SeoAlchemist

One large issue when running a business on or offline is training staff. The main issue that arises is whether you feel comfortable training your future competition. This is especially true in a service or consultancy based vertical, such as internet marketing.

In the end, a well trained staff is an asset, and you cannot control whether your employees become your future competitors. So how do you go about training a competent internet marketing staff?

Training Courses – There are a few training courses having to do with internet marketing that I find worth while. The first and foremost is Aaron Wall’s SEOBook.com. His offering is a great place to start someone new to the space. Other sites offer amazing content on a subscription basis, including SEOmoz.org and SearchEngineLand.com. If you couple a few of these subscriptions you can build an amazing educational library for your staff.

Weekly Roundtables – Each week select a topic for your team to meet about and discuss. Have each person create a presentation around one concept in the topic. For example, if you are going to discuss linkbuilding, you may assign one person to present on linkbaiting and another on a topic such as blogger outreach. This is a great hands on way to learn, and a way for you to spread the educational responsibility across your team.

Conferences – These are a coin flip. Dependent on the personality of your employee you could be wasting a few thousand, or you could get ten fold on your investment. Make sure to explore the topics at a conference and match the content with what you want your employee to learn and engage in.

Company Wiki – Create an educational wiki for your office only, where you can unload your knowledge base for your team to absorb, and add on to. This again spreads the responsibility of education across the team, and minimizes your ongoing time investment.

Other ideas to leverage an educated staff can be outside the realm of education itself. You can alleviate the need to train staff by utilizing these concepts.

Tools – By equipping your staff with Raven SEO Tools or tools you have created on your own, you can streamline workload. Utilizing a strong tool kit you can substitute mid grade labor with lower quality labor and not see much drop off. This of course is not going to be the cure for a really strong marketing mind.

Outsourcing – If you have specific needs a better option than hiring might be outsourcing. You can find labor that specializes in the skill set you are looking for, and by doing so you can not only alleviate unneeded labor costs, you can also often raise your prices due to the expertise behind the offering.

No matter what business you are in, a well trained staff is always going to be one of the key differences between success and failure. By putting processes in place to assure your staff is running efficiently you will give yourself one of the tools you need to succeed.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

How to Effectively Train an Internet Marketing Staff

Your reputation, online or offline is vital extremely important. Recently, a friend of mine owned a travel business. After hiring an employee with a light criminal background and having thousands of dollars embezzled from him, he started to pursue legal action against this individual. This person decided to get revenge by badmouthing the owner and business through Rip Off Report and other online platforms. Now, anytime you Google his name or business some very offensive things are displayed as a #1 result. Consequently, his business has suffered tremendously.

This situation is the perfect example of the need for reputation management.  One of the most powerful (and easiest) methods to begin to control your reputation in the search engine result pages (SERPs) is to create social profiles on major social media websites. Since domains like Twitter or MySpace have such high authority it takes a lot less effort to rank, than creating your own site, by creating a profile that will outrank and push down undesired search results. Also, these search results gives you the added benefit of having control over your brand and being accessible and available on multiple platforms strengthens your overall branding efforts.

Which social profiles should I have?

Once you understand that you should be monitoring and repairing your reputation, you will need to figure out how to do it.  As a rule of thumb the Big 4 social media sites are a great place to start. Generally your goal would be to obtain user profiles that are an exact match as the keyword you are trying to manage. In most cases this is a branded term such as your company name. Additioanly branded usernames are generally available on social media websites. Many sites, particularly niche sites, can be useful to your company and your specific ORM situation. But the 4 you must have are:
•    Twitter
•    LinkedIn
•    Facebook
•    MySpace

If you want to check across 120 different social sites to see which keywords or names are taken you can do so very easily with KnowEm.com. Just type the desired username and click “Check Username”. Additionally, they offer a service that will register you on all those different social media sites as well for .50 cents per social media site.

Steps to Take

Once you have your accounts setup, you will need to do a few things before your campaign can be effective.

1. Create a complete profile
Simply obtaining the name twitter.com/companyname, isn’t enough.  You need a complete and full profile to have a legitimate working account, this includes bios, avatars etc. As much information that you can fill in and feed to search engine spiders, the better.

2. Engage and Interact
Participating in the community strengthens your profile and gives your account credibility. An account that has your name but nothing else looks like a spam account.

Also, you gain the added benefit of internal links from these social sites. If you just create a profile and let it sit then it doesn’t gain internal link equity it needs, for high SERP rankings, from other profile pages, group pages, etc.
Interacting (e.g. returning messages, commenting, voting) is vital to the strength of your profile.  For an example, check out the hat tip to Steve Espinosa for showing how to get DoFollowed links on YouTube here.

