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A Marketer’s Guide To Mind Control

If you are an online marketer, this is must-read stuff. Yes, the title sounds a bit cheesy, I agree. But fact is I wanted to get your attention to this excellent guide to key online marketing principles which, if used, do really make a hell of a difference.

Here the first five great strategies suggested, but there are two more and much more details and advice in the original control. So if this below is not enough, you know where you can find more and say thank you.

Amplify’d from www.copyblogger.com

Mind Control Marketing: How to Quit Begging and Make People Want to Help You

image of black and white spiral
  • If you ask a popular blogger for a link, will you get a reply?
  • If you ask a partner to email a product offer to their list, will they agree?
  • If you ask a friend for a donation, will they write you a check?

You don’t know. You can’t know. And it bothers you.

Wouldn’t it be easier if you could just close your eyes, pop over into their mind, and seize control?

A Brief Introduction to Mind Control

As it happens, mind control is possible. Sort of.

No, you can’t turn your customers, partners, and in-laws into mindless zombies, but you can influence them.

In fact, there’s a science to it.

Back in the 1980s, a researcher by the name of Dr. Robert Cialdini wrote a book called Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. He outlined different principles scientifically proven to influence people, as well as suggestions for how to do it.

The Truth about Marketing

The core of marketing isn’t customer profiling or market segmentation or any of the other complicated nonsense taught in most business schools.

y simpler than that, and it can be encapsulated in one word:

Ye

It’s infinitely simpler than that, and it can be encapsulated in one word:

Yes.

You ask a blogger for a link, and they say, “Yes.” You ask a partner to promote your product, and they say, “Yes.” You ask a customer for a testimonial, and they say, “Yes.”

If you get enough yeses, your blog/business/charity succeeds. If you don’t, it fails. It’s so simple, and yet so few of us really understand how to do it.

1. Do all the thinking for them

The worst mistake you can make when asking anyone for anything is telling them to “Think it over.”

Here’s why: people already have too much to think about.

Do it for them.

  • Instead of expecting them to see how your blog post will benefit their audience, explain it, and offer examples of similar posts that have done well in the past
  • Instead of asking them to host a webinar for you, setup the webinar, landing pages, and emails yourself, and send them as part of your pitch
  • Instead of begging a customer to write a testimonial from scratch, send them a dozen different examples to use as a guide

Be specific. Explain your reasoning. Offer proof. Tell them what to do next and why.

2. Start an avalanche

For example:

  • Getting a popular blogger to tweet your post is hard, but once they do, dozens or maybe even hundreds of people will retweet them
  • Convincing a leader in your niche to promote your product is tough, but once they do, everyone else will want to promote it too
  • Persuading a celebrity customer to give you a testimonial can be tough, but once you do, sales skyrocket, and getting further testimonials is easy

3. Ask for an inch, take a mile

Whenever you’re asking for anything, never start by asking for everything upfront. Instead, start small. Make it easy to get started. Reduce the risk if it flops. Let them see the results for themselves.

And when it goes well, ask for more. And more. And more.

You might think that’s unethical, but if everything is going well, why not push for more? It’s not manipulation. It’s common sense.

  • If you want do a JV promotion with a leader in your field, start by asking them to email your launch content to only 10% of their list, and than 50% of their list, and then 100%, and then a direct mail campaign
  • If you want your customers to give you case studies, start by asking for a 1-3 sentence blurb, and then ask for a half-page testimonial, and then talk about doing a two-hour webinar going in depth about their success

    • It’s not psychological trickery or anything like that. It’s smart business. No one likes to risk everything upfront, and by offering progressive levels of commitment, your chances of getting them to say yes go through the roof.

    4. Always have a real deadline

    The keyword is “real.”

    There are no clients, and there is no urgency. The salesman is just so desperate he’s willing to lie, not only costing him your trust, but probably the sale too.

    And it’s not just salesmen.

