Social SEO and You

Many people have heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) especially when starting a new business/blog/website (or all of the above) but not many know how easy it can be to get started with SEO.

The focus of this post is to look at Social Media and how it can affect your SEO positively with easy techniques anyone can use to get a little extra out of their content and efforts.

There are four main sections that we’ll take a look at:

• Basic SEO principles
• Facebook Posts
• Twitter
• Video

In order to give you a portable asset I’ve built a power point presentation you can download at the bottom of the post with all of the content.

Basic SEO Principles

Starting with the absolute basics is always the best way to get your head in the SEO game. What most of you probably intuitively know is: in social media people share content that is awesome. So the more awesome you can put into your content, the more likely it’ll get shard, leading to increased SEO for the source you linked back to.

What some of you might not know is this quick list on some easy SEO tips.

Linking in posts

When you reference a book in your post, link to that book, the more outbound links you have the better your SEO according to Google. Remember though, you don’t want to send your potential clients/readers away from your site too often, so use sparingly and always make the link open in a new window.

Using tags effectively

When you finish a post you can always add tags to it that help others know what it’s about. This is also catalogued by Google and used when people search something with those keywords you used as tags. Remember that ‘stuffing’ (adding fake keywords you know are being searched) actually reduces your SEO, so don’t tag Justin Bieber randomly! Unless, you know, you’re actually writing about him.

Use a Site Tree for ‘crawling’

When you develop a website you have the ability of keeping an accessible site tree for users to navigate around with rather than just letting them browse via buttons. It’s really good idea to have it for more than just your readers though, Google spiders crawl site trees far more easily than without which actually ups your SEO.

Use Keyword (Google trends will help you!)

Identifying the keywords that your target audience is using is a pretty big endeavour (and a whole series of blog posts on its own) but if you have some then try to make sure you use them throughout your web pages. Just be really careful not to overload on them, if you pass a certain threshold (sources say that’s anywhere from 6%-15% of this word existing compared to other words) your SEO decreases as Google thinks you’re cheating.

Use keywords in Page Titles and URL links

If you have one keyword that’s the most searched, its best if that’s included directly in the Page title and URL link. Imagine you’re writing a post on a new iPhone App, you would want iPhone and App in your URL as it’s an incredibly highly searched term compared to ‘pumpkin’ or ‘cell phone’ for example.

Use phrases and words people will search for

Something that’s difficult to think of at first is: “How will a potential reader find my site?” I could bet they aren’t typing in your name (unless you’re doing marketing around that) but more than likely searching on your area of expertise, that’s where you want your keywords to be so that they can find you. Example: I’m a business strategist and really love helping clients make strategic plans from social media to product launches. It’s rare that someone will Google Brandon Waselnuk as I’m young and just starting my career. I know though that they are probably searching “Benchmarks for Product Roadmaps” so I should author a post around that and fill it with other great keywords!

That’s all for now

It’s a heavy set of information I’ve just brain dumped on you and you’re probably itching to try out some of the tips and tricks. So at this point I’ll recommend you download the slide deck and at your leisure read through the rest of the content.

You can also check back about a week from now and I’ll have written on the next major topic, Facebook Posts and SEO.

Before you go though, let me know if you like  this format in the comments, and as always if you have any questions I’d be happy to answer them.

Sometimes in business we take hits, sometimes those punches aren’t above the belt. How do you respond?

Looking at business like an organic thing isn’t a new concept; in fact that first known mention of organic growth was in 1899 by Inazo Nitobe’s – The Soul of Japan, but sometimes it gets a little to real and emotions get tied to business decisions. In these emotionally charged situations people hold on tight and go to their corners, fighting for their piece of the pie, and if you get to close, well; you better be ready to take a punch.

The methods of response that I’ve observed in business are:

• Take the hit – This type of person is able to just take that swing and not react. Then later in a proper and well thought out manner they talk about what happened.
• Counter-attack – This person is usually quick to take a rapid swing back. Sometimes lashing out with more data points, 3^rd party backup, or upper management support.
• Avoid at all costs – This person goes for the dodge, duck, dive, and dodge tactic. They pretend it never happened and never follow up, preferring to just keep things rolling and fluid.
• Low blow – This person just goes for the knockout. They pull out a past or previous situation in which the offender did a ‘poor’ job on a related topic and throws it at them as if this pulls their credibility away.

