I have been keeping ahead of the game of new and shiny objects by trying out the latest and greatest in tools that can be used for social media programs at companies. I have always come back to the main point of view as it relates to tools that work.  I was reading a recent blog post by David Armano related to this very idea.  David states better than I can about dusting off some of the old tools before trying out new and shiny ones:

Your Blog(s): Your company is blogging. Congratulations. Is anyone listening? Blogging was the bright and shiny object of 2006-2008 and many companies found out just how hard it is to do well. Good blogging provides value. It is interesting and generates a healthy amount of comments and conversation which in turn generates a good dose of Google juice. It’s also terribly difficult to sustain. It requires cultural shifts within an organization, and has to be prioritized (read: made part of someone’s job). Frankly, I rarely see outstanding examples of a good company blog. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing (if it makes sense strategically), but doing it well is another story.

Many companies have still not taken on blogging as a tool that will work for them.  They have gone straight to Twitter or Facebook fan pages or none of the above as yet.  I am of the camp that blogs are a place to start, and a place to start a social media foundation.  I am dusting off the blog here and trying myself to get back into the swing of blogging for business.  This is the message I mention in most conversations.  Is you blog dusty?  Perhaps a little cleaning is in order and some attention given. Then you can go off to find a new and shiny tool.

Tags: Corporate Blogging, Professional Blogging, Bloggers For Hire, Social Media, Social Media Tools

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I have been preaching about blogging for a long time.  I have been an evangelist and telling companies that they had to blog more they had to have a place for people to "join the conversation" and making it possible for them to connect with their customers.  Like some of the preachers of the past, I am my own worst sinner apparently.  I was reminded by people in my company that I am the worst person in the world to tell companies that they are not blogging enough or that they are not doing it right.

I am preaching from the pulpit so to speak and I am preaching to the choir perhaps, but I need to update more often here.  I am trying to get more and more content on here and those that are slinging arrows at me the most may be asked to also contribute now and then to what we are doing at One By One Media and Bloggers For Hire.  I am also on Twitter quite a bit, and I am trying out Posterous, and I am about to start Social Mediasphere TV again.  Of course, you can always come and hear what we are doing at our new radio show at Blog World Expo Radio.

Now that BlogWorld & New Media Expo is over for 2009 I have a few minutes I can breathe, and I will be using that time to try to be more involved here rather than out on the road or on the phone trying to convert the latest in small medium or large business to jumping into the social media pool.  I guess I am like that life guard that actually never swims!

Photo via LeMonde1

Tags: One By One Media, Bloggers For Hire, Twitter, Posterous, Social Mediasphere TV, Blog World Expo Radio, Blog World Expo, Business Blogging, Evangelism

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I have been talking about 2009 being the "Year of Listening".  This may be a little ahead of its time as we are still getting sign on for the idea that social media as a doctrine is even worth the space or tab for the business plan or model.  I think that social media gives an opportunity to do more listening and less shouting.  I even do this in the real world.  I tend to sit back and gather intelligence in a situation before I ever enter into the discussion or argument or whatever might be the mode of communication at the time.  I get more accomplished by first hearing what is being said and then contributing.  I tend to learn more about a subject and the people discussing that subject than I would if I jumped into the conversation early.  Many times I have done that I find myself with foot in mouth and backing out of the conversation sooner than later.  My first advice to many companies to to listen.

Now the other side of that coin that is usually the first reason many companies are not quick to sign on to the idea is listening does not convert.  I have heard many an executive tell me, "listening doesn’t sell."  After all that is the bottom line in a company selling your product or your service to the person that holds the money.  I recently spoke to a group and later the owner of the company met me in the hall and said "oh good someone that will explain how social media is going to help us SELL."  That four letter word is the only one I tend to hear from the likes of those looking at the bottom line.  I can assure you if sell is not the goal I will hear other four letter words that will describe certain feelings.  It really is only about the sell so how do you impart listening as a way to get the sale?  Listening does not convert.  Sure that statement might be true but when does your program have the ability to know when someone wants to buy or better yet what they want to buy?

