Conversation Marketing: Internet Marketing with a Twist of Lemon

Helping you see the forest for the trees in internet marketing: Pulling together search, design, development and more with a cogent strategy.

1. Use Twitter auto-follow tools.
2. Cut other people down.
3. Sell products you know are crappy.
4. Don't take advice. Ever.
5. WRITE E-MAILS IN ALL CAPS.
6. Misuse words. Amelioratingly.
7. Latch onto one idea and don't let go. Two legs good, four legs baaaaad.
8. Whatever you do, never admit you're wrong.
9. Whatever you do, never stop reminding others of their mistakes.
10. Let fear rule your marketing.
11. Sell to the loophole, not the customer.

I'm here tonight to clear up a little misconception:

Douglas Karr wrote an article a few days back titled "Is Google really trying to make the web better?"

He talked about Matt Cutts' implication at PubCon that site load speed is becoming a search ranking factor. Karr implies that this favors businesses with deep pockets, I'm assuming because they can spend more on improving load speed.

Mashable picked up the thread, too:

1. Favors big / powerful sites: As Karr notes, big companies are best able to plow resources into technical prowess. This could disrupt Google's egalitarian basis, and the whole idea of the web as a meritocracy.

They got it backwards

If page load time becomes a ranking factor, that favors small business, not big business.

Have you ever seen a large company try to change their web site? Here's how it goes:

1. IT department is asked to build site based on a content management or ERP system that the accounting department chose.
2. IT department builds site, testing it carefully on their internal network, and over their ridiculously fast Internet connection.
3. Site launches.
4. Site runs like crap, with page load times somewhere around 45-60 seconds (see below if you don't believe me).
5. Marketing department says "What the hell?!" and asks IT department to speed up the site.
6. IT department says they'll have to take time away from 10 other projects to change it, and anyway, the competition's site loads just as slow, so who cares?
7. Marketing department tries to find a way to fix the problem themselves. Finds out there are only 10 people on earth who know how to use the web system they're on, and they all cost $2500 a day. Oddly enough, they all work for the company that makes the system.
8. Accounting department sees that the marketing department is hiring a consultant. Sends a 3-inch-thick stack of forms to the marketing department to handle the new vendor, who the marketing department is paying a total of $2500.
9. Marketing manager quits.
10. New marketing manager comes in, starts the whole thing over again.
11. IT department manager, sick of managing a web site, quits.
12. New IT manager comes in swearing to work well with the marketing department.
13. Accounting department slashes IT budget 40%. New IT manager has to lay off 4 people. Is now totally overtasked.
14. Marketing manager sees how slow the site loads, says "What the hell?!", and asks the IT department to spee up the site.
15. Return to number 6 and loop infinitely.

At a small company, here's what happens:

1. CEO gets site built on Wordpress or static HTML.
2. Site's not perfect, Lord knows, but it works.
3. CEO realizes they don't rank for anything, hires an SEO.
4. SEO says "your site runs too slowly".
5. CEO yells down the hall to the CTO: "Frank, fix the damned site. It's too slow!"
6. Frank sets up GZIP compression, or compresses a few images, or hires someone to fix it, or Frank gets fired.
7. Problem solved.

Quick research

I just checked out a few home pages with Safari's Web Inspector and Google Page Speed:

• Target.com: 1.25 megabytes, 15 second average load time
• Adidas.com: 1.72 megabytes, 10 seconds average load time
• NYTimes: 2 megabytes, 8 seconds average load time

Niiiiiice.

Now, let's look at a few 'smaller' players:

• SeeJaneWork.com: .271 megabytes, 4.7 seconds average load time
• Velonews.com: .75 megabytes, 6 seconds average load time
• usaautoglasswa.com (totally random choice): .135 megabytes, 1.9 seconds average load time

Hmmmm. So who exactly is Google favoring? The small sites, seems to me.

For once.

Related reading

• 31 ways to speed up your site
• 3 ways to commit SEO suicide
• The developer's guide to Internet marketing

If you want to learn about StumbleUpon and what it is, read my previous article about Stumbleupon traffic quality..

