Pea-Finding Maximizers Improve Your Odds: SEO Tricks You Can Use Right Now.

One problem I face creating a new website is in the buzzy realm of SEO – Search Engine Optimization, right? Maybe I am branding the company. Maybe I’m crafting content for a new or revised site. In all cases, it is now a challenge – and good client service – to get the new site’s page ranking higher on Google and other search engines.

How to find and use the right search terms in copy, if you’re a marketer or copywriter? How to build them into your website, if you’re an in-house graphic designer or a outsource coder?

These days we pay more attention because the Internet’s a shell game. The complexity and competition of the worldwide web are the shells; your website’s optimized efficiency is the pea. Discover the pea and you win more…eyeballs. But the pea is elusive. You need more than guesswork. You need pea-finding maximizers.

I always try to find and use a set of current practices when creating a site. (“Current” is important because the game changes all the time.)

That’s just what I’ve done over the past few days. I completed a website’s content with the extra help of 11 simple but effective tricks. I learned – or re-learned – them at a Search Engine Optimization lunch seminar last week. The good people* at CITOC brought Toronto-based Stuart Crawford, President and Chief Marketing Officer at Ulistic, to lead the instruction.

Here’re my current pea-finding maximizers.

1. Start with a tight-and-right marketing plan. Every great website is based on one. Getting it nailed is harder than it looks. And it’s also where you evaluate key words and search terms.

I sharpen this by building in brand-related words, too – important when the client’s marcomms will help push customers and prospects to the new site: not just “oilfield sand screens,” for example, but “open hole expandable sand screens.”

2.  Use text and lots of it. (or Department of Music to a Copywriter’s Ears). Google searches text. The more of it there is on a website, the greater the opportunity for search programs to spot your key words.

3.  Optimize for where you do business. Adjust your website(s) to relate to prospects locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. All of these if you do business globally.

Searches that are effective in Hong Kong or Heidelberg may not work as well in Houston and vice versa – key phrases may be completely different from region to region. Example: “combat boots” in the US, “military boots” in the UK.

4.  Search engines work even better with “current events.” The fresher the news the better off your website is, search engine-wise. Frequency of fresh news is also a strong attractor. Which leads to…

5.  Easy updating is crucial. However you can do it, you need to be able to change up news, events and other elements on your site quickly and easily. Whether you’re the one, or you have an outside resource do it, it has to be fast and simple. Make it so.

Okay – keep a clock on your IT department, your outside vendor or freelancer. The sooner the news release is posted, the sooner search engines can get to work. No, I don’t mean it has to be done this New York minute; “timely” is the right measurement here.

6.  Enjoy more wham! from your website title tag. If you can transmit a key word or key term in the website title, do it. Putting “Jones and Company” is way less effective than “Cheap Diamond Rings ׀ Jones and Company.”

Or look at Signalwrite.com where the upper left title tag starts with “Richard Laurence Baron.”  Then comes “Signalwrite” followed by “Marketing Copywriter Houston.” My brand is built on my three-part name. I want people to search for – and find – me. Thank you to Brian Bearden and Zephyr Salvo for constructing it this way.

7.  Put a Convert Button on every page. Do not lose the chance to call-to-action right where your readers may be stopping.

8.  Use PR releases for backlink to your site. More frequent publicity releases, even for in-company celebrations, can boost visits to your website…remember to put hotlinks into your PR every time.

9.  Then get OPWs to link to yours. That’s Other People’s Websites. Your partners, vendors, customers – either from some social media site(s) or their own websites…this will drive traffic to yours also. Don’t forget to return the favor.

10. Take massive advantage of Google Places. B2B or Retail, especially Retail – put up a separate Google Places listing for each store, office and facility. Don’t forget to check current address details.

11. Test and measure, test and measure. Keep using Google Analytics and other options to see how your newly effectorized website is doing. SEO needs some care and feeding, you just want to know what, where and when.

These are nowhere near all the SEO rules, tips and tricks. And unless your life is spent online, that means another kind of shell game for you to confront. How do you pick the right SEO person or firm to help you with this?

