Social Media Op – answering the prevailing question …

This is a question we are still getting, “What is Social Media Optimization (SMO)? And how do we use it to grow our business?”

We posted much of this early last year, but it’s still very relevant and we’ve added an idea or two.

Thanks to our Doug Patten of www.dmpattenonline.com, we have a complete response to this question that more and more people are asking. We believe SMO is more relevant to some industries and their resulting websites than others, but all websites can use his advice about linking and content updating with success. I’ve known Doug for more than twenty years (which is absolutely impossible as far as I am concerned) and it’s a privilege to bring his expertise to our friends here in Detroit. Drop me a line if you want to have a conversation about SMO specific to your business. dorothy@marketwithpandora.com. We’ll get Doug involved and see how we can make it work for you within your budget.

Over the past few years Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) for websites has developed into a refined art form with companies devoting a significant amount of time and effort defining best practices and preaching the values of SEO and SEM for raising a website’s performance. While I believe in the power of SEO and SEM, there is a new offering for clients which we call Social Media Optimization (SMO). The concept behind SMO is simple: incorporate changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines, and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and other media platforms. Here are the top five ways to optimize a site for social media:

1. Increase your linkability – This is the first and most important priority for websites. Many sites are “static” – meaning they are rarely updated and simply used as an online brochure or storefront. To optimize a site for social media, we need to increase the linkability of the content. Adding a blog is a great first step, however there are many other ways such as creating white papers, e-books and other thought pieces that will go a long way towards this goal.

2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy – Adding content features like quick buttons to “add to delicious” or “add to digg” are a great start. An even better option is to add a more comprehensive “share this” button at the end of the article. These generally are far more comprehensive and allow content to be posted to more than just one or two sites. These options are one way to make the process of tagging pages easier, but you can (and should) go beyond this, making sure pages include a list of relevant tags and/or suggested notes for a link (which come up automatically when you tag a site on delicious among others). Make sure to tag your own pages on popular social book-marking sites first (including more than just the homepage) to jump start your visibility on each of those sites as well.

3. Inbound links – Frequently used as a barometer measuring the success of a blog (as well as a website), contextually relevant inbound links are critical to rising in search results and overall rankings. To encourage more of them, you need to produce original, compelling content. Establish an editorial calendar and stick to it – if you find it difficult to post on a regular basis – ask other blog authors you follow or have a rapport with to author a guest post from time to time. This opens up more time for you while increasing your readership with the additional visibility a second author can attract. Additionally, it is now common practice to announce your new postings on micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter, Tumblr or Jaiku for added exposure.

4. Help your content travel – Unlike most of SEO and SEM, SMO is not just about making changes to a site. When you have content that can be portable (such as PDFs, video files and audio files), submitting them to relevant sites will help your content travel further, and ultimately drive links back to your site increasing your rankings and visibility.

5. Encourage the mashup – In a world of co-creation, it pays to be more open about letting others use your content. A perfect example of this is YouTube’s providing code to cut and paste so you can embed videos directly from their site. This revolutionary idea fueled their growth and helped define the emerging world of user created content. Syndicating your content through RSS feeds also makes it easy for others to create mashups that can drive traffic or augment your own content.

6. Make sure your SMO content accurately reflects your brand. Customize your FB and Twitter pages. And not just with your logo – make it real. The Pandora Outside the Box FB page is an example of this. It’s a continuation of our under-development website, and it’s as seamless as it can be. You know when you click off our landing page to the FB page that it is one and the same company. It’s our image. It’s what you expect. Gustav and all. Do you know who Gustav is?

There are many other techniques and best practices that are emerging as this discipline matures and gets more and more sophisticated. As practitioners, we are always on the lookout for new ideas and concepts in Social Media Optimization to encourage use, best practices and ultimately – results for ourselves and our clients.

Let’s chat. That’s the best place to start.

Hey Michigan Friends – check this out!

More exciting news and opportunity! This is going to be an extraordinary evening and a chance to support our Michigan food artisans and wineries …

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 9, 2010

Contact: Claudia Tyagi,  (734) 673-5557 (10 a.m.–6 p.m.), claudia0316@comcast.net

Michigan Wine & Food Showcase at Shiraz Gardens
Michigan Wine Month and Earth Day Coincide at this Premier Event

Bingham Farms, MI – The Michigan Culinary Tourism Alliance is sponsoring the “Michigan Wine & Food Showcase” on Monday, April 19, at Shiraz Gardens in Bingham Farms. Two of Michigan’s Master Sommeliers, Madeline Triffon and Claudia Tyagi, are closely involved with this project and are excited to celebrate Michigan Wine Month with this event.

