SEOMatrix LLC Blog: Your Daily Ethical Search Engine Marketing Treats

Alex Gambini’s Review of Social Media Marketing (SMM) Part 2: LinkedIN

Alex — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:10:14 +0000

Back in March of 2008 I discovered LinkedIn and have been an avid user since. Apparently, I was a little late to the party – as this phenomenal social networking site’s inception dates back to May 2003. I use LinkedIn for an assortment of task that is unparalleled by any other social networking site. It’s an excellent medium for staying in touch with colleagues, business partners, and even family. However, LinkedIn’s best use is not merely for staying in touch – it is answers; via connections and groups. LinkedIn follows a similar trend that other social networking sites do. LinkedIn allows users to establish connections, which operate similar to friends on Facebook or Myspace.

On any social networking site it is always preferable to have a lot of “friends,” or connections. However, in LinkedIn’s case, the more connections you have, the more it benefits you in reality – not just online. It’s great to stay in touch with people you once knew, but LinkedIn is different – it is professionally based. It grants users the ability to stay connected with business partners, and establish new business partners in your field (or even other fields, depending on your needs). The site is incredibly flexible; it caters to professionals, meaning (in general) it isn’t filled with 10 year olds looking for free music, or spam. The population of LinkedIn (again, in general) is comprised of fairly intelligent and articulate individuals that are generally there to help and receive help.

LinkedIn’s “about us” page breaks its purpose down into three general purposes; “Re-connect, Power Your Career, and Get answers.” Staying in touch with anyone is simple – merely lookup the name, workplace, school, or residence of your friend, classmate, family member or business partner and LinkedIn provides you with a results page with accuracy reminiscent of the mighty Google. Powering Your Career is also fairly simple. This area of the site is where you need to be creative. By establishing good connections, joining good groups, and having a well setup profile anyone can boost their career to the next level. Getting answers is probably my personal favorite part of the site. When you join a group, or have a solid amount of connections, you can pose a question. LinkedIn allows you to post this question in a variety of methods – in group boards, or your “wall” (they don’t have an actual name, so I’m using Facebook’s example). Posing the question in a group is generally the most effective. Groups are filled with intelligent and articulate people; I nearly always get excellent answers, even to questions that are incredibly specific. When asking a general question, only people you are connected to can see the question (and answer it). So unless your connections are avid LinkedIn checkers, it’s generally best to pose a question in a specific board.

LinkedIn is not just a great social networking site. It is also incredibly useful for SEO purposes. You can create personal profiles, and corporate profiles. Corporate profiles are wonderful because they provide people with your company’s philosophy and synopsis of practices as well as contact information. Personal profiles (if done correctly) can majorly influence your online identity. When doing a Google search for your name (if you have a LinkedIn profile) it will nearly always come up on the first page, unless your name is exceedingly common – like Mike Smith for example. LinkedIn will also generate inbound links to your website and indirectly affect your overall web visibility.

Alex Gambini’s Review of SMM - Part 1: YouTube

Alex — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 01:42:47 +0000

Everyone loves YouTube. The website has literally revolutionized the internet. I remember way back in 2000 I was sifting through the barely categorized, non-descriptive and difficult to navigate Yahoo! videos - on a quest for music videos. I virtually never found what I was looking for, and when I did; I had to download some foreign application for the video to play. Then one day back in February 2005 I stumbled upon YouTube - the greatest thing to hit the internet since…well…it was just the greatest thing I ever saw online.

Think about, you can search literally tens of millions of videos that load instantaneously. You can upload your personal videos of any nature for free, any time. Everything is available on YouTube - from Sarah Palin’s wildly outrageous interview with Katie Couric to music videos. Better yet, YouTube maintained the tradition of the internet by shattering the barriers of entry for video. Everyday-people have become famous from their videos on YouTube. Ever hear of Chocolate Rain - thanks YouTube! How about the ever popular Kimbo Slice - the latest craze in the world of MMA - YouTube allowed him to get his name out there for beating people up in his backyard.

