On resolutions, and such: TIL Ben Franklin was the founding father of life hacks

TIL (Today I Learned, for those not hip to Reddit), after suffering a seasonally-related mental breakdown of sorts, that Benjamin Franklin was much more than a founding father  who had his hands in pretty much everything (including the ladies, apparently). He was, as the blog 43 Folders puts it, “the spiritual father of all life hacks.”

Life hacks, for those not familiar, are productivity shortcuts, tips and tricks (originally a programming term, now applied to any part of one’s life).

"Ben Franklin" with Pam on The Office

My husband was the one who imparted the wisdom of Franklin today as we discussed our New Year’s resolutions over a sink of dirty dishes. One of our resolutions was to keep more on top of the housework. But the resolution talk just kept flowing, as it became pretty clear just how depressingly unsatisfied we were with our performance as adult human beings in 2011 (related). Okay, so that was a bit overly negative – we’re really just ambitious people, happy with most of what we did last year, but ready to top it in 2012.

My husband, who studied architecture in college, mentioned that he used Franklin’s “life hacks” as an approach to studying. He’d make a list of things he needed to memorize, and go through them one by one, tracking his progress and repeating when necessary.

Self improvement, the nerd way

Franklin himself had a list he called the 13 Virtues. He was trying to live a more moral life, like pretty much all of us try to do, by resolving to follow this list. But, because he’s a genius, instead of just rattling off a few things like “yeah, I’m gonna go to ye olde gymnasium every day” or “I’m trying to cut out the sweets” or “Gee, I should stop hitting this [tobacco] pipe so often”, he had a methodical approach that helped him see more success in achieving his daily goals.

In addition to having an organized and specific list of items that were of personal import, Franklin tracked his progress on the daily with a spreadsheet-like journal. He tackled his goals one at a time and kept at it until he felt he’d either achieved them, or somehow became a better person.

So, while you may not be a complete success at living a life of piety (or debauchery, depending on your style), at least you can look back in your nerded-out journal of goals and milestones and feel like you’ve accomplished something, and are a more complete or fulfilled individual for it. Even if you don’t keep a journal, making a basic list and attacking each item one at a time, over a longer period of time (rather than trying to do it all at once and burning yourself out) might help you see more success in achieving at least a few of your resolutions this year.

Happy 2012!

PS – As you can probably tell, another of my resolutions was to blog more, hence why this blog is being updated for the first time in…god, I don’t even want to think about it.

How to Hire an SEO Professional

“The SEO business is 80 percent scam,” says Peter Kent, an internet marketing strategist and author of Search Engine Optimization for Dummies. “It’s very, very difficult to find a good firm.”

This quote comes from an article published by Entrepreneur just this month, and it’s a sadly accurate assessment of some of the services purported “SEO consulting firms” are offering to unwary clients. I’ve been digging my heels into the content side of SEO and I understand pretty well what can get lost in the shuffle, but what is often the mantra of good developers and SEO professionals: content is king. The problem is, this phrase is being used and abused by some firms who ultimately just make their clients look bad while leaving them with empty wallets.

Yes, content is king. But let’s stress something: GOOD content is king. READABLE content is king. Should you use keywords? Absolutely. Should you do your best to incorporate them into the copy of your page? Definitely. But don’t lose sight of the ultimate goal: communicating to your current and prospective customers in ways that are clear, intelligent, and readable.

Improper word usage and forcing words make you and your company look sloppy and unprofessional – but this is what sometimes happens to your web content if you fail to hire a good writer. Many SEO firms are more focused on the technical side of SEO rather than on quality writing, and this should be a red flag to you when considering hiring.

Your best bet? Talk to your web developer about SEO and see what they recommend. Chances are, between your developer and hiring a good writer who understands content-based SEO, you’ll end up with a site that’s very well written and very well optimized without wasting your time. As Entrepreneur recommends, the best time to “do” SEO is during a new website build. This way, you get everything taken care of and have a solid organic SEO foundation to work from right out of the gate. If you have an existing site and just want to jazz it up, again, look for a writer who knows SEO. You’ll get snappy and creative copy that sells, plus someone to research keywords and optimize page tags like titles and headings; keywords will be chosen by the person who will actually be using them in writing, so you get a solid guarantee that it’s going to read well.

Link building is time consuming to undertake and can be costly. Want to do it yourself? Talk to colleagues in your line of business, your suppliers, and your customers about swapping links. It might be easier than you think to start a reciprocal link partnership on your own. Just be sure that if you link to a site, they’re returning the favor by linking to you. To take it one step further, get involved by sharing your link with blogs that highlight your industry. Keep it relevant, and the blogosphere will come.

Have questions about SEO or SEO writing? Leave a comment here and I’ll do my best to answer!

New Microblogging Post

A new post will be coming soon to this blog.  In the meantime, please head over to Best Legal Marketing and check out my latest post on microblogging (Twitter) tips.

Google’s Knol: Alternative to Blogging for Experts?