I have been showing some companies that listening actually helps them sell.  I like to use the idea behind the tire swing.

Listening actually gets you to the final image, knowing what it is your customer actually wants.  The problem with that scenario is that the CEO or head of the department or whoever seems to be the decision maker has to be thinking about all the other panels in the cartoon above.  They have learned that making all the other departments happy and still coming in under a budget is what it is actually all about.  This is not listening.  If more of us actually listened for a while to find out what the customer actually wants, we could sell them that product every time.  Perhaps the problem is not that they don’t know what the customer actually wants, its what they can provide the customer from their company.  Maybe they sell jungle gyms and not tire swings.  This is a problem, and not something that social media will help them overcome. Listening converts but only if you actually listen.

Photo via sonyradio.com

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I have been trying to figure a way to work into the mix some of the businesses I visited and met while I was out in the islands and one of the things I thought of for the people at Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut factory was to allow them to talk about the processing of their delicious snack and how it is packaged and sent out to the various parts of the world.  I thought about how they could get a blog to their site to describe each of the seasons of growing, and harvesting, and also more importantly making their already open to the public tour a part of their everyday broadcast to the social media world.

They have a building where they do their packaging and processing and roasting.  As a group we were allowed to check out their assembly line type of roasting, processing and packaging.  I thought it would be a simple way to show the rest of the world this process using a simple web cam and their blog.  A page could be set up and the live stream run on the plant while they prepared and shipped their product. This could also be monitored for questions about the process, or a Q&A about what is being done and how. A few short hours a day could really turn into some sales for them overall.

They are a very retail oriented operation and I was thinking that they could generate a few more sales that would not only pay for their program, but also help with their brand.  The big Island was a wonderful place and this business is only one of them that is doing well on the island. Social media might just get them a little further as time goes on.  Now to see if I can find their Twitter page or if I can find them on Facebook.

Tags: Mauna Loa, Macadamia Nuts, Social Media, Hawaii, So Much More Hawaii Tour, Marketing, e-Commerce

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I have seen quite a shift recently in the way that companies are handling their social media needs.  I am seeing companies that before only though social media was a fad and that it was the marketing gimmick du jour, are now embracing the idea that this new type of online participation is here to stay.  This is not by any means surprising.  Many of the things that I have been preaching over the last 5 years are continuing to be something that seems to work in the online world.

The crazy times I have been experiencing are trying to keep up with the demand.  This is not a bad thing in this type of economy.  The other problem I have had is adjusting to the needs of clients. They for years never wanted anything to do with social media and now they seem to want the magic overnight. I have a difficult time explaining that social media is not a silver bullet and not something that is implemented and like the magic beans grows a stalk to the promise land overnight.

It is not too late to beginning a social media program at your own company and in fact the longer you wait the longer it will take to see the benefits.  Those that hopped on the bandwagon a few years back are  just now seeing the fruits of their labor.  Social Media takes time.  The participation in communities and earning of trust is not something that can be done on Monday and the fruits of that participation are seen on Friday.  That is not to say that those stories don’t happen but they are rare in any sense. Get started today.  Okay, maybe not today as I am still trying to catch up from yesterday! 

UPDATE:  A great post from Phil Johnson at Advertising Age should be read on this as well.

Tags: social media, consulting, advertising, marketing, public relations

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I have been giving a lot of my blog real estate to Twitter recently as it seems to be the darling of all of the micromediasphere (yes, I love that term and bought the URL just because. Did you click through?). I have also been interested in what is going on with other alternatives. Competition is good, but what is that competition? I had been wondering that when I received an email today from Identi.ca

On avergage I get more than 100 new emails every day from new followers on Twitter. I lose may followers and gain many, and recently my average followers increases about 30 per day. The email from Identi.ca was from a new follower. I rare occasion in my inbox. I headed over to Identi.ca and saw some changes. The site itself is newly designed from what I remember, yes it has been that long since I was there, and it indicated on the landing page itself that they have undergone a “massive upgrade” on January 23 and it warns to watch for “new features”. I’m curious to follow along with what this might entail as I would love to see someone push Twitter a little to get them to make themselves better. I am not sure if there are third party things being developed like my beloved Tweetdeck, or other applications to make things cooler, but I will keep up with what is happening. I am also watching what is going on with Plurk and Jaiku, but they are also a memory for me with Twitter growing into the powerhouse it is in the micromediasphere. We have already seen Pownce shuttered (for the time being although I have a theory about that one).

