Search and Social Results

Over the last six months, Google has made some bold moves. Two of these movements are: fully monetizing Google Shopping with product listing ads (PLAs), and the roll out of Adwords Enhanced Campaigns. The former has fundamentally shifted the way advertisers are allocating their SEM campaign budgets within the search platform. The latter is also changing the way budgets are allocated, however at the device, geo, and timing level. Learn more about these changes as well as some best practices and our early findings by reading this article.

What are AdWords Enhanced Campaigns?

This is the way Google succinctly describes AdWords Enhanced Campaigns:

“AdWords Enhanced Campaigns allow you to create custom bidding combinations of device, time, and location bids that work best.”

On its face this is true, however, there’s definitely a positive PR spin at work. Some of AdWords’ enhancements have created some controversy.

AdWords Enhanced Campaigns: Mobile Enhancements

At its core, the new campaign upgrade allows advertisers to bid separately on mobile devices within the same campaign. This could have been achieved before, however, only by separating mobile and tablet-only campaigns out. These campaigns had to be created, managed, and optimized and would often just be duplicates of large desktop-only campaigns.

This took a toll on Google’s servers, support-level, and pocketbook. In essence, Google is now forcing advertisers into making a decision about their SEM mobile strategy. With this update, they are not allowing an opt-out of desktop.  Out of the approximate 1.2 million Google AdWords users, large percentages are small business. These smaller and medium-sized business users usually fall into three categories.

1)      Those aware of mobile syndication, of which he/she had opted out
2)      Those unaware of mobile syndication,  of which he/she left it on by default
3)      Those only using mobile and  tablet ads for bargain low cost clicks

The two it will affect the most are 1 and 3. For those that fall in category 2, as well as new unaware advertisers, this may cause an unexpected price increase per click. They will be charged full price per click by default without choosing to bid more or less on mobile. Pre-update, and since the beginning of mobile, Google has applied a governor called automatic bid adjustment. That’s going away for mobile.

Some are complaining that this is the end of an era of bargain clicks.  As Google puts it, this is their attempt at “closing the monetization gap” on mobile. Fortunately, advertisers are able to cherry pick and essentially opt-out of mobile on a campaign by campaign basis, but only by percentage of the default bid of regular campaigns. He/she cannot say yes or no to mobile, but can place mobile bids at a -100% to +300% of the desktop bid on a campaign by campaign basis.   A decrease by -100% of the desktop bid means campaign ads will not show on mobile.

With the upgrade, advertisers can customize and create separate optimized ads for mobile devices. These “mobile optimized” ads will show more often on mobile than on desktops. The non “mobile optimized” or default ads will show more often on desktops and tablets.

AdWords Enhanced Campaigns: Tablets are Now Just Computers

The most controversial “enhancement” of this update is that tablets are now being lumped in with desktops. This means advertisers cannot bid separately.  Your desktop/laptop bid will become your tablet bid. This control factor being taking away has some advertisers up in arms.

AdWords Enhanced Campaigns: Benefits

In order to keep an objective view, here are some examples of how this upgrade will really help.  You can’t opt out of tablets or desktops, but you can bid more on mobile than desktop by %. For  example, say the mobile portion of a campaign is performing better than the desktop portion. You can now, say, bid $.20 on Desktop/Tablet, and 300% on mobile, so $.60 on mobile making your mobile ad more prominent.  This gives you more control over mobile channel and allows you to nullify mobile campaigns not making money, while pushing harder those that are pulling in revenue.

AdWords Enhanced Campaigns: Non-Mobile Enhancements

There are a few non-mobile specific enhancements. These include controlling ad extensions by ad group (more refinement), and ad scheduling for sitelinks. Lastly, but definitely not least, you can now use geo-specific bids without creating duplicate campaigns.

Now the volume can be turned up and down at different times of the day and in different metro areas all within the same campaign. An example would be setting it up to automatically bid 50% more on your high-end products while serving the ad to New Yorkers at a peek conversion time of 10am – 3pm.  I predict Bing Ads (paid platform for Bing and Yahoo!) is likely to follow with a similar program.

Google Shopping and the New Product Listing Ads

Google Shopping has been around a long time, even if it has changed names: Froogle, Google Product Search.  Google Shopping is a comparison shopping engine (CSE) in-which retailers can distribute product feeds merchandising their products in search. Other CSEs you might have heard of include: pricegrabber.com, BizRate, or NexTag. Theoretically, you can find the exact item you want from several retailers and then choose the one with the lowest price.

The Largest Comparison Shopping Engine Goes Paid

After more than five years of being a free comparison shopping engine (CSE), Google Shopping went fully paid in Fall 2012. From a marketer’s standpoint this switch makes optimizing for Google Shopping from SEO into an SEM initiative.  What used to be called product images are now called product listing ads (PLAs), and you pay every time a user clicks on that image in Google Search proper or in Google Shopping.

Google made it easy to turn on the paid functionality of PLAs by requiring  a simple linking of Google Merchant Center to AdWords. This quick switch basically made advertisers “all in” with their products. However, by doing this without taking some extra steps you’ll only have one campaign by default. SEMs are used to tightly controlling their campaigns and adgroups and get a little uncomfortable about throwing it all in one basket. However, based on own clients and the SEM commentary space, Google has tapped into a pretty ingenious way of triggering PLAs.

