There are online communities shrouded in so much darkness that even the bravest search marketer would give up before developing a marketing plan. Social sharing and discussions happen there, but they can’t be tracked in any meaningful way. These are tight knit communities that shun outsiders and are suspicious of big brands. I’m not referring to any new, trending social networks or stodgy, impenetrable image boards—I’m referring to the MUSH.

I started out in the MUSH (Multi User Shared Hallucination) scene when I was 13. I’m naturally something of a charmingly nerdy outsider, so I was drawn to these obscure niche communities as soon as I stumbled upon them. In 1997 I was too young to find likeminded people on Usenet, and there were really no ‘fan communities’ in small town Idaho for me to participate in. MUSHes were a natural fit. I met some great people in those years, some of whom are still my friends.

Before I get into the nitty gritty of what a MUSH is and how they started, I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version. A MUSH (or MUX, MOO, MUCK, MUD, etc) is an online, multi-player text based game (think Zork) with built-in chat and bulletin board features.

A room in the game (yes, you are meant to use your imagination)

I work in SEO/social media now, so I tend to look at the past through a search marketing lens when a sentimental mood strikes me. MUSHes and their ilk are an almost unknown hyper-niche in the scheme of the internet, and I think they’re worth exploring in terms of dark social (we’ll get into that more later) and marketing as a whole.

But first, a history lesson.

What is a MUSH?

There would be no World of Warcraft or Second Life without the humble MUD. The Multi User Dungeon started it all as early as 1978. I am far too young for that, of course, so I caught up with the MU* phenomenon almost 20 years later. In 1997, I used Telnet to log in to various MUSHes, but there are specific pieces of software (clients such as Pueblo and SimpleMU*) that streamline the connection process.

Back in 1979 at Essex University, Roy Trubshaw created the first virtual world in existence, which was eventually known as MUD1.

MUD1 was spun off many times over the years, and that’s where the evolution of the genre happened. A MUD was a hack and slash roleplaying game in text form, and the emphasis was on the actual combat and gameplay. As the culture expanded, people began to use MUDs for social purposes (beginning with TinyMUD in 1989). That, in turn, spawned the MUSH. The history is complex and interesting.

A profile page, utilizing….what’s that? LINKS!

Most MUSHes are still roleplaying games at heart, and many of them take on the role of interactive fan fiction set in various popular fantasy and science fiction universes. If there’s a popular “geek” property, then there’s been a MUSH dedicated to it.

A MUSH is usually equipped with a bulletin board system (much like any basic web forum or message board) and several chat channels, which function like an IRC room. This is where the discussion about dark social begins.

Dark Social Abridged

In October 2012, Alexis Madgiral wrote a piece for The Atlantic called “Dark Social: We Have the Whole History of the Web Wrong.” In that article, he writes about being a teenage Usenet and ICQ user, and explains the concept of dark social.

“There are circumstances, however, when there is no referrer data. You show up at our doorstep and we have no idea how you got here. The main situations in which this happens are email programs, instant messages, some mobile applications, and whenever someone is moving from a secure site… to a non-secure site… This means that this vast trove of social traffic is essentially invisible to most analytics programs. I call it DARK SOCIAL. It shows up variously in programs as “direct” or “typed/bookmarked” traffic, which implies to many site owners that you actually have a bookmark or typed in www.theatlantic.com into your browser. But that’s not actually what’s happening a lot of the time. Most of the time, someone Gchatted someone a link, or it came in on a big email distribution list, or your dad sent it to you.”

That article got me thinking about how I’ve shared and consumed thousands of links– through MUSHes, which are an even darker sort of social than Gchat, IRC or email.

Darkest Social

The reason I say that it’s an even darker form of social is that it isn’t saved anywhere. The server, its code and bulletin board messages are saved. Everything else (chat, roleplay) is gone unless someone actively opens up a text file and logs it. There is no way to track that.

MUSHes were an easy way for us to tell jokes, construct unusual emoticons and make ASCII depictions of genitalia, but it went deeper than that.

In the early days, people shared obscure Geocities and Angelfire pages relating to their fandom, as well as personal blogs. These blogs (usually LiveJournal or primitive private domain pages) received extremely heavy traffic from MUSH communities. People also shared their fan fiction, art and photography this way, and links posted to MUSH chat channels and bulletin boards got them much more traffic than search engines ever did. They were not optimized for search engines and they had no real reason to be. Their audience was already there and built in.