Maybe “test and measure” applies here, too. C’mon, can I get some opinions on this from real social media experts?

*Nota Bene (which means “note well”): Signalwrite-sized thanks with loud tropical shirts on to Citoc’s BJ Farmer and his team for timely and tasty learning; to Ulistic’s Crawford, taking advantage of Houston weather before snow-flying time comes to eastern Canada; and Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516) who shows that finding the pea has been much harder than it looks for centuries. From Wikimedia Commons.

Operate Your Website for More than One Audience at a Time.

You’ll see this graphic when you go to Upstream Marketing’s revamped website. Principal Brian Bearden and I were looking for a way to simply show how many more audiences are affected by a company’s website than most businesspeople consider.

We drew an early version of the graphic on a prospect’s whiteboard. (It really wasn’t a blackboard – that’s so 20^th Century.) Even in the new website version, Bearden has kept the graphic expression simple.

The effects of the Web are indisputable; but listen, there are about 7.6 million businesses in the US alone (US Census, 2010). Which means that for every spectacularly savvy biz with a great website or two or three, there are maybe 10 or 15 that DO NOT realize all the impacts a website can have on their company’s sales, marketing and growth.

Effects on your audience(s) can be both positive and negative. So I view websites as “conversation changers.” Company managers can’t control every single conversation with a prospect, with an investment analyst, with a shareholder. Yet the website’s going to be the first place people go to have a conversation in both metaphorical and literal senses.

The graphic also imagines that some of the website’s exchanges ought to be two-way conversations, dialogues between you and customers, for example; or employees. Other interactions may be one-way: messages to prospects, perhaps, or trade press editors, at least to start with.

In a 50-word opening paragraph, the UpstreamMarketing.net “About” section says:

We believe that in today’s world more and more effective marketing and sales conversations start with the website. Your website. So our job is to build engaging, easy-to-use, industrial websites for process and manufacturing industries, engineering and service companies. Conversation-changers. Game-changers…the most effective sites – bar none.

I want you to be strategic about your website before you actually make changes, radical or not. SEO is important; content creation also. But deliberation counts for more. A thoughtless website can kill a sale.

The right website, one touched by human thinking, can change your sales or marketing or employee conversations for the better. This is provably true. The best websites can change your game.

To keep the total idea in mind, simple is what you can draw on a whiteboard.

PS: Having visualized this marvelous model, now I have to figure out how to apply it to my own Signalwrite.com site. I’ll get back to you on that.

Tricon Precast Gets a “Fighting Grade” Website from Barrett-Wehlmann.

When you pay any attention to it at all, it seems like “bricks and mortar” – the old infrastructure stuff. Precast concrete is nowhere compared to, say, tablet computers and social networks, or sex-appealing wind turbines.

In the NAICS 327390 world of “Other Concrete Product Manufacturing,” it’s an industry that makes its living manufacturing concrete products like barriers and bridges, sound walls and traffic dividers.

Except when highway construction interrupts your commute, though it is effectively invisible.

It’s no invisible business for Tricon Precast or for its web agency, Barrett-Wehlmann. Tricon Precast actively participates in precast concrete products. Its end-users are mainly infrastructure people, from state highway commissioners and roadway engineers to contractors of all sizes.

Whether the economy is hot or cold; whether civil engineering projects are shovel-ready or on hold, Tricon Precast works with professionals all over the region. Tricon Precast is rather like the man behind the man behind the gun and, as a result, its business is far more about technically rich information than brand presence.

That’s how Barrett-Wehlmann created the new fighting grade website for Tricon Precast. “Fighting grade” is a term not much used these days; but a few years back, it aptly described the roll-up-your-sleeves world of products and services whose benefits far outweighed the need for hype…quality-conscious and price-conscientious.

It ain’t fancy, this new website; it is tremendously functional. Barrett-Wehlmann principal Darrell Wehlmann, who’s also responsible for the SEO on this site, names the website attributes:

…in-depth information about its products and services...clear communication about the benefits of its precast concrete solutions….rich with content, technical data and downloads…easy to navigate and use.

