Yes, there is nothing quite like waking up bleary-eyed, dry-mouthed and head-achey to seventy-five (ok, 35) notifications blowing up your Facebook to validate your existence. No matter that only about 5% of those notifications are from people who actually know my birthday – I appreciate it anyways! I know it took at least 15 seconds out of your busy day to log a couple of keystrokes on my behalf, and for that I am grateful.

Honestly, let’s take a second to think about how much Facebook has changed “the birthday.” Because of Facebook birthday reminders, people are now able to pretend that they actually care about other human beings. It’s phenomenal. Ask yourself: How many friends’ birthdays do you know, as in know for real? Three? Four?

And good luck trying to throw a surprise party for anyone with Facebook in the mix.

In light of the momentous occasion that is my day of birth, I’ve decided to compile a do and don’t guide to birthday postings and responses. These are general suggestions that you can use when your birthday and your friends’ birthdays roll around. Here goes.

Birthday Wall Postings

DO NOT: Wish me “Happy Birthday.”

This is incredibly lame. It’s basically the equivalent of you telling me that the sun is shining, or I have a piece of something in my teeth. It’s a fact, I know that it is indeed my birthday. And it’s my birthday, so most likely I’m feeling happier than I am on other days (unless I’m over 40, which I’m not).

INSTEAD: Try the phrases “Happy Brithday, you ______” (something vulgar) or “Happy Birthday, I can’t believe we survived that time we _______” Make a joke, be creative. Remember, for most people, the Facebook birthday post is the extent of what they’re giving. It is in lieu of a present or a card, so it needs to reflect that you put some thought into it.

DO NOT: Put this monstrosity on my wall -

Or this -

INSTEAD: Please just write something. But if you must visually represent your feelings toward me on my day of birth, go with something like this:

DO NOT: Post anything on my wall that is not birthday related.

Dude, don’t ruin my long chain of birthday wishes with something irrelevant and worthless like, “Hey man, I saw your mom in the grocery the other day!”

INSTEAD: Direct Message, Tweet at me, SMS, call me….the possibilities are endless. Just don’t mess up my birthday feed, jerk.

DO NOT: Wish me happy birthday on Facebook if I haven’t spoken to you in over 5 years.

Seriously, you don’t really want to do it – it’s a waste of your time. And it feels hollow to me and I really don’t care. Save us both some grief and skip the post.

INSTEAD: Write me a real letter. I think something about receiving a handwritten letter would do wonders for rekindling a friendship. Bonus points if you write it in some sort of code.

DO NOT: Wish me happy birthday via a private message.

Unlike irrelevant things, I want your birthday wishes plastered on my wall for the world to see. Why? Because if I don’t have enough birthday posts then it looks like I’m uncool and nobody likes me. If only a few people post on my wall, then it looks like I’ve changed my birthday as a joke to fool people. Then everyone else feels skeptical and afraid to post. It’s a big chain reaction that ends up making me look friendless and pitiful.

INSTEAD: Post on my wall! Two, Three, Ten times if you want – I don’t care. Make me feel loved, Facebook world.

Birthday Post Responses

Once I’ve received all of my friends’ well wishes, how should I show my appreciation? Personally, I believe that the person celebrating the birthday should be exempt from response. The best way to thank someone for writing some kind or funny words on your wall on your birthday is to return the favor when their birthday rolls around.