Feeling beat up in business is never a good thing and unfortunately it happens a lot to many people every day. How you react to these situations is what is important to consider; what type are you?

So what do you think, are there more types, is there a right or wrong, and how do you react?

Fail Boat!

Don’t worry I’m not a huge cynic or anything and I don’t mean that in the literal sense. Just the concept of failing has always been somewhat of a fascination for me. There are a lot of people out there who are pretty terrified of failure, just Google top 10 fears in the world whatever site you pick failure is almost always on there.

Failure to me was a huge blockade that whooped my ass every time I wanted to step outside my comfort zone. It’s pretty intimidating and managed to keep me down pretty often, for a long time. I mean I was ‘the smart guy’ in my classes; I couldn’t say something and be wrong! Could I?

There was a turning point, so to speak, in my life when I did fail, and I failed in a largely epic manner. I failed an assignment in my last year of high school. I know that may not be mega crazy to some of you reading this, but for me it was a big deal. I recall being furious and speaking with my teacher after class armed with brilliant questions like: “WTF?”, “Are you mental?”, “This is pure gold!” none of which helped my case.

Luckily for me my teacher waited out the storm of my stupidity and then said to me something that still sticks in my head today, she said “It looks like you spent 20 minutes on this, honestly I know you can do better. Yes, Brandon, it is probably one of the better papers in this class but it’s not your better work.”

It was like a steel-toed boot to the teeth.

My mind reeled and I, for once, had nothing to say. Then something beautiful happened, I learned.

She told me I had another week to do the paper again and this time to it to the best of my ability. Believe me I worked so hard on that paper the whole time yapping to myself about it being unfair, when I finished though I bet you can guess; it was my best work ever.

The point of that story is failure is actually a great ally, only through it can we really hope to start learning to the best of our abilities. After a little bit of thinking and meeting some great mentors; I now have a new activity I try to pursue every day. Every day I try to do something that makes me feel uncomfortable, in that way I know I am learning and growing.

So when I accepted that failure is a great tool, struck out and stopped holding myself back for fear of being wrong, I was wrong.

That’s where the kicker lies, in being wrong, I learned so much more than I ever would have in a bubble of pretending to be perfect

What do you do?

Well if you’re my brother, you step into insanity.

Adam performing at Zaphods

I once asked my brother after a show he’d played, he’s a performing artist in Ottawa, how he manages to light up the stage like he does; he truly engages with every one of the fans at his shows and has a stage presence that I’m envious of. Sitting in the car as I drove him home at 3am, he paused a moment to think, turned and looked at me and said what would change the way I live my life:

“Every time I’m preparing for a show I take a step into Insanity. Never too far; for I might lose my mind, but enough to find what I need to give one hell of a show.”

Since then I’ve carried that trick in my back pocket and used it to produce some of my best work.

• Before taking the stage to deliver a speech or presentation I step into insanity, to build my passion and deliver to the best extent possible.
• I cross the border while doing strategy sessions, it helps me to dream way bigger than I ever could have and truly think up ludicrous concepts that are ‘out of the box’ to the extreme.
• I even use it to help me understand another person’s point of view when it seems too crazy for me to understand, insanity helps me get it.

The main thing you need to know is the line between insanity and sanity so that you can effectively dunk your head into that pool only when you need to.

Just make sure you know the way back!

How could you use insanity to your advantage? Art, music, film, business, engineering?

P.S. Here’s my brother’s band for some sweet retro-pop music www.theticketmusic.com

What’s interesting about this release is not so much what the OCT is communicating to teachers across the province but more the massive butchering of what the message is actually saying by CBC Canada.

CBC tossed out this article this morning: Ont. teachers advised not to tweet with students It basically says what the title suggests.

The fact that a well respected news outlet could somehow manage to misconstrue a message so badly shocks and, quite frankly, offends me. How from watching the OCT’s video (found below) could one infer don’t tweet! In fact the video goes on to explain how teachers are teaching students the proper use of social media and that the internet never forgets.

The official PDF advisory can be found here if you’d like to review it yourself.

You can check out the OCT’s official video:

While Quora is an extensive tool with a pretty simple concept (ask questions get answers) I could truly sit here all day and discuss many different ways you can get some great information out of it. For this post I’ll keep it short and sweet.

