Paul Fleming - Flemo: Between Sydney, Philadelphia and the World Wide Web

I consider myself an Internet Marketer. I’ve often thought about what makes up a good Internet Marketer and have always found that those best suited to the work have a built-in curiosity and a liking for the hustle. For me, I’ve been an early tech adopter for as long as I can remember especially when it comes to the Internet. Online progress has always been at such a frenetic pace and it feels like that pace gets faster and faster that it’s hard to keep up. There’s some new startup, a new service we have to try out, a beta invite, a must-have app….I have accounts that I didn’t know I have and others that I know I have that remain dormant. There are a few reason for trying to keep pace…some of it just plain curiosity, partially to check something that someone has put their blood, sweat and tears into or had the insight to create something they reckon people might be into. The other side of that caters to my profession in which I look for opportunities for clients. In Internet Marketing, there is this sense that to be successful, one needs to have, or at least pretend to have some form of Attention Deficit, to bounce from system to system, to constantly be on the go and prove value by doing new things and chasing that next big thing. That level of hustle always seems to serve our clients well. Out of that, a process has begun to emerge and we’ve created a more formal structure (sort of). At the very least, we have learned some lessons.

Here are just a couple of tips:

1. Follow other early adopters – there is no shortage of places to find the next shiny thing. A few choice selections on twitter will help but they can be easily missed so I’d suggest focussing on some key blogs. My favorite these days is TheNextWeb which has a very comprehensive coverage, so too Mashable which tends to crank out info by the second. Techmeme is my favorite aggregator.

2. Keep a master login list – the issue here is not that you should be concerned that your data is out there that you are not looking after but because there are times when you will forget about an account that maybe you didn’t “get” initially that upon a revisit recognize its value. This list (which can also remind you of your login info) can help to jog your memory. Evernote can be a useful tool for storing this list.

3. Really test – put it through it’s paces. Use it as if you want to break it and get to know it pretty well before looking around at reviews to see what others have discovered.

4. Use a persona – Mostly I use my own account for the testing but there is the odd occasion when an incorrect setup may impact your account so I have a few dummy accounts that i will use without fear of reprisal. I think a lot of us made the mistake of setting up Google Analytics accounts under our profiles instead of new accounts when it first came out and then losing that data when you had to move it over. We still come across those every once in a while.

While I’ve forced a move to a more manageable and balanced lifestyle (more away-from-the-computer time), I certainly enjoy that side of the business and it may be a big reason why I got into the Internet Marketing game in the first place. I feel like our clients would and should expect that we are doing this so that they don’t have to (until we decide that they need to).

So what’s my latest signup? I just signed up for an invite at www.so.cl, Microsoft’s own foray into social media…maybe. Also just began playing around with Gentlemint which is a guys version of Pinterest. How about you? Any newbies you want to share?

Many of us saw it coming but honestly I didn’t think it would be this early. For mine, it was a no-brainer, a way to get numbers and action on their own social system Google+ and also an way to increase Search personalization which they have been increasingly moving towards for a few years now. Some question whether there is value in doing so and often search results can be a lot worse with personalization but they’re sticking to their guns.

I recently noticed the announcement on my search results explaining the latest updates. 

This takes you to a page that further explains their new service and in typical google fashion includes a video and tells us that “search gets better by including photos, posts, and more from you and your friends.” Maybe.

So first things first, if you’re looking to be part of this latest Search iteration get yourself a Google+ profile. For businesses, create a page. Set up your circles, start following, engaging, sharing. Start getting comfortable with it, I think it’s only going to continue in its importance.

Google recently announced that they will be encrypting Search for logged-in users. It’s their way of saying that we are looking out for the searchers’ best interests by making sure the data of “signed in” users is not susceptible to being stolen or tracked or used or abused. I’m not privy to the specifics of how secure or not secure it really is but in doing so they have also announced that website owners with analytics will not be able to view the keywords that these visitors used to access their website. Now website owners will see a (not provided) referral from Google. Somehow Paid Search is immune to this tightening of security and speculation is rife that this move was targeted at SEO companies. If anything, the target is the business owner who might be interested in this granular data and ends up jumping on the Adwords bandwagon, forking over more money to big G. But that’s the conspiracy theorists. I’m more inclined to suggest that it’s a shame that this is the only solution they have been able to come up with. While SEO’s are impacted, the business owners are the ones who are really being borked by this latest move.

So for us, it’s really just a matter of here we go again, how do we adapt what we do without diluting impact for our clients? Right now we’re not 100% certain, we continue to do what we do and start to address any anomalies in our reports as they come through but you should expect to see a reduction in the number of keywords driving visitors to your website (so far it’s a pretty small number). Rankings (for what they are worth) will remain trackable but the detailed keyword referrals will no longer apply.

So that’s a shame, not the end of the world as some SEO companies fear but a real shame. Forget about SEO and Internet Marketing companies who report on these statistics. Think about the website owners, especially those who use this data to help focus their business strategies and goals. Again, not the end of the world for them but a loss of some very valuable information.

Ever inquisitive, I’ve always been quite curious to find out why people do the things they do. When you spend a lot of time online however, you tend to get pretty tired of any form of spam. Email spam. Comment spam. Spammy websites. All of these can be very frustrating. For me, it’s an opportunity. Surely there is a reason why these folks are doing this? Sure there are plenty of occasion where people are just being idiots under the protection of anonymity but many others are seeking opportunity, mostly to make money. You’ve seen those websites, the infomercials of web pages like http://www.incomehybrid.com (I am not affiliated and it may well be the answer you’ve been looking for!). You can see a pattern with all of these pages…A testimonial video, visually striking text, incredibly long single page without navigation, generally some sort of pop-up and my favorite style in that case is an “Are You Sure You Want to Leave?” notification.

Comment spam is pervasive especially to blog owners and it always intrigued me as to why bother. Most blog commenting systems are nofollow, many moderate and for the most part comment spam is pretty obvious so it begs the question, why are they doing this?

Email spam has been around since email began and should probably be considered the earliest form of Email Marketing. Strong subject. Succinct copy. Generally text-only…hey they do a lot right. Of course they also do a lot wrong like, oh I don’t know, not asking folks if they would like to receive their emails? I’m not forgetting listservs either as one of the earlier places to spam online.

So rather than getting pissy at spammers and ridiculous commenters, I like to learn why they are doing what they do. Those spammy one-page websites with all the bells, whistles and talking heads that I thought were ridiculous appear to actually work as I’ve had several clients reach out and ask about them. Some had even taken the offers. While I’d like to suggest that not all of them are rubbish, I’m afraid to say that the majority of them are. Most likely they are some out-of-the-box affiliate marketing scheme aimed at selling a cheap e-book on how to make money online by selling cheap e-books.

Comment spam like I said had baffled me until I saw a whole series of them on a blog post that was good quality and dofollow. Quite obviously that website did not moderate comments and this is what the comment spammers are hoping for. Get your comments out en-masse, maybe 1% will be fruitful. Hard Yakka if you ask me and not very beneficial but for most of these services, a link is a link no matter what the quality is like.

There have been a few sites over the years that seemed to attract a high level of spam and often this is where I will also look to help with Internet Marketing for clients only instead of spamming people, we prefer to do it properly and provide some value. A while ago ut was digg.com, then squidoo.com became quite useful and now I’m seeing quite a bit on Linkedin and Quora so I’ve been checking them out to see how they fare.