SEO 101

Guy Kawasaki Twitter Tactics Discussion

Twitter Tactics Discussion following a PPC Rockstars interview featuring David Szetela's interview of Guy Kawasaki. Guests include Search and Social's Dave Snyder and Szetela himself. Our Sponsors: * Producer Brasco: As digital professionals and business owners, we understand the critical importance of a secure and high-performing website. That's why I want to talk to you about Kinsta, a managed WordPress hosting provider that delivers exceptional speed, security, and reliability. Kinsta's infrastructure is optimized for WordPress, ensuring your site loads lightning-fast and ranks well in search results. They utilize Google Cloud's premium tier network and C3D virtual machines, which significantly boost performance. In fact, Kinsta customers often experience up to a 200% increase in site speed just by migrating to their platform. Security is paramount, and Kinsta provides enterprise-grade measures to protect your valuable data. They are one of the few WordPress hosting providers with SOC2 certification, guaranteeing the highest level of security for your website. Kinsta's MyKinsta dashboard offers a user-friendly interface with a comprehensive suite of tools to manage your site efficiently. From cache control and debugging to redirects and CDN setup, MyKinsta simplifies website administration. For SEO 101 listeners, Kinsta offers specific advantages. Their platform is optimized for speed, a crucial ranking factor in search engine algorithms. Their security measures protect your site from malware and hacking attempts that could damage your online presence. And their expert support team is available 24/7 to assist with any technical issues that may arise. If you're serious about your online presence and want a hosting provider that prioritizes performance, security, and support, I highly recommend Kinsta. Visit kinsta.com today to learn more and take advantage of their limited-time offer for new customers. That's k-i-n-s-t-a dot com. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Duration:: 51m
Broadcast on:: 20 Apr 2009
Audio Format:: other

Twitter Tactics Discussion following a PPC Rockstars interview featuring David Szetela's interview of Guy Kawasaki. Guests include Search and Social's Dave Snyder and Szetela himself.

Our Sponsors:
* Producer Brasco: As digital professionals and business owners, we understand the critical importance of a secure and high-performing website. That's why I want to talk to you about Kinsta, a managed WordPress hosting provider that delivers exceptional speed, security, and reliability. Kinsta's infrastructure is optimized for WordPress, ensuring your site loads lightning-fast and ranks well in search results. They utilize Google Cloud's premium tier network and C3D virtual machines, which significantly boost performance. In fact, Kinsta customers often experience up to a 200% increase in site speed just by migrating to their platform. Security is paramount, and Kinsta provides enterprise-grade measures to protect your valuable data. They are one of the few WordPress hosting providers with SOC2 certification, guaranteeing the highest level of security for your website. Kinsta's MyKinsta dashboard offers a user-friendly interface with a comprehensive suite of tools to manage your site efficiently. From cache control and debugging to redirects and CDN setup, MyKinsta simplifies website administration. For SEO 101 listeners, Kinsta offers specific advantages. Their platform is optimized for speed, a crucial ranking factor in search engine algorithms. Their security measures protect your site from malware and hacking attempts that could damage your online presence. And their expert support team is available 24/7 to assist with any technical issues that may arise. If you're serious about your online presence and want a hosting provider that prioritizes performance, security, and support, I highly recommend Kinsta. Visit kinsta.com today to learn more and take advantage of their limited-time offer for new customers. That's k-i-n-s-t-a dot com.

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Are you tired of juggling contacts, manually following up and deals falling to the cracks? We can fix it so you never lose another lead, enabling 24/7 sales support via an AI that learns your business. Ready to close more deals with less hassle? Get a free trial of our marketing automation at the BuzzCRM.com Are you tired of juggling contacts, manually following up and deals falling to the cracks? We can fix it so you never lose another lead, enabling 24/7 sales support via an AI that learns your business. Ready to close more deals with less hassle? Get a free trial of our marketing automation at the BuzzCRM.com Welcome to SEO 101, your introductory course on Search Engine Optimization. So, turn on your computers, open your minds, grab your mouse and get ready to get back to the basics. SEO 10101 on webmasterradio.fm is now in session. Hello and welcome to SEO 101 on webmasterradio.fm. This is Rastan, CEO of Stepforth Web Marketing and my co-host is independent SEO consultant Eric Lander. Today's show is one that strays a bit from the SEO 101 track to the etiquette of using Twitter. So at what points do tweets become spam? In the last hour on PPC Rockstars, David Satella just interviewed internet celebrity Guy Kawasaki about his Twitter activity because he's faced significant scrutiny to put it nicely about his tweet content. According to some, he's a blatant spammer, but he still has over 100,000 followers, so it can't be all that bad, can it? Just putting that out there. How you doing, Eric? I'm doing well, Rastan, thanks for the introduction and obviously thank you, David Satella, for kind of setting the stage for an awesome topic today and I think it's one that has gotten our industry kind of up in arms over the course of the past month or so coming out of SES New York. So what is it? I'm still feeling to see the big issue. I mean, it's Twitter. You can just unfollow them. I know I'm very simple on that, I guess. But what do you think? I know you're allowed to say. Yeah, I mean, I have lots to say and I think that my personal kind of gripes with the featured guests in the last hour came more as a result of some interaction that took place between he and I on Twitter. But he said some things in the last hour that I think and I hope we'll get our audience to sort of begin to interact with us a little bit and I want to throw a couple of lines out there that I wrote down and he made it a point to sort of tell us that he's using Twitter as a quote unquote marketing weapon. He does things when he knows that people are going to respond to him and he's using Twitter as an opportunity to quote unquote create real content, which I think contrasts sharply