“Location, Location, Location!”  You might have heard people say that location is the most important thing for a business.  Then, the next most important is … location, and so on.  You’ve certainly heard the phrase enough to wonder what possesses people to say it three times.  Or you might think it pertains to three different types of locations — perhaps an excellent location, a mediocre location and a lousy location. So, how are brands leveraging location for the retailer’s dilemma?

I’ll put your mind at ease. It means identical businesses can increase or decrease in value due to location. It’s repeated three times for emphasis, and so you will remember the phrase. It’s the number one rule in real estate, and it’s often the most overlooked rule in digital marketing.  Even Non-profits use LBS to promote awareness and spur donations. Luckily, the Location Based Marketing Association (LBMA) had a collaborative event with the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association (AiMA) about why location matters.  The Location Based Marketing Association is the live intersection of people, places, and media.  They better help brands leverage location and their president, @AsifRKhan, devlivered a jam-packed keynote presentation of new research from the LBMA on why its all about a location-based future.

At the networking session of the event, I got the chance to sit down and talk with Amanda Spark and Chris Crawford of Response Mine Interactive.  Chris actually taught himself how to be a SEO Consultant by just reading Warrior Forum.

“Constantly doing SEO will allow you to learn to keep up.”- Chris Crawford

I also had a chance to run into the guys at Insightpool, Matt Smith and Adam Lewites, who are indulging in conversations that they don’t even speak like Portuguese.   They are showing  enterprises looking at location from a social perspective matters too.

For many businesses, getting the right location can make the difference between success and failure. Can you think of a shop or restaurant near where you live that has closed down, maybe because it was in the wrong place?  There are lots of reasons why location is important to a business and location matters to some businesses more than it does to others.  Some businesses need to be near their customers or suppliers, but every business needs to be able to reach its customers.  For a retail shop, you might want potential customers to be walking past you all the time.  However, a business that is internet-focused has the ability to locate almost anywhere and reach mass audiences.

Value + Relevance= Individual Data

As businesses become more global, you need people who can speak the same language as your customers. This is one reason why India has been successful in attracting call centres and software development from the UK and North America.  A lot of cultures related to check-in, specifically the African-American and Latino segment, have not been as popular on Foursquare because of cultural values even though they are the heaviest users on smartphones.  Some businesses need to be in a location that suits their image or might want to be the only business of their type nearby. With businesses clustered together – from restaurants in Soho or Chinatown to fashion shops and jewelers on Bond Street -how do you differentiate yourself?  Retailers and brands face challenges in categorizing and selecting the right location-based marketing tools that determines success in their stores.

KEY CRITERIA FOR LOCATION BASED MARKETING INITIATIVES:

• Bluetooth or Wi-Fi?
• Integration with digital signage and point of sale?
• Should you use push notifications, if so, in App or via SMS?
• Mobile payments and how do you fit QR codes into the mix?
• Do you need new POS systems and can you connect to a loyalty program?
• What is the right mix of these solutions for driving footfall vs. increasing dwell time?

PANEL

• Moderator: @AsifRKhan, President @TheLBMA
• Tripp Sessions, CIO Benchmark Brands
• Bill Keen- Director, Mobile Solutions IHG
• Lauren Barash – Director of Marketing Moe’s Southwest Grill
• Josh Martin – Manager, Social Media Arby’s RestaurantGroup Inc.

What is a place?

There are 2,430,000,000 places in the world with 350,000 Wifi Spots.  Geo-relationships are starting to get to that point.  All smartphones today have GPS, Bluetooth and Wifi (Indoor location), and connect to cell towers.  SMS is more outbased the U.S and 85% of all data has a location element.  The point of location based marketing is to create experiential connections that leave memorable experiences.  For example, the Miami Dolphins give away fan experiences to run on the field.  Or how about the Coke dance vending machine as a magic place for gaming platforms? Brands need to complete the redemption cycle like Shopkick, Beanstalk loyalty, and Google Wallet to give card-linked offers.

“Location is just data.”  It can tell you the where, who, how, and sometimes we don’t even need mobile.  For example, the Starhub online music store created a campaign with RFID chips that trigger music from changing room to create an interactive in-store experience.

