Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel: presentation notes from The Art of Marketing

• After months of sailing Cortez & his crew finally arrived in the new world.  His crew asked "how long are we going to stay here for?".  Cortez waited for everything to be unloaded from the ships...then burned them
• How do we get forward moving today?
• CTRL, ALT, DEL - time to reboot
• -50% people who clicked on banners since 2007 (comscore)
• under 8% of online users click through.  There are over 2 billion online users
• this is not a talk about the future.  its about the present.  we are living in the future ie. snaptell, red laser, google goggles, yelp  
• video is king
• media is becoming untethered ie. iPAD
• the question is not when is the web going to take over traditional media, the question should be WHEN IS THE INTERNET GOING TO BE AS PERVASIVE AS ELECTRICITY?
• Apple sold 2,000,000 iPADS in 60 days
• we live in the most branded generation ever
• there are more grandparents on facebook than high school students (readwriteweb - July 7,2009)
• 88% of canadians are on facebook
• Eckhart Walther from Yahoo! says "it's about doing, sharing, socializing, collaborating & most of all, creating"
• Facebook is like your very own "channel" (Think in terms of CBC, NBC, CNN...it is scaleable)
• 81% of online holiday shoppers read online customer reviews (neilson online - Dec 2008)
• Bazaarvoice proves that if you let people open up, you will win.  They have 150 billion impression reviews.  The average review is 4.3/5.  A negative review converts to sale more effectively than a positive review
• with the internet, people are having real conversations between real people
• these conversations are important because they are distributable and scaleable
• the internet isn't about the number of people you can get your message to, but who sees it
• same with Facebook.  It's not the number of 'friends' you have but WHO your friends are that matters
• mass media helps but you need permission for entry.  online allows communication with no barrier to entry
• 1/2 of youtube.com's audience is over 34 (marketingvox)
• the average Canadian watches 15+ hours of youtube video per week.  The average TV commercial is 30 seconds.  The average youtube video is 4 minutes
• Top 3 search engines? 1. Google 2. Youtube 3. Twitter
• Every day on Google, 20% of the searches have never been done before.
• your marketing has to change because of how we connect with one another
• BUT, if your IT consultant says to cancel all your advertising and move everything online...fire him
• the biggest change in this new world is amplification.  Consumers have always had the ability to choose to buy or not and tell their friends if they liked a product or service or not.  The word of mouth is now amplified
• Your brand is no longer what you say it is.  It's what Google says it is.
• Bounce Rates are important metrics to measure your website 'stickyness'  if the bounce rate is really fast it's "i came, I puked, I left"
• identify the pages on your site that have the most traffic and evaluate how the user interface is
• the best value of a brand is in its community
• Digital Darwinism 'we were on facebook & twitter, but it doesn't work'.  The problem is because you're not engaging.  What are you doing to add value? 
• you need to build a community before you launch a product

how to manage in this new world?
1. accept it
2. it goes with.  not instead of traditional media
3. dont write cheques with digital media you cant cash.  it's about honesty
4. open up. let the community share, create
5. attitude, not age related
6. Ask Why? not what.  It's not what are we doing, it's why is this better alighned with our business objectives

• if you have the right message, and you tell the right people, your story will spread....check this free hugs video out,  over 59 million views and counting

What is Search Engine Optimization Anyway?

It seems to me that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of those buzz words that IT departments seem to use a lot and I think I should probably know more about. The site below has some great online tools to help you optimize your own websites, the main points I've included below.


http://www.bruceclay.com/web_rank.htm

What Is SEO?

• Search engine optimization (SEO) is the science of increasing traffic to your Web site by improving the internal and external factors influencing ranking in search results.
• Eye tracking studies have shown that searchers scan a search results page from top to bottom and left to right (for left to right languages), looking for a relevant result. Placement at or near the top of the rankings therefore increases the number of searchers who will visit a site
• According to Bruce Clay, there are a few key Steps in SEO

Step 1 - Brainstorm Keywords

• Select keywords that you expect Web surfers to use to locate your site, submit your obvious keyword terms using our research tools to locate the top-ranked competing sites
• The most important first search engine optimization tip is to select keywords wisely
  http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/
  

Step 2 - Search for your Competitor's Keywords

• try the online tool...it's pretty neat
• If you get one visitor per month for a search term, but one out of twelve spends a million dollars, keep that keyword! But if you get a million visitors and only one buys, and you lose money on that sale, then consider dropping that keyword phrase

Step 3 - Combine Keywords

• Sort the keywords and phrases in descending order of their perceived importance. (i.e., how likely it is that they will be used by visitors as search words and hence, generate traffic).
• It is also important that you add words to help clarify the use of your keywords. For instance, "capital" can have very different meanings — such as intellectual capital, state capital, capital letters, venture capital, etc. So a keyword or two that helps the index builders learn the context of your keywords will help raise your search engine rankings
• Also, consider common misspellings [sic] as additions to your keyword lists

Step 4 - Add your keywords to the content

• Keyword tuning for a search engine marketing campaign is an iterative loop; you keep doing it until you rank reasonably well on several search engines

Step 5 - Submit to Search Engines

• For search engine submission to just the top few search engines, you may use our URL ADD page with links to the add pages of the major search engines.
• Allow two days to four weeks for each search engine submission to be indexed in each major search engine. If you do not show up (as is common), then resubmit

Step 6 - Consider Community, Intent and Engagement Objects

• Once you identify opportunities to add Engagement Objects (ie. video) to your site, be sure to use SEO selected keywords just as you would in any other content. It will contribute to content structure and theme, and it will certainly aid engagement. Adding Engagement Objects is a part of the SEO process and should be done.

Step 7 - Check your Ranking

• Visit the search engine that you care about most and see if you are registered by searching for your URL.
• Once you have your SEO ranking results, you can easily identify where you need to go back and resubmit your site and fine-tune your keywords. Hopefully you will be placed at or near the top of your search results page.

Step 8 - Link Building

• we consider links vital to long-term natural search engine optimization and ranking. The objective is this: if you get a site to link to you, then you gain PageRank popularity points.
• If that site has a lot of quality sites linking to it and it links to you, you get a lot more points,