While I was attending I stumbled upon Internet marketing and everything that it entails. I was enthralled by it and read everything I could find. After I had read and studied about Internet marketing for about 8 months, I discovered that my university offered an Internet marketing class. I immediately signed up for it and imagined that it would be an awesome class where I would take my skills to the next level.

While my professor was quite knowledgeable about marketing in general, he did not have much experience in the realm of Internet marketing. While he tried to compensate for his lack of knowledge by bringing in guest speakers, and there were some good ones, I still felt like the education was lacking overall.

Over the remainder of my academic career there, I often wondered what was missing. Why didn’t universities turn out good Internet marketers? I had this discussion with other students and many of them shared similar feelings.

From Graduates And Non-Graduates

I talked to a few marketing professionals with extensive web experience and they also believed as I did, but their hands-on knowledge allowed them to more elegantly explain the dilemma. Here’s what Scott Cowley and Darrin Demchuk had to say about the issue:

The university did not prepare me for a career in online marketing. I took an Internet marketing class and it consisted of me jogging to campus one evening a week because there was no textbook and no required homework and no necessary materials to bring. The course was taught by an adjunct teacher whose only experience was running an ecommerce site into the ground. He bought us pizza every week to make up for his lack of preparation and organization.

Scott Cowley is head of SEO at ZAGG and graduated with a degree in traditional marketing from Brigham Young University.

Darrin Demchuk, founder of serpIQ, said that he’s attended about five different colleges, but hasn’t finished a degree yet. He had the following to say regarding why he dropped out:

There were a lot of contributing factors. There was a perfect storm of some personal stuff mixed with my overall disinterest in ever going to school in the first place. The traditional rigid schedule of college doesn’t fit how my brain works. I tend to passionately do things for a few weeks at a time, which equates to a lot of failed classes in school.

In both cases, I think it’s pretty clear that there is a large disconnect from what the university is teaching and what is needed to be successful.

What Is The Real Issue?

The next big questions on my mind were, “what is the reason for this failing? Why can’t colleges succeed in training Internet marketers to be valuable, contributing members to the work force right from the start?”

Scott shared his thoughts on this:

“I think it’s important to understand how academia views marketing to understand why Internet marketing will never be the strongest facet of a college education. With some exceptions, marketing professors are paid to research, not teach. They examine what is considered most viable (and safest) in order to maximize their chances for tenure. And there are major disagreements about whether internet marketing is really different from traditional marketing in terms of consumer behavior theory, or whether the “Internet” just represents an industry, like the automotive or consumer electronics industry. As such, there are very few academic specialists who know their way around the Internet, both from a theory standpoint as well as a practical application standpoint.”

Darrin had a similar, but slightly different view:

“A lot of the online marketing world is about riding trends, whether that’s in terms of technologies or products or offers. You need to be able to quickly pivot to stay on top of things. That’s one component of it. Another is that with Internet marketing, you have to have a test-first mindset; you can’t waste time planning and documenting things out. You just have to go for it and have a fail fast mentality.”

Internet Marketers Are A Different Breed

One unique quality that I have noticed with the experienced Internet marketers that I have worked with is they generally are different than the non-marketing people we also worked with. Specifically, these online marketers that I look up to and that make big waves in the industry are creative individuals that think outside the box. These people share the following traits:

• Able to learn independently, either through testing or reading what others have written
• Self-motivated
• Innovative

These are just a few of the traits that set successful Internet marketers apart, and ironically they are the types of skills that are not generally encouraged in college setting.

Justin Lucas said he noticed this in his own college career. “University tends to prepare students for career paths that have already existed. It’s rare for professors out there to encourage students to try something new, something out of their comfort zone. For example in my information systems classes, mainly the project management ones, students wouldn’t try things out on their own. They’d ask the professor right away for help.”

A Hope For Better Education?

There are some promising trends moving forward. Scott guest lectures at his alma mater on a frequent basis (I’ve been lucky enough to sit in on a few of those lectures) and is able to share his expertise with students.

To be fair, universities are making progress. Today, you can find courses being taught by more qualified people–either adjuncts or regular professors who lean heavily on guest speakers. A great example can be seen from Gael Breton of HigherClick in his guest lecture at Harvard. The expectation from digital agencies is that fresh graduates are going to need heavy on-the-job training, so the industry generously accommodates the university’s failure to prepare its students.

While I think that it is good for universities to move in this direction, Darrin brought up a very interesting point. He said, “I think the college mentality leans far too much on getting your degree so you can get a good job and then slowly work your way up. It doesn’t encourage a rapid scaling mentality, nor does it encourage an independent self-starting mindset. I do think college is good for most people, it’s just unfortunate that there’s the mentality that if you don’t go to college you’re doomed.”

So what does the future hold for universities and Internet marketing? Share your opinions in the comments below. Also, I would love to hear your thoughts on the following questions.

• Did your college experience help prepare you for a career as an Internet marketer?
• Why do you think universities fail/succeed at preparing people for careers in Internet marketing?
• Do you completely disagree and felt completely prepared and ready to hit the ground running?

I was at home one night, contacting a couple of “deal” websites about a Cyber Monday sale we were going to be having on ZAGG.com. Meanwhile, I saw a round-up blog post of Cyber Monday deals on a prominent tech site. I checked out the page and thought, “There’s no reason we shouldn’t be on this list too.” Five minutes later, I had found contact info for the author and had written him a nice, short e-mail that basically said, “Hi, I saw your round-up post. If you’re open to adding an additional deal, here’s what we’ve got planned.” I figured it was a longshot, but it only took a few minutes.

The next morning, I had a reply waiting in my inbox. The link had been added. Mission accomplished.

I checked the analytics a few days later.

Between the desktop and mobile version of the site, we made more than $8,000 in referral sales from that one link.

As an SEO, it’s one thing to tell your boss or a client that you built some links of varying quality on various sites with varied anchor text which appear to be helping various rankings which pull in X amount of organic revenue. It’s quite different to say “I built a link that drove traffic and made $8,000.” The first statement will always sound a bit shaky. The second will always sound confident. With attribution becoming an increasingly hazy science, direct link revenue is really the only safe ground to stand on as a link builder.

The amount may seem trivial to you, but to me, it sparked a minor epiphany. This and similar experiences in ecommerce link building have taught me some valuable lessons about the foundations of building great links. If you want to build links that make money directly, here’s what I recommend.

1. Build links like rankings don’t matter.

If an extra backlink to your site did absolutely nothing for your rankings, how would you change your approach to link building? Hopefully, you’d focus only on links that actually drive traffic and convert. You’d put more time into relationships and partnerships and link-worthy content. This requires a mentality shift of large proportions for some, but if you make the transition (and have solid on-page skills), you’ll make money and get your rankings too.

2. Treat link building like a game of timing.

My favorite links are those that the competition can’t replicate. And many of these are only available for a set window of time; sometimes hours or even minutes. If I had waited an extra day to make the link request mentioned earlier, the probability of successful placement would have dropped dramatically (and the ability to generate revenue would have dropped even more).