When I do a search for anything at all - chances are one of the first results is a video on YouTube. Whether it is some sort of educational/instructional video or a news clip from a political speech I missed - YouTube is always there for me, giving me exactly what I need all while proving highly relevant search results. This being said, YouTube is an excellent supplement for SEO. Social Media Marketing can be defined as “[online] activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio.” Personally, I believe SMM is only going to increase in popularity.

Regardless of your business, by putting valuable information onto YouTube you are guaranteed exposure of some caliber. People are always searching for new videos on YouTube - unless the quality of the video is so poor you can’t stand to watch it - people will without a doubt view your video for some reason.

Better yet, if your video does well and people find it informative - they can “embed” the video onto their website or blog. Embedding is a great feature of YouTube - it allows anyone to paste a piece of code on their website to display any video on YouTube (assuming the author of the video has enabled embedding).

In summation, YouTube is just one of the many mediums of SMM that you can utilize to promote your business online - for free.

Homo Habilis & Compete.com - Marketing’s Handy Man?

Brian — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:55:54 +0000

Online competitive intelligence services have absolutely ballooned in the last few months. Alexa.com is in danger of becoming 2009’s Jerry Yang because of a 800 pound gorilla called compete.com. I myself use compete.com periodically for one particular bit a data- their referral analytics service enables me to not only find out which sites are lending traffic to a client’s competitor, but it gives me a good sense of the APPROXIMATE PERCENTAGE OF TRAFFIC EACH REFERRER IS OFFERING UP to these competitors. Valuable stuff —

compete.com marketing's handy man

Connecticut Technology Council Tech Top 40: MDCADS, And Ticket Software LLC

Brian — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 04:00:18 +0000

I was invited to attend the Connecticut Technology Council Tech Top 40 Awards Program by McLaughlin Delvecchio and Casey marketing agency - the big winner of the night was Ticket Software and Donald Vaccaro whose company displayed a whopping average yearly revenue increase of over 4000% (yes, that’s no typo). In his stirring speech he recounted a significant event in his company’s success, to paraphrase Vaccaro (I heavily stress the word paraphrase):

An 18 year old GRADUATE of MIT walked into my office — I looked over his resume and found out that he had not done so well freshman year. When I prodded the young man he said that “I was only 14 when I started college, so of course there was some getting used to the environment.” Anyway, I hired the young man and many others (over 200 employees now) and the rest is history…I dedicate this award to my HR department who has consistently brought aboard the highest quality individuals to work along side me.

Some photos from the event:

Paige Rasid - CTC Marketing and Operations Manager

Open Solutions Inc. Booth

Pasquale DelVecchio

random event participant

Chevrolet Center In Wallingford, CT

Social Media Marketing Squared: Linkedin With Me

Brian — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:11:43 +0000

[http://www.linkedin.com/in/marketingbrianortiz]

I am posting responses to my linkedin question of the day:

What is the best way to judge prospective employee motivation during the interview process?

Kristi Neal

Staffing Specialist at Manpower

Schedule an interview at an awkard time like 7:00am the following day or at 6:00pm the following day or even early on a Saturday morning or you can involve existing employees in the interview process, but stay resilient.

Jaime Gracia, PMP

Federal Acquisition and Program Management Expert

My experience has been with both verbal and non-verbal cues. Their excitment about the opportunity and/or the company, body language, posture, smiling when they discuss their experience, etc. Do they ask questions about you and your experiences, do they seem interested? Those are the types of things to look for.

Patti (Wilson) Dragland

Strategic Sense Inc.

Ask them if they have been to your website. If the answer is no, not only are they likely not to be motivated toward your projects but they don’t even have the motivation to learn about the company at which they are being interviewed. If they really want a job with you, they will offer thoughts on findings at your website.

www.strategicsenseinc.com

Tommy Courtemanche

Lead Developer at WMG Inc.

I strongly disagree with Kristi’s advice. Scheduling interviews at awkward time slots only proves that the candidate is desperate. Doing so will also alienate many potential candidates. For instance, I wouldn’t do an in-person interview on a Saturday morning under any circumstance. It is a bully tactic designed to exert leverage when it is completely unnecessary. Experienced candidates wouldn’t entertain that kind of treatment.