10 Sweet things a student can do with Quora:

• Get started! – Quora’s a great place to get pointed in the right direction. Countless times I’ve seen a response to something, or a question I’ve asked, lead me on a wonderful adventure to new pages and information.
• Industry Experts – Since Quora users generally display their real name and professions they are usually actual experts on a subject. Remember though; if it’s super unbelievable it probably still is!
• Follow People – Yes, much like Twitter you can follow people on Quora as well. Therefore; if you find someone you find super useful in the information they are providing, follow them! You’ll get even more great tips.
• Follow Topics – Quora also offers the ability to follow major topics. For example Entrepreneurship. You can follow the topic and in your home feed see all the questions that are being asked and are tagged as that topic.
• People Source their Answers – yea I’m not joking. People who respond to particularly sensitive or ‘intense’ topics usually hook in a source. Here’s an example: This helps you a lot; you can trace the source back to a website that your teachers will believe is credible. Don’t ask why but if Wikipedia doesn’t work for them you should probably not source Quora.
• Ask your own Question – Of course if you can’t find what you’re looking for just yet you can always ask! People answer pretty quickly I’ve found on almost anything. Generally I get a great answer within a day, and many good answers within a few hours.
• Search – I know it seems silly but Quora has a great search function. You can usually track down fairly specific info quite fast, which is a really huge helper and time saver.
• Suggest Edits – You can recommend to users edits they should make to responses. Allowing your perfectionism to shine through! No, seriously, it helps you know that most of the time the readability and grammar/spelling of an answer is bang on as the community has helped build the response.
• Voting – This helps you in time saving ways as well, since the community votes up the good answers and down the bad, you’ll see what they think the best answer is immediately! Hurray for social technology!
• The Possibilities – Ok this one sounds bloated. But seriously just spend about 20 minutes on Quora and you’ll start to realize how rich it is. Just make sure you have an end goal in mind otherwise you may find it useless (cause you’re not looking for anything) or you’ll lose 3 hours of your day.

Finally; make sure you have some fun. The responses on Quora will make you laugh sometimes, I recommend looking up Google, and will always make you remember the Internet Never forgets.

Love to hear what you think/use Quora for or if you want any more information in the comments!

The Feeling

Remember the first time you shared with a friend? Maybe you gave them some chocolate, filled them in on a secret, or helped them with a school/work project they were having trouble with. Do you recall the feeling it gave you directly after? I do. I feel everyone experiences something different so definition of that feeling isn’t pertinent. Just remember the look in their eyes and I’m sure you’ll recall.

That’s one huge reason I mentor and connect people. When you go out of your way to help someone with knowledge they always offer up gratitude in the form of a smile and I’ve gotta say it gives me a great feeling.

The Learning Experience

I feel that through teaching and instruction one can derive the best learning experience. I’ve learned so much by teaching others that I continue to use mentorship as an opportunity to test my own knowledge and capabilities. It’s great when someone I’m helping stumps me, it shows human nature and causes us both to build a stronger relationship and mind.

The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another – Marva Collins

That quote is another huge factor in the learning experience. If you can help spark another, you’ve helped start innovation at its foundational levels.

Reciprocation

Throughout my academic and professional career I’ve had the privilege of being surrounded and mentored by some truly brilliant people. I’d like to think that I’m as grateful as can be to them for taking the time to meet with me, take a phone call, or respond to an email. However; I feel that passing on what they did for me to others is the best way to say thank you. I’m building a huge snowball effect and I hope you’ll join in : )

Because they’re worth it

Every human being I meet is worth my time, no matter what their role now or in the future. People are simply capable of so much more than many choose to believe. So instead of being quick to judge I’m fast to help.

Before you ask, yes that does sometimes backfire pretty hard. Some people don’t want help and I totally respect them for that. You can’t go forcing people to listen to you, nor would I ever want that, just make sure you try to help out.

I’m interested in your concept of mentorship and connecting people, do you mentor?

What is Quora exactly?