3. Keep your eyes and ears open.

Opportunities abound if your brain is primed to look for and grab them in an instant. This is one of the big advantages to working as an in-house SEO. At an agency, with multiple clients, I certainly meant to take advantage of every available link opportunity, day or night, but the brain just isn’t primed and focused to do it for 20 different websites, so it never happened.

4. Focus on targets with large audiences.

Revenues and conversions are all about numbers. We got over 5,000 visits from that one link and only a small portion of those converted. To achieve that, the original post needed to get a lot of traffic–big enough to create that level of click-through to just one of many links on the page.

The best way to build that kind of link is to keep an eye on the largest sites in your niche and figure out where you fit into their content.

One mentality that plagues a lot of beginning link builders is to try to place links on sites that are ranking for the keyword terms they want. This isn’t a bad approach per se, but it can warp your sensitivity to other opportunities. This coming sale season, I’ll monitor who’s ranking for categorical keyword terms that I want to place content on (but not that I want to rank for), like “best cyber monday sales.” I already know that these pages are going to get a ton of traffic and I’ll have value to pitch to these webmasters.

5. Stop worrying about anchor text.

Trying to chase the perfect anchor text while trying to chase “money links” is a losing game. Optimized anchor text is usually not responsible for CTR; context and build-up around the link is.

Anchor text is one of the reasons that SEOs can get distracted by link building tactics like directories, article networks, and paid links to help rankings. I won’t claim that these tactics don’t work. They do. We all know they do (with varying degrees of risk and effectiveness). But rarely do these work in driving large amounts of traffic or revenues by themselves. So stop freaking out because your link network got shut down. You don’t need it unless there’s no value or legitimacy in your core business.

6. Forget about DoFollow links.

One of the first things SEOs learn is the difference between a NoFollow and a DoFollow link. DoFollow pass link juice. NoFollow do nothing (technically). OK, now break the rules.

If you want to build thousand dollar links, you have to change your value system and toss out the ranking goal. Even though the link above was a DoFollow link, there are a ton of instances where this won’t be true. For example, you can drive a lot of visits and revenues through deal and discount websites and through affiliate websites. Many of those links are NoFollow. Who cares? They’re making money, but they aren’t going to build themselves.

7. Cater to hot content categories.

We never thought, “Hey! We should have a Cyber Monday sale because people will be writing about it and we can get links.” But sometimes that’s exactly how you have to plan sales, promotions, and content. Plan ahead for what people will be writing about. I failed at this recently. I knew some people would be writing April Fool’s Day posts, so I sent out some spoof packages to a few people who had written about past business pranks. Unfortunately, I mistimed and the packages arrived too late. Sometimes you learn the hard way.

8. Ask “Why Not Us?”

Every link has a price, and I don’t mean money. When you encounter a relevant page that you want to appear on, ask “Why Not Us?” Sometimes the answer will lead you to immediately contact the author/webmaster. Sometimes, you realize that you need to pay the price for inclusion. Many of the link opportunities we quickly discard could be obtained with the agile creation of content or a promotion.

Are we witnessing a contraction in link building?

I think it’s getting harder and harder to attribute ranking results to particular link building activities. Just look at the impact that social media has had on SEO. To this day, nobody has offered any empirical data on the link and SEO value provided by a tweet, a share, or a plus, relative to a traditional link. But everybody says it’s important and so SEOs get their priorities backward, causing mini-rants like these:

Let’s face it. Accountable link building is just PR and content marketing, plus goals and analytics. As an SEO, you’re better off earning your job security through sales from your links instead of leaving the rankings to chance and Google.

I saw one company reach #1 for their primary keyword at the very tail end of that keyword’s demand curve because their SEO only looked at the number of searches at one point in time and didn’t think holistically about the trends. The result was a lot of effort, minimal traffic, confusion, and frustration.

As you try to visualize annual search volumes for a particular keyword more as one of many possible demand curves rather than a pure number, you’ll gain greater segmentation abilities and better optimization strategies.

Static  Keywords

Examples: car insurance, dog beds, cheap scissors

In many respects, the ideal keyword is one whose search demand is nearly always constant. This is the benchmark that all other keyword demand curves are measured against. A static demand curve allows you to project exactly how much traffic your site is likely to get at any given search ranking (assuming no changes in page header data, which could impact click-through rates).

Some industries are fortunate to operate in near-static conditions—fortunate in that an SEO can focus on rankings without being hampered by trends. In fact, niches were this static demand exists tend to be very crowded, because of the predictability—the assurance that work put toward SEO for a particular keyword will help the site inch closer to the ultimate goals of rankings and traffic.

What to do?
Keyword research and selection should be fairly easy. A number of keyword tools exist (the most accessible being Google’s Keyword Tool). Even though the data in these tools can often lag by several months, the static nature of these keywords should be enough to trust the numbers reported in the tools. (As a note, I’ll primarily use ‘exact match’ reported numbers along with ‘Global Search’ as the benchmark setting for evaluating keywords in Google’s tool).

With the right numbers in hand, you can adopt a fairly common head/middle/long-tail keyword strategy–selecting groups of similar keywords and assigning them to particular landing pages on your site that you want to rank for those words, optimizing accordingly.

Seasonal Keywords

Examples: New York Knicks tickets, best snowshoes, Valentines Day gift ideas

Seasonality creates uneven search demand. Holiday keywords, for example, will always see similar increases and decreases at the same time every year. Fortunately, identifying groups of seasonal keywords is generally pretty easy. However, predicting search volumes for seasonal keywords isn’t always easy. Since tools like Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool report volumes on a delayed basis, you may see zero search volume for a keyword that is actually being searched quite heavily. You won’t see those heavy search volumes reported until after the window of opportunity is passed.

What to do?
Let’s assume you decide to start a ski clothing company in June. The usual keyword tools aren’t going to tell you what your best keywords will be since you’re researching during the off-season and numbers will be inaccurate. Some paid tools like Keyword Discovery keep a running database of words so that you can look at seasonal numbers. A free way you could approach the problem would be to use Google Insights, which will allow you to anticipate keyword volumes as a multiple of existing traffic, which you could pull from Google’s Keyword Tool.

As you can see, keyword volumes can be extrapolated by using the comparative index shown in Insights. You could also just check out your competitor’s site if you know they’ve been doing their own SEO and/or PPC in past years. Don’t assume they know what they’re doing ,but use competitor sites to corroborate your own research.

I know of many companies with very seasonal businesses that start picking up SEO work 4-6 months before peak season hits. I consider this a very solid approach.

Spiking Keywords (Predictable)

Examples: Motorola Droid 3 cases, Hunger Games tickets

Spiking keywords have a short shelf-life. Sometimes, you have some time to prepare before the search volume peaks because of advance notice, as in the case of a movie premiere or a product launch.