Music + Fashion + RFID Tags = Musical Fitting Rooms

Location based marketing apps are popping up left and right like the 400 million people that have downloaded Shazzam, which is now used for audio signals for TV models, TV shows, and other commercials.  Other apps like Broadcast, Viggle, and Get Glue are connecting content to context.  What types of apps are you using  to market to consumers?

Indoor location brands like bytelight and adcentricity are up and coming.  MCX  and Urban Airship mobile provide jumping to geofences, Jiwire, and Go-Go.  However, the role of other non-mobile media such as billboard  and print communications will continue to promote location-based deals.  Even digital signage will evolve to advertise a certain interest or product to the dominant demographic in a given region.

IP geolocation is the method by which Internet addresses are identified by a geographic location. Each computer using the Internet has an assigned, though not necessarily unique, IP address such as 192.218.62.0 and this address can be associated geographically. A registry exists that assigns IP addresses to countries, regions, city, etc. and databases can be purchased in which to perform the geographic “look-up” of addresses that are associated with specific locations.  However, the question of privacy for companies like facedeals that allow you to check-in with your face are still up for debate.

For brands like IHG that are investing $500,000,000 million in mobile for 2013, location is one of their most important factors in reaching their travel audience for monetization.  They also use loyalty programs and priority club membership to better reward travelers based on their travels to different locations.  Foot geotargeting is discoverable to know where we are today and is a driving factor of where to dine for food.  Moe’s check-in club uses Facebook and Foursquare for gamification to allow fans to compete with other fans and SMS to push out notifications of deals in restaurants nearby.  Arbys uses foursquare instead of Facebook deals because it has been a more successful platform for creating a mayor tent or table for the mayorship of the location to sit at.  They also update offers that are market-based by knowing where certain people are at a given moment based on where they check-in on their social media network.

Key Takeaways:

• Augmented Reality is here.
• Nobody cares about badges; Not Just Gamification anymore.
• Push Notifications keep customers top of mind.
• Indoor Location is the hottest thing.
• Location + IP=Adds a digital element
• Take the store to the people.
• Completing the redemption cycle.
• Location benefits all through charitable services.
• Content is king, but context is the advisor to bringing content to life.
• Don’t forget about audio and trends of active to passive check-ins.
• Bridging social, location, and retention of search.

Final Thought: ”Location is about data.  Mobile is just a connective tissue.  A place is wherever you are right now that can be marketed to in real-time.”

The best part about joining AiMA is the networking at the beginning as it is home to some of the most influential interactive marketers in Atlanta.  I got the chance to talk with John Bartkus, Business Development at SiteMinis Inc., about how I was building a corporate website built for the desktop first, and then using responsive design to build for mobile.  He actually shared with me though that responsive design is not the end all solution for mobile.

Responsive design focuses on taking the same content and delivering it across multiple devices, the assumption is that consumers want the same content on mobile that they consume on desktop, which may not be the case. In an article he shared with me, I learned why:

“If you start talking about HTML5, hybrid apps and responsive design, you start forgetting the consumer experience.”-John Daly

After networking with some mobile friendly members, I walked into the auditorium to listen to the featured speakers:

• Ted Boezaart, VP, Account Director @ Moxie Interactive
• Laura Marbey, Product Manager, ecommerce @ Delta Air Lines
• Allycia Schmidt, Senior Manager of Mobile @ The Home Depot

Before the event, I was curious as to why I need an iPad, when I already have an iPhone and MacBook Pro?  Adam O’Donnell, Online Marketing Strategy Manager at Sage, would proactively engage with my question:

The most used tablet devices have been the iPad, Samsung Galaxy, and the Amazon Kindle.  Moxie reports that 31% of the U.S. Internet population (74.1 million consumers) has them.  That’s up from 12% (28.3 million consumers) just last year.  The tablet market is expected to reach 37% in the year 2013, 16% of which will be new tablet buyers.

The adoption rate has also been quick to the chase.  After 10 years, the smartphone market reached 40 million people.  It only took two years for the tablet market to reach that many people with the majority of these people coming from households earning $50k or more.

So why do people love using tablets so much?  Tablets are used for research before purchasing an item, reading reviews, operational events, marketing specials on websites, during TV viewing, and checking price.  Simul-screen usage in the Omni-channel purchase path is also on the rise.  Tablets should be a strong focus on your overall digital marketing mix to keep your strategy unified.  There needs to be a continuation of an experience for users of brands, but most importantly tablets need to add value to customers as an integral part of digital strategy.

