45 Online Resources for CEO's

Ten years ago, building a website was a no brainer. “Build it and they will come,” was the general consensus. You left the technical details to your IT department; the promotional details were handed off to marketing.

Today, this is no longer an option. If you’re a CEO, you must be involved in your company’s online strategies if you plan to stay ahead of your competition. And by being involved, this means understanding the fundamentals of the Web and keeping up with all of the changes taking place online.

I hope you find this list of resources useful.

Business Blogging - Reading and Writing

1. RSS in plain English
If you don’t know what RSS is, watch this video (3 minutes, 44 seconds) for a simple explanation in plain English.

2. The Best 10 RSS Readers for Windows, Mac, and Linux
Determining which reader to use can be difficult; take a look at these descriptions of ten of the best.

3. RSSFwd
If you’re still uncomfortable reading via a feed reader, why not begin by getting blog posts delivered to you via e-mail. RSSFwd delivers RSS feeds straight to your inbox.

4. EFF: Legal Guide for Bloggers
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has created this guide to give you a basic roadmap to the legal issues you may confront as a blogger.

5. Basic Business Blogging Suggestions
To create an authoritative and trusted blog, consider these 12 recommendations.

6. Blogging Mistakes to Avoid
Not only are there basic guidelines on how to do it right, you also need to understand what to avoid when blogging. Take a look at these 15 mistakes to avoid.

7. The Opportunities and Challenges of Corporate, Team, and Personal Blogs
Forrester’s Jeremiah Owyang describes the pros and cons of the three main types of blogs.

8. Blog Topics for Business to Business
If you’re unsure what to blog about, consider these seven ideas to put get the creative juices going.

Social Media - Learn and Use

9. Your Social Media Strategy Begins With Monitoring
Before you can launch a successful social media strategy, consider monitoring existing conversations about your company.

10. List of Social Media and Social Networking Sites by Industry
A regularly updated list of over 400 sites, listed by categories that include: arts, bookmarking, auto, connecting with friends, consumer reviews, cooking, cultures, dating, education, event planning, family, games, fashion, health, networking, kids, Internet marketing, mobile, music, news, pets, photo sharing, pop culture, professional, real estate, religion, shopping, sport, technology, teen, travel, video sharing.

11. Social Media Press Release Template (free of copyright)
If your marketing department is planning to send out social media releases, give them this template to begin with.

12. Essential Guide to Social Media (Free e-book)
An overview of how to listen and participate in social media and new media marketing.

13. Social Media Networking and ROI
Gain insight into the goals and benefits of social networking, the challenges, and understand into how to best maximize your social networking efficiency.

14. Press Release Grader
HubSpots Press Release Grader evaluates your press release and provides a marketing effectiveness score; helping you create better and smarter press releases.

SEO and SEM - Visibility That's Relevant

15. Factors Affecting Your Search Engine Compatibility
This is a basic and useful resource detailing the common elements that affect your search engine ranking.

16. SEO Jargon Busters – A Comprehensive SEO Dictionary
Commonly refered to SEO terms, explained in English.

17. The Definitive List of Resources for Keyword Analysis
Your site won’t get search engine traffic without using keywords. As the CEO, make sure you are involved in this critical step.

18. Linkbuilding: 22 Dofollow Social Media sites
If your marketing department is not working on getting links to your site; or doesn’t know how to do it without being penalized by Google, point this article out to them.

19. Pay Per Click: The basics of Paid Advertising
Make sure you understand paid advertising; after all, you’re paying for it. Read this to get the basics down.

20. Best Practices for Pay-Per-Action Campaigns
Understand pay-per-action campaigns and best practices with Google’s start guide to Pay-per-action campaigns.

21. Google’s Conversion University
Free online resources from Google that include videos and tutorials, to help you understand search, marketing, and how your company fits in.

22. Google’s AdWords Learning Center
Another offering from Google; free training to sharpen your knowledge of AdWords.

Brand Marketing

23. A Practical Guide to Branding
From Business Week: Understand and define your brand identity—your product’s ‘personality’—before you spend money on advertising or marketing.

24. Word of Mouth Manual
This free e-book is available to download as a PDF. Alternatively, buy the book on Amazon ($45).