    Stop
    an build it into your marketing. For example:

    Not only is it ineffective, but it’s totally unnecessary. Real urgency is easy to create. With a little thought, you can build it into your marketing. For example:

    • Instead of leaving a free report on your blog forever, tell everyone it will only be available for seven days, and then you’re going to start charging $7 for it. Not only will you get a lot more downloads, but other bloggers will be a lot more likely to promote it during the window
    • Instead of letting JV partners dictate when they will promote your product, schedule a launch, announce it to your list, and then forward partners the announcement, inviting them to participate
    • Instead of asking customers for testimonials whenever they get around to it, show them the timeline for an upcoming launch, including a specific date to send out testimonials. You need it by then, or you won’t be able to include it

    5. Give ten times more than you take

    A lot of marketers mistakenly assume it’s a 1:1 ratio.

    You know you’re supposed to give before you get, right? But what you might not know is how much to give.

    Before you ask for a link, you should give a link. Before you ask for promotion, you should give a promotion. Before you ask for a testimonial, you should do one thing that deserves a testimonial.

    But that’s wrong. Smart marketers use a 10:1 ratio, and not just in action, but in value:

    • If you want 100 visitors, send them 1,000
    roducts first
    • If you want $1000 in product sales, sell $10,000 of their products first
    • If you want one testimonial, do ten different heroic acts of customer service worthy of a testimonial

    This isn’t about “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” It’s about generosity so overwhelming they can’t say no.

    Yes, it’s a lot of work, but that’s the price of influence.

    Read more at www.copyblogger.com
     

    Google+ Is Going To Win

    Is it really? According to Jeff James there is little doubt about it. He carries forward six good reasons why G+ is going to win over Facebook. Here are the first four. If they feel convincing to you, look at the remaining two on the original article, which I recommend. (For me the jury on this is still out.)

    Amplify’d from www.windowsitpro.com

    Six Reasons Why Google+ Will Succeed

    Google+ has been available for several months now, and I've spent some time playing around with the service. I've read more than a few articles about why you should and should not adopt Google+. After fiddling with my own circles, sparks, and huddles for a while, I've come down on the side of those that think Google+ is here to stay, and that it brings some new and innovative features to the table. Yet while Google+ competes with existing social media platforms on some level, I'd argue that Google's ambitions for Google+ go far beyond simply competing with Facebook.

    Read on for the six reasons I believe Google+ will eventually join the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as a leading social media platform.


    1. It's Not Facebook
    Some bloggers and pundits have already dismissed Google+ as a poor clone of Facebook, and point to recent Google failures like Buzz and Wave. Google has lots of company in the tech failure hall of fame: Apple's MobileMe, Apple TV, and Newton eMate 300 are surely present, as are Microsoft Bob, Windows Vista, and Microsoft Zune. (Beads of flop sweat are beginning to form on Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 efforts, but it's still too early to dismiss this very promising--albeit beleaguered--mobile OS from a seat at the tech fail table yet.)
    While Google+ does have some features that are comparable to Facebook, it isn’t fair (or accurate) to dismiss it as a feature-for-feature clone. Granted, Google+ can't match Facebook's impressive 750 million user base, and I doubt it will ever usurp Facebook as the social media platform of choice for posting photos of Hummel figurine collections, reports of embarrassing office parties, or serving as the online soapbox of choice we all use to tell our own airbrushed versions of reality. (Those of you that have never used Facebook to post pictures of your kids, brag about a recent vacation, or subtly tried to let everyone know how great of a person you are can be excused. Still here? I thought so.)


    2. Social is the New Search
    Part of that broader ambition for Google+ is improving Google search, which has suffered an increasing amount of criticism over the last 12 months concerning deteriorating search result quality – like here, here, and here. Google says that it is continually updating their search algorithm to provide better search results, and part of that improvement has included the addition of social media factors. More people are using social media that ever before to select and distribute online content to their friends, and Google+ (and the new Google +1 feature) are two of Google's attempts to bake more social media factors into search and determine the “social value” of individual websites. Given the increasing role of social media in search -- and the long-term impact that shift could have on Google's core (and very profitable) search advertising business, Google had to respond. Although arguably a bit late to the social search game, Google+ is proof that Google to aggressively embracing the trend.


