Best wishes for a successful 2012 by whatever means you define that.  Have a wonderful and safe New Year’s Eve.  We’ll catch you next year.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

By making us wait so long (they kicked off notorious troublemakers like Sesame Street for trying to use the original launch of Google+ for persons as an organizational page), they really built up anticipation, so we were all pretty excited at the news today.  Heck, even SEOdog was running around and barking like a rabies-addled pooch.  Or maybe that was just because there were scary-looking 10-year-olds walking out front.

How Do I set Up a Google+ Page for My Business?

We’re glad you asked, Rhetorical Writing Device.  Just click here.  You’ll first have to sign in, so you’ll either need to have an existing Google account (maybe you have gmail or have hooked up your existing email to services like Docs or Calendar) or create a new one.

NOTE: Unless this changes in the future, this Google+ Page is going to be tied to your Google+ profile like facebook pages.  Therefore, you’ll want to make sure you’re doing it from an account with a person least likely to leave your employ.  I believe you could also set up a business account with Google Apps and tie it through that, but trust me – that’s a pain in the tuchus if a Google+ Page is your only reason for creating an account.

Once you get in, you have five basic choices for page type:

• Local Business or Place
• Product or Brand
• Company, Institution or Organization
• Arts, Entertainment or Sports
• Other

Even though it doesn’t have as many choices as facebook pages (6 basic variations: Local Business or Place; Company, Organization or Institution; Brand or Product; Artist, Band or Public Figure; Entertainment; and Cause or Community), I really like the Other choice as a catchall since you can’t anticipate all the different legitimate variations.

From there, you can write a short description of the page, upload a logo, and add a status update.  You should also be able to add photos and videos, but they don’t make it easy on you to do so, at least with videos – why no easy YouTube integration?

Alright, I’m Set Up.  Now What?

Well, there’s not really much to do at the moment besides update statuses and add folks to your circles.  It’s really kind of a letdown after so much time in beta.  But features will be coming soon and there may be some SEO benefits down the road.  It will also be nice to comment and like, I mean +1 things publicly as the company as opposed to needing to do it through a personal Google+ profile.  Update for clarity: You can only add individual Google+ ‘ers if they’ve added you to their circles.  Same thing about +1′ing their statuses.  There’s also no way currently to +1 search results or other pages off the Google+ site itself as your page.

Although, if you’re a big enough brand, there is one cool feature called Direct Connect.  If people type “+” in front of your company name in the search bar, they can be taken directly to your Google+ Page from the dropdown.  Here’s what it looks like if you search for “+Pepsi”:

See An Example of a Google+ Page

Want to see an example?  Check out our Google+ Page.  Not much going on so far, but be sure to check back soon and add us to your circles.

Get Found on

on Google+

One snark – Google makes it easy for you to create a Google+ Page badge.  I do find it amusing that the alt tag is neglected.  Call Matt Cutts!

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

Thank you to all who entered this completely off-topic contest via twitter or facebook. Congratulations to Team Cream and their faithful captain Adam Daniels.

Each team member has been contacted for jersey sizes, numbers, and names. As soon as we have information from everyone, we will order the jerseys, have them shipped to our Wheeling, WV office, then ship out directly to the address you provide. If everyone responds quickly, you should have your jerseys next week.

We’re toying with the idea of setting these up for direct sale. In the meantime, we’ve had some people contact us about buying the jerseys. If you’re interested, send an email to beasties at directom.com. If you order this week, we can add them to our contest order and get you a discount.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

If you’ve watched their 30 minute short film or their 2-minute previews, you’ll be familiar with a line that cracks me up to no end:

Because I’m so excited for the album coming out and because I’m feeling a little goofy today, we’re doing a giveaway contest (details below).  But first, let me show you where several of our hours went today.  We’ve designed some baseball jerseys for the No Pie, No Sledgehammer Team:

Note, it may look slightly different after we print these bad boys up, but that’s the actual design that we’re uploading to the store. Also, it’s called a jersey by CafePress, but it’s one of those jersey-style shirts.  We’re not talking MLB-stuff here. But it’s still pretty flippin’ sweet and you can’t get one anywhere else.

Now let’s talk contest.

