I looks like little David (i.e. online, social, consumer-driven, music management) may have taken down Goliath (i.e. the big recording labels … all except EMI, and they’re still in negotiation).

A new MySpace venture, funded by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., will launch later this year. The service will provide MySpace members with DRM-free, streaming, on-demand music (ad-based, of course) and will allow users to create playlists and all sorts of other cool non-centralized, bureaucratic RIAA-like features. Oops, did I let my opinion of the RIAA show there a little?

This TechCrunch article has most of the details. Please, dear reader, make note of this event! It’s a biggie business milestone. This is on the order of light bulbs beating out candles and gas lamps … the auto beating out the horse and buggy … VHS beating out Beta … Jordan Sparks beating out Sanjaya Malakar.

This signals the end for many industries. Music stores, radio stations (as we know them today), major record labels control over artists, etc. Maybe it’s not an immediate end to these staples of our society, but, it will be a quickly changing aspect of our business landscape.

Yesterday, I had a wonderful lunch discussion with Terry Lieberman (VP & General Manager) and Dennis Hennessey (Director of New Media Development) for The River — 92.5 FM, a triple-A station in Portsmouth, NH. The discussion revolved around their view of the changing nature of the radio industry. Let me say emphatically, these guys guys ‘get it!’ We all agreed, if the big boys in the radio biz don’t wake up and smell the coffee sometime in the next 12-18 months (24-36 months will be too late), they’ll likely find themselves being referenced with the likes of button hooks, collar tabs, and bed warmers … or Sanjaya Malakar.

Go Ahead, Socialize ...

A long-standing rule of search engine friendliness is web site owners need to create inbound links … links from other sites pointing to your site…. Ten-ish years ago, when Google started the shift away from code to content (including inbound links) as the preferred way of determining ‘relevance’, the world changed…. Immediately, businesses owners started scrambling, and begging, for every link they could get…. Thank goodness things have changed!… This doesn’t, however, mean that inbound links are no longer important…. In many ways they’re more important than ever before.

How then, does one go about getting those precious nuggets of hypertext anchor tagging?… Here are a few strategies;

• Blog Comments …€” Go out of your way to read other people’s blogs…. Your Mother always told you that reading is good for you … she was right! But, when you do so, be sure to productively interact with those bloggers…. It makes them feel good. It validates what they’re writing about. It starts up a relationship between the two of you. AND, here’s the good part, it gives you an inbound link to your site.
• Blog Trackbacks …€” Start your own blog and refer to all of those blogs you’re reading in the form of a “trackback” in your posts…. Learning what this means exactly will have to wait for a future post or tutorial, however, suffice it to say, you need to know what this is if you’re blogging and it gives you an inbound link.
• Pay Per Click Advertising is indeed an added marketing expense, however, it is a controllable, predictable means to build ROI and is a great way to build inbound links where you have control over the text used in the link tag.
• Participate on Forums …€” Similar to blog comments and trackbacks, participating on industry forums will get you hooked up with other like minded professionals, will keep you abreast of current trends and you get to build your own inbound links in the signature line of the posts.
• Build Other Pages …€” Some new social networking sites on the web allow you to create content and post it in their domain as new pages. One great example of this is Seth Godin’s Squidoo…. By creating “lenses” that focus readers on a particular topic of interest, you get to engage readers and create more inbound links to your main site.
• Wikis …€” The concept of a wiki (like www.wikipedia.com) is where readers also become content contributors…. Anyone who is registered can log in and change content…. Understand other readers of this information rich content have zero tolerance for salesy/advertising tactics … so, be careful with this one…. Be purely informative and helpful with your newly posted content…. If the content survives peer scrutiny, you’ll have a nice little inbound link that’s potentially seen by millions.
• Social Networking …€” MySpace and FaceBook for sure, but there’s an explosion of social networking web sites out there…. Dive in and start participating…. Doing so allows you to interact with other professionals and, you guessed it, builds up inbound links.
• Social Bookmarking …€” Different than social networking, social bookmarking is similar to how you used to bookmark sites in your browser but, instead, you bookmark your favorite sites publically in sites like de.licio.us, ma.gnolia.com, spurl.com, rojo.com, Google bookmarks … the list goes on and on…. The goal is to have people discover these bookmarks, and then your site…. An added benefit to social bookmarking (and blog posts) is you get to “tag” your content with words and phrases that are relevant to the content…. These tags are used to identify the content in the search process.
• Organized surfing sites …€” This is a variation of social bookmarking…. There are sites that organize how people surf the web in an effort to make the process of finding the right content faster and more focused…. StumbleUpon (available as a Firefox plugin) is one of my favorites but others like Technorati (blog content), Digg (blogs, articles and news stories) and newcomer Trailfire (another Firefox plugin) allow users to power-surf … finding your site via inbound links.
• Link Begging …€” Don’t discount it just yet. Asking another site owner for a link sometimes still works…. However, with all of the other options listed above, you’ll quickly learn that this tactic is largely time consuming and unproductive.