StumbleUpon is my friend. In a weird, they-just-showed-up-and-were-nice-to-me kind of way.

I'll write an article about, say, The Plague that is Powerpoint. Nothing happens. I shrug and move on to the next piece.

Then BAM, weeks later traffic goes ballistic:

Pretty dang cool. I have no idea who started that Stumblefest, but thanks!

No manipulation

First: I am not manipulating StumbleUpon. I don't have 50 accounts so that I can stumble my own stuff. In fact, I no longer stumble my own stuff at all. I got banned once, went through a Kafka-esque ritual to prove my innocence, and am now really conservative.

But there are a few things I do to maximize my Stumble-ability.

Make yourself a Stumble target

1. Use an image. Always make sure you have an image that will grab a Stumbler's attention:
   
2. Make the image catchy. The typical StumbleUpon user just clicks the 'Stumble' button every 10 seconds or so. You need to make them stop clicking long enough to read. That's what the photo is for.
3. Write a good headline. This one's been beaten to death, but write a cool headline. "Why Powerpoint is bad" probably won't do it. Call Powerpoint a plague, though, and you've got something.
4. Write something funny/useful. I don't have to explain this, I hope.
5. Make the page scannable. It has to be easy for someone to zip down the page, take in what they want, and then decide if they like it or not. I broke the Powerpoint post up with lots of images and sub-heads, as well as a few bullets.
6. Don't write too much. This one pisses me off, but it's true. I write long, detailed posts about canonicalization issues and no one cares. Write a short post with a dead body at the top, though, and you're SET.
7. Keep blogging. If I stopped writing for a month every time I wrote a dud, I'd write once a month. Keep posting, preferably daily. Take the time. Old content establishes authority. Then one day a piece of new content grabs attention, and folks start going back through your old stuff and suddenly realize, "Hey, maybe this guy can write after all!"

Related reading

• My post about Powerpoint, of course.
• 32 tips to make online customers love you.
• StumbleUpon traffic IS worth something: Links.
• While you're at it, why not read my e-book about SEO copywriting? It's only 7 bucks...

I go to conferences, eat the dry sandwiches, sleep in the hotel room and then head home.

Usually, it's a wash - I learn a thing or two, bounce around outside the circles of the 'in' people like the smallest puppy in the litter, and that's it.

This year, though I went to my first PubCon. And it was fantastic! Here's why:

1. I didn't attend a single session that was a 50-minute sales pitch. That's a first.
2. Not one speaker I heard said something that set my teeth on edge: No recommendations like "Optimize your keywords meta tag" or "You'll rank #1 when you get 35 links".
3. I learned. A lot. I'm not being conceited - my withered, limp ego can't really handle it - but after 15 or so years, I don't expect to learn in every single session I attend. It's enough to hang out with people who're super-smart. This time I was taking notes. Fast. Frantically, even. Maybe I just picked good sessions, dunno.
4. I met people. People I've known for years but never met in person. People I've harassed via Twitter. For some reason, it was just easier to walk up to Lee Odden and be intercepted by Joanna Lord, or share a table in the speaker's room with Bruce Clay than at other events.
5. A great panel. I was on a panel with Heather Lloyd-Martin, Elisabeth Osmeloski, Gillian Muessig and Allison Driscoll. That was pretty darned cool, plus the audience asked great questions.
6. I suck at Search Spam. SEOMOZ had their Search Spam party. I was like the ICBM of good will, trying to spot the black hats and mowing down white hats in the process. I have to redeem myself next year.
7. I didn't get to meet a host of other people, like Streko and Rhea and such.

So, PubCon gets a definite thumbs-up from me. I'll see you there next year.

Note: Blogworld was undoubtedly awesome, too. But I was too sick to do more than crawl downstairs for my speaking gig. So don't make any assumptions about the conference's value.

Related reads (sort of)

• Analytics-driven SEO: A lesson in 4 steps (a preview of my Pubcon presentation)
• Using eBay as a keyword research tool (a post-presentation detail post)