Android. Google Earth. Google Maps. Adwords. Adsense. YouTube. Ad Planner. Google News. Google TV. Chrome. Google Docs. Orkut. Picasa. Knol. G-Mail. Google phone (aka non-virtual hardware). Wave. Google 411. Google Images, etc., etc. etc. You get the idea.

Google. First of all, is Google a “them” or an “it”? For conversation sake here, let’s just call them/it Googzilla.

I just finished reading “Googled – The End of the World as We Know It”. Absolutely fascinating. The author, Ken Auletta, gave an interesting inside view of Google that I would say is mostly unbiased, and certainly daunting when you realize how many things Google has its virtual hand in.

The pervading message throughout the book was Google’s ability to abuse their power and knowledge if they ever choose to do the opposite of their corporate mantra, “Don’t be evil”. Yet this message is countered with the consistent theme from founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, also often chimed by Eric Schmidt (Google’s CEO), that they just want to help make interactive technology a great, user friendly, reliable, relevant, safe resource.

But here’s the twist – every step Google takes to be more useful is often because they’ve learned more about us. For example, search relevance improves via behavioral targeting because they’re watching us closer. Our continued diminishing privacy makes the web more convenient for us. Not to mention that opting out is a lot more complicated than opting in. The trillion dollar question is – do we really care?

It comes down to this simple dividing line. There are those who trust Google and those who don’t. And, as long as there are more that do, Google will continue to grow and own the online world. Could that change? Sure. If they mess up. If I had to bet, I’d say they probably won’t. But then again, in spite of all their algorithms, PhD’s, and rocket scientists, they’re only human.

What do you think?

I decided to look up the current (i.e. Wikipedia) definition of “guru”, which states “one who is regarded as having great knowledge, wisdom and authority in a certain area, and who uses it to guide others (teacher).” Hmmm, I can remember a few teachers from my past that definitely do not fit that definition, how about you?

As the owner of an agency that has made it through 20 years of transitions in marketing and advertising, I would like to say I know a lot about today’s new world of social media. And, just like most others, I’ve learned what I know through a lot of reading, practice and, yes, failures. But every time I begin to think of myself as a “guru” I pick up a book from Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, and now Mitch Joel (way to go Mitch!) and I’m instantly humbled back into the position of a never-ending learner. And you know what? That’s perfectly ok.

So why am I writing this? Who cares, you say. I agree. Except for one thing.

If anyone reading this is trying to become more involved in the world of social media so that you can make money in the industry, I encourage you to come every day as a learner. You don’t have to be a guru to work within these new parameters. If it’s all about truth, trust and transparency, then live these characteristics in your own self-promotion. Most of us are not worthy of being called Social Media Gurus, so let’s not weaken this industry’s authority with falsely self-proclaimed titles just because we can.

Remember, if you understand just a little bit about how Linked In, Twitter and Facebook work you’re ahead of most. You can still be helpful, and earn an income from it, if that’s your goal. But if this industry ends up being viewed as nothing more than thousands of self-proclaimed gurus, it will hurt the validity of those who really can use their knowledge, wisdom and authority to guide others.

I’ve got a self-proclaimed title that I’m working on for myself. I want to be a Social Media “Student Teacher.”  The only requirement is to come as learner and be passionate about sharing what you’ve been taught. I can do that. Want to join me?

Keywords: They’re That Important

Article on how important figuring out what keywords you should be concentrating on for your website. Also has tips on where to start when making up a keyword list.

How to Always Be Behind the Social Media Curve

From the Viral Garden, basically, if you’re concentrating on how to use the tools, you’re doing it wrong, much more important is figuring out why people are using the tools. I completely agree.

Wefollow.com

Let’s you see how many followers a twitter user has, not sure that it’s necessarily better than just searching on Twitter, but it does let you browse through celebs and such.

My least favorite page on a website to write, but a very important one, as this blog entry explains. This also applies to writing your facebook or twitter profile page or any profile page, for that matter.

Link Building Tactics 101, Part 2

Second part of a series on building links. This one talks about writing articles and where to submit them, also some tips on using twitter for link building.

A Brief and Informal Twitter Etiquette Guide

Good info from Chris Brogan and his friends.

SEO? That Sounds Like Work

It is work. There isn’t a magic wand you can wave that will give you good results in the search engines. You have to have stuff on your site that people are looking for. Just like using social media for marketing. It’s easy if you have something worthwhile to give to people.

