Have You Tried the "Wonder Wheel"?

Of all the cool features Google offers, the Wonder Wheel is one of the nicest hidden gems. Especially for those who are interested in keyword research. It runs as a flash object inside the Google Results. To find it, click the +show options link on the top left side of the search result page. The "tool belt" (Matt Cutt's term) will show on the left hand side and click on Wonder Wheel. Here are sample results. Notice that you can select any related term and click on it to see the related wheel. This is a great keyword research tool. I still haven't figured out a way to export this info, so you may need to open an excel spreadsheet or bust out a pencil.

While you're exploring, check out other tool belt features. For instance, notice that you can search by time frame. this is great for repuation management. You can search for what's been said about you or your company within the past week or even the past 24 hours.

You can also see search results limited to blog posts only etc.

As always, Google is inventing new ways for users to find good information and along the way, there are beneifts to professional search marketers as well.

Google Analytics newest features

I pulled out my flip video during a short breakout session at eMetrics and want to share a fun and informative presentation by Phil Mui and Avinash Kaushik from Google Analytics. For the past few years, Google Analytics has steading added a surprisingly nice set of additonal features. I'm proud to say that I recognize many of these features from the "good ol days" at ClickTracks. Avinash was the lead analyst at Intuit at the time and I still remember when the announcement came that he would become the Web Analytics evangelist at Google Analytics. With the latest features, Google Analytics is better than most other commercially available products. It's gone from "great for the price" (free) to worth more than free. I think they will continue to damage uptake of commercially available and often very expensive solutions that are left with fewer differentiators.

Take a look:



Part 2:




Part 3:

eMetrics Summit in Washington DC

I just returned from an exciting three days in DC at the Web Analytics Association's eMetrics Summit. Jim Sterne opened with a great keynote. The theme was "Translating Web Intelligence into Business Value." That's a great goal and certainly a major theme of professional Web Analysts. The four main points he stressed was a focus on measuring:

Behavior or what do visitors "DO"
Attitude or what do visitors "FEEL"
Competition or how does your website "COMPARE"
Outcomes or what are the "RESULTS" of your efforts online

He stressed that management typically wants more than just data. They want your opinion.

He also encourages analyst to "Reason backwards" when building funnel analysis. In so doing, you can avoid a common trap in analysing data which is faulty causality reasoning. An example would be if you were to notice that you are selling many more umbrellas on days when it is raining, it doesn't mean that umbrellas cause rain.

He offered a "gift" to attendees which is a list of the 101 things you can do.

Beyond the keynote, there were lots of additional sessions during which I took good notes and built my own knowledge base tremendously. It's likely I'll blog about other topics soon.

SMX East takeaways

I've been attending Search shows for several years. I'm at T5 using their stable wifi (unlike the service available at the Javit's Center) while I wait on my delayed flight to board. I ran into Eric Enge in the Hall and introduced him to Ryan Kelly with Pear Analytics. Eric described me to Ryan as "coin operated." I laughed...then quickly realized that perhaps I should have been offended. Then just as quickly realized he didn't mean it as an insult. I then reminded eric that I had successfully extracted some coins from him in the past so I decided that it was more likely a high compliment. Eric is a Rock Star SEO and I feel like I've contributed to his analytics prowace.

There were fewer vendors and mostly the same cast of characters, but missing several notables. There were fewer booths for sure which is likely a sign of the times but not likely the industry. Others shared my excitement about the SEO business in particular. More and more marketers are catching on to the benefit. Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz threw out a zinger during a session this morning when he pointed out to a guy who's running a bunch of PPC, "you know google doesn't charge you for those clicks over there under those paid ads." The guy was there to learn about SEO and knew that, so the comment was met with a big laugh and the guy was not offended in the least since he was in on the joke.

It strikes me that these seminars are great for people who already "get" seo/ppc, but not a training course by any means. The panel format is often tricky- some are unprepared, others are long winded. In other cases, it's exactly the right approach. The first panel had me very worried when 5 of the most respected SEO's gave completely conflicting "opinions" about the use of NoFollow tags as it related to passing link juice. The aforementioned Eric Enge presented the only real case study data on the topic as Rand admitted he wasn't done studying the issue yet.