25. Brand Personality
Guy Kawasaki interviews Ogilvy’s Rohit Bhargava where they talk about the role of ‘personality’ in branding.

26. How’s your Rep? Online Reputation Management
When a potential customer searches for your firm on the Internet, you want to be in control of what they see on their first search engine results page.

27. Protect Your Brand Online
Everything you need to know about monitoring and managing your online reputation. eBook ($39).

28. Free Tools to Monitor Your Online Presence
Take a look at these nine free online tools to monitor conversations about you on the Web.

Free Online Courses

29. Entrepreneurship and Business (Carnegie Mellon)

30. Open Source and Distribution of Digital Information (UC Berkeley)

31. Understanding Computers and the Internet (Harvard)

32. The Future of the Internet (Stanford)

Reports About the Internet - Trends and Stats

33. Forrester: Consumer Technographics data
Understanding the impact of technology and the Internet on your business.

34. Comscore: Key Measurements of the Digital World
Comscore covers today’s hottest business trends, with key measurements of the digital world.

35. Internet World Statistics
The latest data about Internet users worldwide.

36. Top US sites from Quantcast
Rankings for sites in the US; how many visitors, and type of visitor.

37. The Future of Media (video)
A panel discussion on the Future of Media, with journalists David Carr of NY Times, Keith Kelly of NY Post, Kenneth Li of Reuters, and Johnnie Roberts of Newsweek and Erick Schonfeld from TechCrunch.

38. User Generated Content, Social Media and Advertising—An Overview (PDF)
In 2008, if you’re not on a social networking site, you’re not on the Internet. A report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Top 10 Management Blogs You Should Subscribe To:

39. David Kellog, CEO
Mark Logic, Inc.

40. Joel Spolsky, CEO
Fog Creek Software

41. John Mackey, CEO
Whole Foods

42. Guy Kawasaki, Managing Director
Garage Technology Ventures, founder of Truemors and Alltop

43. Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and President
Sun Microsystems, Inc.

44. Mark Cuban, Owner
Dallas Mavericks

45. Craig Newmark, CEO
Craigslist

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and hope we can start a conversation about what CEO’s most need to know about the online world.

Please let me know your opinions and suggestions by leaving a comment below; questions too are welcome.

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Graduated Search Marketers at eMetrics San Francisco?

I love Jim Sterne. He comes up with the most fun sessions for his eMetrics conferences! I will be on a session called Serious Search. In our cap and gowns a few us will provide the audience with the top 3 things we learned in graduate school and open the floor to discussions about - well - search analytics. eMetrics is THE educational conference for advanced web analytics people with a great focus on teaching the basics of managing paid search marketing. May 5-7 in San Francisco. He saved the best for last - come hang out with us on Wednesday May 7th.

SA-6 Wednesday, 1:30 - 2:30
Serious Search - Graduate Level

Barbara Coll, WebMama.com Inc.
Gary Angel, Semphonic
Michael Stebbins, Market Motive

You’ve read the books, you track the blogs, you’ve got most of your search marketing in hand and are doing a pretty good job of it. Now it’s time to take it to the next level. Find out what Gary, Michael and Barbara learned in 30 years of combined experience in search and analytics. They have definitely matriculated and are ready to outline where things are going next with online search. Come learn from the graduates.

Dana Todd and The WebMama Working Together

Dana Todd and WebMama.com are joining forces to provide WebMama.com clients and prospects with exciting (some would say explosive) insights into the future of marketing. Dana and I are both well known in the world of internet/online/web marketing and have been search marketing visionaries and disturbers of the peace for at least 10 years each. Both are founders of SEMPO. Both have been Presidents and Chairs for the organization. Dana has the reddest hair and WebMama is one of the most recognizable brand names in the industry. What a team!

Dana's forward-thinking into direct marketing and brand marketing strategies will provide my company with opportunities to discuss with the C-Suite the value of search marketing as an integral part of all marketing strategies and programs. For the prospects and clients who can handle the phenomenal, out-of-the-box ideas and the fast-paced presentation style of Dana Todd, there will be great rewards in helping their company navigate the ever changing world of search and web marketing.