Admission to the Showcase is $40 per person at the door, from 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. There will be a comprehensive selection of artisan food and wines from Michigan with lavish appetizers of local ingredients prepared by Shiraz Executive Chef Travis Waynick. Winemakers will be on hand to discuss their wines and provide additional information about their winery operations.

From 12:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., the Showcase will be open to restaurant, retailer and distributor staff. Please RSVP with your professional affiliation to Madeline Triffon at Madeline@mattprenticerg.com.

The Michigan Grape and Wine Industry Council (MGWIC), also an event sponsor, is pleased to highlight the event’s tie-in with Earth Day, April 22. Michigan’s wineries, farms and food producers emphasize the importance of buying local and green. Visiting the state’s wineries and other agricultural tourism destinations, and featuring local ingredients on restaurant menus and in retail shops supports the state’s economy.

The MGWIC is using funds from a USDA grant for this Showcase event, one of several underway with the Michigan Culinary Tourism Alliance. The alliance’s goals are to increase menu offerings of local products at restaurants across the state, increase sales and profitability for Michigan specialty crop producers, and promote Michigan as a destination for culinary travel experiences. To learn more about the alliance and other events featuring Michigan wines, visit www.michiganwines.com.

Shiraz Gardens is located at 30100 Telegraph Road, in Bingham Farms, next to Shiraz, which is part of the Matt Prentice Restaurant Group. For more information about the Showcase, contact Shiraz at (248) 645-5289.

# # #

Editor’s Note: Attached is a partial list of wineries and food vendors participating in this event. Members of the media are invited to attend any part of the Showcase at no charge.
The Michigan Wine & Food Showcase will feature more than 30 Michigan wineries and food vendors, including:

2Lads
Bel Lago Vineyards
Black Star Farms
Bowers Harbor Vineyards
Brys Estate
Burgdorf’s Winery
Cascade Winery
Chateau Chantal
Chateau Fontaine
Chateau Grand Traverse
Ciccone Vineyards
Circa Estate Winery
Dizzy Daisy Winery
Domaine Berrien Cellars
Fenn Valley Vineyards
Gill’s Pier
Good Harbor Vineyards
Hickory Creek
L. Mawby
Lawton Ridge
Left Foot Charley
Lone Oak Vineyard Estate
Michigan Apple Committee
Naturipe Farms
Peninsula Cellars
Pentamere Winery
Pleasantview Winery
Sandhill Crane Vineyards
Shady Lane Cellars
St. Julian
Tabor Hill
The Blueberry Store
Uncle John’s Fruit House Winery
Wyncroft

Is it all about the events right now?

Maybe it is. Or maybe it’s about all the folks coming out and doing the best they can with what they have.

I went to to the Matt Prentice Wine Bar at Shiraz in Bingham Farms tonight. A group of 50+ who were out to learn more about (and really enjoy) green wines. I learned a lot. I learned that the way vineyards grow their grapes is not only making a difference in the bottles that we have the opportunity to purchase now, but also about how their practices are going to keep the land richer and healthier for all of us for years to come. There’s a lesson there for us Detroiters and all of us here in our glorious country struggling right now.

I learned something else. Or maybe I just had it confirmed. Yes, in Detroit, we are still struggling. A lot. If you don’t live near or in the D, then you see it on the news. Abandoned buildings, home values crashing and unemployment still staggeringly high. I see it every day as I drive into the city – boarded up houses on either side of the highway with billboards soliciting people to file for bankruptcy. Honestly, I see it here in my little ideal, Norman Rockwell hamlet of Plymouth, Michigan too. Houses owned by the bank and families who we have known and respected for years walking away. By the way, for the record, we still respect them. Perhaps more than ever. These are unprecedented times. Families need to make the right decision for themselves and their children.And those decisions are God-awful hard to make.

But put the brakes on … at least pause it all for a minute.

We are slowly climbing out. Tonight’s event at Shiraz and others recently are proving this. A whole bunch of wonderful, ordinary people came out tonight at Shiraz in Bingham Farms to celebrate Green Wines. Organic wines. Vineyards that are committed to sustainability and practices that are going to keep our earth healthy. Combined with the best sommelier team in Michigan led by the country’s first female Master Sommelier, Madeline Triffon -we all had a great time and celebrated.