On this project, James Grantham is the Creative Director; Carl Glatzel is the designer. Artist Mike Guillory created the 1950s-style illustrations on the HOME page, an excellent touch. And I wrote the copy – I’m always grateful to Barrett-Wehlmann for involving me in clients and projects that are just different enough from the everyday to be completely involving.

In Henry V, Shakespeare described what I take the Tricon Precast site to represent: “We are but warriors for the working-day.”

Thanks to clients B-W and Tricon Precast, I got to be this kind of warrior myself.

“CMO’s Guide To The Social Media Landscape” a Primer for Site Choices.

I wish I’d gone to this year’s Houston edition of the Online Marketing Summit. I have attended OMS each of the past four years, had to miss this one. The event has become such a magnet for marketing professionals and here I am in the “absent” column.

Brian Bearden of Upstream Marketing has been there all day. One of his texts says, “I’m surprised by the caliber of the speakers – and I know only a handful of…attendees. Attendance is very low.” The first part is great news: past years’ OMS speakers have been outstanding. Though there was some concern expressed over this year’s slate, OMS has definitely delivered the mail today on this score.

The event has been promoted heavily by AMAHouston, the BMA chapter of which Bearden is outgoing president, Energy People Connect and many others. But there are a surprising number of people who’ve told me that they couldn’t get away from the office today – I’m one of those. Everyone’s busy. (So this is actually good news too.)

For you and you and me – the ones who didn’t make it, take a look at this great chart from CMO.com – 10 social network choices with green-yellow-red choice points. Sites from Facebook to Digg are graded in four areas – Customer Communication, Brand Exposure, Traffic to your Site and SEO value.

Read this Guide. Print a copy for yourself. Use it to impress your colleagues...and your bosses. Best for the weekend.

Svedka Vodka: Strangely Appealing Robot Love-and-Liquor Combo.

Advertisers use robots in the pages of certain trade publications and nerd-mags. Wired, for example. I thought robot-featuring ads were going to take over this magazine in 2009, although paging through back issues I could only spot a couple reliably.

Ford’s SYNC®, “the guru of directions,” is a generic monowheeler. ESET, more I-robot-y, promises to protect us against cybercrime.

These days, I’m enjoying Svedka® vodka’s fembots.

They’re not the first CPG-related robots but I have come late to this brand*. I’m not hip enough myself (anymore if ever); I don’t live in the trendy parts of Houston or other large metro areas like Chicago and New York City, where the brand’s promotion is heavily deployed.

Despite early criticism (New York-based Copyranter, for example, hated these ads), I think the brand has three likeable attributes.

First, Svedka is value-priced, recognizing that there’s quite a bit of hype in the tonier brands of vodka which, no matter what people say, is still “an unaged colorless liquor originating in Russia.” Want to drink a lot? Drink this one. It’s both cheap and good-tasting. It’s from Sweden. Which keeps on being cool without being snooty. The current bottle shape is more reminiscent of Absolut.

Second, Svedka states it’s “voted the #1 vodka of 2033.” Wonderful, this claim: Neatly counter-intuitive, much less pretentious than some of the upscale vodkas. Besides, 20-plus years from now, no one will remember it and won’t need to.

Third, since the brand is invested in an imaginary (and party-hearty) future, Svedka can use…robots. See ‘em on the website, even build your own, a nice but not complicated level of interaction. See ‘em in advertising like the ones shown here, and in a range of other marketing materials.

Constellation Brands bought this vodka in early 2007 and says it’s now the third largest imported vodka brand in the US. As big as Constellation is, the brand is nimble and wry. A year after the purchase, Svedka offered then Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton free vodka for the rest of the 2008 election season.

The offer appeared in a full-page ad complete with fembot and coupon appeared on Page A11 of The New York Times. But unlike Clinton, the Svedka vodka campaign is still running.