For those online retailers that did not link their Google Merchant and AdWords accounts, their feeds were still there, but lied dormant with little to no organic traffic.  Instead of keywords, product images were triggered in search and in Google Shopping by product names (titles) and descriptions in the feed. This was a hit for retailers with some spending upwards of 20% of their SEM budget in the first few months of its release.

The only hold up from the SEM management side is, in order to further refine bids, new fields had to added to the product feed. These fields could either be campaign labels corresponding with the labels in Google AdWords, product UPCs, or other information.

In conclusion, if you are an online retailer you should definitely be aware of these two game-changing movements by Google and approach these strategically in order to take advantage of the updates. Enhanced campaigns will be rolled out in full by June as a mandatory change, however you can convert your campaigns earlier. Using your analytics platform run a mobile analysis of your SEM channel in order to get a state of the union to learn which campaigns are and are not performing well on mobile. This will help you set your mobile bids.  As for product listing ads, I recommend setting up auto targets and campaign labels in order to manage groups of products and their bids on your Google Merchant Center feed.

Neil Lemons is a veteran search engine marketing expert with eight years of SEO and SEM experience. Follow, friend, add him on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

“When you take charge of your life, there is no longer need to ask permission of other people or society at large. When you ask permission, you give someone veto power over your life.”- Geoffrey F. Abert

No one will give you permission to create wealth as an entrepreneur, so stop waiting for it. No one will give you permission to combine and attract new resources in a way that will allow you to live completely free and autonomously.

You are not alone in seeking this, but you are the only one stopping yourself.

As a sovereign human being, you are entitled to have freedom and so is everyone else in this world. Even if you live in a developing country or are starting with little resources, the Internet leveled the playing field.   We live in an abundant world where having more does not mean others get less; there is more than enough for all.

Thinking you’re undeserving and needing permission has subconsciously caused you to reject or sabotage opportunities that have been handed to you because you thought they seemed too easy, or you skeptically thought they were too good to be true. Stop thinking you’re not good enough. Stop thinking you don’t know enough. By being a good receiver, opening your eyes, and giving extreme gratitude for everything that supports your growth, you’ll find The Universe lopping you layups [opportunities ripe for the picking] all the time.

The more means and resources you have, the more you can give and the more you can make incredible changes for your  family, employees, community, cause/non-profit/church,  society,  and yourself. Before giving this gift generously to others, you have to achieve it for yourself. For some of those you will affect, your monetary offering will be your gift, for others it will be your time, and for others it will be your story.

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” – Chinese proverb

Wealth historically comes from creating extreme value for lots and lots of people. Period. Yes, if you want to be a mismatcher or find exceptions, you’ll find them, but haven’t you already been doing that? How has that worked out so far for you?

You may have your wealth engine/entrepreneurial muse already built.  Did  you stop putting  fuel in because you thought you didn’t have permission to stand out and create value?

There are people that might encourage you when you explain your dream or vision for your entrepreneurial venture, but if you’re looking for their approval -  just like you did for other major decisions in your life -  stop.

Be ready and be OK with not receiving approval or ongoing encouragement. When you share your ideas and dreams, often others’ values are called into question, and some may tell you all the ways your idea won’t work. By presenting your ideas to them you’re making him or her evaluate their own level of courage. Some people aren’t ready for that sort of self-reflection.

Who should you seek approval from for manifesting your freedom through creating wealth as an entrepreneur?

• Not your mother, she wants you to be safe, secure, and happy. An entrepreneur’s life is risky with extremes such as extreme joy, extreme giving, and extremely hard work (for a time).  You won’t be “comfortable” (which can be a trap in life) for a long time.
• Not your father, he doesn’t want you to move back in the house  if you “fail” [There is no such thing as failure, only feedback]. Secondly, he never was able to make his entrepreneurial wealth dream happen, so it must not be possible.
• Not your boss, you’re high leverage to him/her. You get billed out at $300 an hour, while you make $40 an hour. He/she doesn’t want you to quit. It would make his life harder to find someone to replace you because you’re amazing.
• Not your sibling, he/she’s “not interested in money” and thinks you’re “selfish” for wanting to make a lot. He/she’s skeptical and sees most wealthy people as unethical, sellouts, or dull and dumb.
• Not your coworkers, misery loves company. Crabs pull other crabs back in the bucket.
• Not your spouse, you already have an awesome, high-paying, prestigious job, he/she doesn’t know why you won’t just stay there and move up the ladder. He/she doesn’t want to have to explain to the friends (the Jones) what you do.
• Not your grandmother, she doesn’t know why you don’t want to work for 30 years with the same company and retire with a gold watch like grandpa did before he died five years into retirement.
• Not your friends, they think you’re weird for not wanting to “go with the flow” and crazy for wanting to quit your job “in this economy.” Why can’t you just relax.
• Not other successful employees, they don’t think like successful entrepreneurs and will view your ideas and execution plans through a different lens.
• Not the President, global lower and middle-class mediocrity and conforming to what the controlled media says makes you easier to manage and tax.
• Not God, although there are plenty of sacred religious texts encouraging wealth and good stewardship, God’s not going to blatantly send an angel in a dream that says to you point blank, “Go forth my son/daughter and make bank, you have my permission.” -The Man Upstairs

Remember I said seek approval not approve of and send resources once you are making waves and creating value.  Mark my word, this will happen once you are  giving yourself permission. I say giving instead of given because it is an active process.