What to do?
Sometimes you use whatever time you have to research for, build, and optimize content–even if it’s only a few days/weeks. Traditional keyword research tools may not show any search volumes for your initial brainstormed list of keywords and that’s okay. I’ll often use a site like Soovle.com to generate keywords. Soovle is based on the auto-suggest results from Google and other search engines. It may not give you actual search volumes, but the suggested terms and phrases are all currently searched and are ordered by demand (for benchmarking).

Spiking Keywords (Unpredictable)

Examples: CNN Mashable acquisition, Halle Berry engagement

News sites often count on being optimized for spiking, unpredictable keywords as a way of generating traffic. The demand curve for these kinds of keywords can be nearly identical to predictable spiking keywords, but without any advance warning. Most of the time, news has a shelf life of a couple of days to a week, so waiting longer to post optimized content will completely miss the window.

What to do?
News hits and you have minutes-to-hours to get content up before it’s already past its prime. Sometimes Soovle will be fast enough to pick up on today’s news, and sometimes not. In these cases, I find that predictive keyword brainstorming is enough to get by with. One helpful method is to pick out the important nouns in the story and apply the 5 W’s to each of them to determine which questions people are most likely to have about the story, leading them to search. People are searching in longer and more specific phrases than ever before, so optimizing for those exact questions as your post titles will help you be completely optimized and ranking high. In cases like these, it’s also important to make sure your site is being crawled quickly, either through its own authority or through social media promotion once the content has been published.

Combo Keywords

Examples: iPad accessories

Some of the toughest keywords to deal with contain attributes of multiple demand curves. They may have an element of constant demand which includes peaks of hyperactivity due to market changes or related news.

What to do?
The easiest approach to these keywords it to use a combination of keyword research approaches. I’ll typically use Google’s tool plus Soovle plus predictive keyword research in combination (and PPC if necessary) to gauge performance and relative importance of the keywords I’m interested in.

Unknown Keywords

Example: New business category or product class, e.g., “Foursquare Meets Craigslist”

Some startups definitely fall into a category of ambiguity when it comes to keyword volume trends. Anyone seeking to create a blue ocean business is likely to run into some trouble when it comes to SEO. People aren’t searching for your kind of business. Your keywords may not have even been invented yet. And yet you still want to be found.

What to do?
You can think in terms of solutions rather than keywords. What problem does your product or service solve? What need does it meet? What words are people already familiar with that could be associated with your product?

I will issue a caution. I have witnessed some of these kinds of startups put a lot of money into SEO only to be disappointed. It often makes more sense to focus on branding, education, and awareness with your marketing dollars instead of putting them into a channel that relies on heavy assumptions with an unknown payoff.

You’ll find a mix of opinions on the issue. Some feel that adding PPC when a site is already ranking well organically creates unnecessary expensive cannibalism—paying for clicks that would have come for free through an organic ranking. Others believe in a synergistic effect that PPC has on organic traffic. So what is the right answer?

Adding PPC When You Already Rank Organically

Brad Geddes is a powerhouse when it comes to PPC and gives a great guide to testing the impact of PPC on SEO for any business regardless of size. Testing is essential because the keyword set can impact whether adding PPC helps or hurts the bottom line.

In a set of tests on one client, the results showed that adding PPC to organic SEO efforts created a decrease in the number of SEO clicks, but increased the total number of clicks by almost 25 percent.

The more important figure is that the total revenue generated by combining SEO and PPC together yielded a profit over 27 percent higher than SEO alone.

Adding SEO To An Existing PPC Campaign

A recent study by iCrossing found that the addition of organic SEO to a preexisting PPC campaign yielded great benefits (compared to the campaign by itself).

Some addition research by iCrossing shows the impact of running SEO and PPC campaigns together.

While the data doesn’t show the relative impact that SEO has on PPC, it seeks to make the case that SEO is complementary to the benefits that PPC provides (while not a complete replacement).

Adding PPC For Branded Terms

A couple of recent tests by George Michie provide some interesting insight into how the SEO vs. PPC dynamic plays out with brand ads. In one test using exclusively branded keywords, some cannibalization occurred, but the ultimate result was synergistic, meaning the total traffic generated from both channels proved to be greater than SEO alone.

In a second test performed with a client who had done very little paid advertising, the result of adding PPC was a near complete cannibalization of SEO traffic. In this case, the client ended up losing profits because of the costs incurred by PPC.

In a separate test performed by IMPAQT, a PPC campaign targeting brand-specific keywords was shut off, leaving only organic search rankings to capture branded searches. The result:

• Total visits decreased by more than 10%
• An average of approximately 4,000 visits per day were lost
• Visits fell by more than 50% within make and model branded campaigns

Conversion Rates of PPC vs SEO Traffic

Does SEO traffic convert better than PPC traffic? One of Geddes’ clients initially performed a test and found that conversion rate differences were fairly negligible between the two traffic channels.

Conversion Rates of PPC vs SEO Landing Pages

Is there a difference between using the same pages you rank for organically as your landing pages for PPC? After all, supposing that conversion rates are same and that cannibalism isn’t a factor, wouldn’t this make combo landing pages a natural strategy? It’s easy to arrive at that conclusion.

A test run on Brad Geddes’ client site show the conversion rates when SEO landing pages are used as a destination page from PPC traffic. They also show conversion rates for PPC-specific landing pages. The results are significant.

It helps in multiple ways to create PPC-specific landing pages. PPC pages may be simpler, more keyword-targeted, and may even eliminate the traditional page navigation found in a typical SEO landing page.

My Own Experience

I operate the SEO for a large e-commerce site that puts a lot of money into pay-per-click advertising, even though we rank #1 for many of the terms we pay for. My observation has been that a sizeable portion of our SEO traffic is tied to our PPC spending, meaning if we scale back our PPC campaigns, we generally see a corresponding dip in our organic traffic.

Why would this be? A couple of explanations:

1. The presence of paid placement in search results as a complement to normal organic rankings is a major trust indicator. If two SERP text snippets both point the searcher to the same site, the “strength in numbers” quality signal increases click-through, regardless of whether one of those is paid.
2. In the new version of Google Analytics, Multi-Channel funnels allow you to see which channel touchpoints your site visitors had during their interaction with your site. One of our largest “funnels” includes site visitors who first came to the site through PPC, then returned later through an organic search result. It’s as if they were first introduced to the brand through paid search (usually through a non-branded keyword), then remember the brand and searched for it then next time. These “initial branding interactions” wouldn’t have taken place without PPC.

What Can We Conclude From All This Data?

Based on the available studies, it’s safe to say that SEO and PPC work very well together, producing greater results than either would get by itself. There are certainly exceptions to this rule, which is why anyone involved with SEO and PPC is encouraged to test and validate the “synergy hypothesis” rather than blindly believing the studies.