with the whole purpose of all talk and we can get into that later in our program as well. I think he sort of unfairly labeled a lot of SEOs and sort of what their distaste was regarding his keynote. And again, I wasn't there. I only read about it. I saw what was going on and then I, you know, as he eloquently observed in his spot on, I engaged him in a conversation. I used him to get more followers. I used him to interact and I wanted to get his approach or his feedback on some things like tint and some other SEO disasters, in my opinion, that he sort of tactfully danced around. Just to kind of open this up, we've got a 1-800 number for our guests to call in and to ask our questions, and that number is 1-866-916-3423. We're also going to be scanning everything that's going on on Twitter. So if you want to ask us any questions, same as you did with PBC Rockstars. We've got a hashtag out there and that's just going to be SEO 101. And if I understand correctly, we have Dave Satella who's on the phone with us right now. Dave, are you there? Yes, I am. Excellent, Dave. Yes. Again, thank you, Austin. It was a great interview, I think, unfortunately, it's straight from PPC, and I was kind of throwing some digs out there at Guy in an attempt to sort of continue this conversation through our half-an-hour show. I guess in a nutshell, what was your opinion of how everything went? Well, first of all, thanks for the applause just then, Brasko, and I'm sorry, who am I speaking with? This is Eric Lander. Hi, Eric. How you doing? Good. Well, I think it went really well, I really enjoyed it. I mean, basically, it's a super complicated set of issues exacerbated by the fact that we're dealing with a brand-new technology for which there are no standards and no protocols. So it's always interesting for me to see where the emotional flash points are. And in this case, as I said, early on, the flash points came from people that I knew pretty well or very well, and it's kind of like being at a party where two of your best friends are fighting, and you really want to know why. Fair enough. Well, and one of the things that if you don't mind, Andrew Goodman just mentioned something, he says, "How can he damage anything? Brand damage due to trailer park cheesy image?" Sorry, but just unfollow was a bit of a pretty boring response. All right, I guess, like I said, pretty simple when it comes to the stuff. I think so what, he damages his brand, fine. Some people don't like it. Maybe some do. There's a lot of people that could be unfollowing. He's got 100,000 people following him. More than that, actually. But there's a lot of good content on Twitter, too, so Twitter's not really being that damaged. I'm missing something. I know, and I want to be educated. Please tell me. Well, yeah, I am missing something too, and unfortunately, some people use that as code for "I don't agree," and I just don't have the ball to say it. In this case, I really don't quite get it, and as I said, and I've said this to Andrew in emails and other ways, I just don't understand what you're trying to say. Please help me understand what it is. I can't find Andrew's--was he tweeting something recently about this, like, over the past couple of minutes? Yeah, he tweeted me @rostdone. Sorry, I got to get a little push myself now. Ah! Spam! Link Love! Yes! Anyway, what was the gist of it? That was it. I've been pretty much rooted out there. Essentially, I said that I don't see there's any reason or any problem. There's no way you can really damage anything, because you can just unfollow them. I agree, like I say, it's pretty simple, but Andrew felt that that was kind of crazy, you know, brand damage due to trailer park cheesy image. Oh, okay, so when he says brand damage, I think he's saying Twitter's brand. Yeah, and like I said, there's a lot of good content out there too, so it's like anything. Like Google's got some bad content, does it really hurt its brand? Yeah, I think that's the point that I don't get that, you know, Twitter is the communications medium, and there are many, many millions of people who use it every day, and the majority of those millions. Andrew's got a better head for math than I do, but I think the majority of those millions have never seen and will never see a single tweet from Guy Kawasaki. So I think the danger that the Twitter brand is going to be tarnished by the actions of one, you know, smart vocal marketer is unlikely. Okay, so we've got another person here on a John, he's here on the phone, how you doing John? I'm doing well, Ross. How are you? Great. Thanks. Do you want to add your opinion? Yeah, I just, regarding Twitter, the basic thing is you have to know your audience, and the one thing you have to remember about Twitter because of the conversations, it's all about marketing, whether it's marketing yourself personally, I mean that's what networking is all about, it's telling yourself, or whether you're marketing a business. Now for me, I work for a company called Accent Ins, and we have a couple of, you know, I have an account for myself that I will tell people about what I'm doing, and then I have an account for Accent Ins where we'll do tweets on what we're doing or about our innate events or things like that. And again, if you know your audience, you post accordingly, they're going to be, the people who are following are the people who are going to be interested in what you have to say and make sure you say something that they will be interested in and limited to that. Yeah. Okay. I agree with that. I mean we do the same thing with our company as well, so. So actually, this gives me an opportunity to kind of break in and just mention something that Guy did in the midst of SES New York that I just agreed with, and we got into a heated discussion and it wasn't so much about the use of Twitter. But as Guy admitted to today, and I think, David, you brought this up earlier and I thought it was a great point, Guy Kawasaki has two different Twitter accounts, right? So there's the all-top account which is apparently only used for all-top, and then there's the Guy Kawasaki account, which I just learned today is now a quote unquote branded account for Guy Kawasaki. So in the midst of this conversation relative to all-top, Guy Kawasaki then takes it off of the all-top account, goes over to his Guy Kawasaki account on Twitter, and decides to throw a flame towards me. And I think there was other people too, but it's not so much that, but if your goal here is to know your audience and your goal is to tweet something and you cover this in conversational marketing, that's really what he's talking about using Twitter as, where's the relevance there? And I think, John, our caller here has pointed out that if you're going to have a separation between you as a person and you as an organization, that has to be very clear. And frankly, I don't believe that Guy Kawasaki has done that short of mentioning that, David, on your show in the last hour. Yeah. Do you think it's pretty obvious? I don't know what that's about. I mean, the last thing he said surprised me because I always assumed, and I had double check this in email exchanges, I always assumed that none of this criticism really bothered him at all. He just saw it as, you know, additional links. And I think, you know, maybe he's just human, and when people say we think you're a bad human being and evil, he reacts instinctively, negatively, and can't control it. Well, we're going to stop on that note here and we'll bring you back on, David, after this, I believe. We're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we'll touch on more of this feisty topic. SEO 101 will be back right after recess. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] This is a test of the PR web content and news delivery system, from PR web and PR web author.com. If this was a real release date, your story would reach more than 30,000 journalists, 250,000 RSS subscribers, and just over 30,000 unique websites. PR web can reach your target audience online, drive traffic to your website, achieve high rankings on search engines, and get your content on top news sites like Yahoo News. Editors are available 24/7 to help you optimize your content for maximum exposure to over 70 million people in the US alone. If this were a real PR web release date, your website would have so much traffic you'd be tempted to duck and cover. If you have an online marketing emergency, go to PRwebauthor.com for 25% off. PR web, the premier online release news and content distribution service. Friendfinder. Friendfinder. The world's largest online dating network, featuring over 100 million profiles. At hot sites, such as passion.com and fastcupid.com, represents enormous profit making opportunities for webmasters, just like you, with Friendfinder's ability to geo-target and provide billing solutions and most languages and currencies, you are sure to find our comprehensive network to be a good friend. Welcome back to SEO 101 on webmasterradio.fm, with Eric Linder, independent SEO, and myself, as well as our CEO of Stepforth Web Marketing, Inc. Before the break, we were discussing a guy Kawasaki and some of his controversial tactics on Twitter, and from right now, we're being joined by Jim Hedger and Dave Snyder from Search and Social. How are you guys doing? Good. How are you doing? Dave. Hey, I'm great. David, I thought you were calling me. That was so weird. I probably was, I can't figure out how to work Skype. Everyone else isn't getting too bad here. Well, you know, if we're going to hear echos, I want to hear echos of that last show. Like, wow, what an episode. You know what I have to say, so Eric, you're the man with a lot to say here. Well, I mean, I kind of went into it a bit right before break, and I mean, I didn't want to take over John, our callers point because I think that it's important that we understand, you know, what he was trying to say there. In terms of Twitter, I mean, I'm all for it. If you can use it to market things, obviously that's a great way to do so conversational marketing is where it's at. That's sort of the heart of social media. Dave, Snyder, I want to kind of throw this over to you a little bit because I know we were planning to talk about social media a little bit today anyway. It's tough for me to focus Guy Kawasaki and my sort of disagreements with him on SEO topics as they pertain only to Twitter. I think there's a lot of other things that sort of make me irate when it comes to him. And I mean that in a professional way, I mean, I don't mean that as though he's an awful person. I think he's just managed to either manipulate or game specific systems in order to take advantage of them. He's a marketer. Awesome. David, you mentioned at IAM spring break that there was a conversation there where, you know, this isn't so much white hat, black hat type of nonsense. It's more managing risk and making decisions. And sometimes those perceived black hat techniques or simply techniques that are effective. Well, what Guy Kawasaki is doing to some degree is effective. But Dave, Snyder, to kind of throw this back at you a little bit, what is your opinion sort of what we heard Guy Kawasaki go through over the course of the last hour and kind of leading through the first 20 or so minutes of our show here today? Well, I mean, yeah, anybody that can you guys hear me by the way? Yeah, loud and clear. Okay. Yeah. I mean, anybody that has seen me speak or whatever knows, I'm pretty transparent about the fact that I don't really buy into the social media ethics nonsense. And a lot of what everybody does marketing wise on social media, if you're marketing at all kind of veers against what social media is really about. My biggest beef with Guy, because I've seen him actually do that Twitter key note. I saw him do it like four times within a span of a month because we kept going to the same conferences as each other. My biggest beef with him on that whole thing is that he's teaching these tactics to people that really don't understand the medium, right? And I know as far as what I do, right, like, like black hat SEO. Let's go back to SEO for a second. I know that a lot of black hats won't get up at a conference and teach black hat SEO. Why? It devalues a strategy, but more so, it can really hurt people that are utilizing it in effectively, right? It's like a loaded gun. And if you don't know how to fire the gun, you're going to hurt yourself. The same thing goes for some of these social media strategies, me utilizing a social media strategy that is more gray can be effective. Somebody like that owes a bait shop down by the lake using it. They can destroy their online business. So for me, that's my only real beef with him. For what, you know, that whole like teaching people how to use Twitter, all kind of thing. And teach people to do really heavy push marketing via the platform. Beyond that, like as far as like the whole concept of what's gray and what's not, I mean, you know, my whole thing is if you're not hurting anybody, you know, what are you really complaining about? Fair enough. I totally, I actually see your point now, you know, he is teaching and that's something that Andrew Goodman actually mentions, turn replies, you know, he is influential. He's telling people how to participate on Twitter. I would like to think people have their own minds and they can say, no, this isn't something they'd like to do. They want to keep things separately, want to be personally, want to be business on another one. You know, I do think there is a