So what does that mean for marketers?  Customers who use a PC and smartphone during a purchase convert 10x as more than that level of a desktop.  When people use a desktop and tablet it’s 12x.  When a consumer uses all these devices it’s 15x higher.  We need to leverage these devices during the 7:30-10PM peak time for mobile traffic.

Delta took a $140 million dollar investment this year in mobile alone.  Why?  The evolution of the customer in the next 5-7 years will leave everyone having a smartphone who is over the age of 13 years old.  60% of business travelers have an Ipad and 89% of those use an Ipad when traveling for business.

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”-Henry Ford

On board experience has landed.  “Thank you for flying Delta” is not just a saying, but Delta communicating as a brand to customers that they want to make the entire customer experience of traveling delightful.  Delta has even released a new Glass bottom jet app for the iPad that allows you to see points of difference over which you are flying, people in your social networks, and connects you with an in-flight Go-Go session.

Home Depot has focused more on their interconnected path to purchase for retail.  50% of Home Depot sales involve online research before purchase.  In-store has information about the experience and 25% of Home depot purchases are made before by looking at the homedepot.com website.  Tablets add to that 10% of all online traffic of the Home Depot website and have been added to the mobile team where they analyze traffic patterns.  The patterns are then broken down further to provide insights of where cross shopping patterns exist (where the sale comes from).  The role of the tablet for Home Depot serves as a marketing medium, used for product information, an ecommerce tool, project inspiration, social tool, store connectivity for RFI tags, augmented reality, and useful for their style guide iPad App.

How do you use your tablet?  Most of the speakers use it for business research, as mini whiteboards, digital books, or other added value to what they are doing.  YouTube and Safari are some of the most commonly used iPad Apps. You should expect people to download an app by using a call to action, don’t force it on them.

Check out some of the favorite apps discussed from the event such as Realtor.com, Angry Birds, Houzz, Tourist, Skitch, and Sketchbook.   One last thing to keep in mind is that the Hispanic market uses mobile more than computers.

Final Thought: Maybe the tablet is more useful than you think.

Ever feel like people don’t care about the time you spend developing content marketing?  James Andrews dispels the myths of content creation by showing you easy ways to create great looking content.  James Andrews, founder of Social People, specializes in the creation of digital/social technology strategies, online communications, and web content production.  His vision for Social People is a strategic communications agency that focuses in helping brands and individuals navigate through the social media and online space to build better connections with their audiences.

James Andrews set the stage of this presentation by sharing his story of how he started as a DJ with USTREAM.  It was hard for him in the beginning to get gigs and he would even DJ in-flight.  Eventually after grinding through ground control, he landed big gigs as a DJ at South by Southwest (SXSW) and the Grammy’s after party.

So who is James Andrews?  Silicon valley kid turned Columbia Records man.  Dotcom survivor and envisioned online strategic marker that has worked for clients such as Coca-Cola, Ketchum Digital, Procter & Gamble, Nike, Turner, Lexus, Grammy Awards, Actress Jane Fonda and the NBA.  He told us of his #beatcancer story that beat a Guinness world breaking record on social media with 290,771 hashtag mentions. He promoted it through blogworld.com, but sold it through creating a meaningful story that touched people’s hearts by raising over $70,000 in the process from its financial sponsors.

James had a profound understanding of social media or what we like to call in the industry as a “Key Influencer.”  He defines social media as “the intersection of technology and social interaction to create, share or connect online.”  In other words, people online having conversations.  Social media is the new main street and it’s always on.  Mobile technology increases access to this, but don’t think you control social media.  The power to define and control a brand is shifting.  Content is the lifeline of the social ecosystem.

So how do you have your content factory drive the momentum with conversation?  Think like a curator.  Here is how James has cooked up a recipe for content success:

TOPIC SELECTION

Make the customer be the hero.  Mobilize your entire company, take risk, and be a storyteller.  Content is more than just text–gather content from others.  Events are great opportunity to own the conversation.  Make an event out of a tactical things like the Nike Command Center.