Using SEO with PPC has 5 additional benefits, as outlined by Crispin Sheridan:

• Improve SEO entry page URLs: Optimizing specific SEO entry pages from an analysis of keywords that perform well in PPC but struggle SEO-wise from a conversion perspective.
• Expand SEO priority keywords: High-converting keywords in PPC that are low in organic visibility must become priorities for SEO optimization in order to build the share-of-voice across the search engines.
• Maximize SEO keyword exposure: Keywords with high PPC conversion rates but high CPC can be targeted in SEO, allowing paid search funds to be reallocated to other keywords.
• Increase PPC keywords: Keywords that perform well in organic search by either garnering clicks or high conversions provide opportunities for increased exposure through paid search.
• Minimize expense, more efficient PPC: “First result” organic keywords that are also expensive, high-performing PPC keywords can be deemphasized organically, instead focusing time and funds back into broader PPC keyword sets.

Ultimately, decreasing your dependence on SEO or PPC alone will be great for your internet marketing (and help you optimize each channel through data sharing). As long as PPC continues to produce an acceptable ROI, there’s no reason to shut it off. And since most clicks on a search result page are given to organic results, the best viable strategy is to constantly work toward high organic placements via SEO.

People love to use the word “debunked” in blog titles. At the time of this writing, there were 40,000 exact match results in Google for “social media myths debunked.” There’s just something heroically Mythbusterish about picking apart commonly-held social media beliefs. But what if it’s the debunkers who need “debunking?”

With dozens and dozens of posts out there claiming to debunk social media myths, it wasn’t hard to find some examples of “myths” that probably shouldn’t have been debunked at all.

Myth No. 1 – Social Media is Free

Why originally debunked?

The debunker argues that time is not free, so social media is not free. Depending on what your time is worth, social media could end up being very expensive.

Why unbunked?

The reality is that most in-house social media managers run a very fluid system of work, from social messaging to content creation, and time is eaten up as a natural cost of business. Companies don’t care how long it took or didn’t take to accomplish a social media objective. The results should speak for themselves.

The primary communication platforms in social media are free. And there are plenty of free monitoring and messaging platforms to manage the data streams that social media managers work with—at least the majority of them. If you want to introduce elements like Facebook or Twitter advertising, robust social management platforms, or social automation products, there are obvious costs. But for 99 percent of businesses, social media is free.

Myth No. 2 – You Can Sell Products on Facebook

Why originally debunked?

The debunker points to social media as a conversation starter and occasional lead-generator, but not a direct sales channel. You can’t expect to generate actual sales through social media campaigns.

Why unbunked?

Personal experience. You can sell products on Facebook, Twitter, and any other social channel to a consumer in buying mode. The impressions from social channels may be less relevant overall, but I’ve had success making money from affiliate links posted solely to Facebook and Twitter. It works because of an engaged audience, a proportion of which will click on a link, and a proportion of which will buy the product. I get plenty of Groupon-type deals for free because of similar affiliate links posted to social media.

Traditional e-commerce sites have just as much success because of their highly-motivated, highly-engaged audiences. I happen to know that companies like ZAGG generate thousands of dollars through Facebook by posting discounts or information about new products. In the future, don’t be surprised if Facebook allows purchase and checkout directly from its platform.

Myth No. 3 – You Should Interact As Your Brand and Not As Yourself

Why originally debunked?

The debunker argues that companies should introduce their social media figures, their positions within the organization, etc. because people relate more to other people. The debunker claims that campaigns and brands that do this get more interaction than individuals hiding behind a logo.

Why undebunked?

I can understand why some would argue for an authentic, personal, relatable voice in social media as contrasted with a plain, uncreative, informative tone. First, the line between engaging and unprofessional is rather thin. That’s why so many large companies continually get into PR trouble because of posts – social media writers trying to be a little too creative, witty, or edgy. It’s best to err on the side of professionalism, if only to avoid issues of appropriate vs. inappropriate. Second, I would argue that the longevity of social media success is tied to the consistency of messaging tone. A high-personality writer may be hard to replace if they leave. It makes more sense to give these people unofficial company voice on their personal profiles, rather than to adopt a very dynamic tone from the official profile. Last, I think you want to protect your social media management from becoming the targets of personal attacks and customer service complaints.

Myth No. 4 – You need to have a presence wherever your customers are

Why originally debunked?

The debunker argues customers are everywhere, but companies shouldn’t be. Companies should be selective about their channels to save time, money, and credibility. The debunker points to examples of successful firm-created networks like American Express’s Open Forum or HSBC’s Business Network as evidence that being everywhere isn’t a necessity.

Why undebunked?

It’s 2012. By now, if a customer wants to join a community of business fans, they’re going to look for you on the main networks: Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. I don’t know of one company that succeeds on one of these networks, but can’t hack it on the other one (celebrities are a different story). The only way to meet business objectives with social media is to go where the people are, and cultivate communities in those places. When new, broadly applicable social networks reach a particular critical mass, it’s expected that companies will have a presence.

Myth No. 5 – Don’t Call Yourself a Guru on Twitter

Why originally debunked?

The debunker points to data showing that people who use words like “guru,” “official,” and “expert” in their Twitter bios have more followers than average Twitter users.

Why undebunked?

The issue is not about the data. It is about the assumptions of the data. First, the idea that adding a particular title to a bio leads to more followers, regardless of whether the title is merited, is a flawed assumption of causality. A title like ‘guru’ activates preexisting connotations, and for most Internet-savvy people, that connotation is negative.

So what about the data? I suggest a likely “lurking variable.” Those who would call themselves gurus are the same who would use automation tools to artificially and inauthentically boost follower counts without providing any value. The data may be accurate, but don’t let it lead you to the wrong conclusions.

Myth No. 6 – Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays are Bad Days to Publish

Why originally debunked?

The debunker points to data that suggests email and social media click-throughs are higher on Saturday and Sunday than during the week because total message volumes on those days are lower.

Why undebunked?

Part of the deserved undebunking lies in the wording of the supposed myth. There may be higher click-through rates on weekends, but does that mean that you should ‘publish’ on those days? Network diffusion (share) of content on weekends is definitely lower with the volume of tweets I see on Saturday and Sunday being much lower than the rest of the week.

The headline also fails to mention that Thursday, for example, has just as high of a CTR as weekend days. So when should you publish? For content that obviously has a short shelf life like news, you should publish as soon as you can. Press releases historically go out in the first three days of the week because the eyes that need to see it are better primed to act on the information during the work week.

Shiny algorithm syndrome started online long before the Klouts and Empire Avenues of today. Alexa and Technorati have had their own arbitrary rankings of site popularity and influence for quite a while. While fine for a general benchmark, people still get carried away by their numbers. Some companies refuse to partner with others that don’t meet a particular Alexa rank cutoff. Google itself is the biggest source of shiny algorithm syndrome. Search engine rankings have become the ultimate algorithm that distracts site owners from real business objectives. Business owners are so distracted by “rankings” that they pay thousands of dollars to SEO companies to get them #1 positions for keywords that don’t bring in revenue. Businesses don’t care. They’re just happy to be “at the top.”

So how can you tell if you’ve caught shiny algorithm syndrome and gotten distracted from real goals? Here are a few symptoms:

1. You know your Klout score.

We remember things we care about. If you remember your Klout score, you probably care about your Klout score. You may say that it’s out of pure sociological interest that you keep looking, but let’s face it – you want that score to go higher and people to take notice.