I have talked here and over at the Best Legal Marketing blog about how important it is to establish yourself as a resource on the internet if you are a professional with a field of specialty, whether you’re a lawyer, own a cosmetic surgery practice, or provide web design consulting.  I’ve discussed some of the ways this can be accomplished, via your own website, blog, micro-blogging, or other social media presence.

Google’s Knol is in the beta stage, and has been around for about a year.  It was created as a way for experts and knowledgeable people to write and share articles about their areas of expertise in 2008, and there are now over 100,000 articles on the site according to Wikipedia.  Each article is referred to as a “knol”.

There are a few advantages to using this service. You can incorporate AdSense into your knols, and posting on the site allows your content to be found readily by Google’s search engine. Like writing original, informative blog posts about your chosen subject, writing knols on the topic can have the same effect of establishing you as a resource in your field.

The downside is that the site has been polluted by people seeking to merely abuse and take advantage of the advertising opportunities, who post incomplete, plagiarized or duplicated, and inaccurate information.  If legitimate authors and professionals could take back the site, it would gain more use and credibility.

Check out this Ars Technica article about Knol to learn more about the upsides and downsides of this new-ish offering from Google.  Although right now it’s not a great option, with time and a little TLC maybe Knol will become a useful net resource and a great way to establish professional reputations, network, and exchange information.  It could also position itself as a competitor to popular how-to and general article sites like About and e-How.

Keep in mind that per the site’s content policy: “We don’t allow pages that have the primary purpose of redirecting visitors, acting as a bridge page, or driving traffic to another website.  We also don’t allow Knol pages that have the primary purpose of profiting from displaying ads from any publisher network, such as pages created with little or no unique content that exist only to display ads.” This should come as common sense to most people; adhering to these standards is what helps to preserve the integrity of the information shared on the internet, so violating it is basically a great way to show that you don’t care about about ethics and are just out to make a buck.

Best Legal Marketing

Please check out the blog I’m writing for: Best Legal Marketing.  It features tips about SEO and SEM for legal professionals, but it also offers a lot of helpful advice for anyone interested in applying some SEO techniques to their site.

It’s being found useful, as you can see.

Social Media Revolution: Event Planning

Event planning: something you do plenty of if your profession involves promoting and public relations, or just something you do if you have a fairly active social life and like to keep things simple, effective, and organized amongst your family and friends.  Social media adds a new dimension to event planning, in that it’s a quick, easy, and highly effective way to get the word out and keep your attendees (and potential attendees) up-to-date with any changes in plans.

I’ll be the first to admit that I use (and probably over-use if you ask some of my friends)  Facebook‘s Event feature.  It’s easy, it’s thorough, and everyone I want to invite is already right there in my friends list.  I just have to tell them where and what time something ridiculous is going down, and I can count on those who RSVP to show up (because I can also very easily bug them via messages and event updates t0 ensure their attendance).

With a little creativity and technical know-how, you can take big steps towards event success by utilizing social media; whether you’re planning a personal event, a promotional affair, or something else entirely.  The benefits are obvious; social media makes it easy to share and distribute information, and it might even be taken out of your hands altogether if enough people are really interested and start spreading the info by word of mouth (or word of key, or mouse).

Know Thy Audience

I’m a believer in preserving the integrity and spirit of the web, and as such I think the content we all provide and generate should be useful, informative, and suited to our target audience.  If you don’t ‘get’ something, and aren’t at all interested in it, how are you going to convince anyone else to attend an event or read a blog or anything else you want people to look at or participate in? That’s why when you are promoting an event via social media, you should always really know your audience – whether that means doing some research, or establishing relationships.  And it seems obvious, but people don’t appreciate receiving invites or information about events that have nothing to do with their interests – so in five seconds you can very easily succeed in making yourself look both ignorant and careless if you don’t first select your target and make sure you really know what they want.  Remember, news travels fast.

Also, don’t deceive or bait and switch, and don’t patronize.  Again, obvious, but you might know yourself firsthand how many invites we ignore or delete every week for these reasons.

Additional Tips:

• Document your event as it unfolds; the preparation leading up to it, and the actual day or night itself – but please don’t constantly send updates to people who may not want to hear about it in their inboxes.  Reserve e-mail updates for those who have specifically opted to receive them, and utilize your event page or blog for keeping people in the loop too.
• Give attendees (and those who missed out) the opportunity to interact and form a sort of mini-community around your event in the days leading up to it and the aftermath.  This gets people even more excited and involved, and really gains you big credibility points, and it’s a great way to gain valuable “live feedback” about some of the things you’re doing.
• Check out this post for more ideas, suggestions, and info from real planners and promoters.

