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Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Can Quora drive traffic?


I'm addicted to Quora. There, I've said it.


I know some folks have doubts. I love StackOverflow too. But something about Quora has me on there, all the time, answering questions.


I do have an ulterior motive: If I can get on there and help lots of people out, I can build an audience. If I build an audience, that's one more pool of interested people who might someday hire my company, buy a book, etc..


See, I'm not actually addicted. I have business motives! I can quit any time I want.


But that business motive means I gotta see Quora actually do something as a traffic or lead generator. So I've started keeping score.


Traffic is a dead loser. After 4 weeks of posting 3-4 answers a day, and accumulating just over 400 followers, I've had a total of 42 visitors. Wooooo.


Quora referrals


But it pays to look a little deeper. On a site like Quora, I'm not necessarily looking for volume. I'm looking for quality. I want really, truly interested people to get in touch with me, follow me on Twitter, etc..


So, take another look at the numbers:


quora-tos.png


Of the top 50 referring sites for Conversation Marketing, Quora generates the third highest time-on-site. If folks are spending that much time on my site after coming from Quora, then this might just be worth it. In my own, weird scoring system, these are high quality visitors.


On the other hand, goal conversion from Quora is zero. Zilch. Nada. But it's not much of a sample size.


We'll see how Quora does. My 30-minute-per-day investment really only requires one new client per quarter to pay off.


I'll keep you posted.



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8 copywriting catastrophes and how to avoid them


I'm a creature of habit. And there are 8 stupid copywriting mistakes I make with amazing consistency. Here's how I try to deal with them:


Ever use 'form' when you meant 'from'? When you do, your computer snickers to itself and mutters something like Remember that time you cursed at me because you forgot your password? Well it's payback time, sucka! Spell check THAT!


Your spell checker won't save you. Certainly not from embarrassing stuff like this:


lick here - not exactly what they intended, I think


And, of course, truly horrendous mistakes that make a 'lick here' style typo seem like nothing.


The fix. I read most of my rough drafts backwards. Yes, you heard that right. Backwards. That makes correctly-spelled typos jump out at me. It's a trick one of my best writing mentors taught me, and it works beautifully.


Just because I know the word 'pusillanimous' doesn't mean I should use it. But I admit, I still get a little thrill out of using ten syllable word. Why use 'fix' when I can use 'ameliorate'?


Here's the thing: If I'm trying to learn about, I dunno, internet marketing, then I have enough on my mind. Keep the writing simple.


The fix. I actually use a few tools to check grade level, like this text-statistics gadget. And I keep a rubber band on my wrist. Every time I use a word with more than 4 syllables, I snap the rubber band. Ouch.


Ever read something like this?


"Dramatic Technology helps clients build value by leveraging digital assets. We use our unique skill set to integrate technology and human processes for great results."


Uh, what?


I'm terrible about this. I've written entire pages of text that could apply equally well (or poorly) to fresh fruit or bicycle frames.


The fix. Write the paragraph. Show it to someone else. Ask them what you're writing about. If you're describing a car and they say "Um, a peanut farm?" you need to rethink.


I talk a lot about the blank sheet of paper test: If you write a title tag, or a paragraph, or link text, on a blank sheet of paper, the reader needs to know what it's about.


Online, your writing gets pulled apart and re-used in search results, feed readers, etc.. So you can't rely on the fact that your headline will always be right by the photo that clarifies your meaning.


Some truly dramatic fails I've seen:


"Royals to get a taste of Angels Colon"
"Supreme Court tries sodomy"
"UN to grant Taliban amnesty"


Yikes.


The fix. Use the blank sheet of paper test. That's it.


I work for hours on a piece of marketing copy. When it's done, there's no call to action. At all. It describes a company's new service in prose that would make David Ogilvy weep from on high. Everyone reads it and swoons. But no one actually does anything.


Because I didn't ask.


The fix. I wish I knew. Right now I have a sticky note on my desktop that reads "Call to action?!!!". That takes care of it. Usually.


my sticky note


Choke. Passive voice. I could write "We build web sites". But it's so much more fun to write "Web sites are built by us".


I had a Humanities professor in college who looked at me one day and said "Lurie, if you could write in active voice, you'd save 100 trees a year."


I'm paraphrasing.


For some reason, though, I can't seem to just say [SUBJECT] [VERB] [OBJECT]. I have to say [OBJECT] [PASSIVE VERB] [VERB] [SUBJECT]. If could add in more stuff, I probably would.


The fix. Back to the rubber band thing. SNAP.


I know, you're all snickering.


I once wrote a letter to an auto mechanic that started with "Dear Criminal". For some reason, he never called me back...


dear-dumbass.gif


The fix. I'm better now. I don't write truly angry. I wait a bit, simmer down, then write. Or I write, walk away, come back, revise, and then publish.


It's really, really hard for me to write something and not immediately publish it. The pressure to generate lots of useful, interesting stuff and get it out there is overwhelming.