    3. Google+ Everywhere
    While Google may have been late to embrace social media, their Google+ strategy intends to leverage all of their existing strengths in a way that their previous efforts haven't. Just as Microsoft has historically used their dominant market share on the desktop to promote related products -- such as Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player -- I believe Google fully intends to embed Google+ support across their entire product family, from Google search to Gmail, YouTube, and beyond. In this sense using Google+ isn’t analogous to adopting yet another social media platform, as Google is simply adding Google+ functionality to services that we’re already using. Capitalizing on your strengths is always a valid business strategy, one that Apple and Microsoft have been especially effective at employing themselves. Just ask Digital Research, Novell, WordPerfect, Jack Tramiel’s Atari, Commodore, and all the other ghosts and diminished competitors of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates about how well those industry titans have effectively leveraged the strengths of their respective corporations to their competitive advantage.


    4. Consumerization is Driving the IT Agenda
    The adoption and use of computing devices and services intended initially for consumer use in the enterprise is increasing, and Google is one of the companies leading the charge. Microsoft has been forced to react to this change, with the recent unveiling of Office 365 and the long-overdue move to Windows Phone 7 being responses to the success of consumer-focused cloud services and mobile devices, respectively. Google is embracing and driving this trend perhaps more than any other vendor, with Gmail and Google Apps for Business and Education in the cloud space, and Google Android in the smartphone market. Amazon may challenge Google in the cloud arena, and Apple is a strong competitor in the mobile space. Microsoft doesn't have a strong position -- as of this writing -- in either the cloud or mobile arenas, although the advent of Office 365 and ongoing updates to the Windows Phone platform could change that.

    Read more at www.windowsitpro.com
     

    What Strategies To Use To Grow Your Facebook Fan Base

    Mari Smith does an excellent job in curating the best strategies, tools and tactics that really make a difference in growing your Facebook Fan base. Here is a list of ten key strategies you can start using right now and in the original article, there is even more stuff to put to use. Highly useful. Practical.

    Amplify’d from www.socialmediaexaminer.com

    #1: Embed Widgets on Your Website

    Select from a number of the new Facebook Social Plugins and place them on your website and blog. The Fan Box widget is now the Like Box and it works well to display your current fan page stream and a selection of fans - see screenshot below with Whole Foods Market Facebook Like Box. I would recommend adding a title above the box encouraging visitors to your site/blog to click the “Like” button (which makes them a Facebook fan).

    You might also consider the Live Stream widget for more advanced uses, particularly on an FBML custom tab of your fan page itself. The Live Stream widget allows Facebook users to add their comments to a live event, for example, and that activity pushes out into their stream.

    #2: Invite Your Email and Ezine Subscribers

    Assuming you have an opt-in email list, definitely send out an invitation to your subscribers via email (several times, over time) letting them know about your fan page and encouraging them to join. Ideally, provide them with a description of the page and an incentive to join.

    Be sure to have the Facebook logo/badge appear in your HTML newsletters. Instead of the usual “Join our Fan Page,” say something creative like “Write on our Facebook wall,” or “Join our Facebook community,” or “Come add your photo to our Facebook group” (where “group” is actually your fan page). Users have to be a fan in order to interact with your fan page in this way.

    #3: Add to Your Email Signature Block

    Instead of promoting your Facebook personal profile (if you do), include a link to your fan page in every email you send out. If you use web-based email, check out the Wisestamp signature addon.

    #4: Make a Compelling Welcome Video

    Create an attractive landing tab (canvas page) with a video that explains exactly a) what your fan page is about, b) who it’s for and c) why they should become members.  The result: you’ll increase your conversion rate from visitors to fans. One of my favorite fan page welcome videos is by Steve Spangler, the Science Guy! After watching his video, you can’t help but want to join!

    #5: Use Facebook Apps

    I recently tested a new live video-streaming app called Vpype. The app adds a tab to your fan page called “Shows” and when you broadcast as your fan page, everyone can view by default. (You can also broadcast as your personal profile and selectively invite friends/friend lists). I wrote up a review of this app here. By announcing via Twitter, your personal Facebook profile, your blog and your email list, you can broadcast regular live Internet TV shows from your fan page and create much buzz.