*Svedka robots were created by New York-based agency Amalgamated in 2005 and the vodka has been an Adams “Growth Brand” and an IMPACT “Hot Brand” awardee every year since 2006. I’m just behind the curve.

Dear HugeDomains.com: $995 is Too Much for this Blog Name – Ya Pirates.

I have missed the opportunity to make a lot of money. Again. Mainly because I wasn’t clever enough to [a] gobble up a bunch of neat url names and [b] hold them for ransom. Here’s what the “About” part of the pirates’ site says:

HugeDomains is a premium domain reseller site that strives to bring you brandable domains for your business at a fraction of the cost.

So this firm not only has Signalwriter (which is a brand name I invented) but also SignalDepot and SignalBay and – oh yes – HowToBeACopywriter. Dot com.

Still, fair is fair. I did create the Signalwriter name – it’s a trademark. But these folks thought hard enough about the subject to scoop it up and purchase the url before I (finally) got around to it. It is the part of the model of capitalism to offer for sale something that people want to buy.

I therefore admit to sour grapes. Arrrh!

(At least HugeDomains.com does not own www.sourgrapes.com – that’s a Warner Bros url.)

Signalwriter Marketing Blog is the property of Richard Laurence Baron. “Signalwriter” and “Signalwrite” are trademarks. All rights reserved. Painting: Muti, jene Trauben sind sauer, Joris van Son, c 1660-1665.

Fruitocracy’s Footsoldiers

Here’s a bottle of Fizzy Lizzy Yakima Valley Grape soda – eight flavors all in neat glass bottles that the FL website calls “soldiers of Fruitocracy.” Well known in among modern foodies, the NYC company’s been around for eight years. Naturally (when it comes to “natural”), I’ve been behind the curve: Barbara and I finally selected a test bottle at Phoenicia on Westheimer.

The beverage is carbonated water and fruit juices, which have been empirically balanced to get the flavors that the brand owners like. I hadn’t seen any advertising in Houston.

I’m in it not just for the taste but for the quite neat website.

I recommend it to your attention and you can read the entire story of Fizzy Lizzy right there. It is a fine blend of art and message that conveys the hand-crafted nature of the products. There’s more scattered in various corners of the Internet like DesignWorkLife.com; if this is the kind of product you like and aren’t already sucking down, check out Ms Lizzy and her products.

“24HRWebmaster.com” Begins

John Phillippe will attempt to provide one more answer to a (relatively) ageless question: Can you successfully market a service that’s hardly been thought of yet? I intend to help out with the answering process so this post is NOT disinterested. No atheists in foxholes here.

A plunger sparkler is a toy with a ratchet-driven spinning disk that shows sparks behind red celluloid windows. Phillippe is like that sparkler only he throws off ideas. Sometimes, one catches fire.

I think that’s what’s happened with 24HRWebmaster.com, the new Internet-delivered application that’s up and running now. This is an on-demand website maintenance service, a fix-it bureau for companies who either don’t have their own webmasters in-house or keep these professionals busy on more critical activities.

Around the clock, US website owners (of any size, shape and description) can log into their accounts online and request help changing their sites. Because of Phillippe’s long experience with websites, he makes sure that the services – fixes, changes, additions, deletions – are completely secure and done on time…within 24 hours, in fact.

Even large-scale organizations with in-house web pros sometimes have difficulty adding the name of the most recent sales manager in Des Moines, or the latest press release from the Florida operation. For companies and organizations without their own webistas, change represents even more of a challenge.

In Phillippe’s vision, 24HRWebmaster.com is there to quickly and efficiently execute content updates, database changes, graphic adds and deletes, FLASH animation revisions, site restructurings, feedback form modifications, even upload. The web service bureau can also troubleshoot coding problems.

All of these elements can be accomplished at one low hourly fee – a good deal given how much a real web professional can can do in 60 minutes.

He make it easy to maintain a fresh, relevant website. If I were writing sales copy (and this post is practice), I’d point out 24HRWebmaster.com is perfect for marketing and corporate communications people who live at the beck and call of their organizations 24 hours a day.