In addition, Dana will be working with the WebMama team to increase their knowledge of a broader range of marketing strategies and tactics based on Dana's experiences with SiteLab. Dana has also announced her involvement in start-up NewsForce, working as CMO.

Can you imagine the two of us together in front of companies like HP, Guthy-Renker and VMware? Can you imagine the two of us ever letting the clients get a word in edgewise!!!??

Reality Check - Social Media Advertising

I was lucky enough to moderate a panel on Social Media Advertising at the jam packed Web 2.0 Conference hosted by WebGuild Silicon Valley in Santa Clara today. The speakers were realistic and at the same time excited to talk about the opportunities for traffic generation (either through the social site or through organic search results that are an end-result of the social advertising activities) and online sales.

Cam Balzer - VP of Emerging Media for DoubleClick/Performics. Cam covered the traffic stats of sites like youtube and facebook. (Did you that 25% of Canadians have a Facebook profile? No jokes about being snowed in with nothing else to do please). He also talked about the targeting of specific people based on keywords, groups, applications of FaceBook; showing the ease of the user interface and encouraging all to try it.

Rajiv Parikh - CEO, Position2; a Search Engine Marketing company engaged in what was called 'viral' or 'buzz' marketing, now called social media advertising. He gave two excellent examples of video, facebook usage, myspace usage and article placement to help gain visibility and traffic for a site called EffinFunny. The work Position2 did for this client helped gain high rankings - above the competition - in organic search results.

Kent Lindstrom - CEO, Friendster. As one of the pioneers in social media Kent talked to the real reality of monetizing social media members. He felt that even with targeting groups or personality traits people on social networks are not there to buy. He feels the ad models are still evolving and it is worth a dabble but don't bank your company on social media advertising.

I talked about the breadth of social media sites and peer review sites that are worth at least joining or monitoring to see what how ads are being served up: Digg, Technorati, Linked In, Friendster, Facebook, etc. I mentioned the fact viral marketing (free submission of videos, articles, blog postings, etc) is extremely time consuming. Buying ads on sites such as Facebook currently has about 1/10th of the return of Google Adwords, less even than Google Adsense or other contextual networks. Still no clear answer to whether social media advertising will work for B2B companies.

It was a great session and I believe the audience walked away with lots to think about and some things to go to the office and play with. Thanks to WebGuild for a great conference.

Education Offerings - Advanced Search Advertising - SEMPO Institute

SEMPO Institute offers basic and advanced educational course on all things Search Engine Marketing; fulfilling one of the important, founding goals of SEMPO set by the first Board of Directors which included me [Barbara Coll].

Many hours went in to the development of their courses - primarily by SEMPO members who volunteered their time. Now available is a course on Advanced Search Advertising. Wes Blemker, my senior search marketeer, helped review the course for SEMPO [SEMPO acknowledgement].

Video on Search Marketing Tools from Searchnomics Conference

A video of my session on Search Engine Marketing Tools from the Searchnomics Conference. I hope they invite me back next year as this was an excellent forum. [But do I ever wish I did my hair differently.]

Barbara Coll, WebMama.com Inc. Video of Session
Session Description: A panel discussion on using tools for search engine marketing. More and more you see the offer of search engine marketing solutions for managing PPC buys. Those solutions are primarily a set of tools for keyword analysis, keyword expansion and bid management. This panel will cover three aspects of 'tools': automated systems, a hands-on service model and outsourcing. Come hear the panelists debate the relative merits of their chosen method of managing search engine marketing campaigns.

World Travels - WebMama on the Road

I am sure a few (2?) noticed that I hadn't posted to this blog for a few weeks. I have been traveling - a lot. Through Quebec, at the cottage outside Ottawa, Washington DC, through Pecs, Sopron, Balaton in Hungary. We are now in Budapest and heading on the 4 th leg of our trip tomorrow - south-west Ireland. An amazing vacation made possible by the excellence and committment of my team, and the virtual nature of .dot com company management.

Internet access has been there quite readily when I needed it. {and thanks to two new clients - Vonage and Teleflora and the increasing activity of current clients VMware and Verisign - I needed it.} But it has been a PAIN phoning outside of Hungary. T-Mobile owns the market here and is very, very inconsistent in providing telephone service, through my cell phone, to US and Canada. It is interesting to see Google in action from another country. I am right now writing this blog entry in a Hungarian user interface - IP sniffing is not just for AdWords and google.com it appears.