    #6: Integrate the Facebook Comment Feature

    My favorite example of this is the t-shirt company Threadless. On their landing tab (canvas page), you can view and purchase t-shirts as well as Like and comment on any item and choose to have that comment posted to your Facebook profile, as shown in this screenshot:

    #7: Get Fans to Tag Photos

    If you host live events, be sure to take plenty of photos (or even hire a professional photographer), load the photos to your fan page and encourage fans to tag themselves. This, again, pushes out into their wall and friends’ News Feeds, providing valuable (free!) exposure. And, a picture says a thousand words – we notice the thumbnails in our feed more than text. (Props to Nick O’Neil for this tip.)

    #8: Load Videos and Embed on Your Site

    Facebook’s Video feature is extremely powerful. You can load video content to your Facebook fan page, then take the source code and embed on your blog/website. There is a “Become a Fan” button right in the video itself. For an excellent tutorial, see Nick O’Neil’s post: How To Get Thousands of Facebook Fans With a Single Video.

    [UPDATE: Since Facebook changed the Become a Fan button to the Like button, embedded Facebook videos now display a white watermark hotlink of the Facebook name in the upper left corner of the video player - see first screenshot below. This is a clickable link that goes to the original video page on your fan page. If the visitor to your site clicks through to Facebook from your video, and they are logged into Facebook at the time, they will see a Like button at the top left corner of the video player - see second screenshot below.]

    #9: Place Facebook Ads

    Even with a nominal weekly/monthly budget, you should be able to boost your fan count using Facebook’s own social ad feature. It’s the most targeted traffic your money can buy. To buy an ad, scroll to the foot of any page inside Facebook and click the link at the very bottom that says “Advertising.” From there, you can walk through the wizard and get an excellent sense of how many Facebook users are in your exact target market.

    Then, when you advertise your fan page, Facebook users can become a fan (click the Like button) right from the ad as shown in the screenshot below. Additionally, Facebook displays several of your friends who have already liked you, thus creating social proof.

    See more at www.socialmediaexaminer.com
     

    Can You Make More Money By Having Customers Chose Their Price?

    Here is some really interesting information to look at. A few real-world stories go a long way in letting you see how much of an opportunity there can be in letting customers chose their own price.

    There's a lot more to check in the original article. Make sure you check it out.

    Amplify’d from www.getelastic.com

    Is Pay-What-You-Wish Pricing Wishful Thinking?

    Some businesses have taken the same approach to pricing, allowing customers to “pay what they want” – even if that means pay nothing. “Pay what you wish” / “name your own price” (PWYW / NYOP) worked for Radiohead and appears to be working for some restaurants, but it’s a different ballgame online. The anonymity of the Internet removes the social pressure one feels after being served personally by a human being. It’s one thing to download Radiohead’s In Rainbows for $0.00, another to show up week after week for a legit dine-and-dash.

    Nevertheless, there are some notable examples of PWYW / NYOP in ecommerce:

    The Radiohead Strategy

    Radiohead made waves in 2007 when it bypassed traditional distribution channels and offered its In Rainbows album for whatever fans wanted to pay. According to Comscore, In Rainbows was downloaded 1.8 million times, generating $2.26 per album (60% opting for the free download). Without costs of production, inventory, shipping or cuts to the middleman, Radiohead claims it actually made more money off the “pay what you want” release than any other album.

    World of Goo

    Indie game developers 2D Boy celebrated the one-year anniversary of its World of Goo game with a one-week NYOP sale, and blogged the results of the campaign here.

    In one week, the San Francisco duo drummed up 57,000 new downloads with an average purchase price of $2.03. Even after 13% in PayPal fees – that’s not a bad chunk of change. A nice side effect was sales of other games Steam and WiiWare rose 40% and 9%, respectively due to the social media publicity and enthusiasm. Fascinatingly, some commenters on the blog post confessed they downloaded the game not because they wanted to play it, but to support the NYOP pricing model!