Basically, the best way to assess prospective employee motivation is to determine the individuals value system. There are numerous ways to glean that information, but I always like to ask the following questions:

Why did you choose a Development/Sales/Marketing etc. career?
What do you enjoy the most/least about your field?
If you had to choose another career field what would it be and why?
What would you consider to be an ideal work environment?
Who had the greatest impact in your professional career and why?

Keep in mind that the response will be what the prospect believes to be “correct” answer. Your job is to identify the value system from the answers that you are given. Typically, it is not a good idea to lead with questions that have a yes/no answer. Get the candidate talking! The more they tell you, the greater to opportunity to parse out the motivation behind their responses.

If a prospect repeatedly mentions learning new things, improving skills and mentoring others in their responses, then Knowledge is a value. That type of employee can be motivated by the prospect of continuous training, working on larger, more difficult projects and the potential to lead a team.

Everyone is motivated by something. The challenge is to determine what that something is and to utilize that knowledge in a way that keeps the employee productive and happy. Generally speaking, people want to have a positive impact on their team, have their efforts recognized and be rewarded for a job well done.

Rich Webster

Information Architect: Web, Print, Internet, Multimedia, E-Learning

To suggest a more lateral consideration: many people — especially when there is a high unemployment rate — aren’t particularly motivated to work specifically for your company, they just need a job. It doesn’t mean they won’t do a good job, or that they don’t WANT to be excited by their job…
Instead (or, in addition), determine how much energy they put into their profession when they don’t have to: do they read trade publications, attend conferences, and keep up with the latest/best practices in your industry? Otherwise you might be asking them to enthusiastically lie in order to hear “I’m so excited by Acme Widgets, it makes me tingle.” so you can check it off your list.

Paul Feingold

President & CEO at Feingold & Associates, LLC

Ask him/her what they know about your company. ask about hobbies or other activities to see if the activities have any relationship to the job (a mountain climber would probably not last long at a “desk job”). Ask the three things he/she disliked about his/her previous job.

Messages from Paul Feingold (1):

Angela Harvey

Owner, HR Revelations

Profiling as part of an applicant assessment process can also be helpful with understanding what lies beneath the surface. The majority of serious applicants are rehearsed and on their best behavior for the interview. So it’s helpful to understand more about them prior to an interview, and it can lead to a more effective interview You need to be certain you are using a valid and reliable tool that is appropriate for a selection process. This can be very effective in hiring right and knowing more about the individual applicant before you make then an offer for employment.

Links:

http://www.HRRevelations.com

Steve Balzac

President at 7 Steps Ahead, LLC. Leadership and team development expert.

Best Answers in: Staffing and Recruiting (1)…The key is to recognize that people are always motivated; their motivation and your motivation may or may not coincide.

While you certainly want to see that a prospective applicant cares about your company, recognize that they can’t possibly learn enough about it to be motivated to work for you beyond the simple fact of getting a job that they think they’ll enjoy.

Therefore, there are two key things to look for. The first is passion. You want to see that the person is passionate about something, preferably something job related. That’s not a requirement though; mostly, you need to know that given an opportunity to become engaged, this is a person who will tend to engage.

Second, find out how motivated they were on previous projects. Ask them to describe what they’ve done. Let them talk; only ask questions when you need to keep them going. You want them to paint a picture. Does that describe the person you’re looking for?

For more details, see the articles below.

-Steve Balzac
“The Business Sensei”

Links:

George Polak

Accomplished International B2B Sales and Marketing Leader

One approach I have used with prospective sales people is to ask them if they had the choice between 1. a high base and lower commission plan or 2. a lower base with a higher commission plan, which would they choose.

You can also generally observe from their behaviour at the interview, the level of enthusiasm, for instance, how motivated they are likely to be.

However, at the end of the day, until someone has worked for you for at least 30 days, you really won’t know. It’s a crap shoot in the end. Even the behavioural tests don’t always get it right.

Frank Liesenborgs

Independent advisor to CEO’s, MD’s. BOD’s and SME’s. Serial entrepreneur and Investor in Ideas

Best Answers in: Small Business (6)…

Hi Brian,

Just ask the prospective employee:
“Why should I hire you?”
and “What would be your added value to this company”.

