Google is changing the web again. This time, they are asking webmasters to begin identifying authors in a way that allows:

• Google to track who is the author of content
• Google to track about the author pages (called profiles by Google).
• Authors to authenticate their profiles (author pages) on multiple websites.

If you are an author, this is fantastic… and if you are a content publisher, it’s even better because Google is now starting to look at who writes, not just the cold math behind an article.

To acknowledge an author, you use the HTML5  rel attribute in a link pointing to an “about the author” page on the same website like this:

Article written by <a rel="author" href="../authors/mikeseidle">Mike Seidle</a>

Because most authors have profile (about the author pages) on multiple websites, Google has a way to link them together. The first step is to put a link to the author’s website on the profile with a rel=”me” attribute like this:

<a rel="me" href="http://mikeseidle.com/about">Read more about Mike</a>

On the page mikeseidle.com/about, we have to insert a recriprocal link back to the above about the author page (profile)  with the rel=”me” attribute:

<a rel="me" href="http://problogservice.com/authors/mikeseidle">How To Help Google Identify Authors of Content on Your Site</a>

Before all you search engine optimization experts get your hair on fire about reciprocal links causing bad things to happen to your page rank, here’s the link on Google’s Webmaster Tools that shows that it is required by Google to do a reciprocal link.

As of the time this post was written, most blogging software does not support the new author tagging features yet, so you’ll either have to write a plug in or embed your own links. I would expect to see support for author and profile tagging to be included in future versions of WordPress soon.

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Web pages are useless without traffic, and the same is true about LinkedIn profiles. It doesn’t matter if you are looking for new customers, a job or just more connections, no traffic = no opportunity. Here’s a simple strategy I used to increase the traffic to my LinkedIn profile page from 3-4 people per day to 70-80 people per day (that means 27,000+ visits in a year). Feel free to make it your own:

Step 1: Figure out what your goal is with your LinkedIn Profile.

This isn’t that hard. Your LinkedIn profile is a resume with a couple of places you get to be creative, and there are really only a few practical uses for LinkedIn. Most likely your goal is one of these four:

1. Finding New Customers
2. Finding a Job
3. Expanding your Network
4. Recruiting people

Step 2: Make your summary do something.

Your summary is the block of text that goes right below your vital stats on your LinkedIn profile page. You can put four or five pages of text there, and you can say whatever you want. Most people use it to talk about how great they are. We’re not going to do that. We’re going to change our summary into something that grabs people’s attention and gets them to take action. That means we’re going to talk about our visitor’s favorite person in the world: our visitor. In other words, we’re going to tell people “what’s in it for them”.

The key, according to LinkedIn guru Flyn Penoyer is to make your summary be about the reader. That means you are going to use the word “you” a lot, Here are the most common goals for LinkedIn, and what you can do with your summary:

Step 3: Change Your Professional Headline

Note: This is the most important step, but you’ll look like an idiot if you don’t do steps 1 and 2 first.

Right now, your professional headline (the one line ad for yourself that goes next to your picture) probably says something about you like “Innovative Sales Leader” or “Customer Acquisition Guru”. While this makes you look good, it doesn’t engage people who see your profile, and if it’s to braggy or buzz word riddled, it probably acts more like opportunity repellent. Since the professional headline shows up everywhere you do, right next to your picture, we’re going to make it drive people to click on your profile and learn more. So, out with the “Foremost Change Agent and Project Manager” and in with “I can make your project finish on time and 10-25% under budget. Visit my profile to find out how.” (Oops. I just clicked on your profile). Here’s what I did with mine:

Before

After

The results: I’m getting 10-20x more visits to my profile page every day.

Tying it Up

So, we’ve changed our summary so it tells our visitors what’s in it for them and called them to take action. Then we changed our professional headline into a powerful invitation to view our profile page (where the summary lives). Now it’s time to get the word out. This is the best part. All you have to do is participate on LinkedIn. When you post a message in a group, ask a question or send messages to other LinkedIn users, your headline is right next to your picture… click.