I still read My Yahoo! home page with all the industry RSS feeds regularly and am happy to see the industry ticking along as usual. I will be jumping back in, with both feet, on the 20th when SES starts.

Search Engine Optimization and Marketing Tools Presentations

You will find the following two presentations on my website:

SES Latino - Successful Site Architecture (ppt) - my standard pitch on making your website search friendly by adhering to some basic development and design guidelines that DON'T change. In this version of the talk, I address the method of sending all URLs to the search engines for review (it DOES NOT guarantee indexing in the databases, just crawling). Check it out to learn more about Sitemaps for Google and Yahoo. (zip version)

Searchnomics - Search Engine Marketing Tools - I address search marketing tools for paid search and optimization. My twist on this subject is the belief that using automated tools is NOT a good idea for paid search marketing; that it hinders competitive and messaging advertising through search. (zip version)

It is one of my joys in life to present in front of an audience. (For those that know me this will not come as a great surprise). And sometimes I do it for the pure pleasure of seeing people in the audience smile in agreement when I tell a story of the pain of SEO.

Searchnomics - Learn about search marketing and its future.

This conference is a little different than other search marketing conferences - it is only 1 day long! Ok, that isn't the only difference. It is also packed full of sessions that aren't all about tactics and short-term strategies. Yes it has some of the usual suspects but we are getting a chance to talk more informal, more causally, than other times. I recommend it highly.

I will be doing the session on Search Engine Marketing tools - making the case for using no bid management tools, using the vendor tools, but not making it a closed loop, automated process.

Wednesday June 27, Santa Clara Convention Center. Registration. I believe I still have one guess pass for $275 if people are interested in going at the last minute. Just drop me a line at bcoll (at) webmama.com.

Canada, Search Marketing and Gord Hotchkiss.

Gord is magnificent. He lives in the middle of the forested province of British Columbia and leaves it regularly to speak about search. And wow is he speaking today!

Check this out about Search Marketing in Canada. Canada, It's Time to Clue Into Search!

Harsh Words but oh so true.......Here is my comment:

Gord - well said. I have always been astounded by two things:

1 - Search Agencies in Canada don’t think Canadian companies have money to spend on Search marketing like American companies do (it is the old insecurity thing)

2 - Canadian companies who sell in the US don’t know how to play the search marketing game.

In Vancouver, UBC has a degree in Internet marketing that has courses in search marketing. But, as far as I can tell from speaking for 5 years at the IIMA seminar series,brand managers are not educating themselves. I also spoke at the first SES Toronto and found the audience way behind the curve. I am so disappointed to hear that hasn’t changed.

Shouldn't Roots, Teleus, the banks (Scotiabank, etc), the stock exchange, the insurance companies want to be visible in search results and be willing to spend a portion of their very, very large advertising budgets on search?

Here is a get piece from an article in October 2005: (and still valid today)

Canada’s population is roughly 10 per cent that of the U.S. but in the recent Deloitte Technology Fast 500 list 53 of the fastest growing technology companies in North America are Canadian. That’s 11 per cent of the total.

So, Canadians, come out and play like the big boys/girls in the US, eh.

Disclaimer #1: I know that their are exceptions and apologize to those who spend a fair share of their time trying to convince Canadian companies to play.
Disclaimer #2: I am a Canadian who moved to California.

Target Latinos through Search Engine Marketing - Or Let the Competition Do It First.

Attend SES Latino and find out how. See press release about my thoughts on the matter.

Search Marketing Educational Opportunities

SES Latino - Miami - June 18 & 19

Summary: Hear the new and innovative approaches and learn the right tactics for the South American and US Hispanic markets. Listen to "success story" case studies and learn about best practices from SEM/SEO industry leaders and experts in the U.S. and Latin America.