Any good car salesman will recite the old adage, “plan your work and work your plan.” This especially holds true for your inbound link strategy.

Go Ahead, Socialize ...

The design of your home page is critical to the success of your entire web presence (nothing new there.)… Jack Aaronson provides us with a post filled with great tid-bits…. Although I suggest reading his entire post, here are some of my favorites;

• He begins with the recommendation that people should know your “brand”…. We couldn’t agree more that brand is the most important part of the home page design presentation.
• Keep focused. Trying to be everything to everybody will lead you directly to being nothing to everybody.
• Keep things un-noisy and relevant.
• Use intuitive navigation.
• Although Aaron doesn’t use this as one of his main points, he points out that when figuring out the depth of your product presentation, you should test it…. We think you should test everything to determine relevancy and to find out what’s working…. Use Google Analytics to give you loads of information and to help you make these decisions.

Thanks for the great post Aaron!

Go Ahead, Socialize ...

Ever been to a cocktail party that was WAY more energetic and lively than you expected? Did you wonder about how (or why) it got that way. Certainly a major factor is the personalities of the players in the room. The outgoing quirky types get things going … the creative ones get the direction off in tangents … even the somber spectators contribute to the mass mentality. NOW, take that party and put it on the web. Then invite hundreds of millions of your closest friends. THAT’S what social networking is all about.

Lani Voivod at Epiphanies, Inc. asked me:

“…would you please write a post explaining the differences/perks of ‘Digg, Technorati, Flickr or Twitter’”

OK, that’s a challenge …. keeping with the party metaphor, here goes;

• DIGG.com (sharing blogs, articles, news stories and other great content) …€” Imagine a group of people in the corner talking about the latest, greatest, coolest, most significant “STUFF” they’ve seen on the web. Of course, when one person brings up a topic, you’re sure to get two or three other people to chime in “OH YEAH, I saw that! That was so friggin’ cool!”.
• TECHNORATI.com (sharing and ranking blogs) …€” Off in the family room, a group of musicians naturally gets together to talk shop. One person brings up a post on a blog they read last week about Dave Evans, the original singer of AC/DC. Of course, most of the others have read the same post because they’re effectively wired to their world of music bloggers. The others make a mental note to go visit that blog ’cause it sounds like a great resource … and was recommended by other music mavens.
• FLICKR.com (photo sharing) …€” Sally is one of those gregarious folks roaming around the room taking pictures of everyone. Of course she has everyone’s email stored in her camera phone so she can batch mail the good ones to everyone in the room and post them on her personal site.
• YOUTUBE.com (video sharing) …€” Danny is the Speilberg wanna-be in the room. He’s got tape (digital, of course) running on every wacky event he can capture at the party. SURELY, everyone will get to see his stuff after he’s posted it for the web. Hey, he may even win $10,000 on AFV!
• TWITTER.com (Sharing “Wassup”) …€” Just as people started arriving, a small group of people in the kitchen just “catch up.” Joe says “Hey Wanda. What’ve you been up to?” Wanda replies. The catching up goes on around the circle with everyone else in the group.

OK, here’s where it gets interesting. How many different types of groups can you imagine at a cocktail party? If you can imagine it … make it happen! Take the next step and figure out how you can take that socializing idea to a global level and turn it into the next multi-billion dollar social networking web site! Want some examples? These are off the cuff (let’s stick with the party metaphor again);

• A group of executive chefs is gathered around the fire sharing recipes. Since they’re all vegan, they’re all quite passionate and attentive to the input they get from their cohorts. or …
• Hank and Betsy are both in the travel industry. They’ll spend hours talking together about the best travel packages they were able to put together for their clients. Since Hank specializes in trips to Hawaii, he’s got the 411 on the best local eateries. or…or…or

I could go on and on and on with examples. Hopefully you could too. The point of this long post is to show you the world of social networking on the web is NOT about the sites! … it’s about the people! Their needs, wants, desires, interests and passions. Fulfill those and you’ve got something big. Weave this idea into your own marketing and you’ve got something REALLY big!