place for some business and social. I agree that probably the whole concept of social doesn't include business. You're right. There's a definitely it's like a whole new area is being pulled into it, which of course is going to happen. It's just the nature of the Internet. It just, I think I've lost myself, I mean, the whole thing is like my biggest, my biggest thing was right. I saw him do it at SES and at Pubcon South, the same like Twitter spiel. Those audiences are really savvy about Twitter and about Internet marketing and the Internet in general. Right. And then I also saw him do it at in Salt Lake City at an e-commerce convention where it's just a bunch of people that own sites that are going into e-commerce background, like they're going in an e-commerce direction. These are not web savvy people. They're business people that are now moving on to the web, right? That is the exact audience you should not be talking about these strategies with because they don't understand what they're doing and they're just going to hurt themselves and they're still in their infancy on the web. So it's really like a matter of, you know, even when I do a lot of the stuff that I do when I speak, I'll talk about knowing your risk and evaluating risk and doing things like that in the social media realm. But I never get into specifics just because it's not a matter of I don't want to share things with people. I don't want to share anything with somebody that's going to hurt someone if they go and implement it. That's a very good point. For me, it seems a little hypocritical though that Guy Kawasaki goes to Pubcon South in Austin, gives that keynote and I think that was on point with the audience. When he goes to SES New York, which frankly, I don't think it aligned well with it, like you just said, Dave, but he's doing that and then he'll go on to your show, David Satella, and sit there and say, "You have to know your audience." Well, if it's about knowing your audience and knowing what you're talking to, I mean, I understand that maybe the organizers of SES said, "It will be great for you to address Twitter and even go so far as to talk about how you're using it as a marketing tool for all-time." It doesn't seem like it aligned very well. The messages are mixed. That's all I'm saying and I don't know at what point he's going to take marketing over ethics. I guess that's the question I'll throw out to the group. I think everybody on this show right now I've had this discussion with, "What do we market for? To make money?" and at some point you're breaking some ethical boundary in somebody's eyes, right? Because you always have people that are pristine way and then you always have people that are gray and then whatnot. The whole thing with me is social media has pushed itself into this business aspect. You look at a company like Dig, right? You have the new Dig Toolbar or the new Dig Bar. I mean, that's all a way for them to try to build up their numbers and try to monetize and try to pacify their VCs, you know what I mean? The whole platform is moving into a business-oriented function and so with it, so is marketing. And then again, we're talking about a system like Twitter where if you're push-marketing on Twitter, it's going to fail. You have to be savvy enough to know what you're doing. The ethical boundaries for me is like it's really an argument that's moot because the social media platform has, we know it now and I know the argument comes about what forms have been around forever. But I'm talking about social media as we know it now is so new. I don't even think it knows what its ethics are because I've got an argument with somebody recently that unless it's pure conversational marketing, it's unethical. And then I point to the Dell strategy of pure push-marketing that's successful. Oh, well, their community likes that. So now you're telling me push-marketing is okay only if somebody likes, you know, it's so great right now that I don't think anybody knows what is okay and what's not okay. Well, I think it's all in the way that people use the medium itself. Sorry to break it on you, Ross, but I just wanted to get this point in. David, I think you hit it right on the head. I remember having a conversation with Marty Weintraub a year ago and he said straight up, do you really think Betty Crocker exists? Now when Betty Crocker goes and represents their products to consumers, they're using a brand character, Betty Crocker. So I asked him back, well, tell me, Marty, does Betty Crocker ever tell a lie? It's not possible for Betty Crocker to tell a lie. Betty Crocker is a brand character. She's using a bunch of, or the company's using a bunch of different communication mediums to communicate in the voice of Betty Crocker. And this is marketing. If you don't like the message, you can turn the channel, you cannot follow, you can, you know, watch somebody else's Twitter stream. But again, it's just an effective use of the medium. Eric? I don't know, guys. You know. I think what you need to do, Eric, is separate yourself away from guy Kawasaki. No, no, no, total. Because, like, you know, you know me, right? And you know, like, like, I'm about as great as they come with everything that I do. And like, you're not mad at me for what I do. It's just like, I think that you keep bringing guy Kawasaki in the mix. And it's hard not to be upset with him sometimes because of the way he approaches things, you know what I mean? It's just, again, like everything is so new. It's really hard. I don't think there's a clear cup that, you know, there's no Google Webmaster rules for social, you know what I mean? There's terms of service on different things. And if you break the terms of service, you're obviously going in the black area. But none of these things that we're talking about are breaking the terms of service. There are some Twitter rules that have been established. And I've, I've blogged about this actually on search engine people that, you know, there are like, like, uh, Dell's main account there, Dell outlet specifically breaks those Twitter rules. But those aren't in terms of service. They're just like a basic guideline. Um, and then so you still have this whole gray area where nobody really knows, especially with the Twitter platform, what's right, what's wrong, um, all those kind of concepts. Right. In my distaste for what Guy Kawasaki has done honestly isn't pertaining to Twitter so much as it has, or Twitter, Twitter for me and Guy Kawasaki is a personal thing and I'll happily separate that Guy Kawasaki professionally when it comes to the SEO industry is more for me about all top and it's more about 10. It's more about taking other people's content, fabricating it so it appears to be your own and then not only outranking them, but promoting