If well motivated, you will get some amazing answers.

I used this “trick” when hiring people and this proved to be very effective. Q is also, IF they have the motivation that is needed, how are you sure that it is a keeper, not a loser…

Cheers
Frank

Clarification added 5 hours ago:

Hi Brian,

Forgot to mention this. When I was working as MD, after the shortlist, I interviewed the candidates, without knowing their resume. After my short questions (took only max 10 minutes), I referred them to my people who, based on resume and overachievements, continued with the “normal’” process.

cheers
F

Doña Keating

Pres/CEO at Professional Options

Best Answers in: Organizational Development (1)

Introduce a subject related to the position and/or industry and have a conversation, not simply an interview. Cartwheel by including strategic questions or scenarios to get at what you need in order to gauge your candidate.

The hiring process is a two-way street, a prelude to win-win partnerships. Meting out a battery of tests and tools may work for some, but unless a candidate is able to put you through the same measurements, you run the risk of alienating strong and dynamic prospects.

Carrie Calvert

Owner, Double C Professional Consulting Services | LION | Aspiring author

Best Answers in: Organizational Development (6)…

Hi Brian,

Their level of engagement during the interview is a good indication of whether they will be motivated and productive employees.

Did they take the time to learn about your company and/or the position before the interview? Ask them to describe for you how their experience or skills complement your company’s strategic plan or fit in with your company culture. Not only does this demonstrate the interest they’ve taken in your organization, but it also gives great insight into how they think and process information. Any blank expressions or way off base answers might be cause for concern.

I probably wouldn’t recommend scheduling interviews for odd hours or weekends for the purpose of seeing how flexible a candidate is, but there are other more subtle ways of accomplishing the same thing. For example, if you have a good feeling about the candidate, ask them if they’re available for another 15-30 minutes to meet another manager or take a tour of the building. Most people with a genuine interest in the position will be enthusiastic about the opportunity. If they have a legitimate reason for not being able to stick around for another 30 minutes, try scheduling another time for them to come back in. What’s their reaction to this request? Are they gracious for the offer? Do they seem hesitant to commit? Is it clear that your request is inconveniencing them?

Most interviews that I’ve participated in (from both sides) seem to share a number of similar questions, making it easy for a candidate to rehearse their answers and provide exactly what you are hoping to hear from them. I can think of a few truly awful employees that were absolutely brilliant during their interviews, mostly because they knew exactly how to answer the questions, and appeared quite polished in their delivery. Had some unique and complex questions been asked in place of the “usual” list, they might not have been hired.

Excellent discussion topic Brian!

Regards,

Carrie

Herb Kessner, Ph.D

Specialist in Merger Integration, Exit Strategies and Organizational and Professional Change

I suggest using a Behavioral-Event interview process. We’re all experts at fielding hypothetical questions like “what would you do if…” The question to ask is to “recall a time when you had to deal with…” Develop your list of questions based on real-world conditions at your firm. Ask them take their time answering and to be specific in their answers. If they have shown motivation for these in the past, they most probably will in the future.

Herb Kessner, Ph.D also suggests these experts on this topic:

Pam Porath
Denise Codgen
Bob Furlong

Jeffrey M. Tilton, CFE

Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Professional and Certified Fraud Examiner

If you are an experienced interviewer you should go with your gut feeling. Then hire the best candidate on a temp to perm basis. This will eliviate the problem of a good interviewee who isn’t the kind of worker you expected.

Adrian Iaiza (adrian@stewardship.com.au)

Program/Snr Operations Manager / Consultant. Make business easier & more profitable, with less stress. Develop & thrive.

Best Answers in: Business Analytics (1)…, Change Management (1)

Hi Brian - you have a host of great answers here. All I can add is I think you are trying the screen the actors ( those who can put on a convincing reveal their true selves latter on in the heat of battle ), from those who are genuinely motivated, but may not perform as well.

I’ll remove those who don’t even bother doing basic research for the interview ( thus excluding the arrogant and lazy ) and confine ourselves to the scenario where everything being equal a decision needs to be made.