Do find self-made entrepreneurs to have as mentors who have been successful in a similar area.  Don’t seek their permission, only their encouragement once you’re doing things to make your dream a reality.

The greatness of it all is that you don’t need the permission or approval of the people I mentioned above. In fact, you may make some of these people uncomfortable and face opposition and negativity. That’s OK. Expect it and accept it. Keep your day job, but start your “side hustle,” until you reach freedom (enough passive and/or active income to live on). Once you’re free, then you can create some real wealth, and achieve what you’re supposed achieve with your God-given talents and reclaimed freedom.

Once you’ve made it and you’re helping all of these people and others with: jobs, inspiration, mentorship, personal development, business skills and spiritual thought processes that make them more money, manifest more love, ignite more confidence, and bring them more fulfillment, they will be glad you did what you did, they just don’t know it yet.

Neil Lemons is an entrepreneur, arts and entertainment magazine publisher, mentor, consultant, and motivator. Follow him on Twitter, friend him on Facebook, and join his circle on Google+.

I just wanted to give you an update on my life. PFSweb is doing well – my department is growing by leaps and bounds. I decided not to go to Hawaii due to the fact it was V-day weekend and extra expensive because of that. I do think I’m going to go to New York for Blogworld in June and maybe Austin for SXSW in March.

I invested in a bunch of silver last weekend. I bought some in 2009 at $18 an ounce and now it’s at $33. That’s a 55% increase! If only I would have bought a heck of a lot more and not have sold it when I needed some cash. You live and you learn. I still believe it’s going to go way beyond $33 due to several factors and likely to double within the next 12-24 months. With the amount I bought this last weekend I’m a highly committed silver  investor now. Playing with this compound interest calculator got me pretty excited as long as I keep consistent and continue to invest each month.

On average, over the last eight years silver has gone up 24.3% and 29% over the last three (change graph to see silver). The guys I follow say you should allocate 75% silver and 25% gold for liquidity and if under $5k.  Of course gold is killing it too and I’m about to go all in with that once I have stocked up on the recommended amount of silver. I found the best way to buy silver I think. They make what they call “rounds.” They have a design, but are not legal tender, so you’re not paying extra for a pretty designer coin, the face, or numismatic value.

ILiveInDallas.com is now at 45,000 visitors in the last 30 days. We are going to get hit 100,000 in a 30 day period this year and I plan on writing a self-published eBook on how I did it. I recently paid someone from elance.com to write a 7,000 word blog post (has not launched yet) on 101 Dallas Attractions. I’m going to turn that into a book as well and sell it on the site after I get images for it.

I have two more speakers signed up for my meetup group in-which I’m priming them to speak at a seminar I’ll be having. I’ll fwd you the email I sent to my group that I used as a teaser. One of the guys I pitched on packaging his LinkedIn knowledge and doing a product launch. He’ll be the trial run on a partnered info product like I’ve explained before.

I’m finally wrapping up my karaoke article and boy I’m glad that’s almost over. I’m renewing my lease for nine months at my apartment because I dig it here.

This is an email I wrote to my parents. To be successful in life, I recommend expressing gratitude on a regular basis to family, friends, significant others,  co-workers, teachers,  mentors, and the Universe.

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Date: Sat, Oct 29, 2011 at 1:55 PM
Subject: A Quick Note of Gratitude from Your 30 Year-old Son

Hey Mom and Dad,

I was just reading the book Master Your Money by Ron Blue,
a book Dad gave to me, and I found a note that was being
used as a bookmark probably 15 years old. It was in Mom’s
handwriting and it had listed “Aaron’s car $x,xxx” and “Neil’s
car $x,xxx.” It also had some CC balances. This morning, I
felt overwhelmed with gratitude that you raised my siblings
and I with love and support as we were growing up and
continue to now.

I talk a lot about marketing, success, my theories, business
stuff, and my future goals. You guys probably get tired of it,
and it probably seems like the only stuff I think about. It’s not.

Being 30 and in a different place than you guys and my siblings
were and are in life at this point as far as their own families go,
I feel like this subject is one of those things I feel most comfortable
in relating since you may not be able to relate to my current life.

(Mom, I know we tend to have more to talk about, and you seem
happier, when I have a current girlfriend.)

I wanted to let you know despite all the business stuff, without a
doubt, I value relationships and family above all. Also, I wanted to let you
know I am a very happy, well-adjusted, and balanced person.

I have so much to be grateful for with my family, friends, and my
freedom. I’m wealthy in this regard.

My finances are a work-in-progress and a lifelong work. We don’t
always have our families for all of our lives, so I wanted to express my
gratitude to you TODAY.

I read a lot of bios of business people and rock stars. Guns N’ Roses
are coming to town and I looked up the lead singer’s bio on Wikipedia. I
read how sad Axl Rose’s upbringing was with abandonment and abuse,
and again felt gratitude that I had such an incredible childhood with
great parents and a brother and sister.