Go Ahead, Socialize ...

I’ve been enjoying my morning analysis of my HitTail.com results for a few weeks now. Although the referrer and keyword phrase information has always been available to me via my web site activity logs, I’ve been looking at this information differently these days. It’s now all about what will I be blogging about next … or, what topics will benefit my traffic building activities.

DON’T GET ME WRONG … I’m not suggesting that blogging should be based on anything but value-based, authentic commentary. What I’m suggesting is these reports can give you direction on the topics you choose. Within these lists you’ll find a bottomless well of topics based on your years’ of experience. For example, my Hittail suggestion report shows that I have some opportunity in developing a blog about “best taglines.” Can I come up with a dozen or more ideas that revolve around that phrase? …. YOU BET!

There is, however, a side effect of analyzing your reports this way. It forces you to look deeper into your long tail than you normally would. I noticed that I’ve been getting an inordinately large number of visitors to my post about Bank of America’s new brand strategy. Why is this? Come to find out, B of A has a mortgage program called the “Acorn Program”. Combine “B of A” with “Acorn Creative” and VOILA, you find yourself coming up with a #3 ranking on Google for all of those people looking for that program!

BUT, BUT, BUT, you’re saying to yourself, who cares about that traffic if it’s sooooo untargeted to our services. True. But I retort; What about phrases like “Bank Taglines” and “Bank Branding” and other similar phrases that have also popped up in the reports? The point is, there’s gold in them thar phrases. The more you dig, the more you find.

If you’re reading this and you’re the VP of Marketing for Bank of America (or any other bank), feel free to contact me at 888-825-3300! We’ll be happy to assist you with your new branding efforts.

Go Ahead, Socialize ...

Creative web design is complex!  In an effort to create an aesthetically pleasing site that the client loves AND is profitable, it’s easy to pass on the subtleties that will make it effective in both Search Marketing as well as client conversion.  An effective, powerful, creative web design process would surely include;

• Placement of fabulous title tags (including one instance of an important keyword/keyword phrase)
• Use of H1 tags (again, keyword rich but specifically containing the above keyword/keyword phrase)
• Although less important than in years past, you must still develop keyword and description tags
• Writing of keyword rich body copy (99% of the time, this is greatly enhanced by blogging)
• W3C Compliant, Standards-based design
• Either relative or absolute positioned layers that allows your main content to come right after the <body> tag
• Not too much or too little copy
• Aesthetics that are professional and engaging
• Messaging that draws out curiosity and has a direct call to action
• Creative web design always focuses on a single thing for the user to do (Seth Godin’s Big Red Fez is a must read for all web site owners)
• Creative web design is always powerfully emotive and consistent with other marketing design

Review this list with your web developer.  If they don’t know what ALL of this means or how they’ll implement these things for you, it may be time to find another developer.

Go Ahead, Socialize ...

A wonderfully unique application of an old idea! DNScoop.com gives you the scoop on what’s going on with your domain name… with some interesting twists. Finding out how old your site is, getting your Alexa ranking, getting your Google Page Rank … these are all old ideas (in Internet years). DNScoop, however, takes this info to the next level and puts a roughly objective dollar value on page advertising AND the site itself, based on all of the above info. Is it accurate? … maybe not, says Seth Godin … but it is, indeed, interesting.

The beautifully clean home page layout (a la Google), uses one of Seth’s most important axioms …€” giving the user a single “banana” (from his book Big Red Fez). BUT, the clean layout and unique content are tainted by some pretty bad copy. My favorite is the sentence that tells us the tools are offered in “one convent package.” Hmmmmm. Seth’s link and a prominent Digg link sent the shared hosting over the edge where the site wasn’t accessible.

Will these issues dramatically decrease the site’s ability to become popular? … not likely. However, if the company is going to seriously develop itself, and its brand, to become a powerhouse web presence, it should take every step to fix these problems now.

Hey DNScoop team … We wish you all the luck in the world!! You’ve got a great idea, a great site and LOTS of potential!

Go Ahead, Socialize ...