Perhaps I can contact Identi.ca and ask them to be on Social Mediasphere Radio since I don’t have a clue what tonight’s show will be on or what guests I might have. I was going to click through to the Identi.ca blog but alas it could not be easily found. Stay tuned?

UPDATE:  I am now doing my radio show this evening on the alternatives to Twitter.

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I was talking to one of my bloggers recently about getting back to my roots and getting back to what made me the blogger I am today. I talked about rediscovering the talents that I developed long ago when I was a Daddy blogger talking about the little things in life that as I discovered recently are actually the big things. He said something remarkable that immediately caused me to think of this post, he said “It’s like going home.”

I have had that in my mind and can’t get the thought out of my head. I like the sound of “going home.” The thought of going home has many emotions and memories, even smells and other senses and thoughts of better days. I think of all of the times I actually went home when it brought with it the safety of youth and the feeling of protection and notion of being where I belonged.

What does this have to do with social media consulting or anything business related? I believe we all need to sometimes take a moment to stop and go home. We need to get an idea of what brought us to where we are and what started us on the journey to begin with and to see if we are still on that path. Many times we have changed paths without ever knowing and we need to refocus our efforts to get back on the proper path.

For me, getting back to what the true nature of blogging is and was for me is essential to being able to teach and mentor others. It allows me to explain to companies needing my services with the passion I first had for blogging and how it changed my life and the can change their company. As a business owner can you remember where your home is? Perhaps you are working for a company and can think of the time when you first decided that you believed in your company and its message or mission. If not perhaps a short trip back home is in order.

[photo courtesy of sanjoyg]

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On the same vein as my lost post regarding a blogging hiccup or what I see as a new era of business blogging, we are now at a crossroad of corporate advertising, marketing and PR online.  There are many forward thinking companies that are early adopters, and especially in the technical world where technology is seen as a tool to harness if you want to succeed.  So where are we in the adoption of social media as it relates to the rest of the companies and corporations?  We are at a new beginning, the stage of educating the rest of the world. Those companies that didn’t get it, the ones that want to see what the early adopters did and what worked and what didn’t.

We have seen it in our own business model here at One By One Media and Bloggers For Hire.  We really didn’t have to sell real hard to get companies that were contacting us about business blogging and hiring bloggers.  They wanted to adopt the technology and they wanted to make it a part of their online presence.  They were already sold on the idea.  All I or any other social media consultant had to do was implement the tools necessary for the company to join in the social media world.  We had the good life then, and our sales were self fulfilling prophecies.  Now we are in the education stage of the rest of the world.  These companies and corporations are not yet sold on the idea of social media.  In fact, I think it was stated best in a post and thread at the newly canceled Blog Business Summit.

Steve Broback wrote:

Like the Lambada, I don?t believe my original, 1990?s era event model is nearly as viable as it used to be, and certainly not so for the BBS. The BBS really never attracted the huge numbers of marketing and PR types that clearly *needed* to learn this stuff. I tried very hard with the Chicago event to attract that demographic and our efforts washed up on shore like a dead fish.

In addition, we emailed, snail mailed, and telephoned 250 CTOs and CIOs and invited them to come and learn how Wikis and blogs can enable internal knowledge sharing. They were terrified, and only 3 signed up. A couple even said they were ?too busy? with their current efforts to reign in email overload to take the time to attend(!) (emphasis added)

This was a very astute thought and a comment by Kevin Hillstrom about the event:

In the posts of the past two days, one can see that you feel hurt by spending so much time and effort to evangelize something you believe in, only to have to make tough choices that may, on the surface, appear contrary to what you?ve evangelized over a period of several years.