CONTENT CONVERSION

Touch points include websites, blogs, external blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and Slideshare.  Give thoughts about the “Googleability” of your content.  Social media must take on a Marketing/PR role of creating, monitoring, filtering, and participating with consumers.  Brands are media companies that should now look to companies like DigiDay as sources for authority, insight and honesty on digital media and marketing. Don’t forget to keep up to date on emerging tools like Qwiki, Vokle, SocialCam, and SoundCloud.

EDITORIAL CONTENT PLANNING

–Provide relevant information 3x week

–Teach how to do something 2x week

–Start a conversation weekly

–Inspire bi-weekly

–Entertain monthly

You need to be part of the media mix by driving conversation.

OPERATIONALIZING THE CONTENT

Organize the team and define roles.  Your team should consist of someone who scours the Internet, someone who is a wordsmith, and someone who understands the language.  Be sure to create or review the social media policy and how to best handle the conversation plan.  The Social Media United Nations  team has been great at doing this by having consistent platform analysis.

MEASURE SUCCESS

Have a social media policy to measure all this.  You have to start with a goal.  Define your universe, and mine for diamonds to find your passionistas.  Review and adjust your strategy accordingly.

“Rinse, Watch, Repeat.”

FINAL THOUGHTS:

1. Take your clients “behind your scenes.”
2. Never Censor Facebook or blog
3. Take shackles off your CEO and let them go
4. Read and respond to reviews
5. Actively solicit feedback
6. Introduce your employees/team
7. Admit when you screw-up and fix the problem

Blog or die, publish or perish.  Blog article writing is an essential element to getting found by customers and by Google.  Site visitors and search engines are looking for fresh, new content that is interesting.  Published optimized blogs are like an annuity – they will continue to attract your targets’ and search engine interest on into the future, regardless of business category.

However, the best blogs engage target customers to take action.  Did you know that less than 2% of visitors engage with a website?

“That leaves 98 to go.”

Fred Spring and Tom Telford, Co-founders of 98 To Go, created an inbound marketing agency that is cracking the code on what it takes to be found by the search engines, then nurture those online relationships, so that the researcher can gain trust and ultimately wants to buy. As Inbound Marketing gurus, they do a lot of their measurement using Hubspot 3.0 because it provides valuable measurements like marketing grader, unique visitors, traffic rank, indexed pages, linking domains, MozRank, and Facebook fans.  In their presentation at Digital Atlanta “Blogging Tips That Get Results,” they provided us with advanced tips on how to get the most of your blogging.

–>TIP 1: The Title is most important element of the blog post: First, Use a whiteboard for developing keywords and topics into title of blog post.  Then place keywords in the title and in blog post.  Make it sound natural and keep it interesting to attract readership.  Keyword phrases can be modified slightly in title to read more naturally, but the closer the keyword is to the beginning of the title – the better it is for Search Engine Optimization purposes.  Try to use Google keywords, long tail keywords and keep your blog title to 9 words or less for better refine searches.  Finally, ALL WORDS IN TITLE ARE CAPITALIZED, ALL WORDS.

–>TIP 2: Have your blog topic answer questions people are searching for: Is your topic for fun, growing business, or just to help other businesses?  Think about why your writing a post and who your audience is.  Developing blog titles, which answer questions or demonstrate practical advice by using specific information are the most compelling.  Use comparisons, percentages, numbers, and specific product info to gain attention.

–>TIP 3: “More blogging is mo betta”: Businesses that blog at least 20x per month generate over 5x more traffic than those that blog 4x per month.  Those that do blog also get 4x more leads than those that don’t blog.  A lot of people have trouble blogging consistently because of writers block or not enough time.  The best way to solve this problem is to set a publish schedule or to consider outsourcing by using guest bloggers and having co-workers lend a hand. Develop blog titles and topics in advance to secure best writers, enable revisions and allow for edits.

–>TIP 4: Host blogs on your website: Sub domain: ideal home for your blog is on a sub-domain of your main website.  A Website folder is a good alternative for putting your blog in a folder of your main website.

–>Tip 5: #Words per post: Good blog posts are suppose to be short and sweet.  However, through Fred and Tom’s findings, rich and useful 600 or more word posts enable better engagement influence for staying on a specific page longer.

–>TIP 6: Link building: By creating useful internal and external links, blogs can provide better educational experiences for users.  Have your links open to a new window and make sure the keyword your linking to a website contains the same keyword on that site.  Don’t forget to use both internal and external links.