Social Media Revolution: The Music Industry

It  may sound like a lot of hippie crap; but what really amazes me and has drawn me so much to the concept of “social media” is the total revolution that is going on before our eyes, and it’s all incorporated with how we live, communicate, and do business (whether some people like it or not).  I think it’s a huge mistake for anyone to overlook the importance of social media; if not what it actually does, at least what it stands for and what it’s encouraging both online and offline in the way that we do things, and how those processes are going to impact our future.  I plan to write several entries on this topic, and first up is a brief discussion of social media and the music industry.

Starving Musician: Will Twitter for Food

CNN has had a real thing for Twitter lately, but I think there are other interesting things that outlets like Twitter are encouraging:  for example, what’s going on with the music industry? On June 26^th, Stan Schroeder posted this at Mashable. The whole music industry debacle got a bit more attention than usual a few weeks ago, when the RIAA won a case in which Jammie Thomas-Rasset was fined $1.92 million for sharing 24 mp3 files on Kazaa (and news was made again with the sale of torrent site The Pirate Bay a few days later).  File-sharing arguments and debates aside, it seems like folly to me for musicians to ignore the power of social media sites like Twitter.  Schroeder’s post actually cites Amanda Palmer (Dresden Dolls), who says she made more money via an organic campaign she started herself on Twitter than she did from 30,000 sales via a record company.  The details of her efforts can be found in the original post.

So, why toil to get a record deal, when you can have a more rewarding career (financially and artistically) if you just embrace a little technology and try a little DIY? Schroeder made a great point when he said that musicians with fans will likely always have those fans – and those fans will always be willing to buy a CD or a t-shirt, you just need to give them the how-to information (this headcount of course ignores those that tend to jump on and off the bandwagon more frequently than they change their underwear).   With a web presence and registration form, you’ve got all the leads you need to send out an e-mail about an event.  Twitter can do the same thing for your followers.

Just speculating here, but I can see social media making things a hell of a lot easier for plenty of independent artists who already enjoy moderate success under the radar, have good relationships with small and independent record labels and promoters, and value artistic substance and content over the excessive use of autotune.

Useful Social Media Music Stuff

There is a little Facebook feature you’ve probably heard of (but maybe you haven’t) called iLike that I’ve found incredibly useful for finding tour info regarding my favorite bands, and I hardly had to do any work (which is always nice) to set it up.  You shouldn’t have to do much work either if you already have a list of bands included in the music section of your regular Facebook profile.  It does mean that I spend way more money on tickets to shows than I should, but I feel better knowing that it puts more money in the pocket of the artist. I would recommend checking it out if you don’t already use it.

I also can’t overlook the amazing music blogs that are available out there that are written by some amazing music snobs and passionate fans who really do their homework.  You can visit http://hypem.com or http://elbo.ws/ to find some of the best and stream some great new music.

Green SEO

No, not environmentally friendly SEO – although I suppose utilizing the internet instead of print to get your message across could be considered a good way of saving some trees.  I’m talking about those of us who aren’t search engine optimization veterans, and those of us who rarely see the technical side of things (except for the occasional meta tag): “green” SEO professionals, specifically content writers, bloggers, proofreaders and editors.

As a copywriter, I’m confident in my writing and researching abilities.  My career is young (I graduated college in 2006), so I know that I have plenty of learning to do, but I think the general foundation is there.  I’m like a sponge eager to soak up feedback and information, and it’s always fun to learn from your mistakes (well, sort of).  I stumbled into the realm of SEO after working for two years as an editor for a market research firm.  I still freelance for that firm on a regular basis, but in early 2009 I had to move on to something else.

I took on a web writing project, figuring it couldn’t hurt to exercise my creative muscles after spending the last two years correcting punctuation, replacing verbs, and formatting (a lot of formatting). I then applied for a full time job with an internet market research firm – I have always been kind of a nerd, and was really interested in the marketing activities that went on at my last full time position, so I thought that was my best route.  It was an administrative assistant position, and thankfully the genius of a VP at that company recognized my potential (potential to both be bored as an administrative assistant, and be good as a copywriter).  He offered me a job as a contractor writing SEO copy for the firm on an ongoing basis, and the rest, as they say, is history.  Sort of.

I worked as a temp at a very frustrating company for a couple of months before finally landing enough freelance clients that I could kiss that office life goodbye and really get down to doing what I love, which is reading, writing, and spending time on the internet. So that brings us to today, and to this blog.  My intention here is to document my learning process, share some news and other insights I come across, and maybe throw around a little information with anyone who might happen across these writings.

I have many goals that are loosely defined, but the one definite that I do have is direction and ambition: I know that I want to be involved in SEO, hopefully social media, and general internet marketing, and I know that I have what it takes to do that.  I have the ability and drive to do the work, meet the deadlines, pick up the required reading, and take all the free tutorials and classes I can get my mouse pointer on.  I have a good, albeit small so far, network of pros who have been very helpful with their feedback and guidance.

I think it’s a good start, and I hope that maybe you will be able to learn something from the things that I learn and blog about along the way.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog. A real post will be coming soon (and this place will look much prettier). Until then, please visit my portfolio site at http://www.literatrue.net and find me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/literatrue.