the hell out of it. I don't agree with it. Okay. Now there are guidelines out there that suggest that he is in the wrong, that his organization are in the wrong for doing that. I can sit here and say all day long and I can point to all these little bullet points for whatever and tell you exactly where he's gone wrong there. But the fact of the matter is that if you do a relevant search on Google for any one of these terms that he's either directly or indirectly targeting, he's being successful. Which frankly isn't so much a Guy Kawasaki issue now as it is, much of it being that of Google and Google sort of, you know, wonderful, you know, happy smile, rainbow and unicorn feeling towards big brands. It's ridiculous. But again, it comes down to the fact that Guy Kawasaki has manipulated in one way, shape, or form how things are working to his advantage. And ethically speaking, I don't think that that's right. I don't think that it's right that he's taking it to a social media community like Twitter. But Snyder, I just want to clarify one thing too. The main reason why I love talking to you about this stuff is I consider myself only to be an SEO. I'm not good with social media. I don't find myself ever to be effective with social media marketing, but I mean, at this point, this is sort of that gray area, not only where we have to start talking about ethics, but where do we differentiate, what search, what social, where's our hybrid, and so on. But I believe we've got a collar on the line, Ross. Is that true? Yeah. It's, John again, one of our, let's see what that is, kind of my hand, five listeners I think. John, how are you doing? Doing well, Ross. Doing well, Ross. The way you guys are talking, I thought I'd like to make a few more comments. I mean, there's a lot of focus, of course, on just Twitter. But social media has actually been coming around and since the advent of chat rooms, and in chat rooms, of course, you have just such a huge selection of people, and everyone is subjected to whatever one else wants to say. But number one, they make the choice to be there. They don't have to be in the chat room. They don't have to be on Twitter. They don't have to be on Facebook. But if you're looking at it for business, well, business hasn't had a choice but to get involved. When you look at all the sites, let's take review or opinion sites, for example, where they're there, you know, people are going on there anonymously and saying what they think of your business. You have to get on the internet and create your own story or respond to these stories. You don't have a choice, otherwise you'll be bold under. I mean, people are looking to the internet now instead of their friends for opinions and for thoughts. So business doesn't have a choice. Now again, when you look at the difference between standard marketing, where we throw an ad out there and hope somebody likes it with a chat room or with Twitter or something like that, it's more a case of an advisory role. When I'm doing things online, what I hope is people will have conversations that I can contribute here, my thoughts, here's my expertise, and then what inevitably happens is they will start asking me about my business and about what our company does. And that's great because now I'm providing the information but they've requested it, they've drawn it out. And again, I did that by being an advisor. That's really where social media and marketing for business has a great fit. What are your thoughts? Well, I think you're dead on. Interacting on social media is a good thing. For example, I admit I actually unfollowed guy Kawasaki, I don't know, a few months ago because at the time it was trimmers, that was all he was pushing, and it was driving me insane. I got off that, I got off quickly. So there has been, you need some issue there, but that's fine, I unfollowed them. But when it comes down to a brand, like my own, I'm just on there to talk to people, I love giving some opinions, I love getting interacting with people, finding out about people. And yeah, I do some marketing, but it's a minor part of what I'm on there for. And I agree, John, I think it's really coming along. And in fact, here's a question from our chat room, someone asking Eric actually, write a blog post about your real beef with guy from a professional standpoint. If that's a question, I'll just answer with yes. I'll happily do it. Frankly, I've got bigger things to take care of. If that's something that people are actually interested in doing, then you're interested in reading, I'll happily do so. It is what it is. I've already sort of dissected the 10th thing when that took place last year. There was a few posts that I had about it. I know other people chimed in, but I mean, hell, I'm not going to argue with having more visitors to my blog. I'm lucky if I get 10 a day, so I'll happily do it. Eric, of course you guys realize that's what you're doing for guy as well. Even negative publicity turns positive. I mean, look at how many followers he had. So you guys are certainly not hurting him with your conversation. Oh, I don't want him. And he was happy as a pig and you know what, when he told us 90,000 plus, and I was, you know, horribly formed. So it's cool. So I mean, if I can get a blog post out to 50 people that shows him exactly where all these little products that he's had his hands on have gone wrong, then I'll happily do that. It's just a shame because I think what he's done, and I don't want to keep using this name because frankly, I don't think he needs that much more promotion, especially on our program. But when it comes to these S3 related issues, I mean, Tint was out there initially as a scraping tool. That is what they did. I mean, at the time I documented, I think it was Apple Insider. Tint had basically gone through and literally within the first four hours of that site being live, that service being live, they had over 1,000 pages of Apple Insider, not only index, but outranking Apple Insider and Google, which I just thought was ludicrous. So that was one issue. I mean, he's going to sit there and nitpick and try to go after Michael Gray for this whole Q7RA Audi issue. Well, if you go back and look at the post and the entire blog post, the guy Kawasaki wrote, he never once mentions the fact that he gave the car back until afterwards in the comments. Well, I'm sorry, Guy, since I'm one of those quote unquote educated people who lives in my mother's basement reading RSS feeds all day, I don't subscribe to your comment feed. So I never got that news. I'm sorry. Again, it comes down to knowing your audience, and I don't want to continue to pick on him because I think it's a topic of search, whether it's paid search or organic search, or emerges with social work, merges with sort of these