–>TIP 7: Whenever possible, have call-to-actions: Offer related to content with a click on button, act now, order now, buy online today, click here, etc.

–>TIP 8: Use 2-3 related images in each post: Use Jpeg images and label them accordingly.  Name each file and alt text using same keyword.  Use keywords in the picture description.  Original photos are always the best.

–>TIP 9: Pleasing to eye: Keep your blog easy to read with images, video, and design principles.Use 7-10 keywords when you are tagging your blog posts.

–>Tip 10: Determination, results take time: Don’t expect your blog to become a success over night.  Consistent publishing and sharing across the 47 top social media networks can help gain attention. Share this is a great blog application for sharing your content too.

Now in its third year, Digital Atlanta is a week long series of workshops, lectures, networking, and social events that brings together entrepreneurs, innovators, business leaders, solution providers, executives, and aspiring marketers like myself to discuss digital innovations, explore opportunities in the digital space and highlight how Atlanta is leading the charge in the digital marketing era.

What’s the vision for Atlanta in the digital marketing era for the future?

ANSWER: DIGITAL MEDIA HUB           

That’s right–Atlanta has become a Digital media hub for exciting topics spanning everything from social media, entertainment, small business, nonprofits, sustainability, education, and real estate to technology and startups.  I was privileged to hear Scott Shamp, Director of New Media Institute at the University of Georgia, speak on his visionary outlook for ATLiens in his Keynote address on behalf of Digital Atlanta.

Atlanta was established in 1837 at the intersection of two railroad lines, and the city rose from the ashes of the Civil War to become a national center of commerce.  This history foreshadows Atlanta as the future Hub for digital traffic with the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, transportation infrastructure, and distribution channels.

“A Hub is the center of activity.”

So why is Atlanta a center of activity?  Good jobs, right industries, mobility without going mobile, leveraging investments, and social media.  Let’s break it down further into pieces for those of you taking score at home.  Atlanta is the:

• #9 largest metro city
• #2 wired (#of people online) city
• #15 fastest growing city
• #12 largest city for social media

We have strong reputable media companies like Cox Media, Turner, and The Weather Channel.  We have the telecommunications industries like AT&T and Verizon Wireless.  We have the big corporations like Delta, Coca-Cola, Home Depot, UPS, and Newell Rubbermaid.  We have the world-recognized universities like the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, and Emory.  But most importantly we need more agency infrastructures like Engauge putting on events like this for the community.

What is the vision of Atlanta as a Digital Hub?  What makes us so special from everyone else?  Following the Civil Rights Movement, during which the city earned a reputation as “too busy to hate” for the progressive views of its citizens and leaders, Atlanta attained international prominence as the primary transportation hub of the Southeastern United States via highway, railroad, and air, with the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport being the worlds busiest airport since 1998.  Hence, we are dubbed an “alpha world city.”

“Meet, share, network, explore, and leadership.”

We need more government and business participation.  There is a vision, dedication, and leadership to reach this.  Take a look at Henry Grady, the architect of the New South, who created the roots of Atlanta.

“We are the New Media South.”-Scott Shamp

Visibility and a supervening social need tell Atlanta to focus on the needs of the community. Telecommuting and things like Google Hangouts are connecting us in ways we need to utilize.  We have the headquarters of some of the best companies and universities that can’t seem to stop popping out the future leaders of tomorrow.  The writing is on the wall for Atlanta to set the stage.  Atlanta, Rise Up!

In the late 1990′s, digital marketing debuted to great fanfare, but it was still fundamentally about advertising to customers. However in the past several years, new social and search engine marketing tools have upended that paradigm. “None of the universities are teaching SEO” says George Fisher of Response Mine Interactive and Stacey Williams of Prominent Places.  That’s exactly why Adam Lahaie, digital marketing professional, saw a need to create the Digital Marketing Education Series as an educational lecture series provided to students of the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia.

This specific series lecture focused on covering the basics of SEO and Search Engine Marketing.  Did you know that 3,000,000 searches are completed everyday?  In fact, commerce from consumer interest has been the business model for Google.  96% of Google’s revenue comes from Google Adwords.  The SERP, or Search engine results page is broken down into 20% on paid advertising, 75% on organic search, and the rest on CTR (Click Through Rate).  Search queries direct users to keywords, on-site, reporting, and off-site.  Types of terms include long-tail terms, torso terms, head terms, and brand terms.  Match types for keywords include phrase and broad.