    GapMyPrice.com

    The Gap’s foray into PWYW offered customers a one-day opportunity to name their price for certain styles of khaki pants on the www.gapmyprice.com microsite. Lowball offers were returned with slightly higher prices by the Gap, which the customer had one chance to accept or decline.

    In reality, this is not choosing one’s own price at all, rather an e-haggling approach to a daily deal sale. While it sounds so novel (and perhaps, insane) Gap’s approach is not new. eBay sellers have had the option to list a suggested price and invite customers to “make an offer,” which may be rejected by the seller for years.

    Name Your Own Price Tips

    1. Determine whether your product is right for NYOP

    2. Consider a time-limited promotion

    3. Consider a suggested price

    The suggested price has a powerful psychological influence on the price a customer is willing to pay – it can work for you or against you.

    Setting a fair suggested price gives the customer a true sense of value. It won’t prevent low offers, but it will keep more buyers in your ballpark. Some may even offer more (Radiohead fans have claimed to have paid over $30 for the album).

    4. Don’t counter-offer

    Coming back with counter-offers is merely e-bargaining. It reveals you have a reserve price, and instead of offering a sale, customers must “guess” how low you’ll go. At worst, customers may feel they are being gamed into pay more than a sale price.

    5. Add some social pressure

    In Maravu’s checkout, your offer is pasted on a graphic that shows its relative cheapness. While it’s an arbitrary scale, when it’s positioned to the low end, the customer may reconsider the price paid. If the scale is based on what others have paid, this may also make the person feel “cheap” and up their offer.

    See more at www.getelastic.com
     

    Is Google+ The New FriendFeed?

    Interesting article by Mario Sundar looking at the social model that Google+ has adopted and which is a mix between Facebook and Twitter. Something FriendFeed had pioneered with mixed results. Read on and comment on the original article what you think of Google+ future in this light.

    Amplify’d from mariosundar.com

    The Return of Friendfeed (as Google+)

    I recently shared my thoughts on Google+ (Google’s recent foray into social networking — let me know if you need an invite — after the public failure of Google Wave and Buzz). They’ve got to get it right this time (and frankly I think they nailed some of the subtleties that they didn’t in their past avatars). That said, there’s just something about Google+ that doesn’t seem right and — that’s got to do with its relationship model.

    Google Plus is a curious amalgam of Facebook and Twitter but more interestingly this is the same model that Friendfeed pioneered (with far slicker tools: “like” and “real-time feed” anyone).

    Google+ is basically the 2nd coming of Friendfeed and therein lies the rub…

    Information networks vs. social networks

    Why is that a problem you ask. Let me first explain the two different types of social networking models. Traditional social networks (like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) have a symmetric connection model — mutual connections mark the relationship. Twitter on the other hand (an information network if you will), followed the subscription model where you follow users (much like Ev and Biz’s first hit – Blogger.com, which Google later bought). To the best of my knowledge, here’s the best description of the two models — hat tip to Adam Darowski (Bokardo), who did a terrific piece explaining these two social networking models. Highly recommended reading.

    Now, Friendfeed (later bought by Facebook – oh, what an intricate social web we weave), came out with a hybrid model which allows you to have both friends (subscribers) and followers. Oddly enough followers could pop up into your conversations as well. So, rather than being the best of both worlds, what you end up with is the worst of both worlds. Initially, there’s an incentive to build your REAL social network (a la Facebook) that Google+ is trying to foster with Circles, but at the same time they pollute that atmosphere with the follower model, where people you don’t know jump in with comments that you don’t feel like responding to.

    That was the problem Friendfeed faced and that’ll be the problem that Google+ will inevitably encounter.

    Secondly, Circles or Friend-lists are not scalable (though Google+ has perfected the art of persistent engagement to get users to bucket them – nicely done). What this means is that Google+ will gravitate toward the asymmetric or hybrid model (as it already has, wherein your stream will be sprinkled with random comments from people you don’t know).

    What’s Google+’s future?

    As I said in my Quora post, Facebook has nothing to fear from Google+. They both operate under completely different models. While Facebook is focused on building real relationships and has assiduously built an environment that reminds me of “Cheers” (see below), Google+ is slowly morphing into Friendfeed.