Cool Beastie Boys Stuff You Can Win

The grand prize winner gets the Hot Sauce Committee Part Two Deluxe Package, a $75 value, which includes:

• Hot Sauce Committee Part Two CD with 8 Panel Digipak Fold-Out Design
• 9-panel Fold-Out Poster Designed by Mike Mills
• 2 x 180 Gram White Gatefold Vinyl
• Digital Album Download Card
• 2 Extra Bonus Tracks + Remix (Delivered Digitally)
• Bonus 7″

Plus…

• Beastie Boys T-Shirt (exclusive to their pre-sale of the album)
• Exclusive Iron-on (1 of 3)
• HD Download of the extended version of the Make Some Noise Video called “Fight for Your Right Revisited”

All the above are official Beastie Boys items.  In addition, you and your teammates (details below) get a No Pie No Sledgehammer team jersey, customized with your names on the back.  Heck, we’ll even let you pick your size.

Contest Details

Since we are talking about the No Pie, No Sledgehammer Team, we’re making it a team exercise.  Here’s how it works:

Let us know the type of pie you would like to see the Direct Online Marketing team™ smash with a sledgehammer. You can do this in one of two ways:

1. Visit our facebook page.  Like us if you haven’t already.  Post to our wall what kind of pie you’d like us to smash. OR,
2. Follow me on twitter.  Tweet me what kind of pie you’d like us to smash and include the hashtag #nopienosledgehammer.

That’s it.  Once you’ve done one of those things, you’re entered into the contest.  One entry per real person / organization.  No double dipping.

Now, here’s where the team aspect comes in.  We’re keeping a tally of all the different pie types that get entered. The pie with the most entries becomes the winning pie.  That’s the one that we’ll smash here in the office (or maybe in the parking lot – that might be messy) and upload to our YouTube channel.

So for better odds, encourage more of your friends to enter.

From the winning team, we’ll choose one winner at random for the grand prize package (the deluxe package plus a custom jersey).  Then we’ll choose up to nine more from the same team to get their own custom jerseys.  That’s enough for a starting nine plus manager.

Good luck!

Update: Oops – forgot to put the closing time for submissions.  It’s this Friday, May 6th at 5PM Eastern.  Standings will close and a winner will be drawn and announced Monday, May 9th.

What Does this Have to Do with Online Marketing

Absolutely nothing.  I just really, really love the Beastie Boys and couldn’t resist making a No Pie, No Sledgehammer team jersey.  If I wanted to make any business off this, I should have done a different contest.  If only 3rd Bass did a comeback album, we could have done a Gas Face shirt with MC Serch’s mug on it.

And the Winners Are…

Update 2: Learn who won and watch some pie get smashed.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

Social Media Week

I customize virtually all presentations for the audience and always update older material with recent changes in the online marketing world, but here’s one that will be totally new that I’m really looking forward to.  Online Marketing Connect is hosting its Social Media Week this week and you can register for free for the entire week’s worth of presentations from a good looking group of speakers.  And by “good looking,” I mean in terms of their organizations and material.  I do not know what most of them look like, but I’m sure they’re all Greek gods and goddesses.

My presentation is more intermediate-level and will focus on recent changes in the local sphere and its effects on reputation management and, ultimately, profitability.  I hope you’ll join me this Thursday at 5PM Eastern for Brave New Local / Social World: Recent Changes to Local & Review Sites and their Effect on Online Reputation Management.

Association of Information Technology Professionals

On Wednesday, May 11, I’ll be sitting on a 2-person panel with fellow blogger and all-around smart guy Russell Dunkin for the Greater Wheeling Chapter of AITP.  We’ll discuss blogging and social media as often times organizations put these things in the laps of the IT departments.  Even when it’s not their core responsibility, developers are often tasked with setting everything up, integrating various platforms, and maintaining the technical aspects.

West Virginia High Tech Consortium Foundation

The next morning I head down to attend the Generation West Virginia Young Leaders Conference.  On the way, I’ll stop in Fairmont, WV to present an intro to social media benefits and pitfalls entitled Can Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & Local Review Sites Help Your Organization?

Update with specifics: Attendees of this Do Biz U presentation – who include WVHTC Foundation Affiliate Members, the Marion Regional Development Corporation, and Create Marion – will be able to ask questions about their organizations to learn specifically if and how social media can help them.  As much as we marketers deal with social media, it’s still daunting to many businesses who want to ensure they’re not doing themselves more harm than good before jumping in.

Click here for more details or to register to attend this event at the Robert H. Mollohan Research Center in Fairmont.