2. You got upset over Klout’s recent algorithm changes.

Late in 2011, Klout announced a major change to its algorithm that caused the scores of many to see major lifts or drops. Some took the change in stride since the change was applied across the board. Others reacted very negatively, sending e-mails to Klout, calling for the change to be reversed. Some even went so far as to kill their Klout account in protest. The idea that you think Klout owes you anything is just a little silly.

3. You actively ask for +K, post about +K you gave, or post about +K you receive.

Feeding the beast, are we?

Think about your motivation for doing this. The only reasonable explanation for this behavior is that you want to be more influential. And you want others to notice. The trouble is, you may be putting time into trying to increase your influence in a very artificial way. Instead, why don’t you write something, create something, or help someone in a way that makes a difference and reveals your true expertise?

(In case you aren’t familiar with +K)

4. You know how you score on other “egometrics” besides Klout.

Do any of these ring a bell?

- Kred
- Peer Index
- Twitalyzer
- Empire Avenue
- ProSkore

You can get easily caught up in every new egometric site that pops up, trying to boost scores, figure out the systems, and convince people you belong at the top of the social food chain. Regardless of what any of these companies may claim, each is built to snare people in via shiny algorithm syndrome and provide very little value or guidance in how to be truly influential.

5. You don’t give attribution for things you post.

What does this have to do with SAS? You subconsciously feel like attributing that awesome joke or video you posted to the original sharer will dilute your ability to get credit. You didn’t find it, but you want all the glory. Maybe you’re afraid that giving attribution will prevent your post from spreading as much, or will dampen the positive karma. No matter which way you’ve justified it, you’re trying to fabricate your awesomeness. Why not just be awesome instead?

6. You focus on social ratios.

If you care about appearing better than average, then you have a grade-A symptom of SAS. This can come in many forms. Do you care about maintaining any of these?

- More followers than “following” on Twitter, Pinterest, Google Plus (Circlers, I know!)
- More recommendations for you than recommendations you’ve given on LinkedIn
- More inbound messages to you than outbound

7. You spend all of your time interacting with other “influencers.”

Let me guess. The only way to become an influencer is to start acting like one, and the only way to start acting like one is to stop playing in the minor leagues. And that requires only surrounding yourself with Big League names and distancing yourself from the Triple-A players , who surely aren’t going anywhere and will only drag your reputation and scoring down. If you don’t really feel that way, then why all of the online name-dropping?

Any of these sound familiar?

“Locals just aren’t nearly as interesting.”

“If I’m going to make an impact, I need to make friends with the people that are already making an impact.”

“Maybe I’ll reply to some of these lesser folk through DM instead of publicly.”

Just last week, I asked a local-turned-national figure if he knew of any local marketers with his same specialty who I could connect with. His response: “Sorry, I don’t get out much. Don’t know many locals.” How can you call yourself an expert or an influencer if you can’t even talk about the local ecosystem? It’s evident you care too much about appearances.

8. You change your posting behavior to help your scores.

Maybe you ask questions that you don’t really care about the answer to (or already know it) just to get a response. Everything you post must be optimized for maximum engagement and spread. You make sure you don’t go more than 120 characters on a tweet, so that you can easily get retweeted with attribution. This is a classic example of inauthentic, metric-driven behavior.

9. You believe your own hype.

If you think your Klout score means anything substantive about your influence as a person, you probably have shiny algorithm syndrome.

The issue I take with social influence scoring is the idea that people can be algorithmically segmented and profiled as influential, not influential, or somewhere in between. It’s like saying that the smartest people are those who score highest on the SAT. A high SAT score, in my book, demonstrates someone’s ability to score well on the SAT first, and demonstrates true intelligence a distant second.

Image credit

It’s not a new term you need to look up on Urban Dictionary, but is actually what it sounds like it is.  Videos, info graphics, pictures where you’ve swapped the faces of your friends from their Facebook images (it appears this was also quite amusing even before the internet–Rene Magritte’s Spirit of Geometry), Fenton throwing caution to the wind to run with the deer, and many other ridiculous possibilities…well maybe it’s not entirely what it sounds like it is.  But, what’s important about it is that it’s something new and never before seen or possibly is second-hand but with a fresh spin (Kaboom!).  The content is witty, interesting, funky, makes you say wtf, maybe even makes you a bit queasy at times, whatever it is it shares this one strange characteristic, you want to show it to your friends or family.

That’s one of the phenomena’s about the Internet, it’s a source for learning about nearly anything and everything, and for those things you wish you could “unsee” (oh how your pictures haunt me WebMD).  You could easily fall into the perception that it’s all been done and seen before thanks to Al Gore and his Internet.  However, there are those moments when you stumble across something you’ve never seen and you are compelled to share it (of course our thought process is if I haven’t seen it then surely no one else has!).  That’s the phenomena though, wanting to share something you believe is new and never before seen by your friends, and is the key reason you and your business should care about original content.

Now that we’ve talked about what it is and why it is important, let’s discuss creating that content.  First, let’s be honest and agree that you don’t need help from me to create a commercial for your product or any other marketing scheme you’ve dreamed up.  New content is added to the Internet at an absurd rate and some of it has truly never been seen, but that does not mean it is the original content as defined and discussed here.  I have never felt the inclination to share a Geico commercial with friends or post Modern Warfare posters to my Facebook wall, although I know people do this. These pieces of content never become “viral” because they lack the unique characteristics of original content; instead, they resemble common marketing schemes and feel like a reincarnation of something we’ve seen before. That’s not to say that those pieces of content aren’t good and don’t work as intended, they just never enter the realm of original content, where on occasion videos and images are passed around like the Corrupted Blood plague of 2005.

Second, there is no readily defined formula for creating the type of original content that soon becomes a wild fire.  It’s not an exact science; instead, it’s a bit more like alchemy and you may find yourself imbibing some unusual concoctions.  But, we can examine past successes, especially those that are more recent, and narrow down where that damn unicorn lives and how you might take it for a ride—btw it’s not a robot unicorn. I’m tempted to make the claim that all the great original content had its genesis with the internet, but that’s not true in every case. Recall the Apple commercial with the Big Brother motif, or the more recent Old Spice commercials. Even if the internet isn’t the starting point, it has proven that large scale advertising campaigns that include multi-million dollar commercials aren’t necessary to become popular. However, I will confidently say that the internet is your best source for helping you to create original content, a perfect example being the Tiger Woods 09 video response from EA (which we will examine below).

You can breakdown original content into 3 categories, shocking and humorous content, inspiring and impressive content, and troll content.  There may be instances of overlap where the original content falls mainly in the impressive category but also is funny or shocking, this is especially true with troll content and we will discuss that in detail later, but these categories will help in our comparisons. Also, these are by no means the definitive pieces of original content for each category. These are meant as examples and aids in helping us learn from past fads and successes. Where I was able I used more recent content and therefore may have left out more popular videos or images.

