open circuit is a knowledge-sharing network of community members working to demystify computers and information technology. rooted in the idea that everyone has something to teach, and something to learn, its goal is to share technical knowledge to help grassroots activists, arts organizations, non-profits and community groups to increase their organizing capacity. members plan monthly workshops, network and share solutions. their inaugural knowledge-sharing session will take place during simultaneous festival at soap factory on labor day weekend.

to find out more, check out their work-in-progress wiki - just launched today.

where have i been? what have i been doing for the better part of july?

first, i’ve been pretending to be a grownup. with my stepson in town for the last couple weeks, we’ve been eating meals on schedule and planning fun itinerary. we attended the artful new feature film transformers (michael bay = king of ’splosions), ate both ice cream and cotton candy in the same night, spent a weekend camping, bowled with bumpers (oddly, my scores did not improve…), and cruised the parks of minneapolis. and my husband was getting mighty comfortable being a stay at home dad.
and while all that was happening, i was also busy getting promoted. i suspect now i’ll be busy trying to figure out what, exactly, my new job entails. from what i’ve gathered so far, i’m the new vanilla ice: if there is a problem, yo, i’ll solve it. i don’t have a hook yet, but once i obtain one you can check it out whilst my dj revolves it. and if vanilla ice can stage a comeback, so can i.
word to your mother.

…and your friends are my friends, and my friends are your friends. the more we get together, the happier we’ll be.

it’s a great message for a five-year-old, but we’ve seen plenty of evidence that it doesn’t make for a very effective linking strategy. sorry, realtors.

when google doles out penalties for reciprocal linking, small business owners are often in danger of feeling the wrath. that entrepreneurial spirit can make it difficult to let go of important projects, like internet marketing. they read the first 20 pages of seo for dummies, and learn that links are good. how, pray tell, should they go about getting people to link to their site?

they turn to their network, of course. small business owners know other small business owners; their blackberries are jam-packed with contacts. they send out a solicitation to business owners around the country, asking them to trade links back and forth. do they create massive reciprocal link rings with malicious intent to manipulate google’s algorithm, or are they simply applying the skills they’ve learned running a business to the online environment? in business, the more connected you are, the more successful you’ll be. just like raffi said, only grown-up.

i’m not saying business owners deserve to be rewarded for plucking the low-hanging fruit of reciprocal links. building reciprocal links requires little energy or creativity. but should major penalties be applied when business owners translate what they’ve been trained to do offline to the online sphere?

while reading rand’s summer lull post on seomoz this morning, his commentary on the following point caught my eye:

20 to 25% of the queries we see today, we have never seen before 

yes, that’s a huge chunk. but is it ”daunting, overwhelming, all-consuming”? nah. i agree with rand that user generated content is a great tool for capturing long tail opportunities, but i couldn’t help but dwell on his choice of words (the emphasis is mine):

“no matter how proliferate a writer you are and no matter how excellent your editorial work, you can never match the power of UGC…”

here’s the inherent problem: seo is not about you. when you spend more time thinking about your techniques and the assets you can leverage than you spend thinking about your visitors, you’re forgetting marketing 101. marketing is all about the me - i’m your audience. i don’t care about you and your excellent skills. i’ve got a problem. i need something. i’m looking for stuff.   

the key to successful long tail optimization is knowing your audience, and anticipating their needs. before drafting content, do some homework. simple keyword research only scratches the surface. think about who you’re writing to. if you’re selling high chairs, cruise some new mommy message boards to uncover their most dreaded mealtime challenges. if you’re pushing skateboards, it’s not enough to slap ‘tony hawk’ in your title tag and call it a night. who’s on the scene right now? what are the sickest new tricks? and do the kids still say ‘sick,’ or was that so three years ago?

take some time to really research your ideal visitor. what does this person do when not busy buying your gear? think about what they read, what they write, and where they go to get information. are they afraid of something? (wrinkles? aging? getting caught wearing last season’s jeans?) facebook, people magazine, bad summer reality tv, political blogs, digg, the local record store - clues are everywhere, and pop culture is your friend. if you get really desperate, try something drastic: talk to some real, live people who you’d like to bring in to your site. if you’re in house for an online retail site, track down a customer service rep and ask if you can field a couple calls. if you’re consulting from the outside, get creative. go out and meet your target market. they’re folks like us, after all.

the long tail presents enormous opportunities, and if you understand your market and cater to your audience, you’ll be well-positioned to benefit. yes, go ahead and engage your visitors and let them supply you with delicious, free user-generated web content, but never trust them to do your dirty work. there’s nothin’ beats some highly targeted content, written in the appropriate vernacular, incorporating slang terms and synonyms, addressing current trends, supplying how-to tips, playing to your crowd’s hopes and dreams. your content is never ‘finished.’ keep writing.

and if you don’t have to write your own content, don’t forget to pay your copywriter. he/she is cranky, and delirious from lack of sleep. heck, go in there right now and tell him/her how fabulous he/she is. better bring some strong coffee with you.

travelling for work is a great cover. it provides the perfect excuse to rationalize uber-tourist behavior. it’s almost as if you’re not really there - it’s a stolen moment. so if in your spare time you end up drinking at the hard rock cafe or trotting up and down south beach, you have plausible deniability. you’re not a pale midwestern tourist. you’re working. go ahead and order that delicious cuban food while drinking your mojito from a bright orange souvenir goblet.

