important, and also very easy to forge in social media. At least the bad opinions are easy to create, and so it becomes important to address things which may give early impressions about you, or your company.

There are millions of companies hot on the trail to compiling data about you online. It is easy to imagine that all of the data is just aggregate data which applies to you and millions of others like you, but there is also a shocking amount of data about you, specifically. This is not always a huge security risk, such as people stalking your social media usage to know when you are home and away, or anything so threatening as that. However, a risk that it may impose is an early impression that people or companies may create about you, or insights to your weaknesses.

Whether you are in the business of social media, or using it to promote your business, there are a lot of ways for people to make early, and perhaps false judgments about you. This is not limited to subjective statements about you or your company, and it is often presented with objective data.

I will point out a handful of the social media ranking and measurement tools that people may use to gather an opinion of you. Some may appear as little more than tools to allow people to boast, and promote themselves as being greater than reality. Others may cause a greater impact, especially when used to form a composite view.

It should be noted that each of these services are subject to errors, and often have network limitations imposed by their sources. The data should never be presumed as completely accurate, but again, when a composite is created, it begins to paint a clearer picture.

Klout: “The Standard for Online and Internet Influence”

Klout has some pretty compelling data collection and measurement metrics (see Klout website). Klout measures influence of users across the top social networks, Twitter, Facebook, and soon to include LinkedIn. The service seems to be making a lot of progress with improvements such as daily score updates, which used to be limited to every six days.

On the surface, Klout may just appear to be great for producing bragging rights. However, the emphasis is for discovering others who are measurably influential within given industries or topics. This gives it huge potential for networking as people seek influencers. On the other side of the coin, it could also show competition where you are lacking.

I like Klout’s idea, and with a large group of developers working on their service, it seems they are putting significant effort into it. Since the release of a recent plugin, users are able to view Klout measurement in the popular desktop social media tool, Seesmic Desktop. This makes it clear that people are viewing this data, and most certainly forging opinions.

I believe that Klout has some real potential to add value and move their service forward. I must also say that, although they may be completely wrong about this, I am definitely flattered by their assessment of me as a “Celebrity”. Heck, roll out the red carpet … the Murnahan limo tweeted from 48th Street and is headed this way!

HubSpot Grader Tools

HubSpot has created a suite of individual tools for social media and website measurement, including a Facebook grader, Foursquare grader, Twitter grader, and more. I generally place much lower value on any singular social media signal when compared to aggregate data across multiple sources, but people are using them. The number of people using these tools to discover other influencers or forge opinions, as opposed to seeking bragging rights, is unclear.

In my experience, most ranking services which only grade based on individual services are extremely easy to “game”, and especially with Twitter. I have seen my name at the very top of each of them when I wanted it there, and it often only takes a very short time (hours, not days). Twitter is a pretty challenging place to numerically assign accurate and meaningful values to users, but services like HubSpot’s Twitter Grader, Twitalyzer, TweetLevel, and many others are trying very hard. I have previously pointed out that any algorithm to measure Twitter can be cheated, and often with ease. Here are some reference points for that statement:

PostRank Measurements are Useful, but Flawed

PostRank measures social media engagement of blogs. Yes, blogs are social media. If your company does not have a blog, please stand up and hold out your wrists for a good slapping. Didn’t you read “10 Really Good Reasons to Blog“? Your competition probably did.

PostRank pulls data from many sources, which makes it far less fallible than others which only measure single points of data. PostRank is still limited to restrictions of networks, and simply cannot aggregate all pertinent data. However, it is more compelling than many measurement tools because it aggregates and assigns measurements from an impressive collection of data points.

The image below shows an example of a PostRank score for a given article which shows what PostRank knows about it. Again, I must emphasize that PostRank data can still be flawed, due to network restrictions and the sheer volume of data which is to be reported.

Advertising Age’s “AdAge Power150” Accuracy Through Composite Data

Advertising Age gives a great example of increasing relevance and accuracy by producing a composite view across more data points. The “AdAge Power 150” shows that if you selectively merge some of the many social media measurement tools together, the outcome can become more accurate and compelling.

In the example of AdAge Power 150, they have implemented measures of Todd Points, PostRank, Yahoo InLinks, Alexa Points, and Collective Intellect. Their calculations are explained on the Advertising Age website, and I think it makes a useful example of how social media measurement can be used to form a composite view. To further the depth of the data, most of their sources pull from multiple other data sources.

Summary of Social Media Measurement

Social media influence and authority of a company or individual is not easy to measure, but many people are seeking this data to make estimated guesses about you. This is becoming more prevalent as measurement tools are integrated with other services. It is easy to let down your guard and assume that nobody actually uses this sort of information, but they are, and in huge numbers.

If your online representation is weak, competitors can key in on that weakness and use it against you. On the other hand, if your online branding stands tall and reflects industry authority, it can lead to furthering your network and growing your business opportunities.

One common fact about each of these measurement tools is that in order to be viewed as relevant, you must make consistent efforts.

P.S. One of those measures of PostRank is comments. Strangely, my blog scores sky high, even with a considerably small number of comments, but you can still do your part! Tell me what you think, and how you feel about all of this measuring? How might it affect your business? Do you have a favorite?

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