Building a Million Dollar Business Part Time #12: Search Engine Optimization and Link Love
The Hot Mommas Project Case Study Competition has launched (what is this? See our blog brief.) Now, it’s time to get the word out. One of the ways to do that is search engine optimization and other social media tools. Lessons learned from BlogHer DC yesterday are the subject of this post. It took a while getting there, however.
Pictured here: My shower running.
White Noise Machine
Rather pathetically, I am in my bathroom typing so I don’t wake up my husband. This is pretty indicative of the weeks/months I’ve been having which is detailed in a different post for those schadenfreude-inclined individuals.
*****************************************
INTERLUDE
[Blog Themesong "Everybody's Got Their Something" by Nikka Costa Plays. Check out on PANDORA...my new love]
Monday October 13, 6.52 a.m.
Location: Inside my head, in my house in DC…Which is – as my son says – “In the world” and “not make-believe.”
Today, the Hot Mommas Project Case Study competition launches. I am getting ready to go to BlogHer Reach Out Tour in DC to promote the competition.
Last and this weekend were a severe flurry of emails between Dave our developer, Achin on our team (see earlier post), our testers, and me. Now, we take the BETA site live and wait for complaints, hopefully some praise.
7.52 a.m. Now it’s time to go to the conference with Esther. We’ll see how it goes. Wish us luck.
8.48 a.m. The BlogHer conference started 18 minutes ago. I still haven’t left the house.
[Music stops]
……..Flurry of emails. Flurry of emails. Flurry of emails……..
…….Fix sign in process at http://www.HotMommasProject.org………;
[Music starts again]
10.02 a.m. I am finally at the conference. I walk in directly from the garage into a really exciting environment. Cool exhibitors and SWAG. Tons of friendly, smart women. What’s not to like?
10.15 a.m. Attend a killer presentation on “Online community building as a natural promotional tool” moderated by Elisa Camahort Page. All panelists amazing. They ask for social media success stories from the audience. I am called upon:
“My name is Kathy Korman Frey and I run a women’s leadership called ‘The Hot Mommas Project’ housed at the George Washington University. We started a blog just over a year ago, and got on Twitter this summer. The increased interest we’ve received due to this foray into social media led to funding for our venture. With that money, we built a software program where women come online and tell their own story to serve as role models for women and girls around the world. We actually are launching TODAY.”
The entire room, filled with hundreds of people, claps. Yay.
12.30 p.m. – I exit presentation and look at my blackberry. We just got our first hate mail.
[Music stops]
12.38 p.m. – I get another email from a SUPER POWER interactive education guy who has agreed to be a judge for us. (We are not revealing our judges until after the beta, but, I am psyched and so is the team!)
[Music starts again]
12.38-8.30 p.m. – I attend the rest of the conference, meet some amazing people, get fabulous reactions to the project, Esther and I hand out every last case competition postcard. We wrap up the night being interviewed by @dcconcierge for a cool women’s telecom blog and we also hear from @yoga_mama that she’s already started her case.
END INTERLUDE
***************************************
FINALLY…THE SOCIAL MEDIA AND SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION TAKEAWAYS or, as I like to call it, “A list of everything I’m doing really badly.” Is badly a word? Geeeeezzz this blogging and reading and writing thing is soooo complicated! (Said in Napoleon Dynamite voice).
(Note: I am trying to be cool and load a Napoleon Dynamite clip using www.killerclips.com, but, WordPress is like the Gestapo w/ foreign HTML so, my apologies if it’s screwed up. Use “Napoleon Dynamite” link above. Is worth it.)
TAKEAWAYS:
From Charlene Prince Birkeland at Yahoo’s Shine Magazine:
1. How to organize your site/blog. Think – Usable, clean, organized, one click away. What does this mean? No clutter. All key items “one click away” not buried.
2. Research key words. Do this at www.freekeywords.wordtracker.com. Use key words strategically in headlines and in your posts. What does “strategic” mean? For example if 1500 searches coming in for your term, you know your post will get buried/lost. The lower you go (e.g., 300, etc.), the better the chance you’ll have at winding up at the top of search results. Use the words in categories and tags. Tag photos. Rename photos (vs. “IMG5762139″) and put on Flickr so there is a better chance of it showing up in a search.