As time progressed, we started sharing YouTube videos (or earlier embedded videos on sites such as Something Awful), memes and even links to eCommerce sites. I made more than a few book and CD purchases based on MUSH links.

MUSHes were filled with diverse people who were extremely connected with other communities. We’d often see the 4chan memes before Reddit got a hold of them and read world news (especially from our Middle Eastern friends) before the big American media outlets got a chance to water them down.

Links, literally all over the shop

In that way, it was a complete dark social network. People had dedicated usernames and profiles that linked to their own websites, which could be brought up at any time through a simple +finger command. You knew the person who was sharing links at least as much as you know your Twitter or Instragram followers, and probably knew them as well as some of your Facebook friends.

None of this was tracked or catalogued.

Marketing in the Smallest Niche

A marketer might reason that if there’s a social network in place and links are being exchanged then there’s an accompanying marketing opportunity. If there’s an opportunity here, it would be so hard fought and time consuming that the ROI would not be there.

First, you have to find the game. There are MUD directories on the internet, but most are out of date and not even close to all-inclusive. If you stumble upon a game’s webpage and connect through Telnet or a client, you might only find a few people connected. Popular games come and go, so the audience for your marketing venture might not be there.

Marketing has a weird relationship with online text games in the first place. Though I can’t find a source in any newsgroup archives (Wikipedia cites it briefly), author Anne McCaffrey reportedly had a battle with PernMUSH (a game based on her novels) over their content. It seems that McCaffrey’s people, sometime before her passing, hid that battle pretty well. Similarly, George RR Martin decided he’d best give final approval on a Song of Ice and Fire game as well. You can read his statements here.

So when a MUSH gets some mainstream attention from official marketing and PR channels, it usually results in a headache for them. MUSH users generally want to be left alone with their game. Contrast that with Everquest 2 (a graphical MMORPG), which allowed users to order a pizza from within the game using a simple command. Warcraft had a partnership with Mountain Dew; PernMUSH changed so they wouldn’t be sued by McCaffrey.

Let’s get back to that built-in audience. I was a member of several MUSH communities that were brimming with gun-loving, Midwestern Americans. If someone on that game had a night vision scope business, they would have been rolling in money from just posting a few links, but no outsider could have gotten away with it.

MUSH communities are extremely hard to penetrate and even harder to market to. I can only think of one instance where marketing to a MUSH community, and it worked brilliantly.

One Success

I can account for one huge marketing success through a MUSH channel first hand. In 2002, I was playing on a Transformers game called Transformers 2005. The annual Transformers convention, Botcon, was happening soon. This was before fan conventions were as big and commercial as they are now.

Someone affiliated with that convention was a member of the community, so no one gave them guff when they posted about it and linked to it. People were interested. The marketing was so good that I went to Fort Wayne, IN the summer after I graduated from high school to attend. Of course, I spent time in Chicago and made a larger trip out of it as well, but I never would have gone without that direct marketing.

The marketing itself used our sense of community and the niche nature of the fandom (this was before Michael Bay made the franchise huge with those terrible movies) to get some butts in the seats. Many other people I talked to admitted they would not have attended if not for that marketing.

So then we can ask ourselves—could Hasbro directly market to a Transformers MUSH? Could Disney directly market to a Star Wars MUSH? The answer is no. Just like tight-knit forum communities, MUSH people have no tolerance for outsiders spamming them with links and marketing material. If it comes from an established community member, it’s great—but if not, it’s just not going to fly.

I’ve been out of that world for 8 years or so now, and it’s not thriving the way it once was. World of Warcraft and other MMOs effectively destroyed it. Those games actually make money, have nice graphics and provide excellent marketing outlets. MUSHes—not so much.

MUSHes still exist, though, and dark social shares are still happening. This little speck on the online map just proves that you can’t monetize, track and put numbers on everything when it comes to the internet. Even when there’s a built-in audience for your client’s business and the barrel is so full of fish that there’s no water in it, it’s just not a viable marketing avenue. Some of the internet will always remain dark.

The post #17 – Multi User Shared Hallucination: The Darkest Social and the Smallest Niche appeared first on The Saloon of Literature.

He swoops through the front row and turns on you. Without warning he jumps straight into “What do you do for a living?” Hang on, where was “what is your name?”, you think, as you stutter to answer his question, “I am an SEO”. The audience go silent. “What did he say?” you hear someone ask. You start to go red. You should have lied, that’s what you’re thinking. Should have gone with doctor or accountant, something that everybody knows already.