Because I'm commited to simplfying analytics, I'll try to sum up the issue and relate it to Analytics.

NoFollow is a Meta (behind the scenes) coding attribute which basically tells the search engines not to follow a specific link from a website. For a while, SEO practitioners were convinced that if a site has a bunch of links to external pages, the site would bleed "link Juice" which is a credibility rating issued by Google. (oversimplified for sure...)

So- ack in May, as the story goes, Matt Cutts (Google's SEO one man army) explained that the reasons SEO's had been using NoFollow was invalid. So- while this may not be directly related to analytics, Eric used analytics to show an increase in total indexed pages and total traffic right after one of his clients removed their nofollow tags.

My head was spinning as others explained other methods of "link sculpting" which is a concept noone seems to want to associate themselves with...UNLESS it's used for improving user experience instead of gaming the search engines. So the verdict seemed to be, "it depends" which almost always causes audience groans.

As happens, hallway conversations cleared up my thoughts on the idea and I'm now of the mind that nofollow sucks. If you don't want Google to follow your link, don't put the link on your page.

While I don't have time to blog all the feedback from the show, I have idea foder for several more posts over the next few days. But before I go, I found a really cool new analytics package which made it's debute at the show. It was created by an SEO turned tool company called Pear Analytics. Their new product is called Site Juice and they offer a 30 day trial and a tour on their site. They are doing some really cool things with NO CODE install required. May seem like a shameless plug, but I like their ideas and their commitment to simplicity.

WOAH- My flight went from delayed to ON TIME! Gotta go...

Negotiation Nation

This video is just too funny! Part of what I find funniest about it is that I have been "jokingly" trying some of these techniques for years. The check out person at Walmart usually finds it funny as soon as they realize I'm joking. For some reason, lots of business people have become accustomed to being able to negotiate and will get it done. In some cases, it can make some sense to leverage into the future or try to work within a budget, but it can be very frustrating when the negotiation seems to be just "for sport."

Online Reputation Management

Here's a term that's been thrown around a lot these days. In fact, when I mention to anyone that my company helps with Online Reputation Management, they inevitably quiz me on the topic. What is it? How does it work?

Online Reputation Management is the practice of understanding the buzz about a product, person, or even an offline company. An online reputation is just as often good as it is bad. In fact, true online reputation management is essentially public relations in the digital world of instant communications.

There are lots of similarities to the standard tenets of Public Relations, but many phenomenon have been amplified. "It's been said" and many have learned first hand that one positive comment made from one person to another may impact a sale in a positive way. Offline, that may translate to a 1 to 1 ratio. Online, if the information is "shared" through social media etc., it may create a 4:1 ratio (4 sales to every 1 positive comment) as a result of a "viral spread." The dangerous part is the amplification of the negative feedback loop.

In the offline world, the basic marketing principle is that for every one negative comment, it takes somewhere between 9 and 20 positive comments to overtake that one negative comment. Online, the research is still a bit fuzzy, but it seems like that's been amplified to about 90. It's tough to tell when someone specifically doesn't buy as a result of a negative comment or a poor rating.

Not all ratings and negative comments are created equal. I recently wrote about how other factors can affect negative experiences. Since then, Ive had a few other experiences that have colored my suggestions on the matter. I needed to dispose of an old freezer. I know that freon is a bit of a bio hazard, so I was anticipating a little online research to figure out the best way to dispose of it safely. I searched for "appliances (myhometown) tx" and the result was (of course) a Google map with a list of locations near me. I'd heard of a few, but also noticed that there were 11 reviews for a company I'd seen, but never dealt with before. I read the first 5 star rating and felt good about it. I read the next listing- a one star listed and thought "what an idiot" I also kinda didn't believe that it was true. The next one was a 5 star rating and seemed genuine etc... The point is, people are not idiots and if you're going to rant and rave like a lunatic, it's unlikely you'll actually have a negative impact unless your comment drags down an average star rating. Seriously? Do you NEED to use all caps to get your point across? All Caps=lunatic in my book of online etiquette.