Well it’s about time. It’s been all doom and gloom for a while. But events like tonight tell me that we are on the path to recovery. We are rising above the last few years and the turmoil that has defined those years. And if we are seeing this here in the D, where frankly I don’t think it can get much worse, then you know what? The rest of the country will see this too.

Detroiters are resilliant. We are stronger than we should have to be. We are family-focused. We are brilliant entreprenuers. And we all got thrown a very unexpected and very elongated curve ball. But we are on our way back.

Keep turning out Detroiters. Keep being proud of all that we have. If you come to the D, you will see city assets that rival some of the best cities. True, we don’t quite know what to do with them all, but if we all turn out it will only get better.

My boys and I spent Easter Sunday in the D. Church at Christ Church Detroit, a long walk on our beautiful Riverwalk and brunch at Coach Insignia. If we weren’t so stuffed from that incredible meal, we would have done more. But for the day we were Detroiters. And we were proud.

Be proud my Detroit friends. We will not only weather this – we will be a whole lot stronger from it.

Getting positive conversations started …

A few weeks back I posted about my colleague Nic Milani and his belief that a significant part of SE Michigan’s recovery will be based in positive conversations. Dialogues at parties, in restaurants, at bars here in SE Michigan that have zero doom and gloom and all sorts of optimism. I couldn’t agree with him more. If we start believing in SE Michigan and ourselves, then those are the stories the rest of the country is going to start to hear about us — instead of our Kwami junk, miserable economy updates, terrible housing value reports, and so on.

I attended a networking event tonight at The Suburban Collection in Troy. The Suburban Collection is home to the Bentley, Lamborghini, Maserati and Rolls Royce dealerships. There were some seriously nice cars there. There was also some fantastic food, great drinks, a fun photo booth (pix will NOT be posted anytime soon), a ton of giveaways, and (without question, the most important thing on the list) a whole bunch of Metro Detroiters from all sorts of different professions having a fantastic time. There was no gloom and doom that I heard at any of the Red Bull grazing tables, Bombay Sapphire bar, Valentine Vodka bar, or at the Zimba table. There was nothing negative being said at the Dewar’s bar, Quattro dessert table, Cupcake Station treat display, or in the Film Merge interview booth. And there was absolutely nothing negative going on at the Dali station, Gentleman Jack’s bar, or over the Vitamin Water buckets.

Instead there were hundreds of people — some dressed up, some dressed down — having a really good time, smiling, laughing, meeting each other and enjoying the night. A lot of positive conversations were started tonight.

Start your own positive conversation and see where it leads. Tonight for me it led to a few great new metro Detroit contacts and perhaps even a piece of business. But I walked away feeling better about our local area that I have in a while. I believe that’s a mission-critical step for turning things around here. What do you think?

Networking 101

So you get invited to some networking event. What to do? How do you approach it?

First, have your 30-second intro under control. Be ready to tell a new contact who you are, what you do AND (super important) who do you help & how. Gerry Weinberg here in the D taught me this and it has paid off in spades. My example … “Hi. Dorothy Twinney [hearty handshake]. I own a marketing company that works with moderate sized business owners and directors of marketing for larger companies who are usually concerned about one of two things — they are either trying to build and new brand and aren’t sure how to do it effectively in a way that drives customer traffic or they are re-branding an existing product/service or offering a new service and don’t have the marketing support to make it happen. We help. In a way that doesn’t break the bank. Know anyone we could help?”

Second, listen. Don’t overindulge in food or beverage and be prepared to listen — for a while. Offer a potential solution when the time is right. But let the contact tell you about their pain. They will. But you have to let it happen. Avoid the instinct to keep talking them into a corner. Listen to them.

It seems simple. Tell them who you are, what you do, LISTEN and then tell them specifically who you help and how. It works. I promise.

Practice your intro and then use it and perfect it until it starts driving business to you.

Happy networking. D

Can a smile make a difference in business?