How Different Groups Spend Their Day

Very cool interactive graph of how american residents spent their time in 2008 from a survey of thousands of people.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve given web stats to a client and they’ve looked at the unique visitors number and asked me, “Is that a good amount?” It all depends. Compared to Amazon.com, probably not, but we’re not competing with Amazon. I’m relieved that most of the people writing about web analytics now admit that the page view & unique visitors numbers are meaningless on their own.

Here are a couple of other numbers you can safely ignore: Twitter Followers and Google Page Rank.

Twitter Followers

Twitter is the new, bright shiny object. Seems like everyone is on it and one of the numbers easily available for all to see is number of followers. Seems like more = better, right? Not really. What are you trying to do on Twitter? Are you trying to influence millions (perhaps start a new religion)? Then more followers is better. Are you doing research into who’s talking about your product? Then who cares who follows you. Are you trying to become an authoritative voice in your field (usually social media)? You need followers. Are you giving your company a presence where you can make announcements? Well, it might be nice if someone is listening, but Twitter is searchable, so those announcements will become part of the web.

PageRank

This one’s a little more obscure, but you’ll see it thrown around when talking about SEO. I’ve always been a big suspicious of it, but that may be because I tend to work with smaller websites. We rarely even show up on PageRank. What is it, you ask? It’s a way to measure a page’s popularity and authority on the web. A number created by Google that may reflect whether one site ranks higher on a search result than another site. Note that I said ‘may,’ as with everything with Google search algorithms, we’re all guessing here.

There is one time when  PageRank does matter: if you’re selling links from your site to others or getting links from other sites. The ‘juice’ those links have is probably affected by the site’s PageRank.

Other than that, it’s much more important to actually look at where your site ranks for your targeted keywords (as many  SEO experts have said and keep saying).

Oh, and by the way, it’s not called PageRank because it ranks pages, but because it’s named after Larry Page, at least according to the Wikipedia entry on PageRank.

My favorite is the tenth one:

“Tip 10 – start simple!

Start simple and small, and go where the data takes you. PPC is an iterative activity…”

Yes, glad to hear someone else say it. Start simple, check the results and make changes to your ads and your keywords to get the results you want. And make sure you are tracking conversions or goals.

There’s more, visit the page to read all the tips.

http://www.cpcsearch.com/ppc-management-tips.html

Why Email Marketing is Dead (And How to Bring it Back to Life)

Great post on email marketing. The take-away point: make your emails interesting. That means the emails need to be about and for your reader, don’t tout your business or toot your own horn, give them information and links that will improve their lives and solve the problems they have right now:

http://www.copyblogger.com/email-marketing/

7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design

A Simple Presence Framework
A brilliant post by Chris Brogan about how to set up your business presence on the internet. Read it, memorize it.

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/a-simple-presence-framework/

Is Facebook Past It’s Prime?
Did it ever have a prime? I suppose it did, but this article echoes my feeling about Facebook (though I never spent that much time on it in the first place, I’d much rather post my thoughts to my blog and my photos to flickr and tie the two together).

http://www.macworld.com/article/141565/2009/07/facebook.html?lsrc=rss_main

ProBlogger.net 31 Days to Build a Better Blog
A free course through email to becoming a better blogger from an expert in the field. Basically, you can sign up to get an email a day for the next 31 days. Each one has one task to complete that day and some instruction on how to do it. This is an auto-responder campaign set up with aweber (I recognized the subscription confirmation page), so it’s interesting from that point of view. If we could figure out similar free courses our clients could give, they are a great way to stay in touch with potential customers. I’m signing up for it and it’s something I’d recommend for anyone who’s going to blog:

http://www.problogger.net/31-days-to-build-a-better-blog-join-9100-other-bloggers-today/

That means that Google tracks what links people click for the search terms and gives more weight to the links that are clicked more. Makes good sense.

Wait, where does brand come into it, you ask? It comes in on the result: the better known brands are getting clicked more, so they come up higher.

Some people think that Google is assigning some kind of brand value to the links in the search results (to let the big guys have bigger pull is usually what they say and therefore it’s the end of fairness on the Internet). That doesn’t make much sense from a programming point of view. Do they have someone sitting behind a computer somewhere saying, “Well, IBM is a pretty big brand, so I’m going to give it an 8 and then Dell is smaller, so it gets 6?”

Not likely. The fact is that name recognition still counts on the internet and when I see search results that include brands I know, I’m more likely to click on those links. And if those are the links I wanted from that search, Google wants to put that up as high as possible on the page.

It also means that your off-line marketing does have an effect, keep it up!