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If you have a blog, 1/3 of the functionality is its ability to handle RSS feeds (syndicated news feeds). RSS is a vital part of the blog ecosystem, and if you are neglecting it, you are giving up 30-50% of the return on investment you should be expecting from your blog. Isn’t RSS automatic? Well, yes and no.

Most blogs have some kind of RSS publishing capability (an RSS feed is part of what makes a blog a blog), and most have it turned on by default, the problem is that most blogging software have horrible defaults settings that result in your RSS feed being useless to everyone other than desktop news tickers.

When you neglect your RSS feed:

• You minimize the search engine optimization effect. You aren’t getting backlinks from people republishing your article, and therefore, aren’t getting any link juice.
• You diminish your site’s ability to harvest traffic from social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and niche sites on Ning and Groupsites.
• People may be stealing your articles without sending traffic back to your site or crediting the author.

If you want your content republished, have an RSS feed.

So what does “republishable” mean?

1. The full article text is included. If you have a WordPress or Typepad blog, chances are you are set for the summary feed which gives exactly 200 characters of each article, which is good for exactly nothing. Go to Settings… reading and change your feed from summary to full article.
2. Links and picture sources are fully qualified. That means all links and images point to to “http://yoursite.com/super-cool-content.whatever” and not to “/super-cool-content.whatever.” It also means that when your article is republished, the links work. If your site runs Joomla, you’ll have to have someone who is comfortable with PHP make a change to the code that generates your site’s RSS Feed.
3. An about the author block is included. This way, you will always be credited. Don’t do a lot of crazy styling – just keep it simple as many RSS aggregators (the software that grabs your feed and includes it in another website) strip most formatting out, leaving links, and basic HTML intact (stuff like the bold and italics tags). Include your name, a one line description of the author, and it is a good idea to provide a link to your blog, and even your LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook page.
4. A copyright statement is included, if needed.
5. Turn photos off in your feeds. Photos sized and selected for your blog are often not edited correctly for other people’s websites. If you use Typepad, you’ll have to make a settings change.
6. Make sure your logo is set. Some sites will publish your logo next to or above your site’s headlines. Joomla site owners, chances are right now your logo is the Joomla logo.
7. You have a clear set of rules on your site that tell others how they can use your content. A lot of blogs use Creative Commons licenses that make it a snap for people to understand your intent and their legal obligations.

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It’s online marketers’ dirty little secret: Web metrics are not very accurate. None of them.

Surprised? You shouldn’t be.

Users can block script and pixel based systems and proxy servers (servers that cache content to reduce bandwidth use on networks, like say, your ISP’s or corporate network) prevent your server’s weblog from recording every page view (I blogged in a little more detail on accuracy issues here). On top of network issues, there are some basic software limitations in browsers and metric packages that prevent every click and visit from being counted.

How bad is it? Somewhere between 4% and 12%. And it’s almost, almost always missing clicks, visits and page views.

So, do web analytics have value? Yes. But despite what you may think, their value isn’t counting every single click you get on your site. It’s for identifying trends. Knowing what is happening and what has happened in aggregate has great value. Even with a 6-12% margin of error.

The problem is, many web metrics solutions are on a time delay (like Google Analytics) that prevents you from seeing what is happening now. On the internet “NOW” means everything. And if you want to see what is happening minute to minute, your options are rather limited.

Here’s a situation that happened with one of my clients:

We had a client who had just started a $90,000, 48 hour advertising campaign for a major affiliate network. We didn’t realize it, but some bad code was preventing people coming to a landing page for step 3 in the registration process. A real-time analytics package allowed us to see the problem and fix it in about 15 minutes, but a once-a-day analytics package would have only pointed out the problem halfway through our 48 hour schedule.

Should we have tested the landing page better? Yes. Reality is that marketing sites are often done on much tighter deadlines than traditional software development and sometimes testing isn’t that great. That means real time metrics are critical.

If we had waited 12 hours for metrics to become available, my client would have lost 25% of sales and 25% of the money they had spent on the campaign.

Real time matters more than you think. If you’re not investing in it, you need to consider it.

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After reading Erik’s blog postThe Number One Reason Companies Need to Blog About Their Products, I thought I’d clarify the best place to put your blog if your objective is to get the most search juice and the top search rank.