We believe so. Thanks Brian Grinonneau for this gentle reminder. No matter how old or young your company is, remember these simple rules. We’re attempting to do this for all our clients right now and it appears to us those companies living these rules are the ones succeeding on 2010 …

1. Target
   You are not all things to all people. Decide on your niche–narrow your focus and broaden your appeal.
2. Be Different
   If your competitors are doing it, don’t. Stand out from an overcrowded marketplace where so much of the advertising and products look the same.
3. Build a Team
   Don’t hire an employee to fill a position. Employ a person to be part of a team to build your business.
4. Be Fast
   Time is the most precious commodity. When delivery is expected Friday, show up Thursday afternoon. Return calls and emails now.
5. Say Thank You
   A lot. Tell your customers and employees how much you appreciate them. Better yet, do it the old fashioned way: take pen to paper and write them a note.
6. Be Consistent
   Make sure your business has a consistent look and feel. A customer must get the same flavor from everyone within your organization. Always.
7. Smile
   Throw out the reasons you think people buy from you like price, product quality or your warranty. They buy because they like you.
8. Fanatical Optimism
   The glass must always be half full. Attitude will always win out in the end and infect all of those around you.
9. Sell Soft
   Don’t ever hard sell. Solve problems. Satisfy wants. Do what is truly best for your customer.
10. Leave Your Comfort Zone
    Never accept the idea that this is the way you’ve always done it. Never accept that a new idea or technology could never work for you.

Bloated Code … What does it mean and how do we fix it?

This question comes up periodically, especially from colleagues who have tried to save money by developing their own websites in a tool such as Dreamweaver. We often find ourselves in the position of coming into a company, trying to do some new things with the website and then realizing (very quickly) that there is only so much we can do within the current coding. What does “bloated code” mean and why should you care? These are questions I posed to one of my all-time favorite web developers and here is his response:

You asked me to address the concept of ‘bloated code’ and our methodology with relation to writing markup code and css. It’s a huge topic but i’ll try to keep it short.

First, let me define ‘bloated code’ as code that is inefficient in that it uses much more markup than is necessary to do what it needs to do. By definition this type of markup is almost always written using older technologies (HTML 4.0, tables-based layout, little or no CSS, no stylesheet). Most ‘bloated code’ i see nowadays is the result of:

• using Dreamweaver strictly as a ‘wysiwyg’ tool, rather than as a code-management tool
• using tables-based layout and inline styles (sometimes a direct result of the first point)
• embedding code and files into a page instead of calling a separate file

Webpages built using these methods can have a variety of disadvantages:

• more time/effort required to update/edit the pages
• decreased visibility/accessibility to search engine spiders
• increased/redundant load-times
• difficulty integrating other technologies/code
• difficulty integrating into any content management system
• difficulty for other developers who need to work with the code
• compromised/disabled accessibility for mobile web users
• decreased accessibility for disabled users who rely on screen readers or alternative browsers to access the web

There are other best-practices for the web that affect all these things, too. Wrapping them all together with a bow defines “web standards” or “standards-based” code. The body that defines these standards is the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).

When we build a web site for a Pandora client, we strive to write the cleanest, most efficient code that follows these standards as closely as possible. The basic tenant behind this methodology is separating content from presentation. That is, separating a webpage’s content (copy, images), from that content’s presentation (sizes, colors, fonts, margins, etc.) – this is what true XHTML/CSS web development is all about – the webpage (HTML) contains the copy, images, and the containers to hold that content, and the stylesheet (CSS) defines layout and style.

The advantages to this approach are:

• clean, efficient markup (html) that is well-organized and easy for search engines to spider
• layout/design that can easily be changed/updated by editing one document (stylesheet) without having to touch a single line of html
• web pages that are easier to update and integrate with other technologies or content management systems

In a properly designed standards-based site, it’s possible to completely redesign the entire website by just writing a new stylesheet. The most illustrative example of this is the css Zen Garden.

This isn’t just about useability and design – as importantly, it’s about SEO as well. Google doesn’t care about javascript or images or nested tables or colors or widths. It simply doesn’t see them. The Google algorithm that processes the data that the search spiders collect is hungry for content and that’s all. If a webpage is nothing but nested tables and images and javascript, it is practically invisible to google.

Well-organized and defined content areas tell search engines what is what on a page. Structuring and labeling content, images, links, and navigation properly with header and paragraph tags, titles, alt tags, and ul lists tell Google everything it needs to know about your whole site, from just one page.

To be fair, if a client is trying to design their own website in Dreamweaver, Dreamweaver isn’t very good at creating this kind of code out-of-the-box. If you’re using DW as a ‘wysiwyg’ tool and letting it write all your code for you, you’re going to end up with nested tables, poor CSS implementation, and much more markup than you need. To really do this right requires being able to dive into the code and write HTML and CSS from scratch. I write most of my code from scratch in Dreamweaver, using DW’s built in code reference tools and file-management to make the job easier, and the preview window to see (roughly) what i’m building. This gives me total control over the markup, and let’s me optimize things completely while keeping everything lean and simple.