But if you must respond, here are some proven ways:

• The all-encompassing thank you – When everything is said and done, simply post a status that generically thanks everyone who wished you happy birthday.  Pro:  Easy, quick and painless.  Con: Feels like a cop-out, disingenuous.
• Respond to every wall post as a comment under the post – Tell each and every person that wished you well on your wall thank you, right under their post. Pro: You get to thank everyone personally, and it looks like you took the time to acknowledge each and every person individually.  Plus, each friend will receive a notification alerting them to your response.  Con: Well, it will take forever for one.  Plus it looks silly to say “thank you” under each and every post, let’s face it.
• Thank you posts on your friends’ walls -   Pro: Looks really genuine.  Con: If you do it for everyone, it’s going to take up the majority of your day.  If you do it for a select few, you single them out as more important to you than everyone else.  Drama.
• Post a photo to your wall of you drunk, possibly wearing a ridiculous hat – This has to be the preferred way to respond if you must respond.  Everyone will see that you are enjoying your birthday, and hopefully they will be happy for you.  Pro: It’s a fun, interesting way to acknowledge everyone who posted on your wall.  It allows you to say thanks, without actually having to say thanks.  Con: You’re drunk, and in a stupid hat.

So remember, when birthdays happen on Facebook, we are given a chance to connect in ways we couldn’t before the social network existed. But that doesn’t mean that we can take it lightly because it’s on the internet. Make your birthday posts count or don’t even bother. And for God’s sake don’t post a link to any YouTube video of anyone singing Happy Birthday.

Thanks for listening, I’m going to go have a Mai-Tai beer.

Lead Image Courtesy

I used to think this way and the first few jobs I had out of college were horrible.  Everyone used to tell me, “well kid, you have to pay your dues,” to which I would reply, “why?” and the response I always got back was, “you just have to.”  This is the most illogical, useless, counter intuitive and counter productive type of thinking that boxes you in and makes you feel like you are worth nothing.  When I was providing strategy to fortune 100 companies at an agency I used to work at, I used to think, “if I can provide value to these companies through an agency, then why shouldn’t I be able to provide this same type of value to clients on my own?”  That was the day I stopped working hard and decided to work smart.

There are two quotes I want you to think about and remember:

“If it is to be, it’s up to me” (from my mom Ella and my old SAT teacher Ms. Friedman)

“In this day and age it’s not about the experience you have but your ability to learn and your ability to apply what you learn that makes you most valuable” (Gil Yehuda and Rick Fleischman)

Of course we need to look at what the point of either working hard or smart really is.  People who work hard and people who work smart have different measures of success.

Those that work hard usually evaluate success based on inputs such as the number of hours they work and the number of tasks they accomplish in a day or in a week and ultimately seek a large paycheck. Typically hard work means something like 60 or 70 hours a week (sometimes 80 or 90), working at home in the evenings and weekends, and continuously juggling multiple projects in a frantic attempt to get them all done. This is not hard work, this is simply poor management of your time and a clear lack of understanding of your strengths and skills.  Not to mention the inability to balance your work life and your personal life.  I don’t have anything against people that work hard and slave away day to day, it’s just not the type of person I want to be.  There are many successful people in the world who call themselves hard workers, and that they are.

Those that work smart usually evaluate success based on the amount of discretionary time they have to do whatever it is they want to do.  Smart workers don’t focus on inputs they focus on prioritizing in order to achieve the most valuable outputs in the most efficient ways.  Smart workers usually have a much better work-life balance, are entrepreneurs, are able to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and manage time effectively.  For example, a smart worker will realize that they are more productive during a certain time of day and will batch their tasks based on difficulty to match with when they are most productive.  A hard worker, has a long list and just checks off tasks one a time as he goes down the list.

There isn’t a better or worse way to get things done it’s based on preference.  Personally I’m not capable of bulldozing through a long list of tasks, working ridiculous hours, and sacrificing my life for a paycheck, it’s just not me.  I don’t really admire people that make a ton of money and work ridiculous hours (if I want to make a ton of money I can just get two full time jobs and sleep 3 hours a day), I admire people that are successful yet still have discretionary time and a solid work life balance.

I think there are a few key things that can help people work smart (if they so desire)

• Understand your strengths and weaknesses and try to take on projects that match your strengths while delegating or outsourcing projects or tasks that fall within your “weaknesses” category.  For example I realize that I’m much more of a strategy and idea person but I’m not very organized and tend to work in a bit of zen-like “everything will be ok” way.  My business partner Connie however, is the opposite and her strengths are my weaknesses.  Connie is organized, grounded, and level-sets with me when she needs to.