Each keyword search directs a user to a website based on content, technical issues, and crawlability.  The user will find the title, URL, description, call-to-action, site links, and site architecture appear for what they search for.  In order to increase traffic to your website, you must have pagerank-authority and trust.  By understanding your match types, having relevant landing panges and using sitelinks, you can increase your click through rates.  Finally, you need to be proactive by using link building tactics such as guest blog posts, directories/forums, blog comments, RSS Feeds, article promotion and syndication.  

Reserach publications include seomoz.org, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Journal, AiMA, and SEMPO.  The progression of someone looking to make a career in the SEO Industry is as follows: SEO Coordinator–>SEO Manager–>SEO Supervisor–>SEO Director–>Vice President.  One can also obtain a Google AdWords Certification to understand basic SEO principles.

Understanding SEO VS. PPC

• 70-80% of search is organic VS. 20-30% search
• limited # of keywords VS Unlimited # of keywords
• Slow build VS. Quick build
• Limited control of ranking/placement VS. More Control of ranking/placement
• geotargeting tricks VS. lack of tricks
• Clicks are free VS. money

Understanding the SEMPO eCommerce takes on different roles depending on your market.  In a business to consumer market, you can expect to see immediate sales, accrue less expenses, and better find people who are making impulse buys.  In a business to business market,  there is a long sales cycle, expensive or complicated producers and services, and prospecting data for lead nurturing.

The google display network is imperative for you to understanding SEO.  In the presentation, I jotted down the key concepts that any search engine marketer should understand:

• contextual targeting
• placement targeting
• remarketing
• interest categories
• topic targeting
• geographic and language targeting
• Facebook PPC
• Cost-per-click
• KPI-Key Performance Indicators

Finally, claim pages such as Bing and City Search are now being used.  Remember the old days of tracking phone numbers?  Those days are over.  People are actively participating more in customer reviews online and searching for them in Yelp, YellowPages, and Citigrid.   Lastly it is important to understand Geo-modified and Geo-targeted keywords.  Check out Google Adwords Certification program for more information on how to master the fundamentals of SEO.

“Bring your whole self to work.”  That’s the meaning behind having a job that you live and breathe for everyday.  Terry Talks with Google connected Terry students with alumni who have experienced successful careers in different areas of expertise as well as their time at Google. This talk focused on the understanding of identifying values for the companies you are applying for.  Give yourself credit that things will work out.  You need to have a comfortable work/life balance with a company that truly fits.  Gain valuable experience for exactly what you are looking for and preparation should meet opportunity.

Jill Wolner had a diversity of experience in Capital, Biotech, Consulting, and the Red Cross.  She focused more on the human capital side or the people side of business.  However, the consulting experience that you get at Google is very much more collaborative in the fact that your bosses will work with you.  Jill said the career development team at Google is an internal mobility team that strives to mentor and coach as career gurus that better understand yourself through personality tests.  This makes your career more fruitful and passionate.  Sales skills, life skills, and people development form projects and initiatives to buying people into the idea of Google.

Carly Creighton was an International Business student that went to the Forbes Top 10 places to work, highlighted them and went after them.  She interviewed for Google as one the only kids that weren’t at an IVY league school.  She had 4 interviews in 2 days during a 5 month long interview process.  It can be daunting because Google usually starts entry-level people out in Mountain View, Cambridge, or Ann Arbor, Michigan.  She attributes her luck to her internship at Phillip Morris where she was surrounded by some of the smartest marketing professionals.  Just think about marketing an illegal product.  That’s a challenge.

Carly started out in Google AdWords as a sales person learning the product and working her way up.  She then went on to a call center in Buenos Aires, Argentina where she developed a $2 million dollar investment for processes, infrastructure, recruiting, hiring, and project management.

Google looks for people who are innovative, progressive, forward thinking, and are results-driven.  It’s important for people such as myself to choose a mentor.  Have an organic approach to foster that relationship.  Maybe just try to have some coffee with them.  Carly was able to overcome cultural barriers, worked in 6 offices, and had a high tolerance of adventure, but a low tolerance of risk.  ”It’s exciting to work with some of the smartest people at Google with different challenges,” says Carly.

