Image courtesy of zest-pk.

If you’re writing blogs, press releases, and other content to promote yourself online, you may fall into the trap of writing like a reporter. As the old cliche goes, reporters ask “Who, What, Where, Why, When and How?”

The next time you sit down to write a post for your blog, instead of thinking like a reporter, think like an owl. Owls only ask one question – “Who?” No matter how much media changes, you can rest assured that people will always care about the “Who” in any story.

I can think of no better example of this than the Summer Olympics. For a week, everyone is suddenly fascinated by the sport of swimming. Then for four years, most people won’t watch a single event. Why is this? People are fascinated by the personal stories that are covered so excellently by the networks. Very few people out there are dedicated swimming fans. But many people are captivated by the stories of Michael Phelps and all of the other interesting and dedicated people who participate in these event.

Your business is a lot like the Summer Olympics. You might have a small group of dedicated fans; these are your best customers and evangelists. Everyone else doesn’t have a strong feeling one way or the other. But they do like a good personal story. So give them one. When you talk about your company, don’t talk in terms of facts and the bottom line. Talk about your story, the stories of your employees, and the stories of your customers. Think like an owl, and talk about the “Who.”

Last month, Hyundai owner Todd Jamison was the victim of some very bad luck. His 2004 Hyundai Elantra was the victim of one of the worst parking attempts of all time. As you can see in the following security camera shot, a large SUV pulled into the gym parking lot in which his Elantra was parked, and inexplicably drove right on top of it:

Pretty much the worst luck you can imagine, right? Well the folks at Hyundai heard about this little mishap, and presented Jamison with a brand new Hyundai to replace his crushed car. Here’s the video, from Hyundai’s YouTube channel (Awesome!):

This is really marketing at its finest. Building brand loyalty isn’t about spending the most money – it’s about making an authentic gesture to your customers. As with gift giving, it truly is the thought that counts. Hyudai took this opportunity to show that they care about their customers – for a fraction of the cost of a 30 second TV spot. Not only has Jamison surely become a loyal customer, but lots of people like me will talk and blog about Hyundai’s goodwill. Congratulations Hyundai, job well done.

Image courtesy of albertopveiga.

On the Web, media is virtually limitless. The barriers to entry are very small, and the amount of content available is unfathomable. We have become hyper-consumers: we are constantly bombarded with content to consume, and routinely consume multiple forms of media simultaneously. Some see this great mass of content and are intimidated. “How can we complete with all of this?” they reason. Today I’d like to take a more optimistic view of this situation, and see it for the opportunity it really is.

If you told a salesman fifty years ago that he would have the opportunity to pitch his product to every person in the world, he would be thrilled. Yet so many businesses today pass on this same opportunity. Perhaps they’re afraid they will do something wrong, or afraid that they will lose control of their business’ image. Perhaps they simply don’t know the opportunity exists.

There’s no good reason not to take advantage of the free and powerful opportunities to market yourself online. Get involved on Twitter and Facebook. Share content on YouTube, Flickr, and Digg. Engage your customers, and find new ones. The possibilities are endless.

More than anything, I think this is really the goal of this blog – to help people share their stories better and more freely online. Now’s not the time to get stage-fright.

To my mind, there’s just nothing better than a good marketing chart (sad, I know). I thought I’d share two of my favorites today.

The first is from Brian Solis and Jess3.

Click to see larger image

And here’s the second chart, from Lisa D Myers at SearchCowboys.

Click to see larger image

The reason that I like both of these charts is that they bring everything together for me in one image. The truth is, there are so many aspects and tactics that comprise online marketing, it can be a bit overwhelming sometimes. When I begin work for a new client, or I’m struggling for fresh ideas for an old client, I like to look at these charts to remind myself of all the possibilities of the social Web. I hope you use these charts as a reference for your future endeavors.

Image courtesy of mattfoster.

I’m a writer at heart, and I’m a strong proponent of the written word as marketing tool. Even though the Web is filled with Flash animation, online video, and amazing site designs, text content remains a very powerful way to market yourself online.

Text is also easy to create. It doesn’t require a design degree or a wealth of technical knowledge. However, all too often people are afraid of writing. These people convince themselves that they are not good writers, and in fact, they worry so much about their writing, it ends up not being very good. So today I’m here to tell you to stop worrying, and start writing naturally.

Nothing should be more familiar to you than your native language. You’ve been hearing and reading it all your life. Don’t get hung up the finer points of grammar, just convey your message in the clearest, most powerful way you know how. No one is going through your blog posts with a red pen. No one expects you to be a brilliant author. They simply want to hear what you have to say, and how you can make their lives better. Don’t keep them waiting.