• Don’t focus on completing a lot of tasks, focus on completing the most important tasks that will have the greatest impact on whatever it is you are doing.  Prioritize and manage your time effectively, this means understanding when you are most productive, what tasks take you the longest time to complete, etc.  Batch the hardest most tedious tasks with the times you are most productive.

• Check email only twice a day (and is possible once a day).  I do this at 11am PST and 4pm PST.  I batch my email time and when I’m not checking email I’m actually working on getting things done that need to get done.  The trouble with email is that when you send an email you get one right back and email then becomes this glorified chat messaging program (which it isn’t).  I let people get ahold of me on skype if they really need me but email is only at 11 and 4.

• Don’t waste emotional currency in return for financial currency.  What I mean here is don’t work at a job that makes you feel miserable just because they are paying you well.  Now, you can’t just up and leave a job that is responsible for your financial security so the smart thing to do here is to start saving and aggressively looking for another job that you can transition to.  Pick up some small side projects on Craigslist (or wherever) just to supplement your income.  When you have enough money to cover your expenses from side projects (or saved up cash), then you can quit.

• Education is your best friend.  Working smart is all about understanding the big picture.  You need to constantly learn and evolve your skill set, so if you’re a social media consultant you might want to learn about supply chain, CRM, ERP, and some of the other things that make companies run.  Don’t narrow your scope.  You need to be able to adapt and evolve with the times.

• Don’t be scared to outsource.  I outsource a lot of admin work which was saving me hours a week.  All of my scheduling, calendaring, basic research and information tasks, and some email, is all handled by someone else which allows me to focus my time on the things that really matter.

• Leverage your resources, your network, and your connections.  You have to understand what and who you have around you should you need help at any given time (or need access to additional resources and/or information)

• Build for the future while being able to sustain tomorrow.  Let’s say you close a 20k deal for a months worth of work, what do you do with the money you earned?  Some people are overjoyed and decide to go out and splurge but the best thing to do (in my opinion) is to think about and build for the future.  Perhaps allocate 10k into a “hiring fund” which when it reaches a certain amount means you can hire your first employee.  Basically, when you get a paycheck, use what you need to cover expenses and enjoy yourself but don’t forget to build and plan for the future.  You really need to understand what you are trying to build and why.

• Know when to cut your losses.  We all make mistakes, learn when you have made a mistake and move on.  Don’t invest your time and your resources into a lost cause, there’s no point.  Do what you can to salvage your work and maintain the relationship, understand what went wrong and why, and then move on; making sure this mistake is not repeated in the future.

• Look for the shortcuts.  This doesn’t mean cut corners in a way that makes your work less valuable or complete.  It means, understanding the regular process that is required to accomplish something and then understanding if that whole process is necessary.  Is there a way to complete the same task with the same quality of work but in a more efficient way?

• Work hard at working smart!

I could probably go on and on about this but I’m sure you get the point.  What do you think about working hard vs working smart, is this something that resonates with you?  Do you have any other tips that you would add to this list?

Originally published on http://www.jmorganmarketing.com/

And naturally, to find the best ones, you turn to . . . your tech blogger friends. Not your millions of users (and thousands of followers), but a tech blogger who you just know is just going to turn around and ask his readers.

I hate to tell you this, but you don’t sound very smart today.

Okay, let’s end the hypothetical there. Obviously you’re much more intelligent than that. And yes, there are advantages to asking someone with their finger on the pulse of your product and access to thousands of active Twitterers.

But why don’t Twitter’s founders seem to have a finger on that pulse? Don’t they have access to thousands of active Twitterers? How is it that after so long, they still don’t seem to understand their own product?

Well, one theory might be that they failed to define Twitter, ceding that control to its users. And now maybe it’s so far out of their hands that they aren’t even sure what to do with it.