    At the end of the day, I just wanted to be someplace…

    …where everybody knows your name,
    and they’re always glad you came.

    you wanna be where everybody knows
    your name.
    That is Home. That is Facebook. (For me)

    Read more at mariosundar.com
     

    How Do You Go About Valuing Your Startup?

    If you are looking to get your startup project to be financed, you may be wondering what is the best approach to determine the value of a new startup. In this article, Bill Clark provides nine possible steps to consider when attempting to put a value on your startup.

    Amplify’d from mashable.com
    Determining your startup’s worth is one of the hardest parts of the fundraising process. There is no magic formula that will spit out a valuation, namely because the number is highly subjective. The entrepreneur, for example, anticipates huge potential and may therefore put a high valuation on his company. The investor, on the other hand sees a company that needs capital to grow and may fail without it, so he may set a low valuation. To help the process, we’ve devised a few considerations to help value your company.

    9 Steps to Consider When Valuing Your Startup

    Determining your startup’s worth is one of the hardest parts of the fundraising process. There is no magic formula that will spit out a valuation, namely because the number is highly subjective. The entrepreneur, for example, anticipates huge potential and may therefore put a high valuation on his company. The investor, on the other hand sees a company that needs capital to grow and may fail without it, so he may set a low valuation. To help the process, we’ve devised a few considerations to help value your company.

    1. What You Need

    Before you set a valuation, you’ll need to calculate the money needed for both immediate and long-term success. Once you have identified the general range of capital that will help you maintain and grow, you can focus on other factors that determine your company’s worth.

    2. Equity

    No one likes to sacrifice a piece of his company, but there should be a range you feel comfortable offering up to potential investors. You need to find a balance though. Don’t give up too much and lose control of your company or dilute its value, but don’t be stingy either, thereby rendering your company unattractive to investors. Planning 10-20% equity for seed investments is a safe range for startups.

    3. Intellectual Property

    Having a lot of intellectual property could push up the valuation of your company. Your IP might be a patent, a copyright, a design or even a website code. If your IP will give you a competitive advantage, you should assign it a higher value. Look to other companies with similar IP and see what they placed as its value.

    4. Other Assets

    You may have purchased assets or created some other value while building your startup, for example, a domain name, servers, equipment or property. It is much easier to assign a value to a tangible asset, but be sure not to overlook intangibles when adding up the overall value.

    5. Barrier to Entry

    You need to consider the time it would take for someone to copy your idea. Simple ideas often have low barriers to entry; they’ll have to fight off “me-too” companies very quickly – for example, Groupon and other “deal of the day” sites. Startups with high barriers to entry present complex ideas that may require a lot of time, money and effort, and therefore face less competition. However, high barrier to entry (longer first-to-market exclusivity) may be more attractive, and therefore more valuable, to potential investors.

    6. Future Value

    Estimating the value of your company’s future potential is probably the hardest and most subjective step, especially when it’s only at seed stage level. The momentum enjoyed by late-stage companies shows future growth potential, but early-stage startups have less tangible results and fewer concrete scenarios for success. It is important to not underestimate the potential value, however, by presenting enough data to back up your valuation. A solid business plan and avenues for growth will solidify your valuation to potential investors.

    7. Traction

    Investors like to see traction. They’ll be more willing to sign a check when they can see that others have used your product or service. If you have customers, calculate a lifetime value for each, and factor that figure into your overall valuation. As an early-stage company, you may wish to provide free services in order to gain traction, and then use it as a means to increase your company value.

    Read more at mashable.com
     

    From SEO To SocialSEO: SEOMoz 2011 Top15

    What now counts for a web site to move up in the search results is not anymore the result of following the basics of good SEO. Those times have gone. What has emerged clearly from SEOMoz last webinar is the fact any web site publisher must now pay great attention to increasingly important factors such as usage data and social signals.

    Here below some of the 15 key highlights indicating the huge transformation SEO is going through.