My Session: Successful Site Architecture - Barbara Coll, WebMama.com Inc.
Learn to successfully architect your site for search engines and how specific page elements and design technologies may impact your ability to gain good organic listings. Covers topics such as directory and file structure, server-side includes (SSIs), 404 error trapping, java-script, robots.txt use, frames, secure area usage, and much more. Toward the end of the session, volunteers from the audience will have their sites examined to see how changes could be made to their site architecture and design to increase search engine traffic.
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Searchnomics - Santa Clara, CA - June 27, 2007

Summary: Searchnomics is where the leaders of the search industry meet to share cutting-edge knowledge, best practices, and trends in search engine marketing, web analytics, SEO and more.

My Session: Search Engine Marketing Tools - Barbara Coll, WebMama.com Inc.
A panel discussion on using tools for search engine marketing. More and more you see the offer of search engine marketing solutions for managing PPC buys. Those solutions are primarily a set of tools for keyword analysis, keyword expansion and bid management. This panel will cover three aspects of 'tools': automated systems, a hands-on service model and outsourcing. Come hear the panelists debate the relative merits of their chosen method of managing search engine marketing campaigns.

SES Latino Coming Soon - I need data!

Hola! On June 18-19 in hot Miami, Nacho Hernandez will once again lead the pack (and the industry) at SES Latino. The Hispanic / Latino consumers are ready to be sold products and information through their searches online. Have you started targetting them? If not, you are behind the curve and your competition may already be there, so you need to come listen to the best strategies and methods for reaching those consumers via search marketing.

I will be giving the talk on Site Architecture for Search Friendly Sites. This will be in English (as will the whole conference). The fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization do not change based on what language you use on your site; they are a critical part of all website development.

I need to gather some info so please expect a few polls like this in the next few days.

Seeding the Search Engines for a Presentation on SEM

On Wednesday last week, while on vacation, I spoke at an IIMA conference in Vancouver. The talk was about 'Visibility on the Web'. My goal was to convey to the audience of primarily Internet Marketers that it isn't just about the regular .com search but that searches from any tab on the search bar should yield client or your own business results.

I seeded the web by putting out a press release (news alerts and news search) and a blog posting (google or technorati). There were enough pictures of me (yech!). There is a local business listing and map of my business. I have a wikipedia entry for Barbara Coll because of my past role in the Search Engine Marketing industry and SEMPO. There is a book I am quoted in. I belong to a few groups and have 1991 UseNet postings. It is all about showing up no matter what type of media people are searching for. I am working on getting a video created to help explain this marketing strategy to clients who are very, very interested.

Oh, and I plan on posting a review of the amazing resort we stayed in on Vancouver Island, on TripAdvisor. Just one more place to increase my visibility on the web.

WebMama.com New WebSite!

I can't believe it but my company finally has a new website. The goal was to use the current ways of providing information to interested parties and to update the design to give the site a more modern and sophisticated look.

I have always believed in giving away most of my knowledge about Search Engine Marketing because I believe in educating the next generation on good marketing strategies. It doesn't seem to lose us any business as everybody sees how much work it is and hires us anyway. Thanks to the fantastic team of writers and developers who made this happen.

Just to list the ways the site uses the current methods of distributing information (and not call them Web 2.0 tactics):

- updated list of my blog postings
- audio snippets for my upcoming talks
- listings of podcasts I was featured in
- quotes from clients, business colleagues and partners
- downloads available of all recent presentations

The most fun I had (and the most time consuming) was updating the time line of how WebMama the name and WebMama.com the company came into being. Enjoy!

Is Panama Making Yahoo More Money? WebMama Logic...

Today's buzz about the Comscore report on Yahoo is telling the financial world that Yahoo's new ad ranking algorithm is increasing clicks to relevant (ie big spending) advertisers. This makes advertisers happy - especially when the cost for each of those clicks has dropped, which it has. So, if the advertisers' cost-per-click has dropped at the same time as the number of clicks has increased - is it a wash? Not quite. I think it is a win on Yahoo's side but only slightly right now. One thing needs to happen (or be shown to be happening) for Yahoo to truly need to make more money.
More money needs to be spent on Yahoo Search Ads.

This means an increasing in budget for advertisers. Relevant advertisers (ie - the ones that will show up at the top of the search results) will increase their budget for a few reasons:

1 - they preceive Yahoo results as being a better place to do branding and awareness advertising since they will be at the top, or closer to the top, of the results and in the company of their main competitors. This I believe will happen

2 - they are burning through their current budgets and have always wanted to buy more on Yahoo but couldn't get the search volume. This I believe will happen.