ethics and how it is that we as service providers represent our clients effectively, that's the issue at hand. Guy Kawasaki, frankly, is becoming yesterday's news in this regard. I mean, we can sit there and dissect what he did last year, but Ross, like you said, six months from now, we're going to be like, oh, yeah, remember when it was all top, remember when it was trimmers, remember when it was his keynote that he gave half a dozen times in a month? I mean, come on. Yeah, it's constantly changing. I mean, how would you guys teach it then? Like, say you want to teach the fact that there is a marketing aspect to it. I mean, maybe you don't want to, but if you were, how would you teach it to keep everything separate? I mean, we mentioned having separate accounts for one for your business, one for your personal, is there a point that those blend? I mean, I do the same, but I also have a bit of blend in my own personal, not a lot, but a bit. I'm interested to see what you guys think of how you would teach something, like this to the common public. Well, I think that's kind of a tough one, as Guy said during the interview with David, at Guy Kawasaki is one of his brands. Now we know that he has a couple of ghosts writing tweets for him, and actually, it's kind of funny. But during the interview, I was watching his Twitter stream and hash-marked PPC rock stars. And I saw three posts from Guy Kawasaki that had nothing to do with the show go up in that hour. And clearly, it wasn't Guy writing them, it was one of his ghosts writing them under his name. It could be tweeted later. But it's very effective. It's marketing. It is people, his employees, representing his brand. Ross, I remember when I was working for you at Step 4th. I was writing blog posts representing your brand. Was there anything wrong with me writing on behalf of Step 4th? I was being paid for it too. Well, you're right, exactly. There is a difference, and you know, it is a brand. It's a bit tougher, though. It is a bit grayish. Okay. Wait a second. Wait a second. Who on this call, or in our chat room anywhere, prior to the SES New York thing kind of blowing up and prior to him actually admitting that on PVC rockstars, who actually thought or believed that Guy Kawasaki was out there pushing at Guy Kawasaki as a quote unquote brand account? I did. Anyone? Seriously. Well, I didn't think of it that way, but I see that now. I mean, he's a self-promoter, so I mean, everything he does with his name is branding and marketing, right? I mean, we know that he can go back to what he gets for blogging and then the little treats and the little paths on the back and whatnot. I mean, that all comes from somewhere, and it all comes from the fact that he's actively pushing that Twitter account. I mean, if you look at his Twitter account, he's following more people than are following him right now, right? So he's actively pushing that out, that message out to people. It's not like people are just running in droves to follow Guy Kawasaki. He's spending time building up that account, so he's doing it for a reason. Everything that I see with somebody like that, I say this is for personal branding. When you talk about personal branding, you talk about branding a person, right? Yeah, but if that's his business, what's wrong with that? I don't have a problem with it. Yeah, again, I'm probably not the person to really ask about it, right? Again, I don't have a problem with anything that Guy Kawasaki does. I just have a problem with what he tells other people to do. Now from a search standpoint, I do have some of the issues with things that he's done like that Eric's brought up, but on the social media side. To be honest, I think he's not even a social media marketer. I think he utilizes social media, but the way he utilizes it is just so lazy, and if he wasn't Guy Kawasaki, I don't think anybody's been talking about it, you know what I mean? He's not a clueless woman. Well, he's not, I mean, Guy Kawasaki's a smart guy. He's just not a smart social media marketer. I don't think he'd consider himself a social media marketer, right? He just uses social media to market. Well, I think the problem here is that maybe someone who isn't a social media marketer shouldn't be a search conference is giving keynotes on social marketing, right? Yeah, I mean, that's what we could definitely argue about as well, because I don't, like when I look at his work, I just, like the all-top account, it brings up the all-top account. The all-top account isn't that successful, right? It has like 2,000 people following it, and you say, well, of course, it only has 2,000 people following it because nobody wants to have push marketing done to them on a constant basis, right? I mean, his all-top account is a perfect example of why you shouldn't do marketing like that. It's a huge site that people visit and people use, and nobody's following the account, right? Because it's not, it's not giving any information anybody wants. Okay, we're going to just cut right now, and we're going to take a quick break, and we come back, so we're going to touch on that topic. SEO 101 will be back right after recess. Does your website need a bailout looking for conversion rate stimulus package? 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Welcome back to SEO 101 on webmasterradio.fm with Eric Lander, independent SEO, and myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing, Inc. Before the break, we're just talking with David Snyder there. David, why don't you just give a quick recap of what you're chatting about there? Because frankly, I'm starting to lose my grip on reality. I don't know what's going on. I was just talking about the fact that everybody gets worked up about what Guy Kawasaki does on social media. For me, I don't really care that much about what he does on social media, because when I look at the work that he actually does, on Twitter, it's kind of lazy. Owl Top isn't a good account, he has like, I don't know, probably two or three thousand people following it, which by the standards of his other account is drastically smaller. And why? It's because of the content. Nobody really cares about that content. It's a lot of push marketing going on. So I mean, the whole thing, I think he's a bigger hit in our industry than in any other as well, just because there's a lot of people that have strong feelings about him. So when he does things like when, and I really saw it, like the transition from that first conference, I saw him in Salt Lake, Pubcon, and then SDS, everything came to a head. And it was the same thing he was talking about throughout, right? But it's a matter of, you know, we end with a search, a strong search conference. Like Pubcon South had a lot of social media involved with it. And now you