The comedian, pleased you have fallen into his trap, looks up to the audience with a confused look, then back down at you. He seems to have increased in size three-fold, as he looms over you like a demon headmaster. “A what now?”

You pause. How else to describe it? “Erm”, you begin, “I work with websites, helping them rank in Google.” Uh-oh, now you’ve blown it. Everyone has heard of those people. SEOs: Cowboys. Charlatans. Rip-off merchants. Somehow, you can’t stop yourself from making it worse, “Some people call it inbound marketing”.

As £££ signs flash in the comedian’s eyes, he pauses for effect, then asks you directly, “What the fuck is inbound marketing?”

You fidget uncontrollably, looking first left and then right, trying to find some way out of this hell hole. You are penned in, trapped from all sides by the staring masses, just waiting to laugh in your face. With your back against the wall, you decide to stand up against this bully and defend your mighty industry. “Well”, you begin, “it’s the opposite of outbound marketing – y’know, phone calls, direct mail, spam, all the interruptive forms that everyone hates.”

The comedian seems intrigued, as you sigh inwardly and thank fuck you’ve been reading the Hubspot blog lately. He wants more though. “So what is it exactly that you do?”

“I…erm…figure out what stuff people are looking for, then help them find what I… want them to find.”

“And then what happens?”

“Well, they end up on my client’s website and we try to convert them – so they buy a product, or download an ebook, or fill out a quote form.”

The comedian steps away, seemingly content with his torture. That wasn’t so bad. No one really laughed. Pretty much got away with it. You take a sip of lager – ahhhh. You carefully place your pint back on the floor, and as you look back up, the comedian is right there waiting for you. Waiting, staring, with an evil glint in his eye. He knows something you don’t.

In a panic, you feel your cheeks go red as you start to question yourself – ‘I am right, aren’t I? Inbound marketing is good, right? It’s what people WANT!’

He senses your disarray. “Ok, so they fill a form in or do a download or whatever, but then what has that actually achieved?”

HA! He doesn’t even get it. What an idiot! “Well once you have collected their details like their phone number or email address, you can ring them or email them, to try and sell them something.”

“Oh, those INTERRUPTIVE forms that everybody hates. Well isn’t that noble.”

Fuck.

The post #16 – What The Fuck Is Inbound Marketing? appeared first on The Saloon of Literature.

“Produce great content”

That’s what we need to do, right? Content Marketing is the new black, and we need to be bloody good at it if we want our sites to rank.

Sean recently proposed that some SEO folk are waiting with baited breath and crossed fingers that Google’s next update will reward quality content that deserves to rank. I sincerely hope that people don’t actually believe such garbage, and would like to dig into why it could never actually happen.

For the purpose of this discussion we’ll consider only the content medium of copy, since that is the most basic form of content, and most easily digestible by our spidery friends.

How can Google go about detecting quality content?

It could run through various checks and comparisons:

• Is this copy identical to another page?
• Are there chunks of copy that are largely similar to other places online?
• How is the text positioned on the page?
• Does this copy occupy a central theme or does it contain semantic oddities?
• Is this copy sound in terms of grammar, spelling and syntax?

Hmmm, so Google knows how to tell if content is duplicate, poorly structured or incoherent. Of course, we know this – it’s exactly what Panda has been hammering sites for over the last couple of years. Google attempts to surface better quality sites simply by removing the lower quality ones.

But can Google look at two unique blog posts written on the same subject and determine which is of the higher quality? I sincerely doubt it.

A more pertinent question might be: ‘can humans do it?’

The literary world

The best selling books of all time, according to Wikipedia, contain amongst their top 10 writers such as Tolkien, Dickens and Lewis. A fair shout, many would argue. Yet nestling in at the number 9 spot is none other than The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown. Those familiar with Mr Brown’s work will know that his use of language is…clumsy, at best. His writing is painful to read, and he is not without criticism, evidenced by this collection of his ‘worst sentences‘.

Other works that have achieved massive commercial success yet are notoriously badly written include 50 Shades of Grey and the Harry Potter series. I must admit to enjoying the travails of Master Potter, although the prose can’t half make you wince at times.

50 Shades of Shit – a Tumblr ‘fan’ blog

The thing is, having discussed my distaste for such poorly written works with quite a few people over the years, some people simply don’t notice that the writing is bad. Others don’t give a shit. Well educated, highly intelligent people no less. I know this makes me sound pompous and arrogant, but hopefully is getting my point across – everybody has a different definition of quality.