What’s with the coffee cup? Famous web-geeks are famously fueled by Jolt cola and Snickers bars. What powers this new web service bureau’s 24-hour-a-day activity could be that same chemical in coffee form…so Phillippe portrays the concept graphically by using this funky cup, soon to appear on the site.

A cuppa joe is probably the right metaphor for Phillippe himself. Author Honoré de Balzac said, “Coffee plunges into the stomach...the mind is aroused, and ideas pour forth like the battalions of the Grand Army on the field of battle.”

Here’s a fresh battalion for the wired battleground. Send a report from the front: If you try 24HRWebmaster.com for yourself, let me know if it delivers on its promises. I’ll faithfully report user experiences.

LifeFormulae™ Brandwork

Today’s horrid cliché: There are no small clients – only limited imaginations. Exceptions, though, disprove this rule; Lee Jones, Executive Vice President of LifeFormulae LLC, is one of them.

Thanks to Jones, I’ve been working to establish a brand around a software-as-a-service – called SaaS – for the third time in as many years. SaaS is a delivery mechanism for software, more efficient in many ways that purchasing a software package and installing it on your computer. In this case, the effort is for LARTS, the LifeFormulae ASN.1 Reader Tool Set. (In the world of bioinformatics, it’s safe to say LARTS is delivered by SaaS. Got that?) LifeFormulae is a new company…but that isn’t holding Jones and the rest of the team back.

With Jones’s encouragement, a brand has been built around the company itself, rather than its products. Seems straightforward: LifeFormulae, the toolmaker for life-science researchers worldwide, helps investigators shorten the time from research to results.

It’s really not so simple, not when it comes to the complex and challenging world of life sciences. The principals of LifeFormulae have built a better computational mousetrap that speeds up the unraveling of the secrets of life. Outside any perception of brand is a metaphysical platform captured in part by Jay Lake in his latest book:

And so Creation worked, the planet spinning like the hands of a watch, meshing with the ring of its orbits as it transited through the sky. Everything danced around everything else, advancing in a mechanical sarabande that told the story of God’s craftsmanship more eloquently than words in any book to talk…

At its most abstruse, LifeFormulae software aims to help life scientists breach the wall of God’s craftsmanship at speed: To provide them with the quickest route to the genomic and proteomic answers they need.

Beyond any brand communications the company is likely to develop, the motive for the stopwatch visual (discovered and deployed by website development manager Rachel Sandrock) is the intricate construction of life. What lies beyond this boundary, for researchers, “is another Creation.”

Whoa! All the foregoing is way too philosophical.

Look: There’s a new logo for LifeFormulae, created by Griffin Creative. The new look for this small bioinformatics company is provided by Sandrock. Her stopwatch visual could stand for “nonstop solutions;” instead, it emphasizes the time-sensitive deconstruction of life’s secrets.

And the new branding, from brand story to words, comes from me: LifeFormulae is the resource for researchers – the one that can deliver what they need for a shorter time to a result, a critical product…a cure. Everything’s on line to support Jones’s forceful sales and marketing initiative.

A small company may not have the time to explore every possible interaction with its stakeholders. It might have to start from scratch, inventing a position based on product attributes. Despite all the theory in the world, that’s not a bad place to begin branding. And it’s going to show up first at the Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s “Data-Driven Discovery Summit” in Providence, RI, September 21-25.

There’ll be more to this story. I’ll feed it to you as we go. Meantime, thanks to the LifeFormulae team – Ira Crain, Bill Eaton, Pam Culpepper, Jones and Sandrock – for the opportunity to help build another Creation.

“Streisand Effect”

From today’s The Gazette (Montreal): Reporters are still chafing over the issue of blocked websites, only two weeks after Beijing and the International Olympic Committee went toe-to-toe over the issue and the Chinese seemed to back off.

Plenty of websites are still blocked, such as Amnesty International, Free Tibet, and a YouTube video showing the 1989 protest and aftermath at Tiananmen Square.