Shocking and Humorous Content

Original content that’s focused on being funny is the most prevalent due to the fact that comedy is arguably the easiest route to popularity. You might be tempted to say sexual content provides an easier path to internet fame and question why I left it out of my categories. There’s no doubt you can get people to click ads or watch videos on Youtube by having provocative pictures or text. And if you look at some of the most watched videos on Youtube you will see examples of this, but sexual content is a different beast altogether. Users share this type of content less because it is perceived as inappropriate, especially in a public setting. Generally, you’re less likely to share that video of girls jumping on a trampoline on your Facebook wall than the video of Hasan Baba’s Apache Dance. The sharing phenomena discussed above doesn’t pertain to sexual content, and is the reason for being left off this list.

Humor is an incredible motivator for sharing because of the desire many people have to make others laugh, and can be used to make some possibly questionable content more acceptable (girl’s workout example). Most of the instances where I come across something I feel compelled to share is because I thought the content was hilarious and believe my friends would enjoy it too. With regards to creating a comical campaign for a product or company, you will rarely see popular content that is solely focused on being funny. What I mean is, you can’t draw too much attention to the fact that you’re trying to be funny. We’ve all been in the company of a friend or acquaintance that is just trying too hard to make others laugh and everything they say or do ends up feeling forced more than anything else. So, how do you avoid that unnatural feeling? The answer to that question at least partially falls under the “alchemy” of original content. But to be sure, you can’t expect your body wash video to become wildly popular just by having funny things to say or counting on visual jokes. Instead, the combination of a beautifully seamless shot with silly imagery, witty dialogue and an actor that has an aura of confidence is what was required to propel Old Spice to the apex of advertising (here is a reminder if you forgot). Although, Hercules has another approach to letting the audience know he’s disappointed.

Shocking your audience is a bit more difficult, but can yield similar results to humor. It’s not all about car wrecks, fails and broken bones even though these are popular. You want your audience to ask themselves, “how did they do that” or “I can’t believe they did that,” rather than showing gore and other visually disturbing images. There are a few pertinent questions you need to ask yourself before you begin creating this type of content. Who is your audience and what might be perceived as shocking? What norms can I and should I attempt to break? Where is the line between offensive and shocking with regards to your material? The greatest sin of this type of content is to go too far.

What to take note of: How to Piss in Public is a wonderful example of using silly humor and a common dilemma. Here, the success can be attributed not just to the farcical circumstances, but to the seemingly well thought out and legitimate tactics that feel like serious advice. I ended up watching this several times as I showed it to a few different groups of friends, and needless to say, “a pisser doesn’t pontificate” was repeated for quite some time afterwards. Witty, absurd and sometimes honest advice made this a hit for Vans and the OfftheWall.tv crew.

What to take note of: Hastily Made Cleveland Cleveland Tourism Video pokes fun at tourism marketing and the typical poorly made video. The description talks about the creator receiving $14 million about 8 months ago to create a video, but having procrastinated ended up making this video in an hour the day before. Again, this is a jab at how state government appears to have come up with many of their videos and content. Just plain ridiculous satire that’s been effectively used to promote Mike Polk, comedic provocateur.

What to take note of: I was reluctant to use Ultimate Dog Tease as an example because I think it’s ridiculous and the comedy is lost on me, but you can’t ignore 74 million views in such a short period of time. And the fact that I didn’t like this video enough to share it, but that millions of others did (including my dad who I know emailed it to several of his friends) is an important lesson to remember when creating original content. What you, or I, think is mediocre may be the doggy-dub crack to 74 million other people. Alternately, what you think will be the new Rebecca Black video could be a flop and waste away unseen and unknown. Include others in the creative process and don’t just assume your cup of tea is everyone’s favorite as well. The group at Talking Animals took a common question from the hundreds of millions of pet owners, “what is my pet thinking” and applied a bit of comedy and anthropomorphism with masterful dubbing.

What to take note of: The images (as seen below) that accompany the Unhate Film may be a bit more shocking than the film itself, but there is no better example in recent years for shocking content. This campaign seems to force viewers to need to find out more, the best case scenario. When I first saw the image of Obama kissing president Hu Jintao I was surprised and immediately wanted to know the motive behind the picture. The information was easy to find and I was effectively driven to a website and compelled to watch a video. Certainly, the prominence and fame of both presidents lends to the effectiveness, but the kiss does more-so. This is also a good example of the questions you must ask yourself before creating shocking content, you want to push the limits but not break them.

What to take note of: By all accounts, Team Coco rallied a force behind Conan O’Brien that helped to transform the embarrassing dismissal of Conan to a triumphant coup. Mike Mitchell, a devoted fan, started out with a poster that he hoped would start a movement, and it did. This combination of a clever statement and nickname, “I’m with Coco” and embattled community created a highly recognizable image and popular monicker. Mike leveraged his creative abilities by striking while the iron was hot, tagging himself into the ring when Conan seemed all but defeated by the controversial cancellation.

Inspiring and Impressive Content

Inspiring and impressive content play on similar emotions that we all share, a love for the human creature and its capabilities. Although, I’m sure we often forget this love after being flamed by random lurkers on the internet, it’s still there. We love to see the underdog triumph, genuine actions of love or incredible physical feats. They instill in us this idea that maybe deep down I could achieve these accomplishments, that with enough practice I could also free climb half dome (not a chance). Obviously, the key here is to create original content that is truly impressive. Second rate just will not do.

What to take note of: Incredible Speed Boat Catch really is incredible. Even though I would never spend a minute of my life learning to throw a frisbee with accuracy, I respect the difficulty and dedication it must have taken to achieve this. In essence, that’s what we see when we watch these types of videos. We relate the video to ourselves and realize how ridiculous that throw and catch is. It is important to mention that this video received a boost in popularity because of Tosh.0, but that’s proof of the phenomena of wanting to share original content.

What to take note of: If you don’t already know by now (you really should), the Best Air Race Pilot Ever video is a fake. But the ensuing controversy regarding its authenticity caused the video to be shared among friends and become somewhat popular. I’ll be honest, if it had been real I would have shared it too; the idea of a plane losing a wing and the pilot performing a perfect landing is just too impressive and inspiring to ignore. I would caution readers who would attempt to trick viewers, like in this example. Making your audience feel duped and used can taint your company or product. But, what we can learn from this video is that original content with some controversy surrounding it can be fuel to a fire.

What to take note of: Signs does a lovely job of hitting an emotional and inspiring nerve.  The idea of being forever alone is a fear that many people will suffer from during one period or another of their lives. So these stories of success, even as idealized as this one, are inspiring and popular. We like to be reminded that good things happen and maybe even watch in hopes of picking up tips for ourselves. Besides the creative cinematography and witty story, this video is a success because it depicts issues that most people can relate to and offers an ending that everyone wants, happiness.