I got into an interesting dialogue with the folks over at advanced appliances and even had to convey the unhappy news that they lost their wonderful domain name and had a few negative comments. They were truly interested in repairing the damage that may have been done. In their case, my suggestion was to find the negative results, see if they can figure out who the customers were, and call and apologize and maybe even give them some money back or something like that. Importantly, I also suggested that they not ask them to remove the negative comment. I suggest not bringing it up at all. Just call because it's raining and you're in the habit of calling previous customers who had complained and you're catching up. the chance is good that they'll either try to remove their comment or may report that the company cared enough to call. Notice, I did NOT say they should lie about where they found the complaint. The customer will know- it's just more important to be genuine about your concern for the customer and their happiness. Everyone screws up sometimes. People realize that and I think it's far better to respond, attempt to repair and leave the negative comment alone.

Other negative experiences have a far better chance of damaging companies when the complaints are well thought out, true, and based on a situation that a customer service Representative has absolutely no ability to control. Small local companies can just be genuine, try harder and try to do more good than bad. Large companies are still not nearly careful enough about their business practices especially in a down economy. They simply haven't adapted and are wondering why their shareholder value has been eroding. I got an e-mail from Brinks Home Security a few days ago to announce their name change to Broadview Security. I can say honestly that I still don't really care why they changed their name. I read the e-mail and figured out it was as a result of what they called their "spin off last fall as a separate publicly traded company." OK really? I don't see any value there as a customer. I liked being a "Brinks" customer. That yard sign was the only reason I'd signed up with them in the first place. In fact, I realized that I hadn't actually been using my alarm very much. Actually- I had reviewed this bill last August and nearly cancelled then.

It may seem fairly obvious where this story is going, but lets just say that the "customer loyalty" guy I spoke to wasn't at all concerned that I don't appreciate a contract that automatically renews for a year at a time. You see- last August, I was thinking about completely eliminating my "home" phone and going cell phone only like most of my high tech friends. My security system was preventing me for doing that. When I explained the situation, the very nice customer loyalty person I'd spoken with told me she'd give me free service for three months while they finished working out their online monitoring technology. I thought that sounded pretty good. Then, in December or January, I realized that my bills had resumed and when I called to learn about this wonderful new technology, I was told it would cost me a bunch of money OR I could sign a new three year contract. Yikes. Come on people really? Apparently they just want customers regardless of the "cost." This very nice customer loyalty person tricked me into an automatic renewal for another year. I'm sure they would say that they were clear about it, but I'm STILL not interested in being their customer. In this case, it's probably a customer service issue. It would have been nice if he'd just said, "Oh wow I can see how it would seem that way. It looks like you got kinda hosed." I wouldn't have minded if he'd even said something like, "We're a pretty big company and sometimes our policies may seem a little strange, but it's a pretty common business practice." Pretty much anything that showed that he cared about the way I felt like I'd been treated.

I truly wish that companies were able to understand that their customers are people and people want to enjoy things, try new products, feel safe, find good services, and all the other things that go along with being a consumer. Most people I know don't want to be tricked or treated poorly. If you're concerned about what to do or what not to do regarding your online reputation, my best advice is to be human first. Then figure out ways to communicate that policy to your customers. It's just the right thing to do.

Action Oriented Metrics

Here's another post encouraging practicality as you endevour to measure your interactive activities. I've already written a few times about the benefits of finding and tracking your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). I'd like to focus on the basic ideas behind KPIs and a little more about what they are nd what they are not.

Yesterday, I attended a lunch meeting hosted by the Houston Interactive Marketing Association. Scott Berg from HP gave a presentation titled The "Big Bang" of Consumer and Business Marketing Interestingly, there were alot of similarities between the concepts he was presenting and the table conversation prior to the presentation. Scott hit a few points over and over again. He emphasized how important search is and how it ties the rest of your online activities together and he said a few times that some metrics like "time on site" are not very valuable metrics to look at. I immediately realized that I'd spend about an hour on Verizon's site as I was trying to use it to download a new driver for my wireless card and then diagnose the trouble I was having. I truly would have preferred to have spent LESS time on their site the other day. If you are one that considers a long time on site to be a good KPI, I would encourage you to carefully consider that metric. Ironically, I've mentioned previously that Time on Site CAN be a good KPI. That's true- it may be a good KPI especially with a lack of other metrics.