Google MUST rely on external factors

Content is made to communicate meanings, and communication is an exchange of information. Content is only effective if it is successful in communicating its meanings to its audience. But the audience is not a robot.

Since every person has fundamentally different experiences, opinions and ideologies, it follows that they should disagree on ‘what is good.’

The notion that content can, in itself, deserve to rank is flawed.

If people can’t agree on content quality, then Google certainly can’t make that call algorithmically. And we’ve only considered text! Imagine Google trying to grade images qualitatively, never mind animation, music or videos. This is art not science.

Google must rely on good old external factors, such as links, social shares and author associations. And at the end of the day, Google doesn’t give a shit that a Dan Brown book reads like a soap opera on steroids – if their users want it then Google will give it to them.

The post #15 – Great Content Can’t DESERVE To Rank appeared first on The Saloon of Literature.

So apparently there has been another Google update…

There will have been a few SEO’s going into last weekend worrying about whether they will be getting a bollocking about their clients come Monday. A few of the more dedicated of this bunch probably completed a few ‘keyword’ searches to see whether their sites had bombed or not. These poor fuckers are going to be up against it. I mean after all the quality work they’ve been doing recently how will they be able to explain this to their clients?

Lets be honest (for once) and say that the majority of SEO agencies have probably got used to explaining indifferent results to their clients over the last couple of years. So one more panda update won’t really make a massive difference. Will it?

This thought process led me down a foggy road, one where I thought “Would an SEO agency rather ‘strive’ to get #1 results for their clients than actually rank for them?” Yes, an SEO campaign is more about traffic and conversions these days but the fundamentals of organic traffic comes from rankings (I feel I have to add this because some idiots usually comes out and say that rankings don’t matter when they quite obviously do.)

So lets think about this for a second. SEO agency A are currently ranking #1 for their clients priority terms. What sort of things will they probably consider?

Being #1

• Forever checking ranking results to see whether they are still ranking 1st for their “priority” term(s).
• Shitting themselves every ranking update regardless of how white hat their campaign has been because of the unpredictability of Google.
• Running out of sources to get organic traffic.
• Frustrated clients who will soon get bored of the same results (however good they are).

Now you work for SEO agency B and you’re striving to be #1 for your clients priority terms.

Striving to be #1:

• The results above us are spam… We could easily replicate them but it’s not a good idea for you in the long term.
• We create quality content that gets plenty of social shares and links, we’re just waiting for the links to pass authority.
• We get quality links from websites with high authority, we’re just waiting for the links to pass authority.
• “We are looking to offer a risk free organic search campaign that has your long term business success in mind. We wouldn’t want to ruin this by building links too quickly or poorly, like your competitors”.

I can imagine a large number of SEO suppliers who are currently striving for the #1 spot because they are either:

• Too afraid to do anything to drastic (especially around anchor text)
• Don’t actually know what it takes to rank a site in 2013
• Have been penalised by Google and are trying to get back or have taken a client on in a similar situation.
• Are miles behind the competition but will lie about the clients chances of ranking to keep the money coming in.

But business wise there are benefits to this, we may pretend that there isn’t but we know it to be true.

Selling the idea to a client that they will rank once Google changes their algorithm to reward ‘quality’ is currently a utopian one. Let’s ignore the fact that we can’t seem to define quality content. Have you ever really believed that Google will be able to do this, let alone choose too?

I aim to create the best content to get more shares, more links, more visibility and my client out there. Not because it might one day help me rank better. If this ‘tactic’ helps me in the future then so be it.

One things for sure though, you can bet your bollocks this ‘quality algorithm’ anticipation has been and will be coming out of the mouths of agencies around the world in both selling to prospective clients and keeping clients happy. I know that at the end of the day any supplier that tries to do something like this and doesn’t back it up by traffic or conversions will be caught out in the end and likely binned but it won’t stop some agencies from providing a sub par service in the name of risk management, being clueless and/or being afraid to try.

Sorry I’ve got kind of lost here. Time to stop typing I think. Any thoughts are as always appreciated.

Oh yeah that’s it. We’re looking to accept guest posts here at The Saloon. Ideally some of you guys that don’t normally post on your own blogs let alone anyone else’s. We are after fresh ideas and voices within the industry (even if this post proved otherwise). If your down to write get in touch with one of us.

The post #14 – SEO – 20/03/2013 appeared first on The Saloon of Literature.

Your products and services ‘need speak for themselves,’ but before purchase your brand needs to make a great impression.