It will probably be hard, but try to not blame people who ?don?t get it?. It is just as likely that people failed to do a good job of educating folks as it is that people ?don?t get it?. You?ll never know which of those two issues is the right one.

Teresa mentioned that companies that don?t get this are ?sunk?. They aren?t. They are simply missing an opportunity to improve the performance of their business.

When the conversation turns to picking on the ones who you are trying to evangelize, you make it that much harder to be successful in the long term.

Don?t feel bad about having to cancel something you so strongly believed in. Spend your efforts moving forward, showing folks that they can benefit by doing what you?re suggesting, and that what you?re suggesting is evolving and changing every day.

I sent two folks to your conference last year. One of those folks made a difference in her organization, armed with the knowledge she gained. Know that your efforts do help others who have an interest in your subject matter.

Kevin’s comment is spot on in my opinion.  We will need to show the examples of the past early adopters.  We need to take those examples and show the rest of the corporate world how the companies used the tool and how it benefited them and provide hard numbers for those companies to see for a return on their investment. As mentioned, Teresa stating that companies not adopting this social media tool are not sunk, but if companies want to differentiate themselves from their competitors, they can, if not, they are missing the opportunity.  I think we agree on the fact that if a company misses out on enough opportunities, sooner than later they will eventually sink  and die.  It will be up to them if they sink or swim, but it is up to us as social media consultants to throw them a life raft if needed.

So where do we go from here?  Now is truly the call for social media consultants to become evangelists. It’s time to stop preaching to the choir and truly find followers that want to succeed in business using social media tools.  Now is when we have the tough sell.  The easy sell is a thing of the past.  Pull in your numbers, get those examples ready, and show what you have done, and what you can do in the future.  It’s not going to be the easy contract that you get now, but one that you truly earn.

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My friend and mentor Paul Chaney recently asked a question on Facebook about the writing on the wall of the possibility of blogs exiting stage right.  His question:

Two things happened this month that are of significance where business blogging is concerned. Rick Bruner offered up the BBC domain for sale and BBS Chicago was canceled. What do you think that says about the state of business blogging as a trend?

Paul has been around long enough to see the rise of blogging, and the now plateau we seem to be seeing in the area of business blogging.  I responded with a short answer:

I think the shine has left the tool, and we are seeing a bit of a paradigm shift in the tech industry to newer applications. As far as businesses are concerned we have seen the early adopters, now we are beginning to see others see what it’s all about.

My idea is that in the tech industry and the early adopters, blogging is old news.  Who was attending blogging conferences and reading about business blogging?  The tech industry and those early adopters.  Now it’s time to start selling the idea to those that have not already had a taste of the Kool-Aide, or are savvy to what blogs can accomplish.  This is the hard sell era. 

Paul assured me in a conversation he and I had about his question:

I think blogging has matured as a marketing and business communications practice and found it’s place in the overall spectrum. It will still continue to grow, though at a more measured pace than before.

Paul is working on his own plans for his new role at Bizzuka, Inc., as its new Internet Marketing Director.  I hope the company knows what an asset they have hired in Paul to run their Internet marketing.  As soon as Paul gets that company’s blog up and running I can assure you it will be on top of my subscribed feeds and must reads.

A timely post about the blogging slide, is a post by Richard called Is Blogging in “The Dip”? Are we Throwing The Blogging Baby and Bathwater out?  I dont want to steal his entire post but he makes a very good point I would like to direct you to:

From where I sit, business blogging is just starting, so the future has not arrived. It is just emerging. As for those valuable ?Naked Conversations? between businesses and people, I sense they are also just in their infancy. And those conversations are found in blogs ? every day, hundreds of them, good, bad, fun and serious. Real people conversing among themselves, and sometimes with businesses. I am not seeing these real conversations at YouTube or using video. Nor do I see those connections at MySpace or FaceBook. Certainly not to the same and open extent I see them in blogs. Are we leaving the promise of blogging behind to pursue the next big thing, without ever realizing its potential?