What to take note of: The creativity of this Mitsubishi ad is what’s impressive and why it was popular. What can we learn from it? Creativity is king. This is a prime example of the type of original content we’ve been discussing in this article. Instead of a commercial of the Montero Sport driving down a treacherous road and telling us what to think, our imagination is allowed to fill in the blanks and create a definition that inevitably has more meaning.

Troll Content

You may not be familiar with the term troll as it refers to the internet, but you’ve most likely experienced a troll in your time. Trolling is an age old pass time where users deliberately post content or make statements that ruffle your feathers. The sole purpose of a troll is to elicit a reaction from you, if for nothing else than a couple of laughs. Comedy at your expense. The internet is riddled with trolls who use the anonymity to trick you and boil your bottom with an absurd comment.

You may be asking yourself, “Why does this matter? I dont want to aggravate and annoy potential costumers.” This type of content is interesting and has potential for popularity, but requires a keen eye to be used effectively so as not to anger your audience (unless this is your goal as seen in one of the examples below). People love to be in on the joke, a sort of feeling that resembles being part of the in crowd, and troll content can play on that. It can be used to make fun of yourself, allowing your audience to be in on the joke at your expense. Whoever the target, your strategy must be well planned. This is no doubt the most difficult type of original content to successfully produce, and can contain elements of both the above categories but the effect is unique. The content is shared because of both the controversy and inside joke it creates.

What to take note of: Don’t be fooled by Chuck Testa, this is a deliberate joke designed by Rhett and Link. This is a fantastic use of trolling, meant not to rile the audience but to cause us to laugh at the expense of Chuck. We’re lead to think this commercial represents some backwoodsy taxidermist’s attempt at marketing. It’s certainly believable, and we’ve seen other similar serious attempts in the past. But that is why this troll is effective and funny. For a brief period, many internet sites were alight with memes that posed a particular question followed by, “NOPE!” This video was successful because Chuck played a good old fashioned joke on himself, and us.

What to take note of: This is one of my favorites even though I don’t like EA (ironically because they have such poor customer service and will sacrifice customers for money without blinking). After the launch of the game Tiger Woods 09, a user posted a satirical video highlighting a bug in the game where Tiger takes a shot while standing on water, nicknamed the Jesus Shot. That original video was somewhat popular amongst that particular gaming community, but caught the attention of EA and prompted the above video. This is the perfect troll scenario; obviously, it is a glitch in the game and wasn’t intended. EA could have patched the bug or even just ignored it entirely. But to call attention to the glitch with an almost arrogant confidence and create a commercial that essentially says, “gotcha bitch” was genius. Despite the bug, the community was ecstatic with having influenced the content of a commercial with Tiger and from being acknowledged by EA. And the story drew enough attention that it was shared with users outside of the golfing and gaming industry, a true success. What can you learn? User feedback can be an invaluable tool, especially with some creativity.

What to take note of: I was hesitant to share Men are Better than Women because it is the type of troll content that can alienate your audience, but this is the quintessential troll. You’re never entirely certain if Dick Masterson believes in what he’s saying or if it’s a joke, and you never will. The truth behind the troll doesn’t matter as much as the controversy that it causes, and to keep the ruckus going you should never know the truth. Unlike shocking content, the only question you want to ask yourself is what social norm can I break that will cause the greatest disturbance? I want to be clear about this type of troll content, you don’t want to use it. I can’t recommend it in good faith; I know how to piss people off and make a scene, but turning that into a positive business building campaign is beyond me. What can you learn from this video? Trolling is a powerful technique and deserves a fair bit of caution.

What to take note of: The pure genius of Trolling Sauruman. Honestly, there’s not much I can say about this video. PistolShrimps made a brilliant discovery, that the Trololo guy’s song matched up with this scene from LOTR. A match made in heaven that was profited from. This could have fit under Humorous content, but I couldn’t disrespect Peter Jackson like that. This scene was obviously meant to be this way, Saruman has been trolololl’n us the whole time and we didn’t know it. BTW, the below video was just too good to pass up posting. This is a near-present-day video of the original trololo guy. What I want to know is if someone ran into him on the streets, recognized him, and harnessed the clear thinking during this chance meeting to ask him to sing for them. Or maybe he recognized his own troll popularity and blessed us with this gem…who knows.

What to take note of: This didn’t become popular outside of Reddit, but is trolling at its finest. The story is, a user took the first image, in the upper left hand corner, of the Vancouver olympics and photoshopped the pedo bear into the image. Next, they uploaded the image with the appropriate tags so that it would readily show up on Google Images. The doctored image was then supposedly used in magazines and newspapers, as seen in the images in the right column. Because the sources are foreign and would be too much trouble for me to physically track down, I’m going to assume the story is true and bestow the appropriate praises on the author of this troll. Although, if it wasn’t true then I’ve been trolled myself and it’s still a good example since it served its purpose. Either way, clever troll is clever.

Conclusion

In every instance of original content there is no substitution for creativity. That’s what makes it original and endows it with the possibility to become a hit. If you’re looking to create your own content or want a firm, like Bright Oak (wink), to create it, you need to know what you want first. Set some parameters for the content, decide if you want it to be funny or inspiring, and set some realistic goals. Like mining for gold, you may not strike it rich on your first attempt so don’t be disappointed if you don’t get millions of views. Likewise, if a design firm promises a campaign with content that sounds too good to be true, they probably can’t deliver (at least not without spending a hefty sum to purchase views). Having realistic expectations and goals will help to prevent you from being hoodwinked. A small campaign based on quality content should be able to garner several hundred thousand views over the first year. No one can tame the unicorn or even ride it for long, all we can do is hope for the best and never be disappointed with Shadowmere instead.

If you’ve read this far you must be avoiding work or something else awful, so here are a handful of silly videos to help pass more time.

Videos for fun:

GI Joe PSA
I like turtles
Wives making terrible coffee
Absence of towels
Rejected Cartoon
Old Gregg!
Crack Fox
Filling in due to murder
Pretty much everywhere it’s gonna be hot
Fishing show bloopers
Step’n on the beach
Incredible salesman
Streaking the quad

We can all clearly see the sleeker notifications, the wireless syncing, and the improved maps that allows us to choose which route we take to sit in traffic for hours (writing from L.A. here), but who really read those 200 new features that flashed in front of the screen before anxiously hitting install?

If you did read and have in fact explored all 200 of the new features, then no need to continue reading. But I’m going to assume most of us haven’t uncovered and experienced them all, so here is my list of five cool (and a few creepy) iOS 5 features you might have overlooked.

1. Geo-fencing

The tech savvy already know about geo-fencing as it has been around for over a year now. It has been a feature primarily seen in Androids and a few other lesser smart phones as well as a few apps available for iPhone. However, its integration into the new Reminders app is cause for absent-minders everywhere to celebrate. It allows users to set up reminders based on location, and while it can be used through 3G connections it is much more effective while connected to a wifi network. It’s as simple to use as adding a reminder and setting it to remind you “at a location.”