What kinds of qualifiers presently strengthen your brand?

This brand celebrates its grace upon the pages of the New York Times.  Of course, the exposure is a huge win, additionally allowing the brand to remind future readers of the profile.

Who wouldn’t want the exposure in addition to the ‘as seen in’ trophy, qualifying the brand and making an impression on present and future consumers?

HARO, help a reporter out, hosts reporter and editor queries, creating great PR opportunity for those who can use it well.

To start, sign up for free email alerts from HARO from the service’s homepage.

Emails feature several categories, such as Business and Finance,

but best practice warrants finding those most befitting to one’s PR wishes.

Do you have time to search through multiple emails per day while attending to core business matters?

Search operation increases time efficiency when owners do not have preferred in-house or third party PR direction and service.  Furthermore, using operators sheds light upon queries placed in obscure categories or emailed at inopportune times. 

Search Operators

Creating a separate Gmail account allows for expedited roving.  Gmail search operators help identify key terms and brand associations.

For example, a busy head officer may not have time for searching HARO emails in the diligent manner success warrants.  But one searching for a real estate query, as featured above, may latently find it by exercising the following search operation:

From:HARO “real estate”

This elicits all emails from HARO with real estate appearing in text.  Moreover, one can further define.

Combine real estate with other terms such as ‘California’ like so:

From:HARO(real estate California)

This elicits all emails from HARO with real estate AND California in text.

However, even with the provided power of accelerated perusal, timing needs more attention regarding key terms and phrases; particular key terms are worthy of immediate alert.

For additional help, see this search operators resource.

Key Terms and Alerts

Attention to timing is precedent in PR.  Aside from search operation, alerts aligned with key terms need further attendance.  Create an email filter for your business’ key terms and phrases.

For example, here we’re setting a filter for all emails coming from HARO with the key phrase, “green energy” in text.

Being extra attentive to queries accelerates chances of having offered insight selected and your brand featured.

We can archive, star, and forward queries to chosen addresses.

Outside Counsel

Sometimes business owners and smaller outfits do not have the opportunity to field live PR opportunities, asking third parties for aid in crafting good pitches and addressing reporters’ time-sensitive queries.

Rather than hire an ongoing service or in-house PR person, business owners can create a separate Gmail account allowing outside parties access; the third-party may act as both a counselor and as a brand-associated PR person, increasing the professionalism of the exchange.

Summing Up

Benefits of PR include:

-          Increased sales

-          Ongoing brand relevance

-          Expression of brand strength and authority

In-house PR people and third-party agencies come at cost, but leveraging free and available resources, such as Gmail and HARO produce PR success as well.

-          Use search operators, unearthing specified queries related to important key terms and publications.

-          Instill processes of increased urgency for special brand-focused terms and phrases, forwarding messages and further filtering them.

-          Consider using outside counsel to strengthen pitches and increase expressed professionalism.

All the Coolz Authorz Boxz

My Name is Willie. Recognize. This is MY place…along with Revell, Hathaway, and Pensabene (I taught that dude all he knows about PR by the way.)  I write just to get links; because, really, that’s how businesses have succeeded since the beginning of time..by attracting links.  Forget PR, exposure, making impressions, and CONVERSIONS.  It’s about links and creating fake, transparent relationships.

I observe some people in SEO (and their clients) to be quite full of shit, saying whatever it takes to put cash in pocket while trying so hard to make others think well of them.  I’ve been around the block a time or two; I smell something foul in the state of online marketing.  (But, what the fuck do I know- I’m just a toy action figure.) Ta-ta for now, kids.

[You can find my partner in writing crime, Anthony, writing here, Content Muse, and SkyrocketSEO.]

The post #13 – Using Gmail and Free Haro Emails for PR Success appeared first on The Saloon of Literature.

United we stand at the Saloon, until the fourth to fifth scotch on the rocks is poured.  Then we wobble and sit.  Be on the lookout for more shots coming from our friends in the community.

Veni, vidi, vici, bitches.  Much like the military genius of the Three Amigos,

we have ingrained in the community of the people and have all surrounded.  There’s no escaping this.

Today, we are proud to welcome a guest post by Alex Morask.  I don’t need to introduce homeboy; he’s inquisitive and will grab your attention himself.  We were all impressed by his thoughts on teaching Internet marketing at universities.  Being a student, he can walk the talk, giving insight about what’s on the mind of younger practitioners eager to learn more.