3. Know your current audience – I am not sure how to do this. I seem to have missed/zoned this part of the presentation. From the earlier panel moderated by Elisa Camahort Page, I picked up the following:
- Poll your users (BlogHer has used Zoomerang, Micropoll, and Survey Monkey). Your blog company may offer a polling function, too, for free. One audience member suggested Google Forms as the “the stupid easy lazy way to do it.” More on Google Forms.
4. Montior
What do you monitor?
1. Page views – How many. What are most popular?
2. Time spent – How much time? You want people to get lost in your site.
3. Search terms – What terms are bringing people to your site?
4. Links (and reciprocate with link love) – Who is linking into you? Remember to reciprocate and give some “link love” meaning post on their blogs).
How do you monitor? Use a mix of the below:
Google Analytics
Sitemeter
www.haveamint.com
Stats from your pubisher’s tool (e.g. “stats” button on WordPress)
Blog ranking sites (Here are a few: http://www.blogrankings.com/, http://technorati.com/pop/blogs/, http://www.blogpatrol.com).
5. Publish
Think about publishing in new venues like:
BlogHer (not sure about dudes here)
Web circles – considered an oldie but goody (some competitors listed too)
Shine – Cannot figure out how to publish there at quick glance, but, they said you can publish there.
Boing boing – I looked this up and am not sure in what context it was mentioned, but, here is a funny Boing boing post called “Iran: You Suck at Photoshop.”
Don’t forget LINK LOVE and to post on other blogs when they post on yours…and so on…and so on.
If you get “the opportunity” with millions of hits, remember that you have a window of time. Keep the content coming, and keep it fresh, to hold onto those new readers.
6. Don’t “Spray and Pray.” This was not in the Yahoo presentation, but, is useful. Flipping the Funnel by Seth Godin talks about social media marketing. It is not about the MOST eyeballs, it is about the BEST eyeballs. Well, actually, it is about MOST – but the way you get there is by having ambassadors, fans, etc. willing to endorse your cause/product/idea/thoughts/words. “Find your 1000 true fans, have them make asks on your behalf…Tell a friend, put a widget on your site,” was the advice of a panelist. “People trust each other, not the media.” This is essentially the social media hybrid version of Malcom Gladwell’s connector, maven, and salesperson concepts from The Tipping Point.
SUMMARY:
Summary of tools used commonly by bloggers/social media folk: Blogging (wordpress, typepad, yada yada), Twitter (here I am on Twitter. Here is Esther. Here is Achin. We are currently peer-pressuring Kaitlyn – stay tuned.), Facebook (here is Hot Mommas Project on Facebook), Friendster (not on this), Flickr (not on this, yet), Ning (for creating communities) some YouTube (not on this) and video stuff mentioned, but have a feeling that is in a bit of an “early adopter” stage. Some LinkedIn – not a ton. Then, do all that other stuff mentioned above (meaure, monitor, link love, etc.) and then use the below to try to keep your brain from exploding.
TO KEEP YOUR BRAIN FROM EXPLODING:
In a panel led by the authors of 50SomethingMoms and SarahandtheGoonSquad we learned about the following:
1. In Google Reader – Star article at top left corner to save for later
2. http://www.zotero.com – Good for academic research and tracking citations
3. http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=browser_toolbar_download – Linked in Toolbar for Firefox
4. http://www.yoono.com/ – Gives you access to Facebook, Twitter, etc. all at one place.
5. http://www.digsby.com/ – Another tool a blogger just spoke about (learned about it from her son. cool.).
6. http://www.rescuetime.com – Analyzes your internet usage each day. Eek! You can set timers, goals, alarms.
7. Organize yourself/make the world smaller – With tools like StumbleUpon (and other social bookmarking tools like, e.g., del.icio.us) as well as Twitter search.
8. (I added this) Use www.Alltop.com to see blogs by area of interest. Check us out at www.moms.alltop.com.
P.s.
Net squared (an initiative of TechSoup.org) helps nonprofits with all of this stuff. Always check out @Kanter with respect to this field.
P.s.s. As I mention almost EVERY FREAKING TIME – Chris Brogan (@ChrisBrogan) and Guy Kawasaki (@GuyKawasaki) are good folks to monitor re: all things social media. In this realm there is also Shashi. We can’t forget our man Shashi (Shashi Ballamkonda). He took the picture here of the three of us.