have a, you have a base of people that is pretty anti-Guy Kawasaki that is taking this information that's web-savvy and they're like, you know, this is what we shouldn't be doing. And again, like, you know, I really don't care what he does with his accounts because all people are going to do is unfollow him in the all-top account, right? My problem is what are you teaching people to do? Right. So in that regard, and again, I just want to clarify what I said earlier. I'm not at all a social media marketer. I don't consider myself to be. I mean, obviously, I'm involved in Twitter. You know, I've got a stumble upon account. So when I try to stay abreast as to what's going on there, but Snyder, you're obviously, you know, are you the CEO of Searching Social? I know you're a co-founder. Cool. Yeah, a co-owner. Cool. Yeah. Okay. So when it comes to social media, when it comes to what people can be doing, at least whether they're a small business, they've got, you know, their webmaster, a site market or whatever the case is, how can we steer them in the right direction since Guy Kawasaki is not doing a great job of doing that? I guess, could you tell our listeners a little bit more about what they could be doing to kind of cover their, you know, cover their tails online? The whole thing with social media man is like, it's not the same thing for everybody, right? There's no cookie cutter approach. And that's, I think what people in our industry have a hard time understanding because, you know, like, and I always say like SEO breaks down pretty easily. I mean, there's a lot of complexity to search, right? But when you really want to break it down, like, how do you rank for things? There's like, I can do four things to a website and rank for, you know, some mid-tail term, right? Like, social media is not that way. There's no stamp. There's no cookie cutter that you can just go, okay, I want to be on Twitter. Let me do this. So, I mean, the first thing you really have to do is understand your user base and who are you trying to get to do whatever you're trying to get them to do, right? Because there's lots of different things you can do within social media as well. Like, are you using it as a brand builder? Are you using it actually for conversion? Because we're starting to see that with Twitter, that's a possibility. Are you using it to build links? And this is more of a search thing than, you know, real social media, but, you know, viral marketing. Like, what are you trying to do? Who's your consumer? Where are they at? And how do you get them to do the action that you're trying to get across to them? You know, if you don't, and that's why, you know, that cookie cutter approach is, well, get on Twitter, hawking, just start finding people, talking about what you're doing and then go after them. That's not going to work all the time. I mean, it might work sometimes, but I think very rarely. It's really about creating. And the thing I say is, you know, Twitter, in all reality, think of it less as a social community and more as a blog as a marketer, right? It has a lot of social networking aspects. It has a lot more aspects that are blog-like. Create great content and people are going to do whatever you want them to do. Same thing as a blog. You create great content. You can leverage it however you want. Right. Now, like this morning, we saw, I don't know if you're following what Strecko and Barry Wise or ITCN's doing on Twitter, but they launched that Noam service, which is at Noam.com. You go out, you register basically any social media profile name that you want across, I don't know if it's 110, 120 different social media outlets. The recommendation that I've always had, because obviously that can be used for the purpose of SEO, I mean, some of these sites are going to be ranking well for your brand names and so on, you need to do that carefully though, right? I mean, you don't want to just go out and grab as many account IDs as you possibly can, but you want to be using that effectively going back to that method of using conversational marketing, finding a way to interact with your audience and actually using it. I guess providing a value to either your current clients, potential clients, but people who are effectively opting in, in a sense of interest, right? You don't want to just go out and just do whatever. You know, like one of the big things, like I always say, and I said it at public on South and I said it at SES New York is social media, the biggest thing is you get back what you give, right? So people get mad at me because, you know, one of the services we offer is via a link building, right? So we create great content, push it out on the web, and then return, we get links. So we're getting back what we give to people, right? Because people really enjoy the content that we put out there, and in return, they pay us back with what, with links, you know, and that's how it is with all social media. Like, if you have a great blog and you give great content and then you have some kind of affiliate offer on there, you're going to get people signing up for your affiliate offer because you're giving it great content, and they're there and they, you know, they see that the offer matches the content they're getting. So it's not a matter like, and this is where a lot of search guys, I think, go wrong. Is it like, well, we got to get on dig because those links on dig are going to be links back to our site. But that's not how you utilize dig as a channel, right? You create content that dig promotes and then it virally spreads from there. I just think that there's a, there's an under, there's not a clear understanding a lot of the times in the search community about how social media can be leveraged in general. Like, um, I don't know if it's, if it's too analytical, like, like, I don't, I wouldn't say it's lack of creativity because, you know, like when I was talking to, uh, Michael DeMib when I was in, uh, London, you know, he was like, oh, the social media stuff is so new to me. I was like, you were one of the first guys to talk about by our link building. You just, it didn't have a name then, you know what I mean? Like he talked about link baiting before anybody else is doing it. It just didn't have the name it has just it's, people are just thinking to first one dimensionally when they, these guys who just want to use it for building links and stuff. It's just too one dimensional. Uh, like I was just trying to think when, um, let's make some notes, but what do I use it for? I use it to, um, sort of improve my networking with my peers, like, uh, Dave, you guys, I don't see you guys. You're not nearby. I'm on the other side of the continent to see you, um, it just doesn't work out. So I keep in connection with you. I find out