Although, I’m always pushing in my life for growth, new experiences,
doing and considering doing unconventional things like: couchsurfing, world
travel, living by choice as an unattached bachelor, hypnotherapy school,
studying spirituality, psychology, the occult, and the Illuminati, despite
all this stuff that may seem foreign and weird to you, you have raised
a well-adjusted, happy, sane, somewhat-normal person, that’s doing
great in life.

My actions and words may also seem like unrest to you, but I assure you
I’m fine. At the end of the day, I’m a truth and experience seeker. Having a
wife and family will not change that, and it’s not for lack of that that I am how
I am currently in my life. My gift to my children someday
and the world at large will be my story and what I can
teach them, so I plan on making it a good one and having a lot to teach.

One thing I’ve learned about my personality type (like I didn’t already know)
from standardized psychological tests is, I have a verbally quiet, yet adventuresome-in-action spirit. I seek thrills and spontaneity and my ultimate core value is: freedom/independence. Followed by these.

Freedom – Able to move about without bounds or restraints, liberty.
Truth – A verified or indisputable fact, proposition, principle, or the like.
Kindness - Friendly, caring, liking.
Knowledge – Subject matter expert, education via experience or study.
Growth - Investing in lifelong learning, personal development, self-education.

I still have a child-like thought process that I can do anything and be anyone
I want. I am a dreamer (thanks Dad).

I’m extremely fortunate in many ways with all that has come my way with what
others have given. One thing I’ve realized is, some of the most successful people are
good not only as givers, but good receivers. That’s something which good, and even
Christian, people overlook and it can hurt them spiritually.

You have to accept and feel worthy of what others do for you, otherwise you
rob them of the feeling they get from giving and the energy force they are passing
along. Acceptance, even of substantial gifts, without guilt or feelings of obligation,
is fine as long as there is gratitude (override the unfounded feelings of guilt, obligation,
and the Law of Reciprocity).

As long as you’re always giving value to the world and aren’t worried about
getting back, you shouldn’t feel guilty when it comes back (it’s a Law of the Universe).

I’m fortunate to have the abilities you have passed on to me such as: being hospitable,
friendly, a connector, and having a strong character.

I know we fancy ourselves a creative family, but Mom your analytical genes have
helped me with logic and the business side of my life. I do more number crunching than
I ever thought I would do in my career, and I’ve learned to embrace it, because it stands
to represent something I’ve done that others value…results. Dad, your warmth and sincerity
in your writing style, which may have passed through genes and rearing (Nature & Nurture),
has been of huge help in my professional and personal life.

I always say in interviews, that I have both analytical and creative sides (which is
perfect for what I do), since my Father was a photographer and Mother did the books
(accounting) for him (among other things such as sales). My strongest suit in life is writing
with a purpose: teaching, motivating, and being persuasive in print and in person (sales).
Being good at all of these take both sides of the brain, analytical and creative.

Thank you for being there. I love you.

Neil Lemons

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Giovanni Gallucci is well-known in the social media community locally and nationwide. In Google+ Tips and Tricks in Social Media Marketing, he will be comparing and contrasting the different features of Google+, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare and more while making recommendations for regarding which platform can serve you and your online marketing needs best. Giovanni will discuss topics like Google+ Circles vs. Facebook Friends Lists, Google+ Hangouts vs Video Calling, Google+ Huddle vs Twitter, Google+ Location vs Foursquare, Integrating YouTube into Google+, and much more.

For location & time, join Social Media Marketing Mastermind:

RSVP Event Link: http://www.meetup.com/dallas-social-media-marketing-mastermind/events/36386702/

When you leave this presentation you will have a better understanding on how/where Google+ fits into your online marketing strategy. No matter who you are, you’ll walk away  with plenty of new strategies to try out on your social media campaign or your clients’.

About Gio

Giovanni Gallucci lives a double-life. On one hand he is a recovering .NET programmer turned online evangelist and internet troubadour. On the other hand he is a professional, natural-light photographer who focuses on music, fashion, events, and candids.

Giovanni develops strategy for online marketing and audience development for top musicians, production companies, internet personalities, celebrities, and forward-thinking companies interested in breaking new ground online. He also teaches how social media and SEO aligns with offline marketing and pr strategies at bootcamps and private workshops across the great state of Texas and around the world. His speaking style is vibrant, frank, humorous, energetic, and personal. Have a look at the testimonials directly from those who have seen him speak at a conference or attended his full-day workshops at http://gallucci.net/testimonials.asp

Websites:
Company site:
http://gallucci.net/
Blog:
http://blog.gallucci.net/

A Few Clients he has Served:

American Heart Association, The American Cancer Society, American Airlines, Belmont Hotel, D Magazine, Dallas Morning News, KDGE 102.1 FM, Microsoft Corporation, Nokia, Nortel.

See 100s more http://gallucci.net/clients.asp

For location & time, join Social Media Marketing Mastermind:

RSVP Event Link: http://www.meetup.com/dallas-social-media-marketing-mastermind/events/36386702/

THIS MEETING WAS HELD IN AUGUST 2011 and is not ongoing.