Facebook Deals Getting a Push

When I logged into the Direct Online Marketing™ facebook page today, I noticed a big notice at the top for facebook Deals.  Nothing new here – facebook often uses this space for announcements and facebook Deals were announced back in November.  Here it is:

Now, this isn’t showing up to admins on all pages by any stretch, but I find the timing extremely interesting.  Google announced on Tax Day that it was discontinuing Tags, which was their product most directly comparable to facebook Deals.  Now just barely a week later, facebook is pushing its Deals.

So What the Heck are Facebook Deals

If you’ve not heard of Deals, they’re a pretty interesting concept.  You can make up offers to appear in your news feed that work either for a particular person or multiple persons,  i.e. “Check in here with three of your friends, show the phone to the bartender and get a half-priced margarita.”

(For now) there’s not cost to facebook Deals, so if you have a local physical presence and coupons or incentives work with your sales model, give them a shot.  It’s a super fast and easy process – just click to edit your page and you’ll see a link for “Deals” all the way at the bottom of your left-hand menu.  Just be aware: once you start your Deal and it gets approved, you can’t change it any way, or add a second one to run at the same time.  Although, you can stop the deal from running at any time.

To learn more, visit the facebook deals home page.  Yes, yes, it says it’s only available in Hotlanta, Austin, Big D, San Diego and San Fran, but that’s just old.  Why update the main home page where people can learn more when you’re promoting it to facebook owners?  That would just be silly.  Actually, just skip that link above and visit a subpage where it doesn’t have misinformation.

If you like whitepapers, here’s their pdf.  Or if you like short videos, try this (puff), this (for iphone – describes different types), and this (walks you through adding them).

Happy Dealing!

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

Among the topics covered were optimizing sites for branded searches, facebook, portfolio sites, and Google Tags.  Per the audience’s request, we specifically discussed reputation management for politicians and students.   We even talked about our old friend and favorite ORM example, Lois Feldman.

Enjoy.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

This Webinar isn’t for everyone, but will be huge for some.  Here’s a little more information so you can decide whether it’s worth saddling up with a sandwich during lunch*.

* Or the appropriate meal / snack during your morning on the West Coast or evening in Germany or wherever you are. Me? I’m a sandwich freak, so if I were hungry, I’d be gnawing on a sandwich no matter what time of day.

Who Should Attend?

This is aimed for any marketing professional or business owner with basic level (or even no) search engine optimization skills.  If you don’t understand why your site isn’t ranking higher in Google and bing for important search terms, you need to attend.

Who Should Not Attend?

Pros: you can skip this one.  SEMPO did a similar session on SEO audits for experienced SEOs recently, so we’re not duplicating that material.

Non-pros whose sites have no search visibility and don’t care about increasing traffic: if you exist, you can skip, too.

Busy non-pros who do care about better understanding SEO: skip, but send someone else in your place to take notes.

Why You Should Attend

1. Demystify search.  The search engines guard their ranking formulae (or algorithms) more closely than Colonel Sanders’ corporate descendants guard his 11 secret herbs and spices.  But there are certain things that have been proven to help or hurt sites’ rankings.
2. Chock full o’ information. This Webinar is so packed with useful information, it may even come off a little dry…unlike the Colonel’s delicious, delicious chicken. Fortunately, Paul has a background in teaching and speaking and can keep it interesting.  Plus he has a delightful English accent so you can imagine Paul McCartney or John Cleese is delivering an SEO tutorial.
3. Ask questions.  The last 15  minutes will be devoted entirely to your questions.  If you’re left wondering something about how SEO works or about your own site, it’s your own fault. (Or that we had a packed Webinar and couldn’t get to all questions in the time allotted.)
4. It’s Free. The only payment is 45 minutes of your time.

How to Register

The registration process couldn’t be any simpler.  You only have to fill out 6 fields on the registration form, which should take you all of half a minute.

Register today!

Hope you can make it.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

How to Perform a Technical SEO Audit – SEMPO

On Thursday, March 29 (note: this is pushed back a few days from the original date because of SES New York, where Paul has spoken in the past) Paul will be presenting a Webinar entitled How to Perform a Technical SEO Audit.  For a variety of reasons, he is targeting this Webinar towards a beginner level search engine optimizer or site manager. If you’d like to learn more, register now!  Hey – it’s free.