If your blog attracts lots of links, it may be better to have the blog inside your website as the links will drive your site’s page rank and SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) up. In fact, links are so critical to search engine optimization that almost always, the right answer will be put the blog inside your website’s domain. For those who have and have no idea what I’m talking about, we’re talking about this difference in your blog’s address:

mydomain.com/blog
versus
blog.mydomain.com

This is a very important consideration as search engines see blog.mydomain.com as a separate website from mydomain.com. Search engines see mydomain.com/blog as part of the same website, so links to the blog are going to help raise the page rank and search position of the entire website.

There really are only three reasons that are likely to come up for hosting your blog outside of your website’s domain for SEO purposes:

1. You already have a top rank for your keywords and wish to banish your competitors further down the first page of search results.

2. There is a technical reason you cannot have your blog inside of yourdomain.com. For example, you might use a subscription service for your website like a lot of Realtors, attorneys and financial planners do. Often times, these services will not let you install WordPress or another blogging system on their servers.

3. No one is going to link to your blog, and so the best you can hope for are a few keyword links back to your website.

Let me say it again: putting your blog inside your website is generally the best strategy unless you are already top ranked, have a technical limitation or no one is going to link to your blog.

Note: In Compendium Blogware’s case, their blogs fall under situation number 2. They have to do subdomains or external domains(somenewsite.com) and cannot do a mydomain.com/blog URL as they would have to move their software to the server hosting mydomain.com. While the “rising waters raise all ships” philosophy will help your SEO efforts, you don’t get quite the boost that you do from the mydomain.com/blog strategy.

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LinkingIndiana.com recently conducted a survey of social media usage among Hoosiers, and found some rather surprising results.

For those of us who work in the social media realm, it sometimes seems like everyone is using social media. We’re often surprised to find people who aren’t on any kind of social network or don’t read blogs, and I’ve wondered if they have ever upgraded to an electric typewriter. But there are still a lot of people who aren’t on it, although thanks to programs like Facebook and Twitter, that number is shrinking greatly.

The number one finding? Social media is now mainstream with Hoosier businesspeople. It’s not a flash in the pan, or a passing fad (like some people called the Internet 15 years ago). Rather, it’s a real way to do business.

According to the survey of more than 300 respondents, we know the following about our social media habits in the Hoosier state.

• 94% use social networks weekly.
• 77.6% use social networks daily.
• Facebook and LinkedIn are used most often by 86.1% respondents.
• Facebook is clearly used for personal activity.
• Despite growth in social media use, Hoosier businesses are lagging in adopting social media:
• Over half (52%) don’t have a blog.
• Less than half polled (42%) think their employer is effectively using social media.

With these numbers, we can draw a few conclusions, which we will explore in future blog posts.

• Social media is no longer the next big thing. It is the thing.
• B2B marketers should consider launching marketing programs on Facebook. Sure, it’s primarily being used by people to keep up with family and friends, or to play Pirate Clan and SuperPoke people. But it’s still being used by businesspeople, students, retirees, home makers. People are using Facebook like crazy, and you can’t ignore it anymore.
• Take care that your campaigns are done correctly, and aren’t just bludgeon-over-the-head ads. Facebook users don’t use the site for business, and won’t respond well to typical B2B engagement strategies. You can still reach them with fan pages and similar strategies; this is where the “social” in social networking becomes important.
• Only 48% of business people have a blog, yet it’s the one piece of social media that has not changed in nearly 10 years. Blogging is still a great business solution. Search engines love it, forward thinking companies have embraced it, and your customers are reading them, including your competition’s.
• While we love Twitter and Smaller Indiana (I got this job and company because of Smaller Indiana), they aren’t necessarily the best place to spend marketing dollars when you’re trying to reach a large audience. Smaller Indiana is a great niche network, and if you wanted to reach some of the state’s influencers, it’s the place to be. But if you’re trying to reach a wide audience, there are better options.

There are a lot more points to the report, and some that deserve their own post, rather than giving them short shrift here. We’ll explore the important points and discuss the implications for Hoosier businesspeople and the marketers who want to reach them.

