Aspects of Social Media Optimization

Most Web marketers are familiar with Search Engine Optimization (SEO); the practice of structuring web pages to make them "crawler friendly" to Google and other search sites.  But with the proliferation of Web 2.0 capabilities, intrepid marketers are becoming fluent in Social Media Optimization (SMO).  Tom Pick discusses the various aspect of SMO on his blog, including Discussion Forums, Social Bookmarking, Wikis, Video and Social Networks.

(Discussion Forums)…are a place to showcase your expertise in a non-promotional way. For example, in an SEO forum, telling everyone how great your agency is at SEO is suicide; but displaying your knowledge by offering expert tips on title meta tag creation or non-spammy link building is brilliant.

(Social Bookmarking)…sites like Digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Mixx and Searchles are great places to spread the word about your own thought leadership content as well as, and even more importantly, positive coverage your company gets from other bloggers, journalists or analysts.

A wiki is another place to share your knowledge of a particular topic with a community or the world. You can do this by either writing an encyclopedic article about a topic; adding to or editing an existing article; or adding links to your own thought-leadership content as supporting material.

Business video production is growing exponentially because video is engaging, repurposable (for example, you can use a video on your website, at tradeshows and in presentations; post it on YouTube; use it as an asset for blogger outreach or a channel sales tool; add it to social media press releases; etc.), potentially viral, and increasingly searchable.

At the least, social networking services like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Konnects provide increased exposure for your company (and your "personal brand") while also providing SEO and reputation management benefits. At best, these sites can help you make valuable new business connections.

The end result ultimately would enable you to have the top search page which would be a great way to get the word out about your particular industry and get feedback at the same time.

Starbucks Connects with Customers

Working the inner recesses of the Web 2.0, Starbucks has come up with a novel way to get feedback from it’s consumers. After creating an account one can share ideas or complaints via the site and have other members vote on their observations.

Posted by StuartOnline to Other Involvement Ideas

Today while at the local Starbucks (Tiger Point) in Gulf Breeze, Fl I watched three people within 20 minutes leave because there is a charge for WiFi. They all went to other places within the area that offered FREE INTERNET connection. With your high prices for coffee you would think you would offer this service for FREE. Let me add I do own shares of stock in Starbucks.

Posted by Suz01 to Other Product Ideas

I work at home as a remote employee. There have been many times that I have wanted to treat a co-worker to a Starbucks for helping me out on a project, or just to brighten their day. Wouldn't it be neat if you could purchase a drink for someone via the Starbucks web site? The recipient gets an email stating, for example, "Suzanne bought you a drink!" The recipient prints the email (with a barcode) and takes it to their nearest Starbucks to redeem.

Starbucks is recreating itself in order to connect with the customer on an intimate level. Something that was only done in-store before but now they have a wider foundation for new ideas and opinions first-hand by implementing their online exchange.

Skeptic's Surprise

In an article written by Bruce Ross in The Record Searchlight, dated September 5th, he initially states his skepticism regarding Venture Island. However, after attending the event he said that the event was “entertaining, educational, and an introduction to 20 creative businesspeople.”

“When you think venture capital, you probably think technology, but the entrepreneurs were a mix — insurance and accounting consultants with new ideas, farm products, creative new tools cobbled together by tradesmen, a craft brewery and, yes, some high-tech materials and Web idea.”

Ross is putting his money on Shasta Crystals new idea regarding the manufacturing of the crystals used in mini projectors. According to him, all the businesses represented, “win or lose this event, are worth keeping an eye on.”

Typing Angels

Andrew Muse has posted a useful taxonomy of angel investors on myventurepad.com.  Muse's approach could be illustrated pretty effectively with a quadrant graph, with the axes describing investment experience and objectives.

He makes a pretty compelling case that seeking angels exclusively through an angel group is probably not that effective.  He also confirms what we've long preached, which is that you need more than money; you need smart money.

They are people who have previously made lots of money in and around your space.  They have subject matter expertise around your idea and can often provide a lot more than money.  In many cases they will know the ultimate customer that will ensure your success and insure their investment.