Scott says that he has asked colleagues at HP to explain to him what he can learn from a number like time on site. In HP's case, it's possible that they may be interested in tracking time on site on their support pages in an attempt to reduce the average whereas they may want their time of site to remain stable on their product related pages.

However, if you are a publisher, time on site may be valuable to understand "engagement." If you are attempting to sell banner ads, you may be most interested in the time on site and the number of pages per visitor. You'll likely be interested in the ratio between the two and hope that they both grow over time.

The question still remains. What can you learn from a number like time on site? What can DO with that number? For that matter, what can you DO with any KPI? The idea of action oriented metrics is typically a tricky one. It requires exploring your data to look for changes that may be clues to things that are going well or things that are not going as well as they were or as well as you'd like.

KPI's are only as good as your ability to act on them. There are some numbers that will change over time inexplicably and there may be absolutely nothing you can do about it. That's very frustrating to a marketer. The big trick is to figure out the answer to that bigger question. What are my action oriented metrics? What can I DO with all these numbers?

I had the pleasure of working with lots of really smart people in my career. One of the smartest and most influential was certainly John Marshall the former CEO of ClickTracks (now Lyris). He was passionate about lots of things. Everyone in the company knew full well how much he disliked pie charts- especially 3d pie charts. We all also understood how much he disliked the concept of a dashboard. His point is very applicable to this topic. Consider the very thing that an analytics dashboard is typically modelled after. How often do you look at the dashboard of your car? When you first get your car, you need to figure out what each "metric" is and why it is valuable to you. Then- once you start driving, it's pretty typical to only glance down at it from time to time but especially when you see a cop. Perhaps you could liken that to a suprise visit from your boss who walks into your office to find out why your online sales are down. The fuel guage becomes important once the little yellow light comes on. The point is that some of the data provided on the dashboard of your car provide you with actionable data. You know exactly what to do with it when you see it. If you have an analytics dashboard, do you have any idea what to do with the data when it changes? Where is the accelerator for your website? Perhaps that's your paid search campaign that needs more budget or a tweek of the keywords you are buying. Maybe you need to consider a special offer to repeat customers along with a way to promote it to them? Or perhaps the number of visitors to your website means absolutely nothing to you and there is simply nothing that needs to be done about it.

Ok great. So now how do you find your action oriented metrics? I suggest you think like your customer. Go to your website as a potential customer. Have a few people who have never been to your site do the same thing. Does it work in the ways that you would expect? Perhaps you have a sales funnel that you can articulate in your analytics package. If you've recently changed anything, verify that it's working the way you expect. Think about your website and the experience your customer is likely to desire. To borrow a concept from Scott Berg, think of your site as an ecosystem. What metrics are important in YOUR ecosystem? Find your baseline and your benchmarks and you're likely to discover your action oriented metrics in that process.

#9 IMU: Successful Email Marketing (CV301)

Check out this SlideShare Presentation on e-mail marketing

#9 IMU: Successful Email Marketing (CV301)

View more documents from Hubspot Marketing.

The perfect analytics package

I've been in the Analytics business for about 5 years now. As a result, I truly believe that I have valuable information to share. In fact, I can tell you all there is to know about products that can do everything you're going to want to do as you analyze your site over time. That's a pretty bold statement isn't it?

So what products can do everything and answer all your questions? Well there aren't any. The perfect analytics product still has yet to be built. If you think about it, The Model T Ford rolled off the line 101 years ago and the perfect car has still never been built.