3 - agencies will recommend that clients spend some money testing Yahoo and agencies will be able to better optimize current campaigns in a timely manner. This will definitely be a win.

4 - conversions to sale increase and the new Yahoo adds to the advertisers bottom line. I am not so sure this will happen. When all is said and done the people who visit Yahoo and do a 'search' are still the same people and, presumably, will convert at the same rate which is substantial lower than Google conversion for the the same words at the same price. In the world where search is measured, to the micro-level, this may be the reason Panama does not increase Yahoo's bottom line. Then again, if #1, #2 and #3 happen .....

InventYourFuture Presentation

I just gave (performed?) a session on 'How to Become Visible on the Web' (aka 'You Don't Generate Interest or Sales If They Can't Find You'). It was a crowd of small business owners, corporate women and women who are ready to go from small to large businesses. You can find the presentation at: www.webmama.com/inventyourfuture (a few MBs of PPT). As usual I used the fire hose technique to educate people on the opportunities and complexity of search engine marketing in standard search, news, images, video, blogs, rss, local, etc, etc.....

It was a GREAT conference coined the The Entrepreneurial Skills Conference. I will be posting about the next one as soon as it is announced. A bottle of really good Napa Valley Cab to the first person who can figure out why they can't get into the Google index.

Godmother of Search?

Yesterday, Andy Beal on his Marketing Pilgrim website offers his opinion on who should be named “Godfather of Search” in response to a survey Jeremy Shoemaker was doing.

But it got him thinking: “Who is the Godmother of Search?” In the early days half of the speakers and industry experts were women. It is an interesting development that over the years more of the speakers are men but there are still a large number of women running the successful search marketing companies out there. [Just a few examples: me, Ellen Siminoff, Lisa Wehr, Dana Todd, Christine Churchill, Laura Thieme, Cheryl Pingel and Misty Locke)

Take the poll on his site and vote for the most powerful woman in search. You can choose from the list he compiled or put in your own. And thank you Andy for putting me on the list.

A HOT new conference is coming to Mountain View on February 8th. I am lucky to be speaking with some amazing speakers. We will be there to educate professional woman on being successful in starting new companies, running business or moving up the corporate ladder. Here is the blurb:

Whether you are a corporate manager who wants to move up the career ladder, an ‘intra’-preneur building an internal corporate venture or a new or aspiring business owner, this conference is designed to enhance your skills, expand your professional network and increase your effectiveness. Speakers include Stanford Professor Maggie Neale; best-selling authors Sam Horn, Cindy Solomon and Joanne Black; successful small business owners, industry experts like Barbara Coll of WebMama.com, media personalitie like Kara Swisher of the Wall Street Journal, consultants and business leaders from Cisco, Citibank and Microsoft, all of whom who have ‘been there, done that’ and want to share their secrets to fast-track your success.

My Topic - Search Engine Optimization: What Does It Take To Get Noticed on the Web?

And I totally LOVE the fact that they are giving a SPA certificate to every attendee!

Just choose me in the affiliate pull-down menu when you register. $100 off of the price of $475. Really a good buy for the information you will receive.

I saw two things in 2006 that really made me smile/cry. One was a headline from the Search Engine Watch Blog - "2006: The Year Search Grew Up" and second the announcement from SEMPO of the SEMPO Institute. [The Institute was created to help educate people on SEM - bringing many people into the fold in a uniform and consistent way.]

Both showed the moving of my dream to reality of what Search Marketing could be and how SEMPO could help make it happen. When a few of us dreamed up the idea of a non-profit industry association for Search Marketers we had an official sounding mission statement about spreading the word about search - that was in December 2002 (SEMPO officially launched in August 2003). Privately I had another way of describing why I got involved (and ran the organization for 2 years) - to help mature our industry - to get Search Marketing to GROW up.

Thanks Elisabeth and Chris Winfield for giving me some confirmation that we have come from being babies crawling on the floor to tweens. We have much more growing to do to become teenagers. More about that in future posts.