Download a copy of the 2009 Indiana Business Social Media Use Survey Survey here.

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Recently a potential client tried to make the case that writing their own blog made financial sense because it “was cheaper”. So we sharpened up our pencils and analyzed what it really costs to write your own blog in three different scenarios:

1. A corporation where technical experts (think engineers, accountants, lawyers, sales managers, marketing managers or executives) would be writing their own blog posts.
2. A company that uses lower level clerical help to write the company blog.
3. A small business where the owner is writing her own blog posts. In this case the owner is literally working for free.

Here’s how the numbers worked out:

Scenario One: Technical Experts
This is the most common situation we encounter: companies with knowledge workers who write their own blog posts. Compared to our highest-end product, the practice of using your own people may cost three times as much annually and offers little or no comparative advantage.

Scenario 2: Clerical Workers
Smarter companies utilize internal resources better, so instead of having expensive knowledge workers do the writing, lower cost clerical or creative workers are used.  The result: Professional Blog Service’ midrange ghost blogging offering is less than half the cost.

Scenario Three: Small Business Owners
When a small business owner works inside her business, often the labor is viewed as having no direct cost. It does have an opportunity cost. Even working for free, a small business owner would have made more money having outsourced blog writing to Professional Blog Service using our top of the line service:

Conclusion

Hiring a professional ghost writing service can save you 50-66% over having your employees write your company’s blog.

roi, ghostwriting, blogging, businessblog

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Yesterday, we discussed the challenges of finding the right kind of ghost blogger to handle your blogging duties on your behalf, whether hiring a sweat shop, solo practitioner, or a professional blogging agency.

Assuming you’ve settled on the kind of person you want to hire, here are five questions you can ask any potential ghost writer or ghost blogger to quickly discover which bucket they fit in:

What country are your writers located in? 
If it’s not a country where your language is native, then you may have issues. Big issues. At the very least, you’ll spend some time editing and proofing each post, until you’re comfortable with the quality of content they’re providing.

How do you protect me from your writers plagiarizing someone else’s content? 
The right answer has three parts: First, they should have an editor check the writer’s work using Google and Copyscape to ensure your content isn’t lifted. Second, their writers should sign a no-plagiarism indemnification when they get hired (this way, the writer has financial skin in the game if they steal content). Finally, the blogger should register content with Copyscape to protect you from other’s plagiarizing. Please remember the biggest risk in blogging isn’t someone stealing your content. It’s getting sued for infringing on someone else’s copyright.

How do you make sure my posts are authentic? 
The answer you’re looking for is, “we don’t put words in your mouth, we put your ideas in writing.” To be honest and genuine, there needs to be a process that ensures that your ideas and your style of articulating ideas comes out in the final product. It’s important that the ideas and concepts be uniquely yours — but it’s okay to have a professional dress them up and put them on paper. Of course, you will need to be involved and at least read your blog before it is posted.

What happens when my contact goes on vacation? 
Do things stop when your social media person is out of town? What happens if a writer’s child gets sick? Success in social media requires discipline and planning, but there are times when you have to get things done and a one person show simply can’t hit deadlines. If you work with a solo practitioner, make sure you have either a backup, or have a second freelancer you work with to cover the gap.

How do I be sure my posts meet my quality standards? 
Here’s how it works: you have to be sure that what goes online complies with your legal department’s rules, is accurate, and you like it. The only way to ensure that happens is to make sure the work isn’t done at the last second. You need time to read, review and approve your blog posts. If you have a tough legal department or an “extraordinarily responsible” marketing compliance person, it’s likely your blog writing service will have to charge extra to deal with the cost of proofreading.

While there is no one-size-fits-all approach for everyone — maybe you’re willing to work with a writer’s schedule — there are a few things that you cannot and should not waver on: plagiarism and quality. Make sure the blogger(s) you hire can guarantee they won’t steal content from someone else, and that you’re happy with the work they’re doing.

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Ghost writing is a tool. Hiring a ghost writer lets people who either don’t have the time to write or don’t have the talent to write communicate.

Without ghost writers, many people who have great ideas and insight would never blog.