The tricky thing about analytics is that you DON'T know what you don't know. That's the problem. That's always been the problem and that is likely to remain the problem for a while now. Just when products get close to being ultimately flexible, fast enough, perfectly tuned within your organization and your boss has bought in to the numbers, one or more of these things can happen:

1. New MEDIA will emerge that is harder to track (like Social Media or decision engines)
2. A new version of your product will be released that will require a painful upgrade. (Does anyone still have WebTrends?)
3. Your favorite application will get bought out by someone else and the product will lose it's "soul."
4. Your boss will insist that you begin providing a new KPI that you simply can't get without a painful redeployment of tracking code.
5. Your favorite in house analyst will decide to go hiking in the Appalachian mountains and never return.

While this seems rather bleak or at least less than optimistic, my point is that it is imperative that you approach analytics realistically and with a sense of humor and humility. I am not advocating doing nothing and I am not advocating making any attempt to build your own solution.

Forge ahead with applications you like best and try to keep it simple.

The BASICS of Social Analytics

I've been blogging a lot about Social Media for the past few days, so I figured I'd better move back a little closer to my original premise with an analytics post. I've spent the past week participating in the Inbound Marketing University for the past week and it had been very helpful. I fully embrace some of the core principles of encouraging others to find your business through less invasive tactics like Search, Blogging, and Social Media. People are less and less anxious to be "sold to" these days and inbound marketing both recognizes that and systemizes the efforts and measurement of interest generating activities.

So what about the measurement of Social Media? That was the unfortunate topic Marshall Sponder tried to tackle today. I know Marshall better than he knows me, but I also know that he's been mired in the minutiae for several years. He uses lots of tools- most are free. I certainly understand the appeal of data. I too am a data junkie, but I heard all sorts of advice about learning things from the numbers and not too much about what to DO with any of it.

So that leads me to some ideas for you.

1. Find your Key Performance Indicators. This applies to "on site" analytics as well as "source" analytics. Time on site is an old standby. It's a good bench mark. It's not perfect, but it's worth tracking over time.

2. Watch your bounce rate. I think I heard someone say today the sometimes bounce rate doesn't matter. I still can't think of any reason why a high bounce rate is desirable. I will say that there really is no such thing as an industry benchmark. You'll need to track your own bounce rate and measure it over time.

3. Measure Social separately. Regardless what tools you have access to, there is likely to be some method of segmenting groups of inbound links, called referers. (BTW, referer is purposely misspelled. It's kind of a geek thing based on the fact that in log files, it's misspelled and true industry nerds know that. Admittedly, that may only be 12 people on the planet, but I digress... ) By segmenting into groups, you can build a social segment.

Now check all three metrics Social VERSUS the non social traffic. There you have it. The basics of social analytics. It doesn't make any sense to just start look at numbers if you have nothing to compare it to.

OK so now how to get actionable data. Here's the deal- we know the numbers will be different. But if your KPIs are "lower" in your social segment, it doesn't mean you should abandon your strategy. After all, time on site from paid search is often shorter than organic search- it doesn't mean you should abandon paid search. It means you need to learn more. Oh no! are we gonna get complicated? Not really.

Now it's time to consider some new KPI's. Be careful not to violate the cardinal rule of analytics. It can be very dangerous to "add new KPI's" or to try to get the data to tell the story you want told. Don't do that. Just think a little more about what you would expect a social visitor to do on your site. Consider where they are entering your site, what they are doing and how long they stay. If your site has many goals, which many sites do, it's possible that your social visitors are providing more value towards some of your goals and less for others.

WARNING- This may get complicated. Consider this bonus content.
Let's say that your time on site is longer for social visitors, but they don't seem to be converting very well. Perhaps you need to consider that you're customer life cycle is different for Social Media. If you don't already have a latent conversion tracking method, you might need one now. Check out the concept of closed loop analytics- the idea is to follow the whole customer cycle start to finish- including off site metrics in some cases. The other related idea is attribution management. Their exactly the same, just different. Clear as mud right?

If you're confused, I'll offer you the same advice David Spade gave (the late) Chris Farley in Tommy Boy. "Take tylenol for any headaches, Midol for any cramps..."

Twitter is Media

That's right- I said it. Twitter is Media. Lot's of social networks are, but Twitter is farther ahead than others. Why? Well because it is a whole new distribution channel. Media has been spending too much time figuring out how they can talk AT more people. Twitter builds in relevance and recency. So what is the "reach" of Twitter? It's as much reach as is relevant to the audiences that are interested in the content produced by the Genre of You. That's both terrifying and really freakin' cool.