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I had the game MASTERMIND when I was a kid and the tagline says it all, “Easy to learn. Easy to play. But not easy to win.”  This is the same with affiliate marketing. “Winning” does take strategy, but also brute force, persistence, and a willingness to do what it takes.

Tonight will be a working session at:

Panera Bread

Only come if you are interested in doing hands-on work for what I’m about to describe ( I know it’s not for everyone in social media or online marketing).

I won’t be talking as much, but collaborating more. This session is about making $$$ and SELLING via email, not from SEO services, but from endorsing high value products that others have created and sending offers to your email list.

I know SELLING is a bad word and SPAMMING is another bad word, but we’ll be ethically treading the line of doing what you have to do to be a successful Internet Marketer if you don’t just want to sell your time for dollars forever. If you’re not comfortable sending emails to people you know asking them to check out information products or videos, don’t come tonight (I will understand).

In the Internet Marketing and Social Media world, services for others are a great place to start. I’ve done it for six years, but the evolution of the Internet Marketer eventually includes making money not by selling hours, but by exchanging value via products, others’ products, then your own. The key is you have to build a list of people who trust you, who want to consume your content. Give them HIGH VALUE content to consume on a regular basis, then, from time-to-time, you endorse products via email, in which they can buy.

Often you have to make yourself out to be a “guru” and build a following in order to do this (this is not for the faint of heart).

So I told you about affiliate marketing. Well, I like to use a specific style of affiliate marketing. What I sell ARE NOT consumer products like razors and shampoo. Most of these products are what they call “information products.” They are online video modules, training courses, ebooks, DVDs that TEACH A SPECIFIC SKILL or BUSINESS MODEL. Knowledge is power and that’s what I like to endorse, empowering others to gain the skills necessary to make money, and be a force in life. I don’t sell or endorse products that show you ‘how to make money online,’ which in-turn just tells you to sell to others ‘how to make money online’ products. These are real products that contain knowledge that can be acted upon in the real world.

Are you with me?

Being an affiliate marketer via email is an incredible thing if you think about it.

• No product inventory
• You send out an email and make money
• You don’t have to deal with returns
• There is no cost for ads
• Others do all the product creation work for you
• You’re bringing value to others with the products & learnings they receive

I’ve made some money doing this, but I am in the process of learning HOW TO make REAL money doing it. It all comes down to some core things and doing them over and over. My first goal (and the only way this works), is setting up systems to bring EXTREME VALUE to a large list of people BEFORE giving them an offer.

I actually think I know the HOW, it’s just a matter of doing it. That’s what this session is about and I’m learning just as you are, but I will tell you what I know so far.

We’ll be discussing while doing:

• How to build a LARGE list of targeted people who want to consume YOUR content
• Creating follow-up Autoresponders & using Email Platforms
• Who the affiliate and information product players are and who’s lists you should sign up for/products endorse
• Joint Venture Partnerships and how to approach them
• Together we’ll brainstorm list-building strategies & start creating and growing our lists TONIGHT
• We’ll send out an email offer TONIGHT

-Neil

I placed this ad on Linkedin back in September 2010.  It attracted seven to ten inquires of interested people.

Over the next three months I consistently mentored three of those people. The reason I decided to do this was in order to prepare myself for teaching, consulting, speaking, and creating information products.

——————-

Internet Marketing Veteran Seeks Passionate Mentee Wanting SEO/SEM Experience

I’m taking applications for one, possibly two mentees for a hands-on Internet Marketing mentor/mentee working relationship. These individuals need to be passionate about Internet Marketing & advertising, not just social media. If the psychology of influence, increasing click-through rates, keyword conversion rates, A/B split testing, and dissecting long tail query strings excites you, read on.

In the last six months, more and more companies are requiring not only social, but search skills (SEO/SEM), causing social media strategists to take a back seat to veteran search pros who’ve happened to pick up social media as the job market has changed.

Although, many claim to know SEO, it’s a little tough to fake when the rubber meets the road. Savvy SEOs and SEMs get paid well for bringing in targeted traffic with high returns for their clients because there is a direct correlation with the bottom line.

If you have SEO, SEM, and Social Media expertise, you can command more upfront & move up quickly.

If you want to learn skills that pay the bills, but haven’t been given the chance to work with client names to put on your resume, this might be for you. This industry has allowed me to work with some of the nation’s most well-known brands, as well as have enormous success with local clients.

If you’re passionate about direct response marketing, want an in-depth education in pay-per-click advertising, SEO, blogging, traffic manifestation and lead generation for real local clients, let me know. You will be working on actual accounts. At the end of the program you’ll have several more talking points on
your resume and a world-class Internet Marketing education that they have only recently started teaching in universities.

Must live in Dallas. Three month commitment. Work at home three-five hours per week. One-two hour meeting once a week. Send me a personal message with why you would be a good fit and some of your career/entrepreneurial goals.

—————

I followed up with this message.

————–

I’ve already had a GREAT response to this so far and have already started teaching what I know to several mentees. I’ve decided to open this up to more local people wanting to improve his/her skill set. Below are the topics I will be and have been teaching. At the end you’re given each of these materials to take home and study.