It’s the biggest debate in Web marketing right now, and it all started with a blog post from Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz titled, “Terrible SEO Advice: Focus on Users, Not Engines”. To briefly summarize, Rand argues that anyone who advises you to focus on user experience and let the search engine rankings take care of themselves is tragically misleading you. Tactics like title tags, meta tags, sitemaps, etc., are still extremely important, he states, even if the folks at Google tell you to focus on your users.

Seems fairly reasonable, but this post set off a big debate in all the places SEO people hang out. It prompted responses like this one from Jill Whalen, who claimed Rand’s post “could potentially set SEO back at least a decade.” Others claimed that a balance between engines and users needs to be struck, and in fact, Rand added an update to his post that stated this was his point all along.

At the end of the day, Rand’s post and all the responses to it served as good linkbait, and I think everyone was being a bit over-dramatic to make for good reading. But what’s a frazzled small business owner or website maintainer to do? Here’s my two cents: SEO is one way to drive traffic to your site. Social media, branding, and online word of mouth is another. Do both, and you’ll have the best chance at the most traffic. Franky, there’s enough competition out there that you need to excel at both to be successful.

Well, in my last post I wrote all about how a Yahoo! search representative publicly stated that Yahoo! does not recognize the keywords attribute of the meta tag. After Google had made a similar announcement just weeks before, it was looking like we could just about close the book on meta keywords.

But Search Engine Land says not so fast. Danny Sullivan published the results of a simple experiment this afternoon, and ended up making Yahoo! look foolish. His experiment was fantastically simple: he created a nonsense string of characters that returned no search results in Yahoo!. He then took that character string and put it in the meta keywords tag on the Search Engine Land homepage. A couple days later, the SEL homepage was appearing in the Yahoo! search results for his chosen character string. Conclusion: Yahoo! ranked that page based on the contents of the meta keywords tag.

Earlier this week, Yahoo!’s Senior Director of Search Cris Pierry announced at SMX East, a search marketing conference in New York, that Yahoo! does not value the keywords attribute of the meta tag in its search algorithm. Not even a little bit. This announcement comes just two weeks after Google made a similar announcement in their blog.

Spokespeople for both engines have long hinted that meta keywords do not play a large role in formulating their search results. This was a gradual response to the widespread issue of spam in the keywords attribute, and the ability of many to utilize meta keywords to gain undeserved or just plain incorrect rankings.

I wrote a more detailed analysis of this issue in the CommonPlaces blog, but here’s the least you need to know:

• Yahoo doesn’t recognize the meta keywords tag. They won’t penalize you for having one—they’ll simply ignore it. Ditto for Google.
• Bing, on the other hand, does recognize the tag. However, they admit that they place a low value on it.
• Final recommendation: If you already have meta keywords in place, leave them. If you’re building a new site, include meta keywords if it can be done with little effort. Don’t go out of your way to include a tag that will either be ignored or minimally valued

There. I said it. If you have a basic knowledge of search engine optimization and how search engines like Google work, 90% of SEO – or at least white hat SEO – is common sense. Here’s the least you need to know:

• Link authority is a big part of SEO…so maximize the quantity and quality of your incoming links.
• Search engines rely on spiders to crawl your site…so organize your site well and ensure it is easily navigable.
• Search engines attach value to fresh content…so update your site regularly.
• Search engines exist to find the content that best suits the search query…so create content that matches what your customers are searching for.

Many make SEO seem like a complicated process that’s equal parts art, science, and magic. But as I said above, if you understand these very basic tenets, good SEO will follow logically. Memorize these points, or keep them as a reference. The next time you have an SEO question, refer back to them. More often than not, they will contain your answer.

Welcome to Creative Digressions! My name is Harry Lund and I am social media maven hailing from New Hampshire. My main goal for Creative Digressions is for it to become a useful, informative, and/or thought provoking blog on all topics relating to social media, online marketing, and the Internet in general.

Why another blog on social media and Web 2.0 stuff? I guess it looked like fun and I wanted to try it myself. This blog will be a continual work in progress (I do work full time), but if you bear with me, I think we can turn it into something pretty cool.

So why the name? Well for starters, I think it sounds pretty cool, but beyond that, I’ve always had a wide and eclectic range of interests, and I’m quite sure that they will creep into this blog. After all, what’s life without the occasional creative digression?