Aren’t the Games going swimmingly? Seen the nice commercials, have you? Notice how the sports reporters refer to the “haze” in Beijing? Catch the announcement by the officials of the International Olympic Committee are giving China a pass on this one?

Don’t mean to be political, but still, I wonder if China’s blocking action will come back to bite ‘em. It’s been generally proven that trying to block access to information on the Worldwide Web is self-defeating (at least most of the time.). This has been called the Streisand Effect, after an attempt by Barbra Streisand to get photos of her Malibu, CA, mansion removed from the Internet. There’s even a website devoted to the concept now.

William Shakespeare said it first (or best): “Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long.” You can certainly count on the IOC to avoid offending totalitarian regimes. Let’s wait for a bit and see if the Games’ advertisers pay the piper, eh?

File photo by Frederic J Brown.

Social Control

Despite my best intentions, it isn’t possible to capture everything that was presented this morning at “Demystifying Web 2.0: Using Social Media to Reach Healthcare Audiences.”

This summer’s seminar, put on by the Healthcare Special Interest Group of the American Marketing Association-Houston, can be briefly reviewed here. However, the event went for two hours solid and could have gone another two – it was a full house listening to challenging speakers (four of them) with every ounce of attention they could muster at 7.30 on a Friday morning.

The basic plot: How healthcare organizations can or ought to use social media, like blogs; Facebook and MySpace; videos and podcasts to build better interactions between their brands (institutions) and their stakeholders – patients, patients’ families and friends, etc. There are already a lot of players in all these arenas: I wish you could have listened to the presentations.

The moderator was Katie Laird, of sunny disposition, an indefatigable blogger who’s Strategic Advisor for Houston-based Schipul – The Web Marketing Company.

Then there were two speakers each from the hospital side and the social media side – and this is really where deep issues could have surfaced, given enough time.

Hospitals? An exemplary case history was presented by Jennifer Texada of UTMDACC – that’s MD Anderson Cancer Center and a mouthful in any conversation. Texada presented an array of current programs and future plans that demonstrated how MD Anderson is building communities of interest among its patients and well as some of its staff. Chris Ferris countered with warm humor how far St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System has yet to go…although his organization is making progress.

From the Social Media Enablers’ side, passionate Paul Griffiths came in from Boston to present the MedTouch point of view – he’s the firm’s CEO and one of the leaders of social marketing for healthcare organizations. Griffiths firmly believes that information ought to be free, free (as in the “don’t tie me down” school of free) – and that no organization needs marketing copywriters to develop content. You understand that I’m not thrilled with this later idea from the perspective of my life’s profession, but he is a true visionary about the immense capabilities of social media and a thrilling speaker.

He was seconded by the compassionate Jay Drayer of Houston, founder of CareFlash. His firm developed and has deployed very successful “community” tools for putting patients and their families on the Web. CareFlash is remarkable story in itself.

In the seams of these presentations, there were several elemental struggles implied but never explored fully.

One is the issue of control. The healthcare facilities’ very real need for professional and legal control of content in social media environments was admitted – and some institutions can change to accommodate Griffith’s conviction that (eventually) the needs of the patient/caregiver community will win out despite legal departments and HIPAA laws. This is partially an issue of “stodge” and partially of medicine’s attention on cures.

Another issue never quite address was the other leg of the healthcare delivery system – the physicians. Many hospitals today are filled with service teams (nurses, techs, swampers, etc.) Doctors are frequently independent contractors and so are often not even billed through the same system. Unless key parts of a specific institution such as MD Anderson are featured in social media, how do you get doctors to be as socially open as patients want them to be?

Some hospitals don’t even allow patients or their families to access the Worldwide Web from inside the facility – there’s no WiFi, no “public computers” available for use.

It is likely that social media for healthcare audiences have developed way faster than most healthcare institutions or practitioners want or desire. These particular stakeholders see their stakeholders as packages to be conveyed through their systems (as Griffiths pointed out in an illustration of “the old way”).