Profitable Pay-per-click Marketing Methods

21 AdWords Mistakes Small & Medium-Sized Business Owners Make & How to Avoid Them

A Guide to Web Metrics Terminology & Five Key Reports on Google Analytics

How to Rule the Ranks & Win Conversions through Business Review Sites & Local Results

24 Proven Linkbuilding Secrets & Strategies for Better Search Engine Rankings

21 Best Practice Blogging Principles for Better Search & Social Results

How to Get a High Paying Job in Your Field Through Resume Optimization & Personal Branding

How to Win Clients & Influence Prospects through Guru Marketing

And other subjects crucial to SEM, SEO, and entrepreneurship.

Contact me if you can make the one, to one and half, hour commitment each week, with three to five hours of off-site hands-on learning a week. Students will be chosen at the end of the three month commitment for management opportunities of their own clients on a part time basis at home (or anywhere), where they will get paid for the life of the account.

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Fast forward to May 2011. I’m still working with one person, another has gone on to have his own business making 70 – 80k. I am now coaching a new crop of mentees. I’ll speak more about them in a future post.

Have you ever heard the buzzword “crowdsourcing?” It’s popular among bloggers and business start-ups that create tech products or content for mass consumption. Even Microsoft uses this method. Basically, they put out a beta version of whatever product they have created and then use the minds and input of 1000s of software engineers who volunteer to improve the product. Some may call this “the wisdom of crowds,” which is also the title of a book by James Surowiecki.

Developers and users of software may use the term “open source” for software that is free and is continually being improved by 1000s of volunteers, aka the “community.”

For every major piece of software or framework that has had a huge impact in the last 20 years (Windows, Adobe Photoshop, easy FTP programs, blogs, website builders) there is usually a premier open source alternative to the most popular paid one. The most popular content management (CMS) systems or website builders are open source, or free to those who know how to use them: WordPress, Drupal and Joomla.

The opposite would be having to pay a website company monthly for access to a custom CMS or proprietary system to manage content and create pages. For the slightly less technical, he/she may just generalize this to thinking they are just paying hosting fees.

How to Use Expert Sourcing to Blast off Your Blogging Efforts

How does this relate to improving your content? Content is currency on the web, which takes time, energy, and thought to create. You may have heard the more common term “user generated content.” Major social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter have this as their business model.

Only their framework would exist if users were not constantly adding content, and there would not be much value. The value AND the growth come from users propagating and interacting, by, you guessed it, creating content.

I remember hearing a joke a few years ago that went like the definition of a social networking website business is, “We create all the content, they keep all the money.”

I’m not a big fan of being considered someone else’s user generated content. Similar to I don’t like how a specialized expert or subject matter expert in business is called a “resource.”

I’ve coined a term in blogging and content creation which I hope will take hold. I feel is much more respectable for achieving the same results and more accurate. I call it Expert Sourcing.

In my method, EVERYONE benefits in a win-win for all parties: the blog owner, the contributor, and the audience. By targeting key people who have their own agenda or want to build credibility in their respective field and need exposure, writing quality content may be a small price to pay.

Five Types of Expert Sourcing that Make Your Content More Sharable

1. Email Interview with Experts
2. One Question, Multiple Experts’ Opinions
3. Collaborative Guest Posts
4. Article Augmented with Two or Three Quotes from Different Experts
5. A pure guest post

Why do these make your blog post more sharable? It’s simple. Value. There’s value in an expert’s opinion, there is a multiplier effect in having several expert opinions in the same article. This makes the article’s value greater than the sum of its parts. The higher value, the more likely it will be shared.

Case Study: Expert Sourcing for Blog Content Using Collaborative Guest Posts

Some of you may know, I am the Co-founder of a hyper-local digital magazine called ILiveInDallas.com, or ILIVE as I will refer to it for this example. Three months ago, I had the idea of creating a collaborative article. For every collaboration (or confabulation : ), there needs to be a story leading to why something was done.

Having a “reason why” is one of Robert Cialdini’s's minor weapon of influence hypothesized and thoroughly tested in his book Influence:The Psychology of Persuasion.  Here was my story, which subsequently opened the article.

“It started with an email and a mission. After hearing the news that one local Dallas magazine had proclaimed that Bolsa was the “Best Restaurant in Dallas in 2009,” I had to do an investigative search of my own. When I realized Dallas has nearly 7,000+ restaurants I’d have to try, I thought a faster and possibly more accurate alternative to make my 2011 “have to try” list would be to ask five local Dallas foodies for their five best restaurants in Dallas. None of these foodies saw each others’ list before this article was collaborated and one restaurant made two of the foodie lists.”

The article then proceeded to have five sub-articles written by the foodies. Key points:

Each foodie had a blog, or a reason to want to participate.

It was a fun, subjective, topic in which there could be several valid opinions.

There was a team attitude about the whole thing, which made the participants feel like he/she was contributing to a bigger idea (and they were).

The organizer of the post takes on the burden of adding images, consistent formatting, and making sure all elements are in place (bios, author photos, links).

Side Benefits For Expert Sourced Articles for the Blog Owner

- Contributors or interviewees will promote the article to their own network outside of yours.
- You’re more likely to be asked to guest post, or to be interviewed by doing so first resulting in links and better SEO for your website.
- Constantly creating content is tough, you get to take a break for a day.