I?m even wondering if blogging is in Seth Godin?s ?The Dip? and is going to need that focus and attention to get it through the dip, to realize all it could be. From my travels around the web, blogging is still producing the most genuine conversations between a business and people who want to talk about that business. But maybe I just don?t get it all yet either?

As Shel Israel recently noted (and reminded me personally, for which I say “Thanks Shel!”) ?Naked Conversations was essentially about conversations replacing messages because of the internet. We called that part a revolution and we still do. We talked almost exclusively about blogs because they were the only power tool of the conversational revolution at the time. What has changed is that there are now a great many tools and anyone can use any combination of them.? In this vein, Hugh ,over at Gaping Void, made it clear that ?Bogging isn?t for everybody, Web 2.0 is for everybody

I just think we need to be careful. Facebook has great features for sure. There are lots of sexy Web 2.0 applications, but let?s not throw baby blogging out with the bathwater. That is where I still see real conversations emerging.

I agree with Richard’s thoughts here.  Business blogging is not yet made it to mainstream.  It has been looked at played with, used, abused, and tested and tried by those that do that sort of thing and been given its stamp of approval.  Now it has moved on.  It is seen now by that early group as approved, adopted, and sold as a tool that has passed muster.  It now is entering the next phase which is implementation by all.  It used to be that if you didn’t have a website, you were dead.  Now since you are living with your website, if you don’t already have a blog, “your’e dead”.

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At least in our company, we get most of our client’s through Google searches done by companies looking for a blogging consultant or looking to hire a blogger for their company.  I ran through our client list to see the number of companies that have contacted us to provide a professional blogger or to consult them on a social media campaign.  One of the things that struck me was that a large number of them that had reached us or found us as a result of a Google search.

The conversation that prompted me to look at this in this light was a phone call from a prospective client.  We had discussed our services and he was happy with our business model and thought that we would probably do business in the future.  He then told that he had a difficult time finding a service such as ours, but eventually had found it through search.  He explained the roundabout way he happened upon our site, and I recognized a common theme to his search.  Everyone of the other clients had a similar story.

As a small business without a corps of sale people and without a huge marketing budget and a advertising team providing our message, we rely solely upon word of mouth, and being findable.  I preach the same to each of our clients.  In order for your business to be successful, it has to be findable.  It’s nice to see the sermon actually works for me as well.

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It has been nearly 2 years since Shel Israel posted his interview with Donna Tocci, and I also posted on this blog about the Tocci interview.  Now it seems that after this lengthy period, Kryptonite has decided to launch a blog.  I want to thank Shel for posting about their new blog.

This company as many remember and as Shel so pointedly remarked was "the first company to have been soundly trashed by the Blogosphere." 

My advice then was:

Donna, PR is your job and this all could be a great campaign to be honest and forthright with the customers and distributors you deal with each day. They want a place they can go where they can enter into some honest and frank dialogue and you can provide them with information best suited for the message your company is trying to convey.

She obviously took this sentiment to heart when she opens her post:

I struggled with what would be the first official post. It should be prolific after all this time, right? Grand in nature. Broad in scope. So, I struggled. How would we start this company blog? I struggled some more. And then I realized it’s just like walking into a room full of people you’ve never met – we’ll introduce ourselves to you. It seems like the polite thing to do, right?

This conversational style is exactly what the company needs to convey its message Donna.  It is really too bad that it took so long to get here.  Bravo Donna and company.

Tags: Kryptonite, Donna Tocci, Shel Israel, Corporate Blog, Business Blogs

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Fast Company had a provocative article yesterday:

This strategy reflects his overall advertising technique in Dallas. Advertise everywhere available. His name pops up on Google as the first choice when you search directly for him, but not when you search under “technology.” He has created a new way for other people, worldwide, to know him and access his accomplishments by creating a blog. People, who have no reason to look up LASIK eye-care can see his name simply by looking under “technology” on technorati.

Of course, does all this work? I don’t know; I used Dr. George Joseph.
Source: Should Small Companies Blog?

Really the question isn’t whether small companies should blog, I think small companies have every reason to blog, it’s whether a locally-focused company should blog.