what's going on in your lives. And, and it's great. It's a good way to keep connected with my peers. And I also, um, get to show a little bit about what I've learned in web marketing. And as a result, like recently, I got a speaking gig, sure it's local. It's great. I wouldn't have gotten that otherwise. I didn't even know the person that there's just a great way to connect with people either locally or internationally, um, new things. And you inherently, like you said, you get out what you put in and, and I've, I found Twitter phenomenal. I find it very addictive because I'm having so much fun. Um, in fact, Steve Plunkett in our chat room says, uh, social media is engagement and being genuine. Gage. Either is a slippery slope to spam. Well done. I like that. Well, I just figured that one of the things that we like, I've actually been pushing people more towards like that we've been talking to, uh, Twitter to begin with. And then like as, as a way to get into search, what I'm saying by that is, you know, we take the terms like we started working with a company recently, like, uh, smaller company that's doing some, uh, like virtual assistant stuff, right? So we looked for terms like virtual assistant, different things on Twitter and we can actually create real time engagement with people that are looking for those services. It's almost like a social, Twitter allows almost a social media form of PPC in a lot of ways because you can actually monitor terms and then, um, create content around, uh, those terms that you can actually build again, like you said, we're honestly, you can build real time engagement, um, that can go on to build clients or whatever cell or whatever you're trying to do on the platform. Mm hmm. Well, Eric, what do you use it for? Uh, honestly, I mean, it's, I want to try to get people engaged in whatever it is I'm, I'm caring about in the moment. I mean, in the process of SES New York going on with that keynote, I mean, the topic was SEO spam and two degree Twitter ethics and I mean, every day it changes. I don't, I'm not going to sit there and say that at Eric Linder is a brand account because it's not. I mean, at 800 followers versus Kawasaki's 100,000, I mean, obviously there's no influence there. And, but I, I enjoy that. I mean, I like to know that the people that who are at least following me are at least interested in whatever it is I have going on, um, when it comes to making a recommendation for clients, again, I mean, I'm not a social media marketer, I try to make the recommendation to, to work with people who I know who are ethically sounding what they're doing. But yeah, I think it's not, or you just sort of summed it up for me. It's, you want people to put in a genuine effort. I mean, the reason why, uh, I'm going to, I hope I don't, I forget the guy's name. If it's Frank, that the Comcast cares account on Twitter, I, you know, I moved to a new house a little while ago, I had problems with Comcast initially. I tweeted that boom, the next thing you know, that was a conversation that took place. It was a great conversation, it was rewarding, but I didn't sit there and follow him because frankly, I don't want to hear what he's saying to help all these other customers out. Um, so, but again, that, that's an account that I can sit there and make a recommendation for. I mean, my brother, uh, I think I was talking to him not long ago and I said, well, if you've got a problem and you've got Comcast, go on Twitter and just, you know, tweet Comcast cares. Um, it happened last week. I mean, I got a new blackberry and I was using, uh, mail trust, who is actually a company on the inside of, uh, RAC space, I believe, I just tweeted them very quickly and was like, oh man, I'm having trouble with my new blackberry. Within three minutes, my phone rang and, you know, the customer service, I was like, oh, I just got a call from so and so, you know, he's in our social media department. He mentioned that you might have a problem, so I wanted to give you a call and make sure everything was good. I mean, that's, that's incredibly genuine. It's, it's, I mean, talk about opt in ethically sound marketing. I mean, hell, I'm, I'm sitting there saying I've got a problem, you know, and I just threw it out there to see what kind of response I would get and I got a great response back. So I think that sums up exactly what you need to be doing. I, I just fear, you know, what it is that some of these people are saying out there. Yeah. And I mean, it's like, you go ahead. No, I'm just going to say, I mean, one of the people who I think is clearly spreading some inaccurate information or at least some misguided direction would be guided, I know. I mean, the, the reality too, again, it goes back and say it's not just one way to do it. Like, like the customer service angle is great. So you can use it for customer service issues, right? You can also use it to we've, we've effectively monetized Twitter. And Dell is an example of a company that's done really well with monetizing a platform. Okay. You can use it to build a brand name for yourself, for your company, whatever. And then there's also, there's a, from a search angle, there's a traffic element to it. Like let's say, you know, there's two accounts that just hit a million users this month, right? A million followers. Let's say that every Twitter account that, uh, let's say every tweet that I send out, I'm, I'm Ashton coach. I have a million followers. Every tweet I tweet out, I get 1% of my followers, only 1% to, to click on that link. That's 10,000 unique visitors, you know, I mean, that's a, that's like almost a dig front page at this point in time. Um, then there's also a link building element to it as well. I think it's 39% of people on Twitter have a blog as well. So they're getting those links and building links to the Twitter links that they see content that's advantageous towards their users. Um, there's so many things that can be done with it that just one approach, you know, just saying this is the only way to do it. I think that, you know, you need to go into it and say, you know, what's the best way for me and for my customer or client or whatever. I'm trying to, you know, leverage. Thanks a lot there. David, that's great. Um, well on behalf of myself, uh, Ross Dunce, CEO of Stepforth Web Marketing and Eric Lander, independent SEO. Thank you. Dave and Dave Snyder, that is and Dave Satella and John and Jim Hedger and why am I missing? Oh, the other commenters. Thank you. Uh, it's been interesting. I think we've done a good job of beating this to death, but it's a good, it's, it's a good conversation. I really have enjoyed it and, uh, Eric, if you got any closing comments, if you're going to do social media marketing, do it ethically. Thank you. [MUSIC PLAYING]