But they really seem to think Read Write Web does. Last October, it was RWW polling for revenue models for Twitter. RWW isn’t the only source speculating on Twitter’s rumored business models, and their post wasn’t prompted by Twitter founders (at least, the post author, Bernard Lunn, didn’t mention them).

But really, Twitter? Really? You go straight to Read Write Web to find the best apps for your product?

I really hope the email request was just their last stop to make sure they haven’t overlooked something important—but after so many inside stories on Twitter from RWW, I’m just not confident that’s the case.

What do you think? What are the best Twitter apps? Why don’t Twitter’s founders and leadership already know about them?

Comments

We have all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%. They might not come right out to say it, but you still understand th emessage clearly. How about achieving 103%? Basic math would refute the idea that giving more than 100% is impossible, right? Wrong.

Here’s a little mathematical formula that might help you answer this question:

If: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

is represented as:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.

then:

H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K is…
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%

and:
K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E is…
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%

and:
A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E is…
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%

thus:
B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T is…
2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%

AND…. look how far ass kissing will take you.

A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G is…
1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118%

So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty, that while hard work and knowledge will get you close to 100%, AND Attitude will get you to 100%, its the bullshit and ass kissing that will put you over the top.

Enjoy the weekend folks.

Comments

(Coverage of the ACCM conference continues at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

The contextual search advertising market levels the playing field to a point for online marketers. Bidding and budgets play a big role, but as Ryan Gibson noted, one may be able to derive some extra benefit from PPC programs.

First things first, though. Hammer out a list of specific keywords, ones that people use to find your site and pages. Gibson suggested only testing 3 to 10 keywords per SKU a site has, to take the pulse of search-driven traffic and gauge what works.

Negative keywords help control what search drives to your site, and against your PPC budget; use them wisely. Matching remains important to the effectiveness of keywords. Gibson said exact matches offer twice the value of broad-matched keywords.

When creating ad copy for the landing pages where your throngs of PPC visitors will hit, Gibson tipped people to echo the user’s search string. This makes the lead into the ad copy a more natural feel for the visitor.

Doing this properly motivates people to shop where they have arrived. Ad copy on the landing page should tell them why they should shop at the destination, while including offer details like promotions for shoppers.

Gibson said testing means more than evaluating a click-through rate. Look at overall conversions and efficiency too: are people moving in an orderly fashion through the checkout process, or are they wandering around to different places on the site to find what they want?

Keep in mind the habits of shoppers. Since it’s easy to do, they may make multiple visits before purchasing something. The higher the price for the item, the longer they will probably take to consummate the deal.

During the question and answer session, Gibson acknowledged the cost question within the context of budgeting for ad campaigns. As long as it is profitable, spend and keep spending, Gibson said.

Being aware of profitability requires time for managing the campaign. Being aware of daily, weekly, and monthly reports keeps one in touch with which campaigns are profitable.

Remember what we mentioned about people making multiple visits before converting on a buy? Trends may be having an impact, especially in the context of product reviews. In other words, you not only have to know your inventory (how else can you provide quality customer service?), but you have to know what people think of a particular product.

Knowing these things helps produce profitable campaigns along with prudent spending decisions. Even the richest businesses refuse to spend indiscriminately, and neither should smaller businesses either.

This show of enthusiasm from the webmasters and site owners, led Google to put up an another post by the name of ‘Take advantage of Universal Search part 2‘. Here, the Google trend analysts have provided more recommendations to satisfy the webmasters’ appetite for answers.

Some of these recommendation are as follows:

Local search- Help nearby searchers find your business: The site owners are primarily interested in localised searches for their businesses. So, these are a few tips from Google on this topic:

a. Add your business to the Google Local Business Center.

b. The business should always be listed under the correct category.

c. The business name and contact details should be visible on the entrepreneur’s website, and should be accessible to the search engines.

d. Add additional information about the business, so as to let the visitors decide, whether the business suits their needs or not.