It’s not because they don’t want to, it’s because the average blog post takes a non-professional 1 – 2 hours to write. If you think CEOs write every last one of their own blog posts, you are mistaken. They don’t write the letter in front of the annual report, they don’t write their speeches to shareholders, they don’t write their financial reports. Some of them don’t even write their own emails.

Would you really want a person who’s making $1,000 per hour spending 1 – 2 hours every day writing a single blog post instead of running the company? For that matter, if you’re making more than $35 per hour, do you really want to spend 2 hours every day writing blog articles?

If you bill or get paid more than $25/hour, writing a blog post may not be the best use of your time. The time you spend researching, writing, and editing is time you could spend billing and generating revenue.

The challenge is that hiring a ghost writer is tough because there are no real professional standards in the business. There is also no clear definition of “professional ghost writing.” Our professional experience has taught us that ghost writers and ghost bloggers generally fit into five buckets:

• Cheap and Dangerous copywriting sweat shops typically charge $10 or less per post and usually promise keyword rich copy. The challenge is these writers rarely are paid enough to do original work (after overhead, they have $3 – $5 left to actually pay the writer). As a result shortcuts are the rule. Dangerous shortcuts like stealing content from other websites, using non-native writers, skimping on editing, and failing to do any fact checking can come back to haunt you later.
• Solo Practitioners are often very good at what they do, except during their day job’s regular working hours, while on vacation, some weekends, or when life gets a little busy. The challenge with a solo practitioner is simply making sure they have time to meet your deadlines, can work with your legal department and are highly responsible. You’ll also need to make sure you have time for doing more editing on your own, as solo practitioners rarely have an editor. Solo practitioners can be a great value if you want to manage them. If you can find a solo practitioner who does this as a regular job, hang on to them. They’re worth what you’re paying them.
• Social Media “Experts“ should generally be avoided. The general rule of thumb, at least according to Malcolm Gladwell, is you’re considered a top performer (an “outlier”) if you have 10,000 years of experience, and you’re considered “good” if you have 8,000. The problem is, a lot of social media tools like Twitter aren’t even 10,000 hours old, so it’s hard to become an expert in a field like this. Plus there are too many social media tools to truly become proficient at. You can have a passing knowledge about a lot of them, but a passing knowledge doesn’t make anyone an expert either.
• Ad and Marketing Agencies are usually a good source for writers, but this isn’t their core business. They do ad campaigns, marketing campaigns, and online marketing. But they also have higher overhead, because you’re paying for people who typically don’t work on your project or technology.
• Professional Blogging Agencies usually cost a little more, but have advantages, especially for businesses and high profile clients. Professional ghost writers should have a solid editorial process, access to a diverse stable of writers, provide safeguards against copyright infringement, have no issues with deadlines and can accommodate your compliance department.

When you’re looking for a ghost blogger, pay careful attention to your budget, your blog requirements, and whether you have any special requirements you need to meet, like passing posts through your legal department. Then see if you can work with a solo practitioner, a blogging agency, or whether you want to cheap out and risk it all with a sweat shop.

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Credibility is crucial in marketing. Even more so in blogging.  Recently, I asked for the collective wisdom of LinkedIn to get an answer to a simple question:

What makes a blog credible?

There were many very insightful answers, but one answer stood out:

“The people who follow the blog…” — Jan Simpson (If you don’t know Jan, she’s famous for quickly getting to the point)

Why? Because everything you do when blogging is focused on your audience. If you focus on your following, you’ll find that it’s easy to answer questions about content subjects, quality, frequency of posting and design.  It’s also easy to figure out what you need to do to attract more followers.  Your blog’s audience is the sum total off everything, and takes into account nearly every other factor sited by other people who shared their insight.  Your audience is really the outcome of all the little things you do right.  Factors like:

• Content quality
• Reputation
• Frequency of posting
• References and Credentials
• Relevance
• Design

So, the question is, how often do you think about who is following your blog?  Do you know what they like? How about how often they visit? Are you sure your blog is easy enough for them to navigate? Is your about the author text compelling and reassuring?

Hmm.  Better look at mine.

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