And frankly, I don’t have a good answer.  The answer really depends on the business, the target clients, and the area the business is in.  Let’s look at real estate blogs.  If you’re in Silicon Valley or Seattle having a blog is perfect.  Come on you have tech savvy people who you want to sell to.  Those folks are online and looking for things they want online.  Perfect match.  A LASIK doctor in Dallas?  Well, seems a little strange, but you know if you keep the blog up and people find you via a search for “LASIK Dallas” well, that seems like a good benefit.

To me the questions about whether or not a company, small or large, should blog really depends on the company, not the medium.  I’ve done the “all companies should have a website” thing.  I’m a little wiser now to see that blanket statements like that just don’t work.

I’m too much of a pragmatist now to just see a one size fits all strategy.

Should you blog?  Should your business/company have a blog?  All good question that you need to consider yourself then ask some experts.  Jim and I are happy to talk with you.  We’ve told a number of potential clients that a blog might not be the right choice for them.  We’d rather have clients where a blog is the right fit, not the cool thing.

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As many of you know I worked for or around big pharma for close to 10 years.  I don’t blog about it much, or often comment on prescription drug issues often just because I was an insider for so long (yes, I know too much).  One thing that has been bugging a lot of us who have worked within or around pharma is how they have been very slow to embrace social media.  Back in ‘96 I helped launch most of the Glaxo websites for products.  It was an extremely hard sell.  Man the battles we had with lawyers and other regulatory folks.  Man pretty heated at times.

There are some excellent reasons why pharma has shied away from social media.  Control of their message isn’t just about marketing, it’s the law.  There are things you can and cannot say.  There are things you must do if people say certain things (even a hint of an adverse reaction goes to surveillance).  So is it any wonder that pharma has been reluctant to step into the fray?  That, however might be changing…

Hi there. I am writing on behalf of Bayer Animal Health, the manufacturer of Advantage Multi. As the manufacturer of this product, we very much want to know about product reactions (preferably as the are occurring).
Source: » Flea Control for Cats Leashes to Litterboxes

That comment is from a post on my girlfriend Lorraine’s pet health blog.  The e-mail and contact information left on the post are legit (I have 100s of e-mail addresses from Bayer folks to double check against).  This is a huge step and one I congratulate Bayer for taking.  This means that pharma might just be waking up and dedicating resources to monitor the blogosphere for mentions of their product and doing something proactive about them.

Do I expect pharma blogs soon?  Not likely.  Even with my background and knowledge of blogging and pharma I would be hesitant to recommend a public blogging effort.  Now an internal blogging effort, around monitoring an surveillance, well that’s a horse of a different color.

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Jason calls out on one of his favorite whipping boys, PayPerPost:

No one likes to be deceived and PayPerPost’s “disclosure policy” is a total joke. They don’t require folks to place disclosure at the top of the blog posts–which I predict the government will force them to do–but rather have folks put a badge somewhere on their page that links to some quasi-disclaimer that says that some of the posts MAY be influenced by being paid.
What a joke.
I would have no problem with PayPerPost if they forced their bloggers to disclose that their posts were paid IN THE FIRST SENTENCE OF THE POST.
Of course, the PayPerLosers will never do that because they know that their advertisers are using them because their
… and Tim Draper’s point that paid advertising had the same reaction leaves out an important point: PAID INCLUSION FAILED!!!!!!!! Hello!?!? People were so pissed off at GoTo/Overture having paid search results that they were forced to move the paid inclusion into Google-style auction based ADVERTISEMENTS.
Source: LA Times busts PayPerPost for deceptive marketing (or “Is Tim Draper in favor of deceptive marketing?!?!)

First, I will disclose that I have signed up for PPP, but I have not done any reviews there (nothing really seemed like it was worth my time or effort).  Next I will also disclose that after Jim’s post, Ted Murphy left a comment and Jim and both said we’d be interested in speaking at the conference.

So now to the meat of the post…

I think Jason has something there.  I remember in the heyday of paid inclusion people felt that they couldn’t trust search results from some providers.  I also remember listening to marketing folks wanting to buy the top position in search engines.  I never supported this.  Ever.  It just seemed fundamentally wrong to game search results that way.