3. Monitor
When a company engages in social media they are opening themselves up for a lot of commentary regarding their brand. Be prepared to monitor the sentiment to measure if it’s positive or negative. Have a contingency plan for when you come across negative sentiment. I’ll spare the lesson on monitoring and handling sentiment and direct you to The Online Reputation Management Guide by Outspoken Media. Another good resource on ORM is The M&Ms of Online Reputation Management by @DaveSnyder.

Summary

Remember that social media profiles are only one small part of online reputation management but a critical step indeed. Even if you don’t have any negative sentiment in the SERPs, pre-empt now by registering and building out your profiles today to prevent it from happening in the future.

Jordan Kasteler (aka. Utah SEO Pro) is a co-founder of Search & Social, the parent company of Search Engine Journal. Search & Social integrates social media marketing into the Online Reputation Management, SEO, link building & search marketing mix.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Social Media Profiles for Online Reputation Management

Facebook is estimated to have 70.2 million unique visitors per month in the United States according to comScore.  Social networking is booming, everyone is friending, following, tweeting, tagging, and grandma and grandpa are getting involved too.  Wait a minute, did I just say grandma and grandpa?  That’s what some recent Facebook research has shown.  It seems the fastest growing demographic on the social networking giant is women 55 and older.  That segment grew by 175% in February 2009, while men 55 and older grew by 137%.

I was definitely excited to see the data.  I’m a big believer in social networking and love to see people in that age group join a site like Facebook.  That said, reality set in a few days later.  I ended up speaking with someone 66 years old who needed my assistance with their email account.  Like many of you reading this post, I usually end up being the point person for technology-related questions for friends and family.  I had an interesting few minutes on a phone call with her.  Here’s a quick transcript:

Her: I can’t seem to find some emails I’ve written.
Me: Did you check your sent items?
Her: I’m in my email already. Where are my sent items?                             
Me: It’s the folder labeled “Sent Items" in Microsoft Outlook.
Her: I don’t think I’m using Outlook…
Me: What are you using to check your email?
Her: The e with a circle around it (AKA: Internet Explorer)
Me: OK, so it’s web-based mail.
Her: No, it’s on my computer.
Me: Yes, but you are accessing your email on the web.  I can help you.  What’s your email address so I can send you some instructions?
Her: I’m not sure, hold on.
Me: Jumping off roof now.

That conversation reminded me that not everyone is as tech savvy as the readers of Search Engine Journal.  We come with computer chips built into our brains.  Our kids instinctively know how to text and have built in wi-fi.  But, we also grew up using computers on a regular basis.  People that are 55 and older didn’t…  We were typically the ones introducing computers and explaining how to use them. Needless to say, there’s a big difference between the various age groups and how they utilize new technology.

My 3 Degrees of 55 and Older

After the phone call, I started thinking about people 55 and older and the data I saw about Facebook.  I’ll be honest, I started having doubts that many people 55 and older are jamming on Facebook, tagging photos, using apps, providing status updates, and grabbing their vanity URL’s.  So, why was I skeptical?  My parents are in that age group, and all of their friends.  My in-laws are in that age group, and all of their friends.  In addition, all of my friends’ parents are in that age group, so on and so forth.  So, I like to think I have a pretty good feel for that demographic, based on interactions I’ve had with them over the past few years. 

They Are Signing Up, But Not Coming Back…

The initial data I read showed that people 55 and older was a fast growing segment for Facebook (with women over 55 being the fastest growing).  But, recent data revealed that although they were signing up, they were not returning to Facebook.  Unfortunately, that did make a lot of sense to me.  I can only imagine someone 65 years old hearing about Facebook from their children or grandchildren, signing up, and looking at their blank profile thinking, “What the heck is this??”   

Getting My Own Data

Although reading all of this data about people 55 and older was great, it wasn’t sufficient for me.  I wanted to know more. So I decided to collect some of my own data!  I reached out to my network of friends and family with a quick Facebook questionnaire.  I came up with five simple questions to try and understand how people 55 and older were using Facebook.  I sent an email to my network and waited patiently for the data to come in.  It didn’t take long to start receiving responses.  Some of the emails cracked me up, others surprised me, and most reinforced what I thought.  Here are the five questions I sent out:

1. Are you currently on Facebook?
2. If yes, what do you use it for?
3. How often do you visit Facebook per day, week, and month?
4. Do you enjoy Facebook? Why or why not?
5. Do you plan to join other social networks like Facebook in the near future (over the next 6 months to year?)