But I know that, if I put in just 10 minutes of editing, I could turn a so-so article or report into a good one.


The fix. Stop using the internet. Seriously, I have no idea. I try to slow down now and then, but it feels like diminishing returns. Not smart, I know. Maybe you all can humiliate me if I do a lousy editing job on something?


The best way to avoid all of these copywriting disasters, of course, is practice.


If you write a lot, the chance that you'll leave in a horrific typo goes down.


Every time you remember to add the call to action, you improve the hardwired instinct to always include it.


And, the more you edit your own work, the better you get at it.


Any writing issues you have that I haven't listed? Bare your soul in the comments - it's good for you.



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How crawl budget works - my latest SEL column


My latest Search Engine Land column just went live. It's about Crawl Budget and how it may work. Having re-read it, though, I want to make sure I add even more qualification to what I wrote:

I talk about crawl budget a lot, but the most important part of this article, really, is 'making the most of your crawl budget'. That's what Vanessa Fox refers to as 'crawl efficiency'. If you have a huge crawl budget but 90% of it is sucked up by duplicate content and such, then you won't see much benefit.Search engines apply PageRank to individual pages, not to entire sites. However, I definitely see evidence that they look at some version of average PageRank, or domain authority, or whatever you want to call it, site-wide. That appears to impact crawl budget. There may not be a causal link - it may simply be that sites with lots of pages that all have higher PageRank get higher crawl budgets as a side effect of deep links to individual site pages.This is a very deep, geeky topic - I hope I don't ruffle any feathers too badly, but I also hope that a lot of people smarter than I will pick up the discussion, so we can all learn something.


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11 internet marketing skills you must always be learning


In spite of reading my blog, you want to go into internet marketing. Welcome to the asylum, my friend.


Time to start learning. This is a list necessary skills for an internet marketer. Warning: I do not necessarily know all these as well as I want to. I'm still learning:

Writing. I've beaten this one to death. If you can't write, don't even put the word 'marketer' in your title. DON'T. I hear you starting - "mar..." BZZZZT. Stop right there.Statistics. You don't need to be an expert statistician. But understanding a rolling average, statistical significance and confidence interval is required.SEO. Yep. Search engine optimization. This of course leads to a whole new list of stuff. That's for another blog post.PPC. Pay per click marketing. See SEO, above. Information Retrieval. I separate this from SEO and PPC because it's central to a lot of stuff you may end up doing to dig through/mine/organize data when you do everything from social media monitoring to reading your client's last 3 years of sales brochures.HTML and CSS. Please. For the love of all that's good in the universe. You can't help people market on the internet if you can't even fathom how it's all built.Design. You don't have to be a professional designer. At least I hope not - I can't design to save my life. But you should understand some basic principles: The Golden Ratio, typography, use of color, how to do a layout using a grid. Don't be a native, but at least speak the language.Social media. Shudder. It pains me to use this stupid phrase. Still, you need to understand how people connect online. It's a (sarcasm here) teeny little aspect of online marketing (end sarcasm). Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and a bunch of others.Math. Quick: What's .1 X $10,000? If you answered $100, then I've interviewed you before. Fail.Business sense. I can't easily categorize this. But you need to understand what makes a business 'tick'. Little stuff, like earning more money than you spend, can really make a difference.Diplomacy. Yeaaahhhhhhhhh I'm still working on this one. Learn to advocate, strongly, for controversial points that you know for certain are critical to your client. Without alienating every single person in the room. 'Diplomacy' is the ability to tell people they're totally wrong, and make them smile at the same time.comments (10) | trackbacks (0) | permalink


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Internet marketing in under 300 words


Today, you get to see the ugly, stench-ridden underbelly of my writing process. I actually recorded myself typing this blog post. While I removed a few typos that would've gotten me rated NSFW, the rest is pretty much straight-up:


And, in plain old text, in case you don't want the video version:


There are no tricks to internet marketing.


No secret methods.


It's about connecting with an audience.


It's about building a relationship that lasts.


Just for a second:
Forget "Social Media"
Forget search engines
Forget the internet


Focus on marketing.
Focus. On. Marketing.


...


Great marketing requires that you


1. SHOW UP:
Speak where you'll be heard
= Be found.


2. COMMUNICATE:
Favor 'clear'
Favor 'simple'
= Be understood.


3. CONNECT:
Respond to questions
Help people out
= Please them.


Every person who finds you is a potential customer.
Every person who understands you is a potential salesperson.
Every person you please joins your marketing team.


...


K, you can think about the internet again.


The internet makes marketing easier:


Search engines and social networks help you show up.
The whole web gives you a chance to communicate clearly.
Social media helps you connect with customers.


But it's still marketing:


Show up.
Communicate.
Connect.


I know what you're saying.


There's no trick.


There's no 'method'.


Does this really work?


You tell me:


You've now spent 30 seconds reading plain text.


On a screen.


There's no music.


There's no dancing raisins or speeding cars.


No tricks.


It's just marketing.
Delivered using the internet.