Maybe this cast will be assembled again, for the edification of other attendees. I think you missed the beginnings of an immensely provocative conversation revolving around issues of social control – a tug of war happening now at your nearby hospital.

Thanks to the Healthcare SIG of AMA-Houston and all the speakers. Photograph © Yanik Chauvin from Dreamstime.com

Leaving Footprints?

What’s a social networker to do? There’s no doubt that marketers don’t (or no longer ought to) broadcast messages to a massive, passive audience. There’s a reason which the term “opinion leaders” goes back to 1955…but you can contrast this idea to some of the recent Super Bowl XLII – interesting if you have a leading opinion about Dalmatians or Richard Simmons (I was bemused by the Bridgestone commercials, so sue me).

“The Cluetrain Manifesto” was written almost 10 years back and it is now accepted that markets are conversations. I won’t even put that in quotes, it’s becoming a bit tattered.

More and more new mechanisms – like Facebook – are being used for marketing. More social conversations. More prospective marketing interactions. So web marketers are hoping that social networks like Facebook will take Internet advertising into its “fourth phase,” beyond search advertising. Marketers not only want to observe consumers’ conversations (via tracking), they want to participate in those conversations.

Okay – social media is on the right path. One possible challenge, though, is that you may not be able to leave the party once you’ve joined it – I mean like the Communist Party, not the St. Andrew’s Day bash at your local.

Too long a lead? Apparently, you never actually disappear from Facebook. Even if you opt out of sharing information. Even if you deactivate your account. According to a copyrighted story by Maria Aspan in yesterday’s New York Times, “Some users have discovered that it is nearly impossible to remove themselves entirely from Facebook, setting off a fresh round of concern over the popular social network’s use of personal data.”

As Aspan says, disenchanted users can’t disappear from the site without leaving footprints unless they rigorously delete their data, line by line, and then deactivate. (You can read more, by blogger Steven Mansour, in his own dramatic post here – which is also mentioned in the NYT article…very in-your-face.)

So it’s social interaction vs personal privacy. On the one side, you ought to be responsible enough to realize that your personal stuff is, like, on billboards where everyone can see it, right? Yep, you may very well regret showing off those tattoos (or body parts) at some future point in your life. But there’s no 1984 here, no way to go back most of the time and erase those embarrassing – or even worse – items. So social interaction websites ought to be touched with some human thought…yours.

On the other side, (most) marketers don’t really want to know in detail what you did after leaving the bar with your work buddies Friday night. Marketers normally want “you” in specific portions, not you in particular and personally. Why? Principally, I think, because they don’t have the time for one-to-one selling, though this does occur. I choose not to speak for the government.

I was just invited to join the Only in Houston group on Facebook and since I use the site, I thought, “Why not?” Maybe Ann Iverson will buy me a Martini. I don’t believe any information I have on Facebook will horrify anyone, I don’t care about that. Maybe I’ll have more conversations this way.

But do consider that every participant in a conversation leaves footprints (I know, it’s a mixed metaphor). A talented marketer, advertiser or publicist will follow those footprints and, perhaps, try to engage you in additional conversations. That’s what we’re paid to do, we want to involve you somehow in the brands we represent. The real trick is to make the action – and the conversation – meaningful to both parties in the conversation. How come? The Internet is a two-way street. The person leaving the footprints can easily track yours as well.

If you want to stop leaving footprints altogether, it’s going to you take a lot of work.

WEDGE Revamped

The new website for WEDGE Group has just gone live. It’s handsome and, if I do say so, elegant in form and simplicity. (I’m the co-creator and copywriter.)

Napoleon’s epigram about time is quoted often: “Ask me for anything but…” It’s sadly and particularly true of the investment business, especially in publicly held companies. For these unfortunates, the next quarter’s performance is far more important to the stock analysts on The Street than long-term returns.

Privately held WEDGE Group uses time to distinguish itself from other investment firms. It constitutes a unique selling proposition, a rarity in today’s financial world where millions of dollars are spent on hammering common-or-garden brand statements onto customers’ mental church doors.

