My short answer?

Forget about the search engines and start thinking about your customer.

To understand why, there’s a quick story for you, a list of fundamental questions you need to consider and then an outline of how you can tie it all together.

Quick story:

Once upon a time, Bluewire Media’s website was nowhere to be found on Google when you typed in “web design brisbane” – a pretty competitive keyword. This was not acceptable for a web strategy consultancy, so we set out to improve our ranking.

We used 2 sources: We posed a few questions to Reload Media and read Glenn Murray’s SEO Secrets e-book.

Armed with a better understanding of how the search engines worked, we were able to get to the first page of results. It was a good step but we still wanted #1.

We then focussed on “thinking like a publisher” courtesy of David Meerman Scott’s “The New Rules of Marketing and PR”. We co-created the Web Strategy Planning Template with him and started to share much more content with our audience. The number of our back links increased dramatically and from high quality web sites like News.com.au courtesy of journalists and other visitors finding our blog and content useful.

In the process, we saw major fluctuations of our rankings and our competitors’. Some websites that had been on the first page for years vanished to the anonymity of page 4 or 5. Our own ranking bounced around as Google changed their search algorithm with countless small tweaks and a couple of major overhauls.

Ultimately our ranking improved over a few months until we were #1 for “web design Brisbane” (where we stayed for 3 years) and quite a few others. We’ve recently dropped to #2 but that’s ok, we’ll be back (my logic is next).

It’s time to consider some fundamental questions:

Why does a person use a search engine?

To find information.

What then is the purpose of a search engine?

The sole purpose of a search engine is to help a searcher find the information they are looking for.

Why will a searcher return to use a search engine again?

A searcher will return if the results of their search are useful.

How will a searcher choose one search engine over another?

Primarily by the usefulness of the results. A secondary consideration is the speed of the delivery of those results.

How does a search engine make money?

By having searchers click on sponsored links or pay per click advertising. The more people search, the more likely they are to click on the paid links. The more often people search, the more often they will click on the paid links. The more often they click, the more money the search engine makes.

Who is the searcher?

The searcher is YOUR customer, YOUR prospect, YOUR future No.1 referrer, a journalist looking for a good story in YOUR industry. The list goes on.

So if the searcher wants useful results and the search engines make money by delivering useful results, what do you think will drive your business’s long term search engine rankings?

USEFULNESS, to your customer or buyer persona, in everything you do on the web will drive your long term search engine rankings.

How can you do this?

• By genuinely knowing your customer or buyer persona.
• By understanding your customers’ problems and providing great content to help them solve it.
• By structuring your web strategy around your searcher or buyer persona not around your products (try using our web strategy planning template if you need help).
• By knowing what they a looking for and knowing what they are typing into the search engines and using their language, not some mumbo jumbo, jargon filled rubbish.
• By providing such interesting/useful/entertaining/valuable content that people will link to it and share it – thereby building QUALITY back links that create long term sustainable rankings, not junk links from an unrelated forum.
• By building content so it will be picked up not just by your customers but by journalists who will share it with a larger audience.
• By having landing pages that your customers find useful and that are relevant to what they are looking for.
• By refreshing your content regularly to demonstrate that you care about the issues your customers are facing.

Yes there is a place for Search Engine Optimisation to achieve short term results using technical changes, backlinking and other techniques. But do you seriously think trying to keep up with every change made to the ultra secret search engine algorithm by Google’s 31,000 employees (qualified by this type of entry exam) is a sustainable strategy?

Their algorithms are going to continue to refine, to reduce the impact of technical details like metadata, to build in the social proof as demonstrated by the number of tweets and likes and comments and check-ins and reviews and ratings and quality of authorship….. Then the next big thing will come along and swamp everything we know about today and demand more change from our businesses.

But the one thing you can count on is that search engines servicing their customers will be at the heart of it.

Don’t waste your time trying to keep up with every tweak made by collective brain power of the world’s best and brightest – get the basics right and then focus on your customer. If what you do is in their best interests, if you’re genuinely adding value with everything you do, then you can be sure the search engines will catch up and reward you handsomely for it.

So… what do you think? Is SEO dead?

I love the idea of the cloud:

1. accessing information from anywhere
2. allowing our workforce to be mobile
3. all the data backed up.