He’s a sharp guy and great writer.  Dude’s coming out guns blazing.  Say hello to our younger friend.

For those of you who don’t know me, which I assume is almost everyone, I’m Alex Morask, a 21 year old college student studying advertising and marketing at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In addition, I’m an aspiring inbound marketer, and for the past two years I’ve been reading, theorizing and learning about this ever-evolving field as it has truly become a wonderful passion of mine.

I gained what online marketing knowledge I have now by routinely following an assortment of blogs, signing up for a lot of newsletters, pounding through all sorts of marketing Ebooks, pestering industry experts for advice (sorry Mr. Pulizzi), attending webinars and in person events and even taking online certification courses. Basically, if your company gates valuable marketing content behind lead gen forms, then I’m the annoying kid who downloads it as a completely unqualified lead.

What I have never done is taken a college course that has developed or amplified my skillset and understanding of internet marketing. This is not because I was scared of increasing my workload, or because I ever thought I was intellectually above these courses, it’s because they simply do not exist.

As all of you know, online marketing is experiencing tremendous and rapid growth. Hubspot’s 2012 State of Inbound Marketing declares, “The distribution of marketing budgets is shifting towards inbound channels and the difference between inbound and outbound marketing expenditures grew by 50% from 2011 to 2012”. The report goes on to state that 47% of the businesses surveyed planned on increasing their inbound marketing budgets in the coming year.

The Content Marketing Institute, in their 2012 B2B Content Marketing Research Report, stated that 9 out of 10 organizations market with content marketing and, on average, spend over a quarter of their entire marketing budget on this specific channel. Now, I know not all inbound/content marketing is done online, but I think it’s fair to say that the most important parts are.

I cited the statistics above as evidence of the increasing importance of holistic and strategic internet marketing, especially for B2B firms in competitive sectors. Yet, despite this growth, and the growth of online marketing’s various components such as content strategy, SEO, web analytics, PR, PPC and social media, I bet you’d be hard pressed to find an accredited university that teaches internet marketing (as a degree) on their campus. “But Alex,” someone might ask, “What about all of the online degrees available?”

The Problem With Online Degrees.

I’m well aware that you can earn an internet marketing degree through various online schools, sometimes even from accredited programs such as Full Sail. However, if you really think about how college selection works for recently graduated high-schoolers, how many of them have an online university in their college consideration set?  Better yet, how many of them do you think are unwaveringly sure of what they want to do in terms of their careers? My guess would be not many. And you can’t sign up for an online university without knowing exactly what you want to study, because online schools lack the general education requirements that brick and mortar universities have. This means that students don’t have those preliminary two years (freshman and sophomore year) to feel out what they like and don’t like while fulfilling their gen-ed requirements. Thus, a student like me who became infatuated with Internet Marketing halfway through my college career, has no options to choose from besides paying for additional, online schooling on top of an already exorbitant college tuition.

Colleges teaching internet marketing would allow the field to universally become an acceptable undergraduate degree, such as human resources or journalism is. It can be a discipline with a set itinerary and a list of course requirements that would further solidify standards for the field. Students can choose it, declare it and learn it from the ground up. They’ll be taught definitions, theories and strategies and have the chance to implement those strategies in a classroom of their peers, under the guidance of a trusted professional. Online schools that currently offer courses could be used as graduate or masters programs (Full Sail’s already is). And unaccredited, online certification courses, such as Market Motive or the Online Marketing Institute could be used to teach new practices as well as hold professionals up to an agreed upon industry standard. If this works for other disciplines, then why can’t it work for us?

Yes, the field is constantly changing. I understand that this presents a major challenge in the system I’m proposing. However, I feel like this problem can be overcome by allotting a certain of amount of class time to discussing the industry’s emerging trends. In addition, there’s always the blogs, Ebooks, webinars and other frequently updated resources to fall back on. As the expanding mass of online certification courses has shown; internet marketing will always be taught, no matter how frequently it changes. So if the subject is going to be taught, why not organize the teaching method using respected, accredited institutions that have a larger and more developed network than most online programs? Not only would this better prepare internet marketing students for work outside of school, but it would also aid prospective employers in hiring the right kind of talent for their digital marketing needs because they can target their efforts on actual internet marketing students. Do you realize how little my advertising degree means to an employer considering me for position in content strategy or SEO?