I ended up receiving 57 responses from people 55 and older.

A quick disclaimer before I reveal the data.  This is obviously not a scientific study, nor was it meant to be.  I just wanted to receive feedback from a trusted group of people that were 55 and older to see if and how they use Facebook.  Let’s see what they had to say.

Lots of No’s, But There is Hope

As I started receiving responses, I saw a quick trend.  NO.  That’s the overwhelming response I received to question one (Are you currently on Facebook?)  It ends up that 80% of the respondents were not on Facebook.  When someone did choose to elaborate, I received some funny responses.  For example, I found out about one man who isn’t on Facebook and also refuses to upgrade to broadband.  I think the exact quote was, “Dial-up is fast enough!”  I laughed out loud and couldn’t help but think that his response was something right out of an episode of Seinfeld. :)  Another comment that cracked me up was, “I think I was there once.”  Wow, Facebook made such a big impression on her that she didn’t even know if she was on the site!  Although I was hoping to see more people from this group on Facebook, I had a feeling this would be the case.  Then I opened a few emails that gave me hope… 

Wait, Facebook Can Be Helpful!

Sprinkled in with the no’s were some great responses supporting Facebook.  These enthusiastic responses made me think there is hope.  The first one that struck me was from a friend’s mother-in-law.  Her enthusiasm about Facebook jumped off the page. Literally, if she could friend me, tag my photo, challenge me to a trivia game, and become a fan of my Facebook page, I think she would.   She explained how much she loves Facebook, how she keeps up with her children and grandchildren, and loves seeing everyone’s status updates, photos, video, etc.  She logs in a few times per day.  Yes, she was the exception, but she got it (big time).

After reading her story, I received a few more no’s and then another great response came in.  This time from a friend’s father, who logs in a few times per week to see what his kids are doing, he searches for people he went to college with, connected with some of them online and offline, etc.  It was another great example of someone using Facebook in smart ways.  He seemed to really like it. 

Then there were a couple of responses from people that were on the fence, not knowing whether Facebook was really for them.  There were several people who log in just a few times per month, explained that they don’t have time and don’t really know how to use Facebook.  Personally, I think that’s a big problem for Facebook, Twitter and other social networking websites (at least for this age group). I don’t know if there’s anything more frustrating for people than signing up for something you don’t understand.  And if you don’t know much about Facebook, you might end up just staring at a blank page wondering what the big deal is.

A Typical Bell Curve

I’m sure many of you have visualized this already, but my data ended up creating a typical bell curve, with a majority of the people not on Facebook, some loving it, and some on the fence.

No More Social Networks, One Is Enough…

My fifth question was, “Do you plan on joining more social networks over the next 6 months to a year?”  Almost all of the respondents that are currently members on Facebook said they probably won’t be joining other social networking websites.  To be honest, I’m not exactly sure they could name another one.  So, if Facebook can get more people 55 and older to join and actually use the website, they can probably retain those members. Better training and education would be a smart move for Facebook.  Heck, send out a team of people to 55 and older communities across the country.

A Note About When 40 Year Olds Become 55 and Older

One point I kept hearing from friends was that although their parents weren’t on Facebook, their aunts and uncles were (and their aunts and uncles are currently in their 40’s.)  So, many of them will already be members on Facebook when they become the 55 and older demographic (that’s if Facebook is around in 5-10 years).  As fast as things are moving, chances are Facebook will be something completely different by then.  Twitter might be linked to a chip in our brains, and BisKotti, the social network built on interactive TV, will take over our lives.  Never heard of BisKotti?  That’s because I just made it up, but it very well could be the next big thing. :)  {BTW, don’t even think about it, I just registered the domain name!}

My Final Thoughts About People Currently 55 and Older and Social Networks

Although I wish the numbers were better, I think 80% will never adopt social networking.  I think 15% will be interested, but run into barriers and be confused with the best way to use social networking sites like Facebook.  Then I think 5% will truly get it and benefit from its power.  They will connect with friends, use it help organize events, keep up with their children and grandchildren, and yes, probably grab their vanity URL’s while they’re at it.  There’s no doubt there will be some great stories from the 5%, but it unfortunately won’t make up for the 95% that never come back. 

That’s my take.  What’s yours?

Glenn Gabe is an online marketing strategist and focuses heavily on SEO, SEM, Social Media Marketing, Viral Marketing and Web Analytics. You can read more of Glenn’s posts on his blog, The Internet Marketing Driver and you can follow him on Twitter to keep up with his latest projects, news, and updates.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Facebook or Just Face-Look? Are People 55 And Older Really Using Social Networking Websites?