The first benefit mentioned above was one huge key to the success of the article. This article resulted in a the highest two day traffic rush from social media ever experienced on the site:

The Results

- 2500 visitors in 48 hours
- Over 340 Facebook Shares
- Over 100 Retweets on Twitter
-40 backlinks in two weeks

The article continues to bring traffic from keyword referrals/people finding it on search engines for Dallas restaurant-related terms. That’s the power of Expert Sourcing.

This post is a part of a series called Better Business Blogging & Audience Building Secrets you can get free by subscribing here. You’ll receive exclusive email & member’s only content on the latest audience building techniques. You’ll also receive updates on the state of search, social media, and Internet Marketing for more customers.  Neil Lemons is a Dallas Internet Marketing Consultant who has been blogging and creating  SEO content strategies for businesses since 2006.

Yesterday, I noticed something quite major.  The Google Map, powered by the Google Places pages, have commandeered organic search engine results for local searches. I noticed this while searching for listings of three of my clients. I’m checking other local searches in niches I don’t currently serve, and it seems to be true as well. I’m not just talking about the 7 pack Google Map dominating the search engine results, like it has for the last three years. I’m talking about a fundamental shift in ORGANIC results and visibility.

This could be “just a test” or Google has replaced the top three to five search results (or websites) with Google Places pages. It makes sense why THEY would want to do this (it keeps traffic in Google’s loop), but it’s somewhat of a slap in the face against the democracy of the Internet and search engines.

In some instances, the Google Places pages have taken over a specific organic listing, in others, Google is combining with the regular organic listing with the places page, showing images and a variety of reviews. These reviews Google has scrapped from other business review sites (also included in the Places page).

With the perceived importance credibility of reviews, Google most likely feels this is a better user experience. People don’t believe what companies have to say about themselves, they believe what others like them have to say about companies. Savvy marketers have known this for a long time (Check out  TheCluetrain Manifesto, and Influence by Cialdini).

Try some searches of your own.

City name + Service Oriented phase

Service Oriented phase + City name
Google Places is now THE indexed listing for local searches not only on the map, but in the ORGANIC listings. The map has been shifted to the side, and the Google Places pages are becoming the ACTUAL listings.

This also changes the game for search-based pay-per-click. The Google Map, which has traditionally dominated the results for city-based searches for the last few years, has been pushed to the upper right side. The upper right is where positions 4-6 would normally sit. When the users scrolls down the results, the map moves with him/her, covering up those positions.

Update: As of today (Oct. 30th), the map is now static in the 4-6 spot. I’m sure Google got a few calls on that one.

Fortunately, I’ve spent a lot of time making sure my clients had well-optimized, Google Places pages. I feel sorry for those who have not paid much attention to the Google Places/Local Map Listings and only on their organic website listing.

This maybe just a test, or it may be permanent.

I saw the way things were moving a few years ago and wrote a post on a company blog I used to work. The techniques for OPTIMIZING your listing and dominating the results still remain true today: Seven Ways to Raise Your Local Business Listing Rank in Google

If you haven’t optimized your Google Places listing, it would be a good idea to do it NOW. If you don’t know how to optimize it, find someone who can!

If you want to know the BACKDOOR to winning on Google Places check out this post I wrote awhile back, when Google Places was called “Google Local Business Listings.” The Ten Pack is now the Seven Pack, but based on what’s just happened, it may also become the top ten organic search results.

Six Local Business Review Sites Influencing Your New Customers

There is a HUGE window of opportunity for organic placement via Google Places. Don’t miss out.

For almost five years, Dallas Internet Marketing Consultant Neil Lemons has worked behind-the-scenes to help create exposure, traffic, leads, and sales through major search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Calling upon his diverse background in copywriting, advertising, marketing, and sales, he has been learning traditional SEO and SEM tactics since 2004 and implementing since 2005.

This is a guest post from Dallas-based Social Media Strategist Danielle Glick. She owns and operates the company DG Design. I asked her to analyze Roots’ on-site Social Media efforts in order to get an outside, objective opinion for one of PFSweb, my current employer’s, clients. She did an excellent job and I highly recommend her social media marketing services for small businesses.

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Social Media Report Card; A Case Study with Roots International

What is a Social Media Report Card?
A social media report card can be used to grade a company on how well they are using social media channels, either within their company’s web site, an external social media network, or their entire network of online social media channels. In the case of this article, we will use Roots International as a case study example.

Who is Roots International?
Americans may recognize Roots as the official apparel brand of the U.S. Olympics Team. Ironically, they are a Canadian company who also makes handcrafted leather bags and wallets, designer leather messenger cases, leather iPad cases and sleeves, full zip hoodies, men’s wrist watches, ladies wrist watches, and shoes. In other words, they make what you need to look athletic, rugged, and stylish.

What the Grades Mean
We will grade each aspect on a scale of 0-5, followed by a comment that explains why it was graded at that level.

