Internet Strategy SEO & Web Developement

Communication has always been used by marketing people using medias to make us buy and think in a certain way. Nothing new here, and yes its a good thing as we now live in a time where basically everyone can be a media outlet. With industrial media also referred as traditional media, marketers were able to control the production to get global reach. Media production required high cost and specialized skills and training. Not anymore! with the Internet and social media, its been years we have been saying that, preaching and educating marketers how to fit in that new paradigm. Marketers need to let the information go its way without any control of the end result and more importantly lets the masses take control of the information.

Social media is primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. [..] Wikipedia

As one of the hottest buzz words of 2008 I thought it would be great to see how big companies are actually using it in a bad way. Maybe they are just unaware of their web presence, maybe they get bad advice from their web design and marketing department or most likely a mix of both.

Let see how it turns out for Mercedes Benz Canada with their micro site for the Bluetec campaign. It’s should be pointed out that I barely know anything more about this Bluetec thingy…

NOT using the tools effectively

Internet Marketing is too often see as a stack of technical tools on top of marketing strategies, I’m tired of that. This isn’t about technology to get the right information with a good reach or whatever, using technical tools won’t get you the magical twist to take advantage of the word of mouth. The fact that everyone can be a media and use it to get heard is mainly because we have come to a point where the entry level skills are low and the hardware and tools are available for everyone. In fact most of the people are creating media and information without knowing what a RSS, Twitter or even a blog is.

Despite this fact, some big brands with high profile web agencies are making huge mistakes. This example, with a Flash based micro site with barely no content at all, they figure that to get their campaign a social media twist was to add a Digg button. Wrong.

This is just one of the many sites trying to use site like Digg but without taking a minute trying to understand whats it’s all about, a shame. So I submitted to Digg with a nice title as every submitter to Digg know they can write whatever title and description for the news site. And remember this micro site is currently linked from the Mercedes Benz Canada main site and the submit to Digg button will lead you to :

Why they think people will submit to Digg a flash advertising site !? Somebody must explain to them what exactly is Digg. Why not a real site ? Something that lets user comment on the product and interact with it. But come on ! A send to a friend link in the footer isn’t a big interaction feature. Nor is a “Digg this” button.

Any thoughts on that ?

Personal Branding is something too much people, even in the Marketing space, are missing to play with. First you need to realize that people will search for you whatever you do against it. There’s no place to hide on the Internets so why not use this powerful tool to promote yourself, your passions or whatever that make sense for you.

So the goal is to have all the Google results related to you when people are searching for you. Can be done also for a company, an association, etc. So let me tell you the secret! after the break.

Personal Branding in Google

samuel lavoie query on Google.com

The trick to Own the SERPs

If you’re not able to take the time and only want a quick fix, there’s not, like for SEO and this site isn’t for you, really.
So be part of your community of interest, have a presence in those places and be heard. This is commonly name as Social Media, but really its just like in real life; making connections and enter conversations.

This personal blog is of course one of my ways to be heard and as you can see with this google query there’s plenty of them What’s yours?