I am also guessing that motivation desired is one that promotes the company and the team as opposed to that focusing only on oneself.

Here are a few guidelines:
Types of Questions: This has been addressed here already, but ensure you have the questions on how they have dealt with both difficult and delicate situations in the 1st person. So use situational based questioning

Me versus’s We: During the interview guage whether answers to questions how heavily answers are based on self interest as oppossed to serving the needs of the team. Actors usually highly polar placing undue emphasis on either their interest OR placing all emphasis on the team (watch the latter)

Non Verbal / Visual Queues: I dispense with trying to outline picking out the truth from a lie, but when someone is talking about how they have dealt with a situation look as to whether there eyes are looking up, up and around or they are looking down. Research and experience discounts those who when talking about feelings or drives ( ie motivation ) look up or up and around, as this tends to indicate they are fabricating the story ( denoted by those who look down during pauses ). Take note of the tone of voice ( should be deep or natural rather than high ). Finally (this is tricky) check the breathing. If you note short sharp breaths ( which is what you are looking for ), rather then slow, deep breaths then this is a good sign. In the real world you’ll never see all of these so use the 3 out of 4 rule.

Can you guage the motivation: Often people who are genuinely motivated often let slip what drives them - check this for plausibility and consistency with their answers.

As with picking stocks you’ll never get a board lit up highlighting a 100% positive response on all fronts, so pick the candidate with the most green lights in these categories.

… and as always, this note that this remains as much of an art as a science!

aid Maurer

Business Development Manager

Best Answers in: Public Relations (1)

i ask the prospect what they would do if they stumbled over a lottery ticket and suddenly won us$64 million, tax free. this gives you a clear window into where the prospect’s true interests and motivations lie. if you are hiring someone for a sales position, the best candidates are those that talk about what they will buy with the money. if hiring for customer service, the best candiates frequently begin by saying they would give a certain amount to charity or to their family. the better managerial candidates usually say something about a business or other venture that they would start. if they don’t know what they would do with the money, they are probably not motivated enough to do more than the minimum.

Shrikant Lohokare

Executive, Entrepreneur, Technology/ Business/ VC Consultant - Semiconductor, Nanotech, Alternate Energy, Cleantech

Motivations are of various types. What needs to be segmented is that the employees motivation is towards bringing something more to the role and not for what the job brings to him/her. The later can be purely for personal reasons - pay, title, location, perks, benefits,….etc. Asking pointed questions on what and how the candidate will bring more to the role or make a difference to the role will reveal if he/ she has really thought out the role and is motivated to perform.

Milind Limaye

Solution Archtect

Best Answers in: Quality Management and Standards (2)…

Interview, may be for 1 / 2 hrs can not really judge a prospective employee completely. Many times we may have completely different opinion about an individual before and during interview and when we work with him, we come to know that our opinions can be wrong.
Human being is complex thing and every day we may see completely different aspect of an individual. Motivation is driven by a vigor to make change, level of satisfaction with the present level, support available, past experiences etc. Environment plays an important role in defining motivation. It may come from reward, fear to some extent.

Bill Gammell

Marketing / Client Relations at PGM, Inc.

Best Answers in: Branding (1)…, Positioning (1)

Give them homework. Between the first and second interview, give them a business problem (actual or made up) and ask them to come up with their best solutions by the next interview. Be sure to have them explain things in depth when they come back and ask follow-up questions to make sure they really are motivated to solve the problem or simply used the Internet or some other expert to solve the problem.

Good luck!

Marketing People Are Immune From Star Wars Branding

Brian — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:20:03 +0000

Or maybe they aren’t…well…I saw a new commercial for the new Lincoln MKS — was that the millennium falcon I just saw? Wow — just in time for the economic turnaround — I thought Lincoln’s were reserved for words like “uncool” and “gramps” — guess not — I’ve ordered two already.