Given the precedent that paid inclusion failed, would even disclosure save PPP and ReviewMe?  What about product marketers who would like to have their stuff reviewed?  Isn’t the model for a marketplace of advertisers and bloggers a good thing?  Clearly disclosure has been a big issue, but not the only issue.  I think there is a place for sponsored posts and a mechanism where companies can openly request reviews and bloggers be compensated for the time they put into those reviews.  Yes, payola could become a real problem.  Frankly it would happen anyway and has been happening for years.  Websites have promoted products without disclosing if they were being compensated since the beginning, so really this isn’t new.  It’s just that “blogging” has been held up as such a “pure” communication medium, that the thought of besmirching that purity with crass commercialism raised the hackles of many, many bloggers.

Putting this into perspective, it’s way, way too early for us to cast judgement on sponsored posts/paid reviews.  I do, however, lament that too many marketers see this as a shortcut into the blogosphere.  “Yeah will just pay people to talk about our stuff, and the blogosphere will just ignite!” Yeah, not so much.  A lot of the paid reviews I’ve read are rather thin.  No analysis, no “I tried it and here’s what I thought..”, lot’s of “This seems like an interesting idea/product…”.

It’s funny, when I ask for NFR licenses for software, it’s only after I’ve tried the software, like it, and would like to be able to do more reviews.  Sometimes I’m just given a license without asking, because I tried the software and thought it was good.  No money changes hands there, but I think everyone wins.

How do professional bloggers fit into this?  I think I might have already talked that one to death, but more companies using PPP should give blogging a try.  Really, it’s not hard.  You might be surprised with the positive comments you get.  Maybe that will be the final outcome, more companies blogging.  And that’s a good thing.

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I have heard Robert Scoble a couple of times this week say that at Microsoft they did research that showed that 3% of people out there went beyond page 1 of search results in their searches performed.  This can be very scary if you are a small business and want to gain customers on the Internet.  The first thing I ask customers when they ask me what we offer in the area of search engine optimization (SEO) or in search engine marketing (SEM) is "where is your company positioned in Google?"  If they don’t know, that tells me right away that they have no idea whether my answer to their question regarding search is right or wrong.  Google always seems to be used as the example because they have over 50% of the market share in search.  Companies have paid large sums of money to be on page 1 of Google search results.  Many companies also have paid exactly zero to be on page one.  Those without a page 1 marketing budget are the ones that get the position through organic search. 

"How do we get organic search results?"

This is one of the most popular questions that is asked of my company when I speak to customers about blogging and SEO.  I can talk about how great blogging is for SEO and for SEM but until they see actual results, it seems to be a skeptical look at blogging and its power.  My best example is a Daddy Blogger.  This Daddy Blogger I know started blogging back in early 2004 about his children and what it was like to be a father.  He spent exactly $0.00 on a SEO campaign and never once tweaked his site to make sure it was optimized for search.  His handle that he began with was Genuine.  That seems to be a very broad term, name, or search word.  Many companies have this in their company name or title or even in their tagline.  Some of the ones that I can think of are obvious, like Microsoft Genuine Advantage software, Genuine.com a software company, Genuine scooters, and many others.  I tell my prospective client to open their browser and type in the keyword Genuine.  After a few seconds I ask them to tell me what appears on page 1 of their search quest.  After the first three results, I would tell them to stop.  This Daddy blogger usually has always been mentioned. 

The reason I know of this example is simple.  I am that Daddy Blogger.  I never spent a dime on search engine optimization, no advertising budget, and I spent very little time each day to make sure I was on the top of the list.  This example is very effective to show that many of the companies out there are spending loads on advertising, when they need only be blogging.  Our clients are becoming more and more prevalent on the first page of Google in their genres or niche.  They are spending much less than their competition, but their results are growing at an alarming rate. You should also be vying for page 1 results on Google through organic search.  Contact me and let’s get your company out front.

Tags: Robert Scoble, Microsoft, Search, SEO, SEM, Google, Organic Search, Daddy Blogger, Genuine

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