0= does not exist, could not be graded
1= poor
2= mediocre
3= average
4= good
5= social media honors
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Social Media Report Card: USA.Roots.com & Canada.Roots.com
These two web sites are essentially the same site. We will be grading them in terms of how well they incorporate Root’s other social media channels. To get a complete view of how well any company’s web site incorporates social media, you can’t look at just their home page, you need to analyze landing and detail pages, plus any social media links and blogs. Here we’ll be analyzing four key areas that make external social media channels effective on a .com site: visibility, sharability, content, and response.

The Home Page

Topic: Social Media Sites’ Visibility
It turns out that Roots has a lot of social media channels, including: Facebook fan page, Twitter, YouTube channel, Flickr, two blogs (Roots Buzz and The Source), and a custom feedback community (“Your First Roots“). Would a user realize all of this after skimming Roots’ home page? Let’s see…

Visibility of social media network links: 1

A 5-rating would be a web site with easy-to-spot logo icons for all of the social media channels used by this brand. These logos should be in either the global header, footer or other fairly prominent place. On the Roots USA home page, Facebook and Twitter logos are entirely missing; however, buried in the massive footer area is a nav bar with social media links and a “Connect with Roots” section that links to all of the social media channels. The best thing going for social media here is that the main feature graphic of the site incorporates a video thumbnail about Roots history and leather shoes and links to an internal page that enlarges the YouYube video. The problem with this is that Roots bypassed a huge opportunity to encourage subscribing to their YouTube channel or to alert you in some way that they even have a YouTube channel with more videos available. (At least the video content is engaging.) Overall, the social media visibility on the home page is almost non-existent.

Visibility of blog link: 5
“Blog” is part of the global main navigation bar. Hooray! The only slight negative about this is that Roots has two blogs, and this link only takes you to one of them.

Dedicated conglomerate social media page: 2
The best way to promote your social media sites on your main web page is to add a conglomerate social media landing page and use it to pull in live feeds and links to all of your other social media channels. Roots has a “Connect with Roots” section buried in their footer, but they don’t have a landing page for these social media links (although their blog sort of serves this purpose).

Topic: Sharablility
Sharability speaks to the ease and number of options by which users can spread their favorite web site content to other social networks. Does Roots prompt users to share content…?

Includes Facebook Like this button: 0
Includes Tweet this button: 0
Includes conglomerate share feature (i.e. ShareThis): 0
Includes Facebook Connect: 0

Love Roots? Too bad, they have no easy way to share their home page with any of your friends.

Landing & Detail Pages

Sometimes, a web site does a good job of promoting social media on their home page but falls apart once you click one or two levels in, and other times the home page has no social media links while individual product pages allow you to share and leave comments. Let’s see what Roots does…

Topic: Social Media Sites’ Visibility

Visibility of social media network links: 1
Visibility of blog link: 5
Dedicated conglomerate social media page: 2

There is no improvement from the Roots home page when it comes to the social media, blog, or congolmerate links on product landing pages, such as this page showing leather messenger bags.

Topic: Sharablility of Individual Products

Includes Facebook Like this button: 0
Includes Tweet this button: 0
Includes conglomerate share feature (i.e. ShareThis): 0
Includes Facebook Connect: 0
Easy to comment: 2

If you look at a product page such as leather fanny packs and click on any of the products, you will see zero links to share each item. However, you have the ability to write a review and rate the product, which is akin to leaving a comment. First though you have to create a Roots account, so there’s nothing positive here about the ease of leaving a comment or sharing your opinion to other social media sites.

Blog
Roots has two blogs, and we’ve already analyzed how one of them has almost no visibility (“The Source“) while the other has a prominent place in the main navigation (“Roots Buzz“). Now let’s examine the social media effectiveness of these blogs themselves…

Publishes at an appropriate rate: 5
They write new blogs almost once a day, a rate which keeps their site content fresh, provides new information for people to share, and is difficult for most companies to keep up with.

Balances info vs. advertising: 5
Their blogs balance informational/news content with new products and events (advertising). There is not a sense that they are pushing you to buy their products.

Includes calls-to-action: 5
These links serve as effective calls-to-action, that help users get more contextual meaning from the blog.

Cross-promotes their other social media sites: 4
Their main blog, Buzz, incorporates iconic links to all of Roots other social media channels and includes the live feed from their Twitter account. They could have improved this aspect by also including their Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube feeds. However this would turn the page into more of a social media dashboard, or conglomerate page, which we already discussed above that they are missing.

Feels personal/human: 5
There’s nothing robotic or corporate here. Their blogs are written with an informative, yet personal tone, which tends to be what resonates best with consumer-based blog audiences.

Responds to comments: 0
Despite a left-column section that highlights blog comments, I could only find one user comment, and no one had responded to it. Social media is a two-communication medium, and it appears Roots could be doing a lot more to engage their audience in back-and-forth discussions.

User Feedback Community

In my digging on Roots’ web site I discovered a small link in the footer, “Share Your Story“, and this is the only reference to this page that I could find. This page leads to a page that encourages users to tell their story about their first love of Roots’ products and read about others’ stories. This type of content needs social media sharability and more visibility on the home page to be successful and useful. It’s a great idea with a poor implementation.

Score Card Summary

Home Page: 8/35

Landing & Detail Pages: 10/40

Blog: 24/30

As you can see, Roots does a poor job of incorporating their numerous social media channels into their web site; however they keep an excellent blog.

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