The ease of use and simplicity of design that typifies these applications is the icing on the cake. As is the ability to share data across them.

The search and constant involvement with the web eventually lead us to discovering Saasu which we now use as our web based accounting tool, along with a bunch of others. Since they are a web based application business themselves, I was intrigued to find out more about how else they use the web in their business.

Marc Lehmann is the CEO and founder of Saasu and was kind enough to share some insights here that might help you to use the web and the tools available. (transcript below)

Transcript:

We’ve always looked at the web as a very leveraged environment. You can have one relationship with someone on line, but in effect you have a second degree of separation relationship with all of the other people behind that person as well. If you look after one person well, in an online way, then all of the other people start becoming potential candidates to look at your product.

We’ve always looked at it like that – it’s a knock on effect. How many people can you influence and keep happy in a close sense? Then the people behind them starting hearing about you from them. So they become your sales team. People call it word of web, word of mouth, but for us we look at it like there are relationships there that we have online.

We do a limited amount of email because we don’t want to burn people’s attention. We don’t want to constantly send emails out, 1or 2 every few days, like a lot of accounting products do, but people’s attention starts to fall off. It might be important for the software company to send them those emails, but for them, their important thing is getting products sold and they don’t want us harassing them every 5 minutes.

We spend more time trying to find content for our blog, and when we do an email, it’s really relevant to creating time savings for the business owner. We’ll do an email out when we have a feature like automated statements being realised because we know that’s a job that someone has to do every month. Always make the content really high quality. Same goes for our approach with facebook and twitter and all the other mechanisms – we’re very careful about how we use people’s attention.

We spend a lot of time in community, business related events, accounting related events and tech events. We find that’s a great way to meet people and when you’ve met someone, the marketing power is an order of magnitude higher. [Side note: Keith Ferrazzi definitely agrees] If they know you they are so much more likely to talk about you. And it helps scale too because they are digitally connected. They’ll talk about us and generate that organic growth that we’re after. And that’s just us spending our time and money on building our product not on marketing and the old economy ways of doing it.

We use a product called Grad Connection for recruiting graduates. It’s more of a dating service for recruitment where you find out what the grad is looking for in a company and we get to look at what we need. We mightn’t want a graduate that doesn’t have a blog – we want everyone to be a blogger!

Then we use Campaign Monitor and Marketo for email marketing. And lots of great products out there – LinkedIn, Facebook and so on. And everything we do is pretty much online. We don’t really buy software, we just use online applications. Store our data in quite a few different locations in the US, Asia and Australia. That’s how you create safety in the cloud as we call it. Go with providers/web applications that do that. We spend very little money around maintaining our business around what applications we use, it’s really about picking the right application and spending the time researching the one you’re after. When we were investigating email systems, we spent a lot of time looking around.

Occasionally you have to buy a bit of software because not everything has been webified yet. We still use Microsoft Excel and Microsoft have some great products. We use Apple computers in our business – it’s probably 50/50. There are dozens of tech related ones we use.

A good friend of ours Liz Watson, gave us the heads up on Scott’s presentation for Portable Talks when Adam was reading Scott’s book “Making Ideas Happen“. It was great timing and a fantastic presentation. Personally I believe in the adage: ideas are 1%, execution is 99% and Scott has dedicated his time to the 99%. His presentation ranged across all sorts of techniques from checklists, through to meeting patterns and technologies – all focussed on the execution of ideas.

It was perfect timing for us at Bluewire as we try to speed up our web strategy and web design projects’ delivery times.

[It was so good in fact, that when Adam and I saw it in Sydney, we booked 3 extra tickets for the team up in Brisbane!]

So at the end of the presentation I asked Scott: “What is your number 1 tip for making things happen fast?”

The answer: Take action without conviction, take a little action and take it fast. Check out the video below. Thanks Scott!

Transcript:

I’m Scott Belsky and please to answer a question for Bluewire Media.

The question is: Could you please reiterate your number 1 idea for making things happen fast and then how that might apply to web projects or which web tools might help?