    Amplify’d from www.marketingpilgrim.com

    Top 15 Highlights From SEOmoz 2011 Ranking Factors

    Last week, SEOMoz hosted a Search Ranking Factors webinar or #mozinar (to you Twitter folks out there) that highlighted the latest and greatest in what plays into search results. Search marketing presents huge opportunity for businesses. In fact, for many local and small businesses their success often relies on appearing in the SERPs. If you happened to miss the webinar, here are the top 15 things to consider when doing SEO.

    1. Correlation Isn’t Causation – We all knew that this was coming. If you follow SEOMoz heavily this is one of the most commonly used phrases but for good reason. The illustration pointed out that although their study may bring about correlations between variables it isn’t meant to suggest that they cause one another.
    1. Usage Data (CTR, Bounce Rate) is set to increase in relative relevance to impacting search results. Google may begin looking more at how content is capturing and holding an audience’s attention.
    1. More than 75% of SEOs believe social signals, in some regard, will also increase in relevance regarding impact on search results
    1. 60% of SEOs think exact keyword match domains will decrease in relevance to search results. For instance “www.buytractortrailers.com” won’t automatically populate the first result simply because of the domain.
    1. Linking Root domains with partial anchor text are more highly correlated to positive results than exact match anchor text. Very weird to find this information out and SEOMoz couldn’t explain it. Maybe Google is beginning to notice brands setting out to over-optimize for a set list of anchor text? It may be worth it to try and vary your link building keywords every now and then with partial anchor text.
    1. More Adsense slots and size, means you tend to rank lower. Might not necessarily be causation; the data could be due to low quality sites only focusing on advertising.
    1. FB shares were the highest social signal correlated to better search results. However, still some are suggesting that Google doesn’t take FB Shares to account as much as we think, they are merely indicators that content is quality.
    1. Title tags are still very important – They are one of the higher on-page features impacting search relevance.
    1. Page level link metrics have decreased in relative importance – In 2009, SEOs thought 43% of search relevance was impacted by page level link metrics, and 24% of search was impacted by domain level link. In 2011, those figures decreased to 22% and 21% respectively.
    1. To appear in search results via Twitter, the authority of tweets is more important than number of tweets. This makes sense, (especially in the future) because if you get a lot of retweets on an article from spammy Twitter accounts, they wouldn’t be as relevant as a few retweets from “authoritative users.” This will be used by Google to protect themselves against people manipulating the social system.
    Read more at www.marketingpilgrim.com
     

    School Is The Best Social Media Gym

    While traditional schools offer less and less the type of learning experience young people would really need to confront these fast changing times, at their core they remain a fantastic playground for our first social relations and socially-learned behaviours.

    This is why, looking in retrospect at schools, one can see how much of a valuable learning experience they can provide under disguise.

    Amplify’d from www.convinceandconvert.com

    Secrets of Social Media You Learned in High School

    High School Clique Secrets of Social Media You Learned in High School

    In full disclosure, a lot of our social media strategy flows out of the work we do with Jay Baer. He’s been great, taught me and our entire agency a ton about how to develop and deploy social media for our clients and own efforts to grow business. That said, much as we love our time with Jay, I’m always struck right after hanging up the phone, or at end of a webinar, just how simple this whole social media thing is. The hard part—like losing weight, quitting smoking, eating your fruits and veggies– is doing it and sticking with it with in a disciplined day-in and day-out way. But the real basics of how the ecosystem works— well, I learned (and you did too) back in high school.

    Cliques and groups define you

    Who’s your audience? What are they thinking and feeling? What’s important and relevant to them? In high school, I spanned a bunch of cliques, groups, even a few lame gangs. We had juicers, druggies, motor heads, hippies (yes I’m that old,) rockers, heavy metal rockers, jocks and nerds in my HS. And that’s not an exhaustive list. But in each case, as I’d weave through my angst filled teenage years jumping from group to group, each had its own coda, jargon, ethics, special interests, badges of honor (or dishonor) and tests of loyalty.

    If you wanted to be part of one – you had to connect with authenticity. Fake it or fail the test – sniff, whiff or otherwise –and you’d never really be accepted or “in.”