Of course, over here at Pandora we can design and code a site for your organization that is concise, easily searchable and presents your services and products in such a way that your audience is quickly driven to take action. Give us a call! It’s often a lot easier to re-do a site than a client thinks it will be.

Look Small. Believe Big.

We are evolving here in Detroit. Our companies are starting to see turnaround. Our residents are continuing to hope for relief. We are as strong as they come here in Metro Detroit. And as we move toward the future, this strength is our backbone.

But we need to do more. We need to start more positive conversations with our friends in Michigan that can continue to strangers globally. We can change things. I believe that – but it starts with the conversations we have in our kitchens, at restaurants, with our customers and clients and in networking venues. I am watching daily as my clients start to see slow and steady upwards progress, but I am reminded continuously that those who perpetuate the doom and gloom mentality are holding us back.

We have companies here in the D that are thriving. Look at www.genesisgenetics.org. Brilliant scientists that are building healthy families. Look at Havis, Inc. in Plymouth who continue to see growth by taking new markets by the horns. Look at a local Detroit non-profit, Cass Community that has built themselves up in the last decade to be a force to be reckoned with. It’s happening all around us. You just need to look small.

Look small. Years ago, when my youngest Bryan was in Dallas he was peering into a corner of the garage. My mother, his grandmother, asked him what he was looking at. At 5’9″ she didn’t see anything. He looked up with all the worldliness of a child and said, “Granny, you need to look small.” And sure enough, he had a little salamander in the corner.

We need to look small and believe big. We need more optimism and positive conversations. There is no place I would rather call home right now than Metro Detroit. And there is no population that I am more proud of than our community.

It’s all good. Remember who your audience is. Know what will drive them to take action. Then execute. Do it. Now.

Optimism in Detroit?

Yes. We can be optimistic in Detroit. And we really need to  be.

Things are starting to turn around here in Motown. The Auto Show was very well attended, private party bookings were up, friends who are looking for jobs have started to find them, and businesses seem to be investing money and resources into growth-oriented activities.

I mentioned last week or so that I had a fascinating interview with Nic Milani of Havis. I still need to write up the post, but another interesting part of that conversation came to mind today. The conversations we have – around a living room, at a bar, in the workplace, at the airport, everywhere – are self perpetuating. If we continuously engage in negative conversations about the doom and gloom, then you know what? It’s going to lead to more doom and gloom. At least that’s how it’s going to feel. Instead, if we focus on some of the positive news that is starting to break, attitudes will start to change. Optimism is contagious. If we start talking things up, things are going to slowly start to come up, more people will keep the positive conversations going and they will spread to other parts of the country and the world. It really is up to us.

So give optimism a go. We have a great city, full of fantastic businesses and some of the strongest people in the country. Change the tone of your conversations and see what happens. If nothing else, I think it will make you feel a bit better. Cheers!

When it rains, it pours. What a high class problem to have.

When it rains, it pours. One of my favorite adages, although usually one that connotes negativity. It’s pouring over at Pandora these days. Keep reading. It’s a really great thing.

I interviewed Nic Milani of Havis, Inc. in Plymouth last week. I still have to write up the article from that and post it. We had a great chat about Detroit, his company’s merger a year ago, the state of Michigan’s economy and what needs to be done to get out of the collective rut many people feel they are stuck in. But one of the most interesting comments he made was this, “Challenges are opportunities. When we have to figure out how to do business globally because we are branching out into new countries, that’s really a high class problem to have.”

So over at Pandora we are having our own little high class problems these days. You see, it is pouring new business right now. The Company has taken off like a rocket in the last few months and Stan, the designers, and I are doing everything we can to hang on for the ride and keep kicking our creative up a notch. I find myself at any given moment doing one or several of the following: juggling everything – managing vendors – making sure clients get the attention they need – keeping calendars on track – keeping the design team happy. And what incredible, high class “challenges” to be overcoming.

For a little company in a down-trodden city that started last year and was just slowly expanding to have to worry about upgrading CRM software and project management tools because we are so busy we are worried what might happen if we don’t is really fantastic.

So how are we doing it? We are remembering what we are all best at and staying out of the way of opportunity. Our designers are loving the projects that are coming in every day, Stan continues to guide us financially and I am strategizing and working directly with all our clients. We are using technology to our advantage, seeking out help as needed and keeping our senses of humor. It’s a great place to be in right now and I couldn’t be more thrilled.

So the next time someone says “When it rains, it pours.” Smile. What a high class problem to have.