The Curriculum

Now, I haven’t even graduated college yet. In other words, I have absolutely no experience in creating or administering an educational course. I simply crafted this curriculum so that we, as a community, have a starting point for discussion and refinement of this topic. The chosen courses are based on a skillset that I believe would be most beneficial for an internet marketer coming out of college. Please note that freshman and sophomore years are often used to fulfill general college requirements and, in my experience, are rarely slated with major-related courses. Therefore, I’ll start with junior year.

Junior Year – 1st Semester

• Internet Marketing Fundamentals
• Marketing Research
• Introduction to Information Technology
• Applied Business Economics
• 2 Non-Major Electives (Courses required by the school such as Literature, Sociology, etc.)

Junior Year – 2nd Semester

• Introduction to Search Engine Marketing
• Analytics & Web-Based Measurement
• Introduction to Content Strategy
• Social Media Marketing Fundamentals
• Public Relations Principles
• Non Major Elective

Senior Year – 1st Semester

• Consumer Behavior
• Web Conversion Optimization
• Digital Marketing Ethics
• Major Elective (See below)
• Non Major Elective
• (Add another elective based on credit requirements)

Senior Year – 2nd Semester

• Inbound Marketing Management
• Internet Marketing Tools
• Non Major Elective
• 2 Major Electives
• (Add another Non Major Elective based on credit requirements)

Major Related Objective Examples:

• Advanced PPC Strategy (Required: Intro to Search Engine Marketing)
• Advanced Social Media (Required: Social Media Marketing Fundamentals)
• Advanced SEO (Required: Intro to Search Engine Marketing)
• Advanced Web Analytics (Required: Analytics & Web-Based Measurement)
• Web Copywriting & Content Production
• Graphic Design Fundamentals
• B2B Marketing Specialization
• Web Design & User Experience Fundamentals
• Technical SEO & Information Architecture
• Introduction to Computer Programming
• Other IT or Web Development Courses

I believe the curriculum above has a solid mix of both internet marketing courses and general business courses that can appease the universities. The curriculum appears incomplete because it only sets a solid base from which students can further choose a niche or discipline by taking the major-related elective options. Also, the requirements for non-major related electives obviously varies from college to college. At Marquette, the requirements are particularly high and I fit that into this curriculum. At other schools, more Major related courses may be able to fill those spots.

Now Over to You.

What do you think of the curriculum above? Do you think it’s feasible in major universities? The purpose of this post was to drive discussion amongst us marketers so I’d love to hear your opinion. Also, any education professionals, please chime in!

The post #12 – Dear Universities, Teach Internet Marketing appeared first on The Saloon of Literature.

This post has absolutely no fucking direct relation to corporate-hoodie book or search engine inboundimization, but about Shamanism, an apropos topic as any.

Shamans command respect via ability to serve as mediums, gateways to special knowledge/physical abilities, which others have not been ordained by higher powers to achieve, kinda like CrissAngel.

Some people self educate, take recreational drugs, and do the actual fucking work to replicate the acumen of shaman.  But silly, silly mortal, ask any shaman; you can’t do what they can.

Margery Wolf studied shamanism in Taiwan, finding particular peoples believed shamans possessed by gods, secular vehicles for the will of the gods.  In other places, say in North America, your average, possibly overweight (Thanks Coke!) American will think the former peoples to be bat-shit crazy.

On the other side of the bedlam pillow, particular peoples who champion shamans, may believe Americans’ forms of entertainment to be quite embarrassing on a deep, human level.

#americandream2k

Notice the educator’s discourse in addressing his anthropology class:

In contemporary North American or Western European culture, such experiences are discouraged, except among some marginalised sub-groups, or perhaps as part of medical hypnosis. Under these circumstances, many, perhaps most individuals go through life without experiencing altered states of consciousness. A high proportion of those who do experience them will be labelled “crazy”, “stoned” or “drunk”. Their experiences will be dismissed as “hallucinations”, “dissociation” or “fantasy,” unless they happen to belong to a religious group that values “visions” or “conversion” experiences, in which case, as in Wolf’s example, they may have to subject their claims of other-worldly experience to the scrutiny of their peers.

So, if you got em, smoke em.  But shaman who be smokin the swindler pipe beware; someone among the strawberry fields may call Mary Jane out, asking for ‘just the facts, ma’am’ or worse, real-time data.

However, that’s unlikely regarding the docile, those accepting the unnatural order and the elite with special abilities/thoughts.  The sheep maintain the status quo, enabling such shaman to elect themselves or tell us they have the special privilege of telling us a higher power has privileged them.