*weird coincidence: i’ve been watching jeopardy while writing this - that last question just referenced don johnson and melanie griffith.

in self-described web 1.0 fashion, max action has finally updated the action squad site (website, he’s quick to point out - not blog), retelling his adventures above and below seattle two weeks ago. he describes it thusly: 

- 1 part action squad trip log for the usual site visitors,
- 1 part vacation blog for friends and family,
- 1 part synchronicity tale, and
- 1 part seo conference blog.

i’d also add ‘3 parts cultural juxtaposition.’ if you’ve never heard of urban exploration, here’s a place to start: max action at smx seattle. as a personal endorsement, max action is the kind of guy you’d follow down the side of a steep limestone cliff in la jolla while wearing cheap flip flops. in the moment, it would never cross your mind that this might not be a good idea.

*note that action squad follows a strict, self-imposed code of conduct. that said, many of their adventures are potentially dangerous and somewhat less than legal. disclaimer, etc.

establish clear conversion benchmarks up front
before contracts are signed and work begins, sit down with clients and listen attentively as they discuss their goals. if their expectations are unrealistic, this is the time for damage control - not six months down the road. 

if the site will be used as a lead-generation tool, direct contacts may be your primary conversion goal. be prepared to measure all contacts generated by the site, including email, intake form submissions, and phone calls. if the website will also support client communication and retention, establish a set of secondary conversion benchmarks related to these goals. secondary conversions could include online coupon downloads, newsletter subscriptions, contest entries, etc.

when specific goals aren’t established up front, how do clients determine the ’success’ or ‘failure’ of their site? they usually latch on to the only visible signal they have: rank. when a client is obsessed with their position, any fluctuation is bound to give them conniptions. and since rankings are fluid and relative (more so now than ever before), conniptions are almost inevitable. even if you get great exposure for your most prized keywords, those rankings are worthless if you don’t convert visitors and generate revenue. you may drive a flood of traffic to a website, but if you fail to establish clear conversion goals, it’s going to be hard to declare success.

choose an appropriate analytics tool
different tools have very different levels of user-friendliness, ranging from girl-next-door to no-chance-of-parole. if you’re doing all the dirty work yourself and preparing neat, tidy summaries to clients on a regular basis, by all means use whatever you like best. but if you have a hands-on client who wants access to their data in real time, choose a program with a user-friendly interface. avoid analytics rage at all costs - no matter how good those results are, they’ll never adequately impress if your client is in a frustrated state of mind every time he or she checks in.

if you do opt to give clients access to their analytics, don’t just send their login information and back away. have a training session. teach them what they’re looking at, and focus on the metrics that show important performance trends. without baseline training, too much information is a dangerous thing.

track all phone leads
this is an absolutely critical step. even if you have an intake form on your site, many users will find it simpler pick up the phone and call. people searching for service providers often seek an immediate response, and depending on your client’s vertical, an email volley may be out of the question (e.g. referring keyword: twin cities plumber emergency 24 hrs).

the most effective phone tracking method is to dedicate a single phone number exclusively to your web traffic. consider obtaining a unique toll-free number, post it on the website, and never list it in any other marketing materials. if your client prefers to use a local number (and this may be a good idea if you’re relying heavily on local search), dedicate a separate cell phone number to the website (you may also want to use this number for IYP submissions & local search engine profiles). when the phone bill comes, all incoming calls generated by site are listed right there.

granted, you could also give the receptionist a stack of post-its and pencil to keep tally, but this is hardly science. 

expectations gone awry
here’s a case study: a local seo signed on to do some extensive contract work for a financial services company. the owners assured this unsuspecting seo that once they got people on the phone or in the office, they could close the deal with 1/3 of their prospects. they just needed him to get the leads, and offered unsuspecting seo a hefty bonus based on the number of accounts opened.

a few months into the project, unsuspecting seo discovered he had generated approximately 500 promising leads that had never been contacted by the financial firm. no phone calls, no emails, no appointments scheduled. so despite the highly effective generation of qualified leads, unsuspecting seo had no chance of seeing that promised bonus money.

these days, a much bigger portion of my work involves getting exposure for small- to medium-sized businesses that offer services, not stuff. since fedex won’t deliver a dentist or licensed massage therapist to your door, those actual visitor-to-$$ conversions tend to happen offline. leads are generated online when users submit an intake form, send an email, or find the number and pick up the phone. leads are relatively easy to track from my end. but leads don’t always turn into dollars. it becomes much more complex to follow traffic past the point of lead generation and into the realm where actual monies are exchanged. so what are the best ways to measure roi for these clients?

part 2 (the good part) to follow. cue suspenseful cliffhanger music here.

first, a 10 second summary of each. in deep economy, mckibben deals with a range of topics including local food and energy production, entreprenuership in china, and citizen-run radio stations. the book centers around one primary question: can society reach the point where having more no longer makes things better? and as you may imagine, gore’s book discusses the current administration’s policies, climate change, and participatory democracy. 

their shared ground points to the internet as a still-unfettered destination for public participation. mckibben writes: “despite every effort to turn it into one more television set[…], the internet continues to operate more like - to use my favorite metaphor - a farmers market where a million people bring their produce to sell.” this shared medium differs widely from tv in its collaborative nature. a user on the web engages in all sorts of active behaviors: searching, scanning, reading, watching video, and always making conscious choices about what to consume.

not so with television. sure, by turning on the set, the tv viewer consents to accept its content. but the viewer is not active; instead he or she is acted upon and advertised to without the ability to participate in the conversation.

from gore’s perspective, ”the easy accessibility individuals have to publish ideas on the internet has led to the emergence of a new meritocracy of ideas that is similar in some ways to the public forum that existed during the time of america’s founding.” and that’s powerful stuff. it’s easy to forget that we work every day in a medium that has completely changed the way people share and consume information, introducing a new wave of public discourse. and much of the work we do has made the space better; when people look for news, or information, or that product-they-just-gotta-have, they can easily find it.

i’m off to miami in a couple weeks. maybe next time i’ll just read some fiction?