Are You Asking The Right Questions?

Are you creating a website for your business?  Is it time for an overhaul of your existing corporate web presence? 

If so, you'd be well served to jump over to Seth's Blog to check out Things to ask before you redo your website .   This is a great resource to help you establish your marketing objectives and priorities, and to ensure that you can launch your website project on a solid foundation - the first time.  With the answers to these questions, you, your agency or a consultant can develop an airtight marketing brief that will save you time and money, and go a long way in ensuring that you get the results that you are looking for.

Thanks, Seth.

Buy Six Pixels of Separation Today!

... not because I told you to.  Not because Mitch Joel told you to.  Not because Chris Anderson, Dan Ariely, Dan Pink, or Craigslist founder Craig Newmark told you to in their testimonials for Mitch's book.

Buy Six Pixels of Separation because Mitch is one of the preeminent thinkers in business today.  Having had the chance to work closely with Mitch for four years at Twist Image as his Vice President of Strategic Development, I can tell you that Mitch is the goods.  Not only is he a brilliant and incisive business leader, speaker and blogger, Mitch is a great guy who deserves your support today as the book officially launches.

If you work in business and depend on human beings for the success of that business, then you need to understand how we are all intrinsically connected through the digital channels, and through the simple concept of Six Pixels of Separation.

Here's a sample of one of Mitch's simple and powerful musings:

 Go on... buy the book.  You'll be glad you did.

Does Social Media Impede Sales?

Loved this funny from Scott Adams this morning.  Dilbert is always great for some business insight shrouded in dry sarcasm.

Is your brand's absence in social media conversation about your products or services costing you sales? This cartoon reminded me of a Cone study performed late last year that indicated that 93% of Americans that participate in social media expect companies to have a social media presence, and 85% believe companies should be engaging with customers via social media. If your brand isn't present and active in social media, can you justify that absence to your customers? Simply being afraid of opening an honest line of dialogue with your customers could be costing you...

How to Start a Dance Party

The "unstoppable" power of one to move many. Thanks Mario for the link.

SearchEngineWatch: Link Building Tactics 101

Ron Jones, of Symetri Internet Marketing, posted a great article on SearchEngineWatch.com outlining the fundamentals of an effective link building campaign for search engine optimization.

In the first of a two part series, Ron Jones outlines some core tenets of link building for SEO:

1. Focus on link quality, over quantity. The context and source of a link defines the value of its impact on your ranking.
2. PR and digital press releases are great vehicles for generating high-quality inbound links.
3. Provide value to humans first.

This last point is something I've focused on for years as the nucleus of any successful SEO campaign.   It is humans, not bots or spiders, that will propel your site to the top of search engine rankings for a given keyword - because they are linking to your content, sharing it within their networks, and ultimately, clicking on your link in the search engine result pages because of the inherent value it offers to them.

Check out Part 1 of Link Building Tactics 101 to read Ron's article at SearchEngineWatch.com.

TEDTalks - Gordon Brown: Wiring a web for global good

TED Global 2009 happened last week in Oxford, London and Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the UK, gave a pretty powerful keynote speech about the our responsibility in overcoming the challenges faced by a global society.

In one excerpt, he mentions the importance of the role that the web and emerging technologies will play in this:

"I believe there is a moral sense and a global ethic that commands attention from people of every religion and every faith, and people of no faith. But I think what's new is that we now have the capacity to communicate instantaneously across frontiers right across the world. We now have the capacity to find common ground with people we will never meet but who we will meet through the Internet and through all the modern means of communication, that we now have the capacity to organize and take collective action together to deal with the problem or an injustice that we want to deal with, and I believe that this makes this a unique age in human history, and it is the start of what I would call the creation of a truly global society. "

Powerful stuff.

It's OK to Cheat Sometimes

Mitch Joel over at Six Pixels of Separation posted a great reference today, pointing to a collection of cheat sheets and checklists for a myriad of different web marketing purposes, from design and coding references, to usability and SEO best practices: The Ultimate Digital Marketer's Reference.

Geeks everywhere should check out 30 Handy Cheat Sheets and Reference Guides for Web Professionals.

Thanks, Mitch.