Social Media Business Forum

Then two days later on April Fool’s, I’ll be sitting on a couple panels at The State Journal’s Social Media Business Forum.  As mentioned before, I get to sit with some great folks who use social media effectively every day: Emily Bennington of Dixon Hughes, Bob Coffield of Flaherty, Sensabaugh & Bonasso, and Jeff James of Mythology Marketing.  Also speaking will be Karen Saxe and Chris Drinkut of Netspray; Julie Hewett of Julnet; and Kevin Nelson of Huddelston Bolen.

It’s a day chock-full o’ social media goodness, including an overview of the latest tools, social media from a legal aspect, and more.  If you’re going to be in the Charleston, WV  area, come out and join us.  It’s only $15, so register now! Oh, and if you want to follow along virtually, we’re using the #StateJournal hashtag.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

Need to find one of those sticks

Some of these areas get a deeper dive.  One of my favorite aspects has been that the course each time I’ve taught it coincides with the Google Online Marketing Challenge.  It’s a neat program where Google gives student teams $200 to spend on a real world company over three weeks.  The students get to learn about marketing a company and how to manage paid search through the Google AdWords platform.

This year we’ve had some issues getting funding into some of the students’ accounts and finally have an answer as to why.  [Note: See both updates below.] The following email was sent out yesterday to some teams:

From: Google Online Marketing Challenge
Date: Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 2:02 PM
Subject: Google Online Marketing Challenge: Account credits

Dear participants of the Google Online Marketing Challenge,

We would like to update you on the activation of your AdWords accounts. Many of your accounts have been credited, but for a number of campaigns they are not able to run at the moment. This is due to a Google security procedure. We are looking into this issue and working hard to get the affected accounts running as soon as possible.

Thank you for your patience and understanding!

In the meantime, we recommend you learn about AdWords in our free online training site to help you achieve success with AdWords in the AdWords Online Classroom: http://www.google.com/adwords/onlineclassroom/

Best regards,

The Google Online Marketing Challenge Team

I’ve posted the information here in case other professors or student teams are having similar issues and wondering what is going on.  Note: my wife and I often say “What is going on?” in a high pitched voice, quoting some movie that must be at least 5 years old, if not fifteen. I wanted to embed a clip here, but am blanking on the film. Can anyone help? This is crucial for my sanity.

While I don’t like complaining about a free service that benefits the students, I certainly hopes this will resolve soon.  It’s affected the course outline and is going to end up going to cause some students to work on the project over spring break (account management must occur over 21 consecutive days) and / or double up with an extremely  heavy workload while managing two separate projects at once.  The problem has been going on close to a month now.

Update: The problem has been fixed and all students – at least in my class – have received funding.  In a follow up email with Google, they indicated that they have “identified the reason behind this [security problem]  and have taken proper steps to stop this from happening again in the future.”  Great news all around.

Update 2 (April 20, 2011): Apparently not all professors were so lucky and I’ve even had a couple reach out to me because of this post.  I just received an email from the Google Online Marketing Challenge – the first mass one sent to me as a professor – saying that they just about have it figured out for everyone.  Never mind that there won’t be three weeks left in the semester for some of these students to run the accounts.  Anyway, here it is:

Dear professor,
We are very excited to have you on board.

Thank you for your patience with our account crediting process – we would like to apologize for any delays caused by our safety and security procedures.

If any of your student teams are experiencing this issue, please fill this form to send us the Customer IDs of the students that have not been credited yet. Allow us 48-96 hours before the credit is fully applied.

REMEMBER:

• All students’ accounts MUST BE verified by professors. Please check your Spam folders regularly to make sure you verify your student groups.

• Your students AdWords accounts MUST BE set up in US dollars ($ – USD) with no billing information.

• Student MUST update the Student Dashboard with their Customer ID information.

We are doing our best to answer all your queries in the support email address, please use this form for any credit related queries.

Thanks for your understanding and happy challenging!

The Google Online Marketing Challenge Team

© 2011 Google Inc. All Rights Reserved. This is a mandatory email from the Google Online Marketing Challenge team.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?

Happy Presidents Day! Enjoy this pool trick shot video where the banks are always open until tomorrow when, umm, they open again.

Sadly, this video was not produced here on our pool table.

Justin Seibert

Justin Seibert is the President of Direct Online Marketing. He regularly speaks on search engine marketing, social media optimization, and online reputation management. Follow him on twitter. Why not check out the company on facebook while you're at it?