Video Search- Enhance the video results: Google’s ‘Video Sitemaps protocols‘ lets the site owners specify a preferred thumbnail image for video, when they appear in the SERP.

Personalised Search Basics:

a. Ranking changes affect the personalization of search results.

b. Topic specific websites are recommended, as they would stand out in personalised searches. For e.g., instead of making a website about automobiles, create a dedicated site to one particular model.

c. Use Geographic Targeting and Local Business Center, to let Google identify, as to which area the website would be most relevant to.

d. Pay extra attention to detail about the content of the website. Both internal and external.

Image Search- Increase the visibility: Make sure those images that maybe considered explicit or objectionable should not be used within the website, as the Safe Search option in the Google Search Engine will filter them out. In case, the Safe Search is filtering the images that seem fit to be viewed in general, then the site owner can use the ‘Contact Form‘. Select ‘Report a problem->Inappropriate or irrelevant search result’ and let Google know your concern.

These tips and recommendations are designed specifically for webmasters who want their page ranks and other factors about their websites to rise to the top.

Comments

Reputation Management Advice

Basically the problem with SEO brand management arises when bad press gets into the news websites and then finds its way to ranking high on the SERPs for product and company names. If (and when) this does happen how do you combat such a thing? How can you essentially push down ranking of a pesky blogger or news web page? Here are my Top 10 Reputation Management tips:

1. Try “employing” or offering other bloggers to step up and post about the client. Not so much PayPerPost or Review Me style, but emailing or calling them one by one and doing it the right way.

2. Another idea is to join forums and other websites which require a user name and have a indexable profile page. For instance if you look up my name: “Google+Search”>Jaan Kanellis” you will find MyBlogLog Community pages and many other websites that simply list a profile page. Of course your user name has to be the keyword/brand your going after, duh.

3. How about stock quote page? Is this client name/brand/keyword a public company? If so start linking to those stock quote pages from Yahoo and Google Finance.

4. How about getting Social Media websites to help like Yahoo Answers or Google Groups. Once the web page is created start by getting some links pointing to the answer/group page and watch it climb! This really applies to any sort of social media web page that allows you to author your own question/content.

5. How about getting news interviews, podcasts, etc on the subject of brand/keyword live online? Of course these will be primarily authored by the client and positive in nature. Getting the client to do them and making sure the interviewer posts them online is obviously important. Once live you can point to them from many different websites as a resource.

Basically the bottom line of my points above is to utilize already top ranking websites for your own brand benefit, while keeping the end user plenty happy with what they find in the SERPs.

More:

7. Buy, buy, buy domains around your target keyword/brand. Get them live with unique content and offer social interaction/Web 2.0 for visitors. They will rank faster than you can believe.

8. Create another controversy. Well this is very tricky, but rightly constructed it could over power whatever rankings are there now, that are in your way.

9. Try to avoiding the Quixtar route/press:

Quixtar Caught in Search Engine PR Battle

Quixtar Spamming the Search Engines?

10. Make sure your ruling the PPC spots. This can only help protect your brand and will help influence visitors to see who is the real website that they should be visited.

Update:

More solid articles on reputation management:

Ten Ways to Avoid a Google Reputation Nightmare

SEO as your brand watchdog

So what are yours?

Comments

The Google team will review your website, campaign structure, ad text, and keywords. Here’s the best part – they promise to get back to you within 10 days with your own customized recommendations. Even if you’ve already had the team look at your campaign you can request assistance on another. For now, the service is available for advertisers in the U.S. and Canada, for campaigns in English. If you’re running AdWords go sign up. I wonder if they have a similar service for AdSense.

If your campaign isn’t chosen, there will probably be other chances, and in the meantime you can still brush up on your AdWords knowledge with the Google AdWords Retail Industry Newsletter. This issue is focused on the holidays. Here’s a fact from last year: According to the newsletter Black Friday wasn’t the biggest online shopping day in 2006. December 13 was the highest sales day with $667 million spent. December 11 and December 4 were next.