Build a plan with people and have a robust skill-set.  Selling for an industry leader like Google isn’t really selling.  It is more like “chatting”, but is usually the entry point for most people working with small businesses.  You need to understand the business side of the story as a launching pad.  They actually recently changed the Sales team description to Global Business Organization.  What makes someone stand off the page of a resume though is someone that has started their own business and is forward thinking.  You need to understand different cultures and be “open-minded.”  Finally, it is important to have the curiosity for the desire to learn.  Google is a diverse place full of great perks like food, wellness, and even massages, but that comes with the territory.

Final Thoughts:

1. Pick a company that aligns with your values
2. Be bold and take risks
3. Always work on something comfortably exciting

“Piano Man” Gary Vaynerchuk sung us a song on what the ROI of social media means for society at Inbound Conference 2012.  His speech focused on customer retention and realizing that social media has an impact on the way we do business in today’s world.

“The way we communicated in the past has now been disrupted.  We are now living digitally and collectively.  This is the biggest culture shift of our time.”-Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary conducted an experiment to see how many people had connected with people on Facebook they hadn’t see in 5, 10, 15, and 20 years.  An astonishing 70% raised their hands into 15+ years.  However, the interest graph has lead to Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram to give us context of who you are and what you like.  In 1995 to 1999, Gary thought the Internet would be a fad.  “Twitter looked the same way in the beginning too,” he admitted honestly.  What makes Twitter so great though is the fact that you can see what people are saying and engage.  We are now spending more time on social, some of us even haven’t consumed commercials all year, and half the people driving now are texting while driving instead of looking at billboards.

“People aren’t looking at billboards, they aren’t even looking at the road.”

As our world goes forward towards the Jetsons, the people that are like the Flintstones will win. Free shipping was one of the great tactics that worked for Gary at winelibrary.com, but with Social media you can easily track you efforts.  Social media is more scalable.

“Build a brand, otherwise it’s a tactic.”

You need to have the emotional EQ.  Be awesome because of your flaws, not despite them.  Where does the customer attention go?  When you think about the business world you have to innovate.  ”Marketers find a way to ruin everything,” says Gary.  Speed kills.  Get to clients before they come to you.  If you look at the Ad click through rates back in 1994, they were around 87% open rates for Gary when no one was doing Email Marketing.  Social media is now how we initiate customer acquisitions.

What is the ROI of social media?  That’s like saying, “What’s the ROI of a piano?”  If you’re just tapping into social media it means nothing for you.  Social media is becoming a developed skill that has an ROI for helping achieve marketing goals.  It’s like Gary playing the piano when he has no idea what the flip he’s doing, but the ROI of someone more like Billy Joel is serenade to the ears.

Final Thought: ”It’s not about how many customers you can get, but keep.”

Imagine yourself as a young woman, searching for a mate.  Rand Fishkin, short man SEOmoz extraordinaire, had a quirky keynote presentation at #Inbound12 about how women shouldn’t be excluding keywords, but looking for those men who were just as close with a bigger heart.  You never know?  You may just meet Mr. Right.  In this his comical rendition of “Choose Short Men & Tall Women” SEO example, he shared the biases of SEO for us to better understanding Search Engine Marketing.

When people sign up for match.com or okcupid.com (I have three friends on it currently so don’t bash it), they enter certain search criteria keywords.  In these keywords, they also add negative keywords to exclude people from coming up that they aren’t looking for in a mate.  For example, most men want short women and most women want tall man.  However, search online can work the same to missing information that you may be missing out on.

Bias #1:  Ranking position is all that matters.  Click-through rate (CTR) is influenced more than by position.  CTR is also influenced by video xml sitemaps, star ratings, reviews and price, author photos, date of publications, and video snippets.  Great snippets start with great titles, URL, and descriptions.

Bias #2 Active Link Building is Required for SEO.  The best links build themselves. Relationship Building > Link Building

Bias #3 There Can only be one topic.  Focus on your audience’s interest, not just a narrow subject.  Be relevant to anyone who interacts with potential customers.  Broad topics earn signals that help your entire site.