Esther Leff, Kathy Korman Frey, and Shashi Bellamkonda at BlogHer DC. Photo Credit: Shashi Bellamkonda
P.s.s. Here is Kimberly Wilson at BlogHer.
Kimberly Wilson at BlogHerDC
She is an ORIGINAL Hot Mommas Project Case Protagonist (the ones published before we opened up this competition). She has a yoga/clothing/publishing empire but is super chill and unassuming. We love her. Check out www.hiptranquilchick.com for more.
PARTING THOUGHT:
Among other things, The Hot Mommas Project needs to do a better job of: Posting more freqently and doing link love. So, those are a couple of goals. Shorter posts would help me accomplish this. Feel like I’m writing a book here.
Leave a Reply
Add What?
Kathy’s Twitter Feed
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
What do you monitor?
1. Page views – How many. What are most popular?
2. Time spent – How much time? You want people to get lost in your site.
3. Search terms – What terms are bringing people to your site?
4. Links (and reciprocate with link love) – Who is linking into you? Remember to reciprocate and give some “link love” meaning post on their blogs).
Its very useful to all of seo
Great info. We are still fighting the SEO battle. Not very successfully. We post and pray. We have implemented little – takes expertise, and, my team is just not there yet.
thank you … it’s like going to the conf and while never leaving LA (or, my rev stream). mucho appreciationo!
PS: yes, i think you should write a book!
Hey – have my eye on you almost-case-study-author.
Wow! I must have missed the boat…or the email. I had no idea that the competition had officially launched.
hi there – glad you find my blogher presentation useful.
to answer your question about knowing your audience, there are a three really easy ways to do this on a small scale
1. look at who is commenting on your site. do they have a blog? what are they talking about on their blog?
2. look at who is linking to you (via posts and blogrolls. you may see your site is linked to via a message board, etc.).
3. look at who is writing about you in their blogs
you may notice a theme…you may write a random post and suddenly find you have a new audience about that random topic.
you can find all of this info via your stat counter or analytics tool. but you’ll need to do the labor of love to dig in deep and read those other sites/blogs.
as for shine, when you visit our main page (shine.yahoo.com), click on the “manage my blog” spot on the right side of the page. if you are a yahoo! member, just log in and start the process of creating your shine blog.
thanks again! and feel free to drop me a note with any questions.
As I mentioned on your blog – this was such a great and detailed reply. THANK YOU!
Great post….keep it up with good posts.
will do
Kathy- what a great summary of the BlogHer sessions! I’ll just bookmark your post (with all the hotlinks!) and toss out my messy notes.
Best wishes for the launch- I’ll continue to keep my eye out for opportunities to plug the hotmammas project to my Gender&Diversity colleagues…And, I’ll watch your rss feed for articles on your site that I can blog about or link to at my serious blog http://www.AuthenticOrganizations.com , or my advice blog http://www.AuPairMom.com.
Happy Blogging!
CV
I am glad you like the summary. I like your sites, and, that AuPair site – a beauty. We’ve had 3 Au Pairs, 2 of which have gotten in car wrecks, and all 3 have near nervous breakdowns as a result of 1. Culture Shock, 2. My son, 3. Other boys.
Excellent blog! Interesting article and very informative! I will necessarily subscribe for this blog. http://lowsalego.com/map.html
Thank you very much.
I really have a blasting such a lovely stuff in painting. And I was the only one interested in doing so at the time. The last one I’ve not finished yet, it’s fun and a great read for book lovers because the story is taking place in the books world. If your parent is deceased, you will need to show a death certificate or proof of guardianship, or a court order waiving consent. In Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Claudio and Juliet are, thus married by common law standards — however, their marriage was secret and so, not considered as a legal marriage.
Your blog is interesting!
Keep up the good work!
I do accept as true with all the ideas you have
introduced to your post. They are really convincing and will certainly work.
Still, the posts are very brief for starters. Could you please lengthen them a little from subsequent
time? Thanks for the post.
Hiya! I just would like to give a huge thumbs up for the great
info you may have here on this post. I will likely be coming again to your weblog for extra soon.
Whats up! I simply would like to give a huge thumbs up for the nice data you will
have here on this post. I will likely be coming back to your weblog for more soon.