One of the things everyone needs to think about is that with any idea that comes up, that we feel comfortable acting without conviction sometimes. Often times that means rather than thinking about when to start thinking about it, and who to start speaking to and when to take a test, just take rapid action. Rapid action to talk to a specific person about it and decide the next step. Or rapid action to draft it up and send it around for feedback. Or rapid action to buy the domain name. Whatever it is, these little actions are sometimes what help us break the seal of hesitation that often gets in the way of having an idea and actually see it transpire. I think in any sort of web development project, new business, new product, new service, when you have that inkling of an idea, push yourself to find the first action you can take and then take it quickly and see where it takes you.

Adam and I went along to another great Verne Harnish Rockefeller Habits event put on by The Growth Faculty on Tuesday and sat next to Derek Hodge, a TEC (The Executive Connection) Group Chair.

With a full day of Verne under our belts and sharing ideas, Derek invited me to join him the next day for a TEC presentation by Marcus Child (@digitalmarcus) titled “Leading an Engaged Culture”.

What a cracking few hours! Marcus was incredibly energetic as a presenter with great practical ideas around leadership and staff engagement, not to mention some incredible results to report. If you get the chance, I highly recommend you go to see him.

I videoed Marcus afterwards and asked him the question: “How can we use the web to build an engaged culture?” . The video is below.

The quick take home for me: The web can be used to really bring leadership messages to life through visual and audio, and enable them to be shared so much more easily!

Thanks again Marcus!

The video

It’s 2.03mins (transcript below):

Interview Transcript:

Hello my name is Marcus Child.

I’ve been speaking to the leaders of TEC today and that’s my work! Speaking to people all over the place, describing to people how they can get an engaged culture. And think about how we might use the web for that.

My own story, a year ago, somebody said to me: “Marcus, you do these talks, people really enjoy them” (really nice things) “but afterwards a few months after, they say: how do you keep it alive? How do you keep the messages because I’ve forgotten what you said?”

So I made a series of Digital Marcus. Made a website, and made a series of downloads, all audio downloads – mp3s – which people can listen to on their mobile phones, listen to on mp3 players, download onto their laptops, listen on the tube, when they’re driving.

And do you know it’s made a massive difference. For my business it’s been marvellous, but also for people to keep the message alive. I sold 25,000 of these things in the first 6 months! Ever so strong! And that’s been really good for me. I’ve decided to blog, and give people videos and footage of me working – just to keep the thing alive.

With some of my clients we do the same thing. Literally MDs and other people in their organisations, are finding ways of not only blogging, but sharing what they’re saying, what the latest newscast is in a podcast, in a really quick mp3, which gets shared around the business for everyone to get the latest message.It’s a much more modern, powerful way to get to see, feel and hear your leader in action.

And I think there’s a lot there. I think there’s something about replay it, build it into an accessible device, and it can be ever so colourful. And way better than the black and white of a page.

In the last 2 months, we’ve had 2 web strategy workshops with 2 different clients – one has gone really smoothly, the other not so smoothly.

I won’t name names, but sincere thanks to both clients (they’ll recognise themselves) for their genuine feedback – you can’t improve without it.

I want to pick one aspect of the feedback that really stood out as a difference.

Client Feedback

As chair for both of these meetings, I have to take responsibility for the introductions of the team members:

• In the workshop for client 1, I introduced our team and their technical skills.
• A few weeks later with client 2, I introduced our team then described their Native Genius.

The latter worked so much better.

Client 1 said: “I just wasn’t sure about X and Ys skill set and what they brought to the workshop.”

Client 2 said: “It was absolutely clear for us what everyone in the room was responsible for, and why they were there. Everyone commented how well you knew each other’s strengths and how clear your team’s roles were.”

It’s not rocket science to pick which project went smoothly.

What is a Native Genius?

It’s a concept from Liz Wiseman’s book Multipliers (thanks again for your influence Liz) and definitely not to be confused with a technical skill:

A native genius is something that people do, not only exceptionally well, but absolutely naturally. They do it easily (without extra effort) and freely (without condition)…They get results that are head-and-shoulders above others but they do it without breaking a sweat.

[I wrote a blog post on How to Discover Native Genius if you’re looking for more info.]

We list each of our team’s native genius on our website:

1. Adam – connecting with people
2. Toby – helping get the best for other people
3. Angela – supportive organiser
4. Lesley – making ideas actionable through planning
5. Sam – solving problems to make life easier
6. Sarah – telling stories
7. Angus – improving something
8. Shanon – helping others solve problems

Why was Native Genius important?