The right investor partners can make all the difference.  In addition to subject matter expertise, they can help connect you to talent, strategic partners, distribution channels, and early adopter customers.

Lawyers, Guns, and Money

A colleague from my former story arc in Silicon Valley posted a very interesting essay today about the uneasy relationship between product management and risk management, and how it showed up in the Google Chrome launch. Some excellent insights for anyone developing software products from Jeffrey McManus.

The product used the standard Google licensing agreement, which gives Google a non-exclusive license to anything you submit to a Google service. Because they used the same license on the browser, people who didn’t read or understand the legalese came away with the impression that Google owns everything you do using the browser. And “non-exclusive” is key here (it means they can use your data — in a search index, for example — but they don’t “own” it). Still, it freaked some people out and for good reason — the one-size-fits-all nature of a license agreement that’s appropriate for a web site isn’t necessarily going to fit well for a browser product.

In a content ecology where trust is paramount for credibility, this sort of oversight costs you more than customers. It costs you your reputation.

On Your Marks

At the Start Conference last week, although it was not a "deal flow" event, we did get to hear some pitches from some startups. We usually see thirty or forty companies at a GCN event, all of them explicitly seeking private investment, so it was interesting to see a few companies that were simply giving some examples of pitches (and that weren't coached by us).

There were a couple of companies with some market traction I wanted to feature here. Hopefully, we'll feature them at a future GCN conference, as well. But for the benefit of our investor network, I though it worthwhile to mention them on our blog.

Apture provides publishers with multimedia integration capabilities. This post is littered with examples of how it works. Pretty simple; you just highlight the text you want to associate with multimedia, and a box pops up with examples of relevant content from all over the web. You select the item (or items) you want to link and Apture does the rest. When the reader mouses over the link, windows pop up with the linked content. Really just about the coolest thing since draft beer.

Get Satisfaction is a customer service community platform that enables customers and the companies they do business with to interact, collaborate, and resolve issues. A user can ask a question, report a problem, or share an idea about how to get the most out of the product or service. Businesses can respond directly to address the issue, and other users can join in with their fixes, workarounds, hacks, and other advice. So far Twitter, LinkedIn, Doppler, PBWiki are using Get Satisfaction to create stronger relationships with their users. I expect a lot more will, as well.

Ready? Begin.

Big fun last week at the Start conference. About 400 aspiring entrepreneurs filled the Cowell Theater at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco to hear from successful startup vets, service providers, and private investors.

Structured as a series of conversations moderated by Bryan Mason and Jeffrey Veen, the discussions included war stories, practical advice, some comedic horseplay, in an interactive web 2.0 environment.

This last element was the least successful, and the part that I most wanted to see in practice. As it happens, when you put hundreds of laptops in a small room with insufficient WiFi coverage and next to no power outlets, the utopian vision of open source brainstorming quickly becomes clouded. But the idea was cool, even if the execution was less than ideal. I'm sure next year they'll do a better job of that.

Still, some folks did manage to get their questions and comments through to the online moderator, George Oates using Twitter (I gave up on the laptop after lunch and followed the virtual deliberation on my cell phone) and Meebo.

We've been putting on events for entrepreneurs, angel investors, and venture partners for going on a decade, so I was especially curious to see this program. In part because I didn't know anything about it until about four days before it happened. I hadn't seen any conventional marketing; no email blasts, no broadsides, no partner communications, etc. I learned about it through a tweet from @missrogue, who casually told the 9000+ people paying attention to her Twitter stream that she was registering for it.

Naturally, I followed the link she thoughtfully furnished, signed up, and went down for the program. What was very interesting to me was that this was not being presented by a conference organization like GCN, IBF DEMO, etc., but rather it was dreamed up about two months ago by Mason and Veen, and cultivated virally through the various social media proliferating like mushrooms after a hard rain.

And it was a pretty good show, too. Some nice features included the interactive engagement with the audience (which could have worked better, but still cool), the peer-to-peer content, and the craft-brewed draft beer during the afternoon break.

There were also some very interesting new companies giving their venture pitch, about which more in the next installment.