One more tip for online retailers – there’s an entire Google blog devoted to maximizing your retail AdWords campaigns. I didn’t know it until today but it’s a must-read at http://adwordsretail.blogspot.com

Comments

Tag:

I recently created an Internet marketing mind map and published it on my tools subdomain with a link to it from tools.seobook.com, but nobody mentioned it. A few days later I blogged about it on SeoBook.com and dozens of webmasters linked to it. Same publisher, same content, drastically different results…because one channel has attention while the other does not.

The Flaw of Pull Marketing Advice

Much of the marketing advice offered on blogs assumes that you have a well read blog and can get away with great content spreading based on pull marketing, but when you publish a new site and write about ideas that others covered you don’t get the credit you deserve until you build an attention asset. Which means you have to use push marketing until you get readers / subscribers / brand advocates.

Markets are not fair. People are more likely to link to familiar trusted channels then new channels. It can take years to build a significant readership. And if you wait for it to happen on its own it may never happen.

Ineffective Blogging

It is hard to be the regular news spot just by producing similar news to what is available on other channels. If you cover stories that are worth spreading, but are not dong much more than syndicating them, then even if your content is useful the reference links skip past you and on to the end story you wrote about. You might get a hat tip link here or there, but you are not going to get many if you have few readers. And those links are not going to be enough to pull readers away from market leading channels, to do so requires people talking about you. Your content has to amalgamate ideas from multiple sources or unique perspectives such that people are TALKING ABOUT YOU.

Owning an Idea

If you do not have enough leverage to own mainstream ideas then you need to own ideas on the edge or borrow the authority of someone or something else. The first person to crack an iPhone got lots of exposure. Announcing a new Google feature gets you exposure. Real in depth reviews of exciting new stuff gets you exposure. Every market has an Apple, a Google, or some relation to one of those companies.

The easiest way to get a community involved in your site is to ask them for involvement. Collect their feedback and aggregate it in a meaningful format. And interviewing a market leader is an easy way to leverage someone else’s brand and gain attention. Getting community involvement is crucial because each trusted person who associates with you moves you that much further away from being irrelevant or potentially spammy. They make you worth paying attention to because they cared enough to participate.

If you get community participation it also protects your idea. It gets competitors called sleazy when they clone your idea and throw a few more marketing dollars at it.

What if you can’t get anyone to participate? Desperate times require desperate measures! Wrap your message in a fictitious backdrop based on real world opinions. Want to reach out to financial bloggers? Notice they are talking about Alan Greenspan a bunch recently? Tell everyone why Alan Greenspan thinks Google is under-priced. Quote his principals and use them to justify Google at $2,400 per share.

Comments

Suze Orman At eBay Live!

"[People] are spending money they don’t have to impress people they don’t know or don’t even like," she said, prepping the crowd for a little financial wizardry.

Orman covered so many topics in the short time she spoke, we compiled a list of tips you can use a ready-reference for bettering your financial situation.

Orman’s Personal Financial Tips and Goals

Goal: Credit score above 760; If you are in credit card debt and your employer doesn’t match your 401(k), redirect that money toward paying off your credit cards. Your FICO score will rise and benefit you more in the long run.

Tip: Have at least a 6-8 month emergency plan fund to finance yourself during times of trouble.

Goal: Home ownership; Owning a home will be the best investment of your life. Most homes appreciate on average about 4% a year.

Tip: Add a revocable living trust (RLT) to your will.

Tip: Variable, universal, and whole life insurance are not good options. Look into term life insurance as you only need it until your youngest child is about 22 years old. Never leave a child under 18 as the beneficiary.

Tip: A Roth IRA is 10 times better than a 401(k) or any other type of plan out there.

Tip: If you don’t need money right away (10 years or so) invest in mutual funds instead of individual funds.