Sure it’s not the only reason the projects went smoothly or not, but in the contrasting workshops, the subtle difference of introduction had a huge impact on the perception by the client.

Communication is one of Bluewire Media’s core values and brand promise, and I now realise that communicating the strengths of our team involved in a workshop (or any meeting) is critical to its success.

It means that you’re able to work to each other’s strengths. It means everyone, especially the client’s team, understands us and our roles much more clearly and can direct questions and comments accordingly.

Workshop quality = Communication quality.

The outcome? An action item for me: Update all of our agendas to include Native Genius introductions.

PS: I’d be really interested to hear your comments on what differentiated a great workshop/project in your experience.

I must admit I was a little nervous when I rang Saasu.

The website looked good, the accounting feature list definitely favoured them, and the reviews I found were pretty positive from users and bookkeepers. So my expectations were high and I was really hoping not to be disappointed…

Thankfully, I wasn’t.

Getting started:

• I called them and a HUMAN answered. Within 3 rings. Tick.
• It was Tony Hollingsworth – Chief Happiness Office of Saasu. Tick.
• In a 15 minute discussion, I outlined my criteria and he said that yes they were capable of handling all of that plus a few other features like live bank feeds etc. Tick.
• Mobile phone access? He had to check with another staff member, then came back and said that the iPhone app was going to be launched in 2 weeks. Tick. (now live)
• A key issue for me was the transition time from MYOB to Saasu: a 15 minute process to get your base data across. Mmmm – I was a little sceptical but prepared to give it a shot.
• Integration with Highrise (CRM) and Basecamp (Project management)? Yep – through a cloud platform called OneSaas. Mmmm – I’d have to check what this was about.
• Cost? $25 per month. But free while you upload all your data and make the transition! Tick.

What has happened since I opened the trial account:

• Uploaded core data (but not transaction data because we chose not to do so) into the free account from MYOB in 15 mins.
• Customised the invoice and statement in an afternoon.
• Spoke with OneSaas and had the integration with Highrise complete in 2 days (we had a few synchronising issues which were quickly resolved).
• Refined our chart of accounts.
• Only a couple of hiccups through the process, which were handled extremely efficiently by the Saasu team.
• Paid for the first 12 months in advance (and received a month or 2 free).

It wasn’t all perfect, but nothing like a deal breaker in sight:

• We had some issues with our Commbank data feed, but the support was really responsive and it was fixed quickly. (A paypal data feed is also on the cards which is great news)
• No default invoice payment terms set up for customers.
• Employee data (leave/bank accounts/TFNs etc) had to be manually entered – not a deal breaker for us with only 6 full timers.

End result:

We were completely operational in the new system in 5 working days and this would have been a lot quicker without a whole lot of cleaning up of databases etc that needed to happen at our end.

Tony said to me that Saasu’s mission is to deliver an extreme value web accounting system. After 2 weeks I was convinced but 3 months later, I can’t agree with him more.

Plus I’ve got a gut feeling that this is just going to continue. Thanks to Marc (the CEO), Tony and the Saasu team for a great product and great support. Fingers crossed I may have found an end to the constant switching between systems!

[Side note: When I told Sam, one of our developers, about Saasu, he went home and set it up for his fiancee's Brisbane mobile beauty business immediately!]

We are a relatively simple service business – ie there is no inventory management required etc. This is a brief history of which system we used, what the deciding factors were for using it, and the verdict.

A brief history:

2005, System 1 = MYOB

Deciding factors:

Just starting the business, we ran with the recommendation of our accountant at the time.

Verdict:

Good starting point but I found it difficult and inflexible to use.

2008, System 2 = Netsuite

Deciding factors:

Came highly recommended from trusted sources. Thought we were setting ourselves up with a system that we’d never have to change – it seemed to have scale, flexibility, detailed reporting, everything you could ask for. A huge plus was that it was web-based. It integrated CRM with Accounting which was really appealing.

Verdict:

Implementation was complex and expensive, the support was poor and the system was massively over complicated for our purposes. Too expensive for the additional payroll module so ended up having to run MYOB for our payroll. Not a good result

Despite that, we persisted for 2 years hoping that it would get better with more data in it, but ultimately the useability and a host of other minor headaches that turned into a major migraine.