    Word spreads fast (True or not)

    Once you were “in” or “out” – anything you’d do that either enhanced your status or tainted it would be known fast …at least before homeroom, often in time for the bus ride home or that night’s game. Word of your distinction (“you won’t believe what Murtha did?”) or loser move (also, “you won’t believe what Murtha did?”) spread instantly and widely.

    Friends want to hang out with other friends

    Homogeneity was the goal. Fitting in with a HS clique meant you shared a clothing style, a haircut, an attitude, special interests, leaders, and of course, common enemies and causes. And sharing meant hanging out with your group and talking incessantly in-between chemistry and honors English about the stuff that really mattered to us. And after school, it meant hanging out with a following of like-minded individuals. And followings mattered. The size of the crowd that would show up at that nights’ game, or at the corner store, or on the bridge that severed North Bergen from Jersey City heights all depended on who was there. No sense going if there’s wasn’t someone there worth hanging out with—someone with a decent following.

    You can’t be a friend without being a friend

    And what good is hanging out and doing stuff together if you can’t talk about it in minute detail. Over and over and over again. Why see Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson rise out of the smoke filled stage at the Fillmore East if you’re not going to share the experience after the concert. And relive each Aqualung or Locomotive Breath crescendo. So we were “atomizing” and recycling our content streams and we didn’t even know it.

    Good friends talk, listen, comment, trash or praise and relive everything they experience.
    Read more at www.convinceandconvert.com
     

    Future of News: Short-Free Long-Pay

    What happens to online news when stories and articles get chunked up to fit the new social microformats? Is the long-form going to disappear or become a luxury? What are the viable horizons for talented new media writers and reporters to make the best of this deep transformation in how news are consumed?

    Amplify’d from www.businessinsider.com

    The News Article Is Breaking Up

    iPhone vs. Newspaper
    Mobile technology is pulling apart the centuries-old format of the article. News and analysis are getting a divorce

    On smartphones, through which the vast majority of the world's population will get their news, people love succinct and scannable information. We are gravitating to formats that do not require us to click through and consume paragraphs of prose. The update stream popularized by Facebook and Twitter — and ultimately derived from the phone-indigenous SMS — is ideal for breaking news, but it is ill-suited to deeper analysis.

    Meantime, the classic article is a carefully crafted bundle of facts, photos, and quotes bolstered with historical background and analysis. But when the news is already known to the reader — thanks to the stream — these bundles can become confusingly out-of-sync even when they are just a few hours old. And more and more news content is being created on mobile phones: celebrity tweets, handheld videos, location-specific checkins. Taking the time to turn these short-form nuggets into articles adds limited value, so they are made and viewed in a mobile-friendly format, cutting the article out altogether.

    Long-form writing will survive and will do so by abandoning news nuggets. What emerges will offer a liberating business model for writers. Within the next ten years, long-form writers will accept that their readers have seen the facts of the story live as it happened, probably elsewhere. The longer content that succeeds in that environment will be pieces that provide the most value as backgrounders, news analyses, and commentary.

    The good news for writers is that this dovetails with their financial and intellectual interests. Via a variety of social-mobile platforms, they will pass along facts and pictures as soon as they obtain them — or verify them, depending on the writer's journalistic standards. Writers who are especially good at doing this real-time reporting will develop audiences who are attentive to their mobile alerts. News nuggets are highly viral, so successful reporters will very quickly be introduced to huge numbers of readers.

    Through this loss-leading channel, writers will then be able to notify their readers about longer-form articles they have created. Unlike news nuggets, which cannot be protected and whose facts are instantly everywhere, personal pieces reject commoditization. Their value will hinge on the author's subjective perspective, experience, or knowledge. They may be longer than news articles today, uniquely styled, visually interesting, or delivered via video or audio. These pieces will written to be saved to read later — for that time when the reader takes a moment to relax, learn, and enjoy resting by the side of the stream. Social and mobile platforms make payment much easier, so it will be practical to charge a small fee. Fifty cents for thoughtful analysis is inexpensive, and yet it is the cost of an entire newspaper today.

    Read more at www.businessinsider.com
     
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