The SEO Devil’s Gentleman and Maybe Some Marketing Misconceptions

Brian — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 01:58:59 +0000

client: “My web designer is at fault for making my website inhospitable to search engine spiders.”
devilish gentleman 1: ”It’s 2008, your designer should have set your website up for fundamental and scalable SEO success.”
devilish gentleman 2: ”Your web designer is paid to create a beautiful site and nothing more — how could he or she possibly invest their time in creating unique title tags and a zillion other attributes and elements for every page.”

client: “search engine submissions are critical
devilish gentleman 1: “Google will come around eventually (a la The Thin Red Line effect) and find, recognize, and index my site.”
devilish gentleman 2: “You do need to submit your sites to sentient run directories like dmoz and yahoo.”

client:”seo is expensive”
devilish gentleman 1: “depends on who your hiring”
devilish gentleman 2: “depends on what they are doing”
devilish gentleman 3: “depends on the industry you are in”
devilish gentleman 4: “depends on the current state of affairs of your website”
devilish gentleman 5: “depends on the keywords you are going after”
devilish gentleman 6: “depends on your goals”
devilish gentleman 7: “depends on the results your going to hold them to”
devilish gentleman 8: “depends on the popularity of the SEO firms blog”

client: “seo is cheap”
devilish gentleman: “can you say help in spanish”

client: “seo is hard”
devilish gentleman: “the fundamentals of SEO don’t change, only the emphasis on certain facors in Google’s algorithm do”

client: “silly rabbit, youtube is for kids”
devilish gentleman: “according to marketingvox.com 50% of youtube viewers are within the ages of 35-64. So now we know what granny has been up to.”

client: “My website is doing swell. I am capturing a huge part of my Internet market share”
devilish gentleman: “I can show you a tri color synopsis of what Compete, Alexa, and Spyfu have to say about that.”

client: “PPC is better than organic SEO”
devilish gentleman: “wait for Google to mandate mesothelioma like minimum CPC bids of $85″

client: “Organic SEO is better than PPC”
devilish gentleman: “yes, it will take over 3000 man-hours to get you on the first page of Google for “shingle” — at $400 an hour that would be well, pretty expensive.”

client: “seo takes time”
devilish gentleman: “have you ever heard of a blog”

My Googleganger and me: Brian Ortiz’s Online Reputation Management

Brian — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 01:08:08 +0000

Here come the acronyms:

SERM - search engine reputation management
ORM- online reputation management
OBM - online brand management
OIM - online identity management

One of the most common internet marketing misconceptions is that reputation, brand, or identity management is relegated to companies, countries, agencies, or other groups made up of a number of individuals. Identity management however, drills down as far as the individual level- linkedin, facebook, myspace, sphinn, twitter, blogs, and other Web 2.0 mediums including Google itself all act to either make or break an online reputation. Creating a strong individual brand should start with a steady stream of involvement or contribution in these communities — passively approaching SMO and SMM tools could potentially leave you open to a Googleganger attack that even the most fortuitious case of karma couldn’t heal.

Myopic SEM vs. Foundation SEM - Gene Hackman Had It Right

Brian — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 03:57:51 +0000

Remember when Gene Hackman hollered “patch him up” to the concerned doctor in Hoosierswhen one of his player’s stitches came out during a critical point in a decisive game. Hackman hesitated for only about a second when he decided not to play his critically wounded high schooler. Using some 1950s nylon would have undoubtedly only masked the underlying injury, potentially causing irreparable damage to the young man it inflicted. Approaching marketing challenges parallel this Hackman methodology. My thesis:

Before touching a website in any way you should consider whether you are masking underlying problems. Treating the symptoms of a website in cardiac arrest doesn’t get at the true meat of the quandary and it won’t be doing clients too much good. Ask yourself if you are looking at the challenges from as broad a perspective as possible. Question if you are integrating your thoughts into a cohesive marketing strategy. Challenge yourself to understand your role and how it fits into the client’s long term business objectives.