If you remain relevant, and you've found content you are interested in, you are consuming media. If twitter is smart, they won't make a terrible mistake in trying to:

1. Meter the flow of information (like Internet providers tried to do)
2. Spam more irrelevant ads at users (like all other media before them)
3. try to keep a piece of the action (like Google is doing)

Instead, they have the opportunity to make money in a whole new way. I have ideas on what that is, but I happen to know that twitter still hasn't figured that out yet, so I'm shooting for a royalty. Who knows- perhaps someone at Twitter will ask me for real some day soon. In the meantime, perhaps the Twitterverse will be able to design the model for them? How cool whould that be? I just started a Twitter group @#twitterbiz perhaps it will catch on...

Separating Business from Pleasure in Social Media

I would assert that the level to which personal information and random thoughts are included in your Voice is directly proportional to the level of professionalism you want your Voice to have.

If you have 10,000 followers, do you really think they care if you're on the way to the gym? If you have 10 followers and 5 of them are friends of your From the gym, then by all means. The first couple of times, business associates may think, "Oh I get it- he's on the way to the gym. He's active, balancing business with pleasure... Cool." But after a short period of time, it's gonna be painful to follow that guy on Twitter on your phone if it keeps buzzing at work about some nonsense or another.

I have a lot of respect for all of those who have been expressing their opinions about this topic of late. I predict that this issue will not go away anytime soon. What I do think will happen is that Linkedin, Digg, Twitter, Facebook, and (shutter) Myspace will each grab their niche in the Social Media World based on the level of "access" they allow each of their users and based on the usefulness each user finds from it.

Right now, I think the two biggest social networks where people haven't figured this out yet are Facebook and Twitter. Pretty clear Linked in is business only and I don't know many using MySpace professionally. There is likely to be the same "kind" of transition as e-mail (sort of). It's like there will become a "business" persona and a "personal" persona. I've been calling this the "genre of you" Everyone needs to find there voice. I feel like right now we're in a transition phase- people will tolerate "some" personal quirkiness, but the ratio will begin to diminish as more and more people grow weary of reading about which restaurant someone is going to tonight and want to get down to business.

Facebook is encouraging the transition with their "pages" concept- allowing businesses to register a corporate profile and adding more functionality. I'm more likely to follow my friends "socially" in Facebook, and follow news and business topics in Twitter. At least that's my hunch for now.

Finding your voice- the Genre of You

I kinda recommend reading my 5 step plan to finally understand why you should care about Twitter

You don't have to read it right away, but I recommend reading it before you move on to other things, but keep in mind that this is experiential and you should allow yourself a little time both to understand Twitter and to begin exploring it. Most Twitterers are able to figure out most of this stuff on their own very quickly, but I figured this could be useful for the:

1. Twitterphobe : Someone who still hasn't figured out why they should even bother with Twitter.
2. Twannabe : Someone who is brand new to Twitter and still hasn't found their voice yet.
3. Twit : Someone who has been tweeting away without a voice.

What is your Twitter Voice? Perhaps thus far you've been purposely remaining silent. That's fine. Perhaps you will find your voice. Your voice is your On line persona. It's the "Genre of You." If you've been Tweeting and really haven't been paying too much attention to your voice- you may be either disappointing your followers or perhaps you are just not at your stride yet. In that case, you might as well consider Tweeting as the act of sending a Tweet to a Twit.

We're probably going to have to assume that like any other Media (yes I said Media) Success will soon become measured (remember I'm pretty into analysis) in the form of attention and the number of active followers. The Social Graph is becoming far more robust and the barrier for entry is LOWER than ever- but it won't be for long.

So what is your voice? Here's an experiment for you. In both scenarios, let's assume you DON'T know either of these two "microbloggers." Which one are you more likely to choose (follow)? Remember that you don't know either of them yet.