2010, System 3 = Back to MYOB

Deciding factors:

In our desperation to get off Netsuite, we moved back to MYOB which saved us thousands in licencing fees. Unfortunately it still the same old clunky software but this time it had to be run through a VPN on our bookkeeper’s server because our new CFO, our accountant and I were all in Sydney.

Verdict:

Same as before and it really felt like taking a backward step not being web based.

2011, System 4 = Saasu

Deciding factors:

Aside from standard accounting functions, I had a list of things that I wanted the system to do (below). But there were 2 other factors that really appealed to me.

Firstly, we’re huge fans of 37 Signals‘ products and business philosophies. Lesley, one of our lead developers, had heard about Saasu through 37 Signals as an accounting package that integrated with Highrise. That was instant credibility in my eyes. Secondly and very importantly, Saasu were heavily involved in social media – they had responded quickly to my tweeted questions at the end of last year.

So my criteria, over basic accounting function, were:

Non-negotiables:

1. Web based
2. Multiple users
3. Fully integrated payroll
4. Significantly customisable invoice/statement forms

Highly desirable:

1. Integrate with Highrise (CRM – customer relationship mangement) and Basecamp (project management) by 37signals
2. Mobile phone access
3. Support

Verdict:

Blown away. I didn’t realise you an accounting system could make you happy! We’re now 3 months into our Saasu subscription and the improvement from the old systems is incredible. It’s so easy to use, the support is great and all the features are running really well.

[Side note: MYOB Live Accounts failed on integration, payroll and lack of social media responsiveness. Xero did well on the social media and integration but failed on my payroll criteria (at the time).]

In my next post I’ll go into more detail on our Saasu experience to date but please contact me if you’d like to discuss any of the above.

Enter Jase.

**********

With all the noise around the Enterprise Social Media hyper-sphere it begs the question:

WHERE …

IS…

IT …

ALL…

GOING..?

Like Lemmings, many companies are hopping on board with no clear objective and purpose front of mind and as a result are quick to judge a ‘lack of performance and return on their investment’. Few people truly understand the POWER behind these new technologies and how to best utilize them for their own needs.

Personally I believe we are witnessing various new channels and methodologies of communication that will open up a world of opportunity – one of never-seen-before proportions. Excuses for poor communication internally, employees being un-reachable and not having direct access to pertinent information in a timely manner, should and will be, for those companies who utilize these new tools correctly, a thing of the past!

TWO POINTS I WOULD LIKE YOU TO CONSIDER – BEFORE MANY OF YOU TAKE THE PLUNGE!

1 – What are you measuring by implementing these new technologies…What metrics will you be using and how will you know when you are achieving your desired goals?

It is paramount that you are able to articulate the above as there are ENDLESS benefits for your consideration. To help you get started I have summarised below the various uses, examples and vendors (sellers), of the more popular Enterprise Social Software for your consideration.

2- Those of you who might be considered more MAVERICK than most… Encourage your own customers to participate in your discussions. You may need to drive some of the topics and areas of focus initially and then step back, let them be in the driving seat and respond in a calculated and supportive manner.

You will be staggered at what you will learn and what people say – both complimentary and constructively. How you manage your own reactions and more importantly filter and FIND LEVERAGE from this new information will be up to you.  I wish you every success!

Applications of enterprise social software

• Search: allowing users to search for other users or content
• Links: grouping similar users or content together
• Authoring: including blogs and wikis
• Tags: allowing users to tag content
• Extensions: recommendations of users; or content based on profile
• Signals: allowing people to subscribe to users or content with RSS feeds
• Freeform function: no barriers to authorship (meaning free from a learning curve or from restrictions)
• Network-oriented function, requiring web-addressable content in all cases
• Social function: stressing transparency (to access), diversity (in content and community members) and openness (to structure)
• Emergence function: requiring the provision of approaches that detect and leverage the collective wisdom of the community

Software examples

Specific social software tools which programmers have adapted for enterprise use include:

• hypertext and unstructured search tools
• wikis
• Microblogging
• Blogs/Weblogs for storytelling and sharing personal knowledge and experiences
• enterprise social bookmarking for tagging and building organizational knowledge
• RSS and Activity Streams for signalling
• collaborative planning software for peer-based project planning and management
• ideas banks for ideation (idea generation)
• social networking tools
• mashups for visualization
• prediction markets for forecasting and identifying risks.

