I’m catching up on my blog and vlog reading/watching. I slacked for a couple of weeks. Going through garyvaynerchuk.com’s June posts, I came across this 90-something second gem. Man is brilliant. Watch and learn from the master. Yes! THIS is what we’re talking about! Building these connections with your people, whoever they are, wherever they are, and however many they might number is incredibly valuable.

All too often, companies don’t want to make the investment or attempt if they aren’t going to have masses of people following them and participating. You’ll never, ever get there–ever!–if you can’t handle having ten readers. Same as you’ll never be the adored leader of your social set if you don’t make a single friend or talk to anyone. Social media isn’t hiring some agency who promises an army of people to “go viral” with your thing. It’s people organically creating communities, just like they do in the flesh. No different.

It took a couple of pining hours, but when Sara our blog guru and fashionista de officina arrived she immediately said “Oh my gosh, look at your shoes! Oh my, those are amazing.” And then graciously she endured my enthusiastic telling of the siting and capture of these stunning pink and wedge heeled mary janes finished with white trim, a peek-a-boo toe opening and a big white flapper-dancer button clasp.

Just about now you just might be thinking “I thought this was a b2b web marketing blog,” or “Crud, I Googled s-h-o-e instead of s-e-o; I must really be tired…”

Hang in - you’re in the right place. This is a b2b internet marketing agency blog. The topic today is online social networks, and the question is how much of an individual’s personality is appropriate for their social network presence, especially in industries like ours, where we are likely to have an online presence for career that flows quickly in to our personal online profiles.

Barring the extreme, say, for instance, a case where I’d have a facebook persona called Notice My Cool Shoes, and another account with completely different credentials called Susan McElhenney Views Source…where does professional social networking stop and personal hanging out on the web begin?

A creature of detail, I’ll move us to examples. That I do Search Engine Optimization, that’s professional. That I am a working mom with 2 young children…appropriate detail for my Facebook profile? Linked In? How about my interest in transcendent bikram yoga? OK, now, how about the detail that I’m a long distance runner? What if I run with a group called Marketers Marking Miles? What if I run with a group called Moms For The Right to Nurse Our Babies While Standing In Line At the Bank? Are these affinity groups part of my work blog profile? My linked-in profile? My facebook profile? What do you think: Can I twitter my new pink shoes?

Marketing people are very good at communicating. That’s what we call it, and that’s how we make our money, but really, what we like to do is talk, have other people listen, and then see them take action. That’s exciting. On the web, we search marketers pay a lot of attention to what people are looking for, and try to help them find it, but I’m not sure if we marketers are really communicating with the market. That’s where social media comes in…where we get to listen.

Dave Evans pointed out the difference last Thursday at the InteractiveAustin2008 conference, and I wanted to bring it up in the panel I was on, because it needs discussion. That didn’t happen–we did have a lot to cover, between niche marketing on the web and bridging the generations–but it is something to keep in mind as you think about using social media in your marketing mix. Social media is about listening.

Where are people talking about you? What are they saying? Can you help solve their problem with your company or your product? These seem like great opportunities for marketers to get closer to your customers…and learn what they really want, not what we think they want.

We’re kicking off a vlogging series called Search Camp today. There will be short videos on the topics that our clients and colleagues have a lot of interest in. You’ll even have the opportunity to earn merit badges that you can use to breed wild envy among your fellow marketers. Social media marketing is going to be the focus of the first few videos since we get a lot of questions about it. So here’s the first little video… hope you enjoy it!

Click to play

SEO’s prevalence can be maddening. Recently, a client’s design firm questioned our methods and suggested that they not implement our strategy. From the client’s point of view their concerns seemed valid, especially since the designer lists SEO as one of the services they offer. They suggested that below the fold copy with lots of keyword phrases is borderline black hat.

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Yahoo and Google have worked out some paid search advertising deal, announced yesterday. They assure us that it’s not a monopoly or merger. I don’t know what it is, though. From the linked Search Engine Land post, it sounds an awful lot like everything will be run through AdWords, with Yahoo getting to keep a share of the profits. What I want to know about is what this will do as far as the Yahoo Search Submit services go. Are all of the Yahoo paid search services coming over to the Google side or just pay-per-click and contextual advertising?

Guess I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself in what is sure to be a very gradual roll out that already has the anti-trust people in the Senate very, very interested…

I recently vacationed by driving around West Texas and Big Bend (click the pix to see a bigger version). We had a glorious time (consider a Star Party at McDonald Observatory a MUST on your next trip out there) and enjoyed sluicing for gems at Sonora Caverns, cruising up and down mountains and seeing the glory of ALL the geographic regions that make up the great state of Texas.

Before we left, I surfed the web to learn about our hotel’s amenities. No mention of Internet connectivity. None. Gasp! Whatever would we do to entertain the online-video-game playing kiddo? I, personally, looked forward to not being connected, but my son had a different opinion. We surfed around and found a McDonald’s in the area with WiFi. Whew! At least we have an emergency plan!

As an Internet Professional, I spend my days in front of a computer playing with Internet marketing tools, enhancing link development skills, reading blogs and forums, etc. I figured a few days of family time would be wonderful. I’m sad to say I’m the one that felt a little lonely out there. Not only were we unable to surf the web, but we often had no signal on our various cell phone plans. Talk about quiet time!

We’ve talked about the algorithm change over at Google and how it demands actual high-quality content and links from sites if they want to be ranked well–that’s on top of the standard SEO practices and good site architecture. When talking about content, a lot of people want to know what we mean by that. What is good content, and where do you find it? And links?!

Well, you have to make it yourself. You have to think about it and put the work into it. No, it’s not some fifteen minute fix where you go to a site and click some buttons and voila! A really good place to start that gives you both content and links is writing and submitting articles on topics relevant to your business. You write an article and submit it to some of the article submissions sites–there’s probably a small fee–then newsletters and news outlets can pick it up and publish it. The article will link back to your site, giving you a link each time it’s used.

It’s pretty simple to do. What are the basic topics people ask about your industry or business? Can you do a short (under 10) list of things to ask or consider or know about whatever it is that you do? Can you de-mystify something briefly? Know something about the hot topics? Then write up an article and get it out there in the world. An hour or two well-spent doing this can get you a few dozen relevant links in a short period of time. If you put the article up on your site as well, you’ve added well-written, pertinent content to your site. A pretty good use of an afternoon if you ask me…