To realize WEDGE Group’s USP, we combined outstanding input from the company’s management and transformed the brand presentation – while maintaining the brand itself.

“Time is the most valuable asset,” according to WEDGE. “Time enables its companies to gain noteworthy competitive advantages and achieve strong returns.”

Together, designer Kay Krenek and I created a high-concept website that relies on clean white space, dramatic visuals and stately copy that continually reveal brand attributes in layered detail, a scalpel instead of a hammer. It’s the kind of brand image quite a number of companies would like to have but don’t always achieve…because they’re rushing to sell something.

WEDGE Group’s “gift of time” is an unusual characteristic, a terrific contrast to the ordinary pace of commerce.

Krenek, whom I am fortunate to have as a design colleague, found the most marvelous clockwork photograph for the home page (as you can see). Her sensibility carries the website through a set of pages wherein we concentrate on imagery and brand-related text instead of overwhelming details and tricks. Bob Marberry is the web developer. The result is a purposeful re-presentation of the WEDGE Group.

Please: Review the new site and tell me what you think it does for the WEDGE brand.

Technosurround Hell?

In “Dyepot,” a blog out of Portland, OR, the writer mentions the word technosurround, another neologism from Kim Stanley Robinson (see here). In the blogger’s notes, she explains Robinson’s view that “…This can be overwhelming: too much is like being high or in a shaman-state all the time.”

I ran across the word again myself while I was reading the book and Googled it up. “Dyepot” was the only place it turned up as a single word.

Like Robinson’s previous idea, it struck me there’s a marketing implication in the concept of technosurround – from several directions.

Like one of Robinson’s inspirations, the idea of a world-encompassing, omnipresent advertising presence comes from the novels of Phillip Dick, best expressed on the screen in movies such as “Bladerunner” (1982) and “Minority Report” (2002). Writer Michael Stroud wrote in Wired that in one of the movie’s scenes, fugitive John Anderton (Tom Cruise) is accosted by an interactive video advertisement on a wall: “John Anderton, you could use a Guinness right now.”

The film’s production designer, Alex McDowell, is quoted in Stroud’s article: “There’s a logical progression from the way the Internet works now to more enveloping, environmental advertising that’s networked.” McDowell is describing the growing use of increasingly personalized ads – currently blooming on our Internet.

We’re building the technosurround now. This past Thursday, the Houston chapter of the Business Marketing Association brought the current iteration of the Online Marketing Summit to town. It was well-attended and lively.

One thing was very clear: the Internet is its own industry, like the energy industry and the healthcare industry – and it has its own fairly focused agenda. It’s in the Internet industry’s interest to maximally increase everyone’s involvement with the Worldwide Web.

It means that “web marketers” have become this decade’s version of TV network marketers, and radio network marketers before that: give us all your money and we’ll make sure people pay more attention to your product or your service.

Unlike the technosurrounds previously established by other forms of mass media, the new version is personally interactive, like the cell phone you’re carrying around with you right now – and don’t you wish it was an iPhone?

Danger, Will Robinson: The “Minority Report” theme is that the technosurround eventually captures and tracks each and every one of us – to the detriment of freedom and liberty (two quite different concepts, actually).

The blessing is “social media” and the ability it gives us to rage against the machine, if we’re so inclined. Just like this blog, or even more provocative blogs and other forms of interactive communication. Just remember that if China can control the Web content that its population can access, so can America.

I’m torn. On the one hand, I welcome the integration of social media with Web marketing…it’s a powerful way to enact the Stakeholder Rule© on behalf of companies and institutions. On the other hand, I absolutely, positively do not want Amazon (for example) to be all that familiar with my reading habits or any of my other idiosyncracies. Technosurround be damned.

“Richard Laurence Baron, you could use a Guinness right now.”

Above, a futuristic Reebok ad from “Minority Report.” “Stakeholder Rule” © Richard Laurence Baron. All rights reserved.