Tweeter 1.
Ran 4x400 intervals. 2:05, 2:10, 2:15, 2:15
Just updated from GWT 1.5 to 1.6

Went to the third day concert and broke out in a nuclear fusion discusion. We are such geeks!

At the third day concert at Busch Gardens. Wow it's loud! :)

Completed iMapMyFitness Jun 13, 2009 17:31 (Regular Run). 4.07 mi.. 00:53:52

Started a new bee hive. Woohoo!

Grilling my own oysters, yumm!

NMCI just crushed my workstation! Thanks guys!


Tweeter 2

@kw***** I'm a PC kinda guy... But I do use Firefox for most everything

RT @pt*****: [company] offers special discount for [Product]- deadline extended: http://bit.ly/17UHeL

I'm at [professional association]

RT @(hometown)_News: The 10 most influential people in (hometown): http://bit.ly/YzYlM

Here it comes... Are you ready.... Can't stop this one... ♫ url to song
End Tweet

No offense to the guy that only has one follower and is following two, but if you happen upon him, you're probably less like to care what he says as compared to the guy who has 150 followers.

So let's say some Twit has thousands of followers? Am I really go to care what they have to say? They'd better keep me interested. I'm getting really fast at scanning tweets and I can tell the Twit from the Tweeter really quickly.


If I have the distinct honor of having been your first exposure to Twitter, or if you happen to like MY voice, feel free to follow me at @click2dennis Otherwise, happy tweeting peeps... or rather tweeps. Read my next post on Separating Business from Pleasure in Social Media.

5 step plan to finally understand why you should care about Twitter

Twitter is all over the news these days. The media blitz over the past several weeks has been astounding-verging on the annoying for those of us who still watch TV News. So if I were to ask ten people in my neighborhood if they use Twitter, most are likely to say they have an account, but still don’t get it.

First things first, if you don't have an account yet...There's no way to "get it" until you get it. Go to Twitter and sign up. Then, do these things and you will get it. There's no sense in telling you about what it is without showing you how to use it along the way. Twitter is a new social network. It's a group of users. Some are like you and some are not. You'll have a chance to get to know a bunch more people if you really want to.

Ok but what do you DO with it? Well you learn from it. You find information about things you're interested in and you get to chime in if you have anything interesting to say. If you DON'T have anything to say right away, don't say anything.

1. It’s not stalking it’s walking around together. Don’t worry about how many people are following you at first. This actually gets in the way of your initial understanding of Twitter’s value. You’re likely to “find your voice” in time. Think of the “what are you doing?” box as a “thought bubble.” If your thoughts are random and weird, there’s likely to be lots of people who would be interested in reading your random and weird thoughts. You’ll find them soon enough.

2. Mobile use is optional. Once you begin to truly “consume” content, then you can think mobile. In the meantime, learn using the regular web interface.

3. The “hash” structure opens up a whole new world. Explore it. In the standard view, look to the right. You’re likely to see at least a few “Trending Topics” with a # sign in front of a few words. You can think of the # sign as a “group builder.” Click on a trending topic that you think you might be interested in. If you want to say something to the group, type a thought and add the same #group to your post. Then, click refresh. Now you’ve just published your first group tweet. So why are there some trends without the hash symbol? Well that’s because you can search for any word and are likely to find something. The hash structure pulls together the whole topic into a group.

4. Search for stuff you’re interested in. You’re likely to find conversations about it. If you find a group you like, Click the save this search button. Now you have started a list of saved searches.

5. Twitter can be a “custom news channel” so if you have a favorite news anchor, search for their name, read some of their recent Tweets and see if you like their “voice” on Twitter.

There’s more to come on related topics like “how to respond” and “how to retweet” (and why you should) in future posts, but for now, happy twittering.

If I have the distinct honor of having been close enough in time to your first exposure to Twitter, or if you happen to like MY voice, feel free to follow me at @click2dennis Otherside, happy tweeting peeps... or rather tweeps. Read my next post on Separating Business from Pleasure in Social Media.

So much new so little time

SEO requires easy access to meaningful information. As Craig has said, a few may know as much about Search as we do, but we're not aware of anyone who knows more. That requires remaining ever vigilant about all things new and challenging.