Although the application isn’t precise enough to remind you when going from one room to the next, it can remind you when you leave your house, work, or any other physical address. It can be extremely effective, and users have been remembering to make calls when they leave, run errands on their way out, and more.  Keep a close eye on this feature as I foresee Apple continually making this better.

2. Find My Friends

This is a downloadable app that doesn’t come automatically when you update your phone, which is why I feel people might be missing out on all the creepy goodness it has to offer. Find My Friends is an application that allows you to (with their approval of course) see where your friends are, down to the corner of the office building they’re working in. Pretty creepy, right?

Of course, Apple covered their butts with the ability to turn off location sharing for this program at any time, or to delete users from your friends list to keep them from seeing where you are. This app is especially conducive to creeping on your friends randomly throughout the day and sending them inspiring messages like, “Get out of your house and go do something!” However hard to believe, there are other even more useful features. The event feature is by far the most useful tool within the app; allowing users to set up and send invitations to an event with a specific date, start time, and end time where your friends can see your location during only the hours of the event.

Again, the app isn’t always perfect in regards to accuracy but can be extremely useful for, say, keeping the group together on the occasional pub crawl.

3. Direct Access to Camera From Lock Screen

While this is probably the simplest feature of the update, it belongs on this list.  Now instead of fumbling around with the phone (cue black and white extremely exaggerated infomercial clip), unlocking it and seeking out the camera app, it’s as easy as a quick double click of the home button and—POW!—direct access to the camera! This combined with the new ability to use the volume up button on the side of the phone to snap the picture, thus behaving tactically more like the shoot button on a camera, makes using the phone as an every day, rapid-fire camera much easier.

Just as a note, to pull up the camera button from the lock screen you need to press your home button twice while your phone is locked.

4. Messages/iMessages

Using iMessage allows for a few added features when sending messages to other iOS 5 users. The main one you might have noticed already is this change in color from green (when texting non-iOS 5 users) to blue (texting other iOS 5 users), as well as, the little message that pops up underneath your texts showing that the message was delivered. The new message app also allows you to see when other iOS5 users are in the process of texting—so don’t pretend you aren’t. Another (possibly creepier) feature of the new messaging center is that it allows users to enable a “read” notification that replaces the word delivered underneath texts you send out. If you are rushing to your phone to disable this feature, there’s no need; it isn’t enabled from the get go but is simply an option in the settings menu for the messages app. Lastly, the new iMessage allows users to press and hold down on blocks of texts and have the phone read the texts aloud. For those of us without the iPhone 4S, it’s a little bit closer to knowing what it’s like to have Siri.

GigaOm has a great post on enabling and working with iMessaging.

5. Miscellaneous

These little features aren’t quite exciting enough to have their own section, but they’re worth noting. First off is a life-saver for serial app downloaders. You can now change how often the app store asks you to type in your password before downloading. Next, the iCloud enables you to download anything you have ever purchased in iTunes anywhere they have Internet, saving you from losing deleted songs. Lastly, is a simple but pretty awesome feature allowing users to create custom vibrations for each individual contact. It’d be a little insane to do for EACH of your contacts, but for those of us who keep their phones perpetually on vibrate, it’s nice to have a custom “ringtone” of sorts for those special few. In order to enable this feature go to settings, then accessibility, and under “hearing” turn on “Custom Vibrations.”

  

Hopefully, you’ve discovered a little something new to play with, with the new iOS5.

At Bright Oak, we’re vehemently against cookie-cutter social media plans; just as every business has a different model, goals, and operations, so should their social media strategy. However, there are lessons to be learned from a few key industries, who have figured, as a whole, how to do social media right.

1. Tech and Web Startups: Instant Customer Service

It makes sense that Web 2.0 companies, especially those built around social media itself, would be the most agile in using social media to their business needs. This is an industry that takes the cake for instantaneous customer service.

Take Hootsuite for example. Naturally, a company that offers a social media tool should be responsive on those networks, but Hootsuite does a particularly good job being there for it’s customers. In fact, Hootsuite, like many other companies in the same league, encourages users to reach them on Twitter for help first.

Another great example is our server provider, Media Temple. In addition to having a 24/7 support number, they have 19 employees that take shifts throughout the day responding to their customers questions. Other companies outside of this industry can still take advantage of the customer service functions of social media, if not to the same extreme (we mentioned this back in our post last week). Instead of making Twitter the primary location for customer service, understand its value as such, and have a clear plan for directing help and customer service queries made on social media to the right departments.

2. Food Trucks: Build a Loyal Following by Providing What Consumers Need

Unless you live under a rock or in the middle of nowhere, you’ve at least heard of the food truck phenomena. In cities like LA, where the trend was born out of tradition lonchero lunch trucks, mobile eateries are hitting the streets, picking new locations to park and serve their customers great food from the window of a truck.

The food truck phenomena wouldn’t have been possible without social media, because it was the only way for the often spontaneous food trucks to get the word out about their location, which often varies every few hours. And people listened: they understood the only way to find these tasty trucks was to follow them on social media and hunt them down.

Now, tweeting the location of your sports equipmint stores every five minutes is far, far, FAR from a good idea. But food trucks succeeded because whether, consciously or subconsciously, the information they were tweeting filled a very tangible and valuable need for their customers.

It’s a little more challenging for other businesses, but that’s the key to any successful business, and the same to any successful social media campaign: identifying what your consumer actually want and need, not what you want to promote, and providing that.

3. Fashion: Covetable Content

It’s a no-brainer: the fashion industry is all about looks. Take five minutes to browse the crop of visual blogs, photo-sharing communities like LookBook.nu, and the sharing of fashion on Tumblr, and that’s all it takes to realize it’s a visual world out there, built around collecting and sharing.

It’s the fashion designers themselves that started this scrapbooking and sketching, and now their social media pages reflect that. Burberry, for example, is constantly sharing new looks from their catalogs, media from their fashion shows, and more.  And because it’s Burberry, and because it’s pretty, it gets picked up, liked, and shared all over.

Posting photos of your lawncare products isn’t going to inspire the same enthusiasm, but posting content that’s relevantly sharable for your company will. Sharing means exponentially more people see your brand name, which is ultimately more important than just your fans seeing what you post.

Today we lost a creative genius and one of my personal icons. I will be forever grateful for his innovation and leadership that oversaw the product development of the many toys and tools that I use to provide a living for myself and family. Below are a few of my favorite Steve Jobs quotes that I designed into free wallpapers. I will continue to add more to the collection overtime.

Here is a beautiful tribute by one of Steve’s neighbors.

While Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal and CNET continue to drone on about the impact of the Steve Jobs era, I won’t be pondering the MacBook Air I write on or the iPhone I talk on. I will think of the day I saw him at his son’s high school graduation. There Steve stood, tears streaming down his cheeks, his smile wide and proud, as his son received his diploma and walked on into his own bright future, leaving behind a good man and a good father who can be sure of the rightness of this, perhaps his most important legacy of all. Read Full Article.

Free 1680×1050 Wallpapers

RIP Steve Jobs. You left your mark on our desks, on our ears and in our hands. Thank you.