The definition of ”Myopic SEO or SEM” is any Internet marketing practice that only scrapes the surface of a site’s potential to be recognized, useful, and authoritative. Myopic SEO can also be articulated as an attitude or philosophy about how to “optimize” specific websites. Approaching any business should be done with the antithesis of narrowminded and segregated thinking - back it up a bit before sticking on the band aids kids. Examples of Myopic SEO or SEM are as follows:

adding alt tags to images simply because they aren’t there
obtaining inbound links without understanding the best anchor text to utilize and toggle
removing javascript indiscriminately throughout a website without considering conversions
tracking one type of conversions
doing what a client tells you to do without considering any long-term implications
not tracking website conversions at all
adding pages of content while disregarding website structure or architecture
not finding other websites that may have duplicate content sprinkled around the Internet
not clearly understanding a client’s goals or expectations
focusing on one metric as the decisive measure of marketing success or failure
not understanding how SEO and SEM fits within a business’s marketing
focusing too heavily on off-site or on-site optimization elements
not understanding the newer online marketing mediums and how they fit in with traditional SEO like SMM (social media marketing) and OIM (online identity management)
starting work on a website haphazardly with insufficient data driving your assumptions and conclusions

Examples of the Foundation SEM philosophy are:

clearly understanding a client’s marketing goals
clearly understanding why a client is requesting what their requesting
not blindly following a client’s suggestions to simply feed the animal
considering a variety of alternative marketing paths before finalizing a strategy
clearly understanding the client’s expectations
keeping up to date on broad and developing marketing techniques
thinking about how each individual idea or implementation fits within the larger marketing schema
tracking a wide range of metrics and having a sizable starting block of data to work from

Foundation SEM is a thought process in approaching marketing challenges. Every action taken on behalf of a client should be considered among the framework of wider goals and expectations. It might take a little more time and due diligence, but the long term effects can be nothing less than dramatic.

Chrome, Google Chrome.

Alex — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 01:01:57 +0000

Google Chrome is the latest venture of the search giant, Google. According to Google, Chrome is going to revolutionize the way we surf the web, similar to how Google revolutionized the way we search for information scattered across the internet. But is Chrome really that great? I have taken a deeper, unbiased look at this new piece of software.

There are several excellent elements of Chrome that, if fully utilized, could prove quite promising. Similar to the extremely popular Firefox, Chrome is capable of tabbed browsing. Which is infinitely easier to use (and saves precious RAM) than opening a new window if you want to surf multiple pages at once. The old Internet Explorer 6 lacked this feature, while its competitor, Firefox 2.0 did not. IE 7 (and 8 - which is still in beta) now has tabbed browsing. However, Chrome has a nice little addition to the standard of tabbed browsing, it’s called; “Dynamic Tabbing.” Dynamic Tabbing allows the user to drag and drop a tab off the browser to create bookmarks easily and create a new window for the tab you have open. Another advantage to Chrome’s tab feature(s) is Crash Control. We’ve all had Internet Explorer or Firefox crash, then close all of our open tabs. This does not occur on Chrome, if one tab or “application” crashes; only the crashing tab will close - not the entire program.

Incognito Mode is another new feature that is virtually non-existent in other browsers. It allows the user to surf incognito - meaning that if you’d like, Chrome will not remember any of your web history, and will delete acquired cookies as soon as the incognito browser is closed. You can also have multiple browser windows open, one to surf incognito, and another to surf normally.

The best feature I’ve found on Chrome is its superior ability to create simple applications. Many websites have applications that operate just like programs on your computer. Chrome allows you to “download” these applications directly to your hard drive - they can then be accessed without even opening your browser and directing yourself there manually. Web applications like email and blogs operate in this fashion. You can even save these application files to any directory path you want on your computer.

Chrome is pretty straight forward, but it lacks accessibility by not having the typical windows toolbar of: File, Edit, View etc. These features are still available but they can be somewhat difficult to find. There are two buttons located on the top right-hand corner of the browser, known as the “Tools” and “Page” buttons, respectively. Changing the very entrenched Windows interface could prove confusing and a little frustrating to people accustomed to Windows-style programs. Chrome also lacks the very typical browser buttons like Stop (stop loading) and Home (go directly to your homepage). The shortcut Alt+Home keys on your keyboard still work in this manner however.

Chrome is new, but as far as I can tell, Google worked out all the bugs before they released it to the public. I haven’t encountered any problems as of yet - but only time will tell. Despite all the new features and accessibility that Chrome has, I think it’ll be a while before the general population makes a full switch. Myself, as well as millions of other people are entrenched in using Firefox and Internet Explorer.