Quora is a new social media style tool that has an interesting basis, you simply ask questions. To put this in perspective, think about Yahoo! Answers where users  ask a question to “The Internet” and get responses back from random individuals. The ones that are ‘trolling’ you can be voted down by either yourself or others reading, while those answers that are correct or helpful can be voted up. Quora uses this system of crowd-sourcing a question that anyone using Quora (I believe you need to be logged in to respond, correct me if I’m wrong) can answer to the best of their ability. Then; you (and anyone else) vote that answer up or down, shown below you can see how many have voted the answer up.

Also note; when responding to questions and/or asking questions you have the ability to flag yourself as an Anonymous User.

The next factor that Quora introduces is what sets it apart from other question/answer tools out there. Quora gives you the ability, much like Twitter/StumbleUpon/Tumblr, to follow people as well as topics. This is where it gets interesting!

I’m following what now?

When you set up your Quora account they make it crazy easy for you to get started. You can choose to register your account by tying it to your Facebook and/or Twitter account and it will automatically populate everything you need. This statement is under the follow section for one clear purpose; when you do this you will automatically follow every single person on your twitter/facebook that has Quora. Excuse the boldness but I feel that is very important. Since I got onboard a little bit ahead of the curve, I only auto followed about 45 people.  Now that it seems to be a huge and very rapidly building community that could mean hundreds of auto-follows for you and a headache later if that’s not your intent for this tool.

What ‘s good about allowing Quora to dish out your follows is that it appears to do some text analytics on things you’re interested in, as well as where you have worked (if that’s listed on your facebook), etc… After doing this it recommends topics as well as individuals to you that you should follow.

So is it worth my time?

Yes. At this point I believe this tool will be very useful. Considering how much information it auto loads, populates, and then offers to you it’s not a heavy time investment at all to get started. Jump right into it and answer/pose some questions of your own and you’ll soon find that you get some quality information back!

There are a lot of individuals out there who probably know more about certain topics than you and you may as well learn from them. Don’t be afraid to ask a question even if you think it’s silly, most people are polite and helpful and those that aren’t you’ll find get quickly voted off the island.

If you feel there’s anything super important I’ve missed please let me know in the comments!

This year I was a competitor in the Ontario Colleges’ Marketing Competition (OCMC). It’s a huge competition that brings together 14 colleges from across Ontario, obviously, to pit their students against others in a series of categories such as; Marketing Research (My Category), Entrepreneurship, Sales Presentation and many others. Check out www.ocmc2010.ca for more info on specifics if you’d like.

The competition was a fantastic experience, it changed me and the entire team I was a part of, from Algonquin College, for the better. I’m proud to say I was the President of the 2010 team, as voted by them, and even more pleased that our team lead Algonquin College to its first ever podium finish with a Bronze Medal overall.

What we learned in taking part in this competition was not only more knowledge about the specific categories each of us took part in, how to analyze and solve a case in under 30 minutes, or even how to remain calm under pressure. We learned all of that and most importantly how an amazing team is so integral to success.  Algonquin College showed its true colours by not only out performing many but also being the most proud team overall, including the AMAZING faculty that attended the event with us. We stood, cheered, and hugged every team member as positions were announced at the end of the night. For each category they nerve racking-ly announced 5^th place finishes up to 1^st. We were all so proud of each other and our successes as a team that many tears were shed and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many smiles from ear to ear.

I’m proud to say I brought home a Bronze Medal in my individual category of Marketing Research with the help of my brilliant partner Erik Bitmanis.

The OCMC brought an interesting thought to me as well; is it truly just the intelligence, knowledge, aptitude, and any other intellectual principle that truly separates a team from another at a competition of this caliber? Or is there something more to it?

I found us, our team, to really push against tradition. We were not all 4.0 GPA students, nor honours roll or all dean’s list. We were individuals who came together with a common passion and drive to do something great. We added almost 10 hours per week to our already exhaustive school and work schedules all to become better and stronger people. However; what we left with was not just an individual increase in knowledge or capabilities, we left as a team.

The fact that Team Algonquin integrated so well together and were so passionate about each others’ successes as much as their own was what made us great. We learned to lean on each other for support, guidance, and direction. We learned to build relationship and became so strong together I swear to you we could have moved mountains.

I believe I answered my own musings, it doesn’t just take a brilliant person to be successful, it takes teamwork, passion, drive, and a love of what you do. Thank you to all my teammates, faculty, and coaches who helped us achieve everything we could have dreamed about.

We also look amazing