Bias #4 Facebook and Twitter are the Only Networks That matter.  False.  Many social networks can be valuable.  Millions of users exist on: Google+ (200mm), Facebook (1 billion), twitter (200mm), LinkedIn (150mm), foursquare (20mm), stumbleupon (15mm), reddit (30mm), Wikipedia (14mm), tumblr (15mm), and Pinterest (15mm).

Bias #5 If a Viral Content Effort Fails, It’s Over.  Viral fails 9/10 times.  You should plan for it. Try, Try Again.

Bias #6: Only Target High-Search Volume Keywords.  18% of searches being made everyday have never been performed.  Use tools like Search Suggest to go through Google avenues as a great keyword research tool.  Also use Google News to research undiscovered keywords.

Bias #7: My Site is the only Place to do SEO.  Slideshare: Keywords + Embeds=Ranking Magic. Quora, LinkedIn and news sites are also all great options.

Bias #8: Social Sharing is a fire & Forget Tactic.  Link placement matters.  Use followerwonk to better understand the SEO of your twitter and make sure to put your links in the middle of the tweet instead of at the end.  By having the link in the middle, you are making the link stand out in the middle of the sentence where someone will be more likely to click.

Bias #9: Engines Prefer Text Content. Many forms of content work well.

Bias #10 I Should Chase My Competitor’s Links.  Research links that point to non-competitive sites in your niche.  Focus beyond keywords and sites you’re chasing to those who may have topical overlap.

Bias #11: Spending Money for Links is a Bad Hat. Event participation, sponsoring research, press-worthy content, acquisitions, and job ads costs money.  In turn they also earn links.

Bias #12: There’s No Simple Way to Increase Traffic.  Site speed optimization is always great.  It’s simple and increases traffic.  Check out your 404, 500, and 302 fixes too.  Re-targeting can help too.

So get rid of your irrational biases.  Short men and tall women have just as much to offer as anyone else.

Social Media Scientists like Dan Zarella are like unicorns and rainbows–they don’t really exist. However, I got the chance to catch a glimpse of Dan’s majestic knowledge of Inbound Marketing at #INBOUND12.  He’s spent a lot of time crunching the numbers to really show inbound marketers what works and doesn’t work.  In this speedy presentation, he cited useful statistics for better understanding the science of Inbound Marketing.  Check out these QUICK Tips and Tricks:

Slideshare

Tip 1: More slides in a Slideshare presentation leads to more views

Tip 2: Most people tweet a presentation/blog that is relevant and for sharing purposes

Ebooks

Tip 3:  The preferred way to read an Ebook is through a kindle and then a PDF

Tip 4: Ebook pages should be less than 5 or more than 100

Tip 5: People still prefer printed books for business related Ebooks

Tip 6: Ebooks recommendations are strongest from people we know or Amazon

Search

Tip 7: The most linked title words are sports, breaking, and music

Tip 8: People click on search queries that are most relevant to their search in the  description

Landing Pages

Tip 9: Landing panges need to have a free incentive

Tip 10: Provide white papers with text and not select boxes

Tip 11: A “Click here” button is always better than a “Submit” button

Facebook

Tip 12: Saturdays and Sundays get the most likes on Posts

Tip 13: Facebook post types that get the most likes are photos and statuses  

Tip 14: Facebook captions are most successful when they are under thirty characters

Tip 15: Always keep your Facebook posts sentiment positive to recieve more likes

Tip 16: The most popular linguistic content types for sharing are sex, positivity, learning, and media

Twitter

Tip 11: When you actually say “Please Retweet” that gets 4x as many retweets.

Tip 12: 60-80% of links get retweeted

Tip 13: Spike of Retweets is 4-5 PM

Tip 14: Retweet people are the most savvy   

Tip 15: Use the Buffer app as a tool to see the time of day vs. retweet

Blogging

Tip 16: The highest conversion rates are from paid, email, and then social.

Tip 17: Blogging affects purchases somewhat by people who read a blog more than once a day

Tip 18: Parentheses are always better than brackets

Tip 19: Pieces that have the word “Free” in the title have a higher conversion rate then those that don’t

Tip 20: Saturday and Sunday get the highest click through rates, but the best time of the day is 7-8AM.

These are just some of the tips and tricks to the science of Inbound Marketing.  What tricks have you learned?  For now, good luck at finding your unicorn at the end of the rainbow.