Enterprise social software vendors

Enterprise social software vendors fall into several categories, including platform vendors:

• Atlassian
• Cisco Quad
• Clarizen Work Management Solutions
• Google Sites
• IBM Lotus Connections and IBM Lotus Quickr
• Microsoft SharePoint
• MindTouch open source
• Oracle Beehive
• Oracle WebCenter
• Yammer

Marketing in The Age of Google (by Vanessa Fox) is an insightful book about search, how it’s impacted the web and our lives, and how to make the most of it for business.

Vanessa goes into detail about the specifics of search engine optimisation and how search engines can be used for business planning, research and testing. i definitely agree with the tag line: “Your online strategy IS your business strategy”. The information is good, tying together the various concepts and tools available with examples and diagrams.

The parts that stood out for me were these quotes (bolding mine):

According to leaked 2008 Google quality guidelines, utility (how helpful the page is for the searcher based on intent), “is the most important aspect of search engine quality.”

A much better strategy is to focus on what the search engines are trying to achieve with all of those algorithm tweaks – showing the most relevant results for a given query.

Remember, the customers remain the same – they are simply adapting new behaviours to take advantage of the world of search.

What does this mean for you?

Don’t wait for the search engines, get ahead of them.

How? 3 steps:

1. Be useful.
2. Be relevant.
3. Be easy to use.

Because the customers haven’t changed, only the way they are finding information!

The reality is, if you are all of these things, the search engines will eventually catch up to you. With 26,316 seriously smart people at Google, (not to mention all the staff at Yahoo!, Bing and the others), they are bound to tweak their algorithms to catch up and deliver the most relevant and useful results.

[Side note: It was great to see that Vanessa's concepts closely aligned with our Web Strategy Planning Template, particularly the idea of "search personas" mirroring "buyer personas".]

Why? She uses it. (The first time I met her she confessed she was a twitter addict! You can follow her on twitter @mysocialpolicy or read her blog: My Social Media Lawyer.)

Particularly when trying to convince CEOs, we are frequently asked about the legalities of social media policies so I asked her to write a guest post to address just that.

Enter Vivienne…

+++++++

Blake Burningham, Vivienne Storey, Me, Hanh Keary, Jim Stewart at David Meerman Scott's Real Time Marketing and PR masterclass

Have you thought about the real purpose of taking the time and effort to write and implement a social media policy in your organisation?

There are many answers to “why have a social media policy at all?” and the main ones usually revolve around risk management issues such as:

• How do I protect my brand?
• How do I protect confidential or sensitive information?
• How do I hand over “control” of my message?
• How do I manage productivity?
• How do I address privacy concerns?

These are all highly valid questions that can and should be addressed in a social media policy (along with a whole host of other risk management issues) but there is one main function a social media policy should address and that is:

“How do I enable my organisation to communicate in “real time” without having to wait for approval from the marketing/comms or legal team?”

Policy making

A social media policy should in effect be a pre-approval document for employees in your organisation to have a real time dialogue on the internet, whether it’s via twitter, blogging, Facebook or responding to comments. Imagine the power of unleashing all of your interested employees as marketers on your behalf, safe in the knowledge that they are following well thought out guidelines and processes? Imagine.

Throughout the process of writing a social media policy, this should be your single goal; “Am I enabling the organisation to engage on-line without having to ask “Am I doing the right thing?”, “Am I breaking any rules?””.

Examples

If you look at companies that are “doing” social media well, this is exactly the approach they have taken. Companies such as Coca-Cola and Deloitte have developed and implemented clear, well thought out, policies that encourage real time online engagement. And how successful they have been!

Content

Content is so time sensitive that you simply cannot afford to be waiting around arguing over whether certain pieces should be published by certain people. If you have to wait days to get agreement over publishing, the content is probably passé; relevancy and opportunity long gone.

Have these arguments while you’re developing your policy; dispute, wrangle and wrestle your way through the content of the policy always keeping that key question in mind; “Does this enable my organisation to engage in real time, on-line?” It’s worth having that intense debate during the development of your social media policy so that once it’s complete you can hand over to the organisation and say “go for it”

As Nike say “just do it”.

Note from Vivienne: Thank you to David Meerman Scott for the “real time” reference via his book, Real-Time Marketing & PR, and the inspiration for this blog.