Tricky, huh?


You should try it.



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6 steps to make genius happen


This post is written by Todd Clarke. Todd's... it's hard to explain, but he believes IT departments can add tons of value and do brilliant stuff. And he helps them do just that. He writes the blog Fire Under Every Butt and generally dispenses great wisdom to anyone in a company that relies on technology.

What if you were doing just the activities that energized you?


Imagine operating as the Energizer Bunny, performing only the tasks that increase your energy, and thus, delivering remarkable results for your business or organization. You would excitingly read the books, register for the classes, do the research, spend the hours, solve the problems, and commit to results by accomplishing your most rad, butt-burning aspirations, without having to be reminded, prodded, pushed and poked to get stuff done. Wow.


Now, imagine the possibilities of your whole team working according to just their genius skills- operating with heightened clarity, conviction and commitment.


Double, triple, quadruple wow!


Here’s how.


Say you bought into the idea of creating the Genius Sub-Culture (one of many sub-cultures making up the Well LIT culture) because it’s easy to picture the possibilities. What next?


1. Generate your skills inventory. For a week, on a sheet of paper, keep an inventory of all the activities you perform. Several times a day, jot down bullets of what you are doing. Examples include: attend meetings, perform performance review for direct report, mentor a developer, setup automated build system, pitch new sales idea to boss, interview candidates. You get the idea. Do the same for at home, ’cause it’s all your life.


You can also get assistance by asking a friend or co-worker:  “what do you see as my ‘Unique Ability?’, this includes my talents and abilities, characteristics that describe me, what I’m good at, how I do things, what you can count on me for, and any other distinguishing features you see about who I am.


2. Categorize your skills. After a week, rate each of the items on your list via the following:

U for unique. Activities that increase your energy. Things you love to do, even if you had all the money in the world.E for excellent. Skills you are excellent at though not something you totally love to do.C for competent. Others can rely on you for these but you feel ‘eh’ when you do ‘em.I for incompetent. Straight-up. You suck at and/or really hate doing these activities.

The idea is to stop doing and/or delegate everything except your Unique abilities to deliver remarkable results by operating within your Faith, Fire and Focus. They are Unique because you are unique and when doing something when you are so LIT makes this a unique skill.


3. View your skills by category. Next, on another sheet of paper, make a quadrant of your skills by isolating your Unique, Excellent, Competent and Incompetent skills.


4. Snapshot your Unique Ability. Finally, on another sheet of paper abstract your Unique Ability skills to create your Unique Ability snapshot. For instance, based on my Unique skills, I derived my Unique Ability snapshot:

Mentor, coach, teach, encourage & inspireOrganize, model and present useful data and conceptsConnect immediately with new peopleEngage in meaningful and honest conversationsLearn and apply new ideasFacilitate and share ideas in group settingCreate clarity and order out of chaosApply technology in innovative ways to produce effective resultsMake things look pretty

5. Snapshot the team skills. Now that you have determined your genius, have the team do the same to generate a map of team skills.


6. Map it out. With these snapshots, you can use this new map of your team’s genius skills in a number of ways:

Trade activities for a better skills fit among team membersModify performance reviews by changing ‘areas for improvement’ to ‘areas of genius’Give team members their own focus time, and have them present their findings to the teamReward special solutions with training, free-time, or other bonusesUse your genius to derive more ways to develop the Genius Culture

Now…you might be thinking… ”Ok, ok. Simmer down little tech-LIT-genius-hood-day-dreamer. What about all of the stuff that needs to get done that won’t if we all just start operating in our genius zone? Well?”


I hear ya.


While I answer that please hold onto this thought…that of all the new and improved and only useful activities you and the whole cool-in-the-gang will perform by operating, collectively, at such a creative and effective strata.


Too often, folk are just doing as told or as instructed with no Faith, Fire or Focus behind their actions. As well, too often the ideas are being generated by the few… execs and managers. Well gosh-for darn-math-sakes, that is just plain lamo. A few higher-ups coming up with a few good ideas, maybe? How about multiplying the possibilities by having creativity abound in the workplace with everyone operating in ‘the zone’ with many of the great ideas coming from the trenches?


Your work world will look very different. Loads of higher-level activities will present themselves based on this heightened work-life-force. Much of what you thought had to be done won’t even matter anymore because new goals, new products, new services will develop with your ‘new workforce’.  Dan Sullivan, of the successful Strategic Coach program, refers to this as the Unique Ability team, linking peoples’ genius together to deliver higher value.


New relationships will be formed. New skills will be voluntarily developed. Clarity will increase as people operate with a new faith (the belief that you can), fire (operating with energy and passion), and focus (removing interference with the focus of operating better with your current knowledge and according to your faith and fire).


And for those (fewer) remaining activities that are deemed necessary, find and/or hire more geniuses. Most importantly, treat your team as investments versus costs to ensure the benefits of the Faith, Fire and Focus in all of us.


Imagine the possibilities. Even better, go make ‘genius’ happen in your company.



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