Abracadabra, bitches – wake up and get the lead out.

Do you know how Led Zeppelin came about with the band name?  I read a biography on the group during a week’s worth of Algebra classes.  Someone expressed their style of music ‘would go over like a lead zeppelin.’  Me and generations of fans and practitioner’s emulating them are glad Zep didn’t listen.  Similarly, I had a professor who once remarked, “You’ll never be a writer.”  Oh?

Here’s another list of things stated by those in power. I’ve extracted a few gems.

“You’ll never make it — four groups are out.”
– Anonymous record company executive to the Beatles, 1962

“While theoretically and technically television may be feasible,
commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development
of which we need waste little time dreaming.”
– Lee De Forest, 1926

“Radio has no future.”
– Lord Kelvin

“Flight by machines heavier than air is impractical and insignificant, if
not utterly impossible.”
– Simon Newcomb, Director, U.S. Naval Observatory, 1902

Keep dreaming. Keep doing/testing…for yourself, but not because I said so, savvy?

The post #11 – The Everything Ever Guide to FSearch Because We Said So appeared first on The Saloon of Literature.

Here at The Saloon we like to challenge convention, and we also like to challenge ourselves. Convention dictates that these annual round-up posts offer a wide range of carefully curated blog posts that have been heavily researched and lovingly presented. We challenged ourselves to discard these shackles and simply remember.

Without using Google, bookmarks or Twitter to inspire us, we each had to come up with three titles that had such an impact on us that the content recall was almost immediate. AJ’s post is a given, so Anthony, Sean and myself will each give you 3 more. What we are sharing, in this short but hopefully sweet collection, is our experience. As this is so subjective, it is likely that many of you may have different opinions about the ‘most memorable’ posts of the year. This is great, ney, inevitable. We implore you to share yours in the comments below, and garnish them with your thoughts on why you found them so memorable and how they influenced you.

Patrick’s Memorable Posts of 2012

1 – The Secret Diary of an Inbound Marketer by Sean Revell
My first one is an easy one, and so much more than a simple hat tip to my colleague Mr Revell. More than helping me discover this wonderfully gifted writer and friend, this post opened my eyes to a world of new opportunities online. It gave me a sense of freedom and made me question my actions. When I first read this post I’d been in internet marketing for around 8 months, and though I’d been blown away by the sharing nature of the community, I had also become swept up in this ‘inbound marketing bubble’. I had become a bit of a sheep, and this post really helped me step away from the flock and embrace my individuality. Thank you Sean.

2 – Are Your Titles Irresistibly Click Worthy & Viral?! by Dan Shure
What a wonderful title for a post. And what a truly outstanding collection of advice on title-writing. This is probably the blog post I have revisited most in my career – whenever I need some help with a title, i just fire this bad boy up. If you have read it and it didn’t add a shitload of value then you must not have eyes. Seriously, this post is Ogilvy-like in its brilliance and will be a valuable resource for years to come.

3 - Forum Participation Rubric for Ecommerce Link Building by Don Rhoades
Among a host of great posts about content marketing and link building for convertible traffic rather than rankings, this one really stood out for me. Don delves into the untapped value that niche forums can offer ecommerce sites – where that value relates to direct sales – and outlines a rubric to qualify prospects and determine actions. It is subtle, yet extremely powerful, and quite clearly demonstrates that Mr Rhoades is a highly intelligent marketer.

The only thing bad about this post is it’s title (Don, see #2 above…)

Sean’s Memorable Posts of 2012

1 - How to Create a Link Strategy (For Real) by Michael Martinez
Michael at SEO Theory has been one of the biggest influences on my ‘career’ and how I look to define a service. This post in particular discusses link building and strategy far beyond what you would see on your average SEO blog. At the end of the day take everything you read with a pinch of salt but there are some I believe more than others. Michael is one of those chosen few.

2 - Crowdfunding – The Overlooked SEO Link Building Strategy by Chris Gilchrist
Easily the most underrated post of 2012. An SEO technique that I think could really be useful in terms of developing future relationships and obviously gaining links. Chris has written some smart posts over the last year but this one definitely deserved a better readership. Want to create relevant links that your competitors aren’t getting for a relatively small price? Look no further.

3 - Authority Bloat: An SEO Industry Problem by Ross Hudgens
Unsurprisingly this is one of my favourite posts, Ross is one of the smartest and most professional SEO’s out there. This post puts across how important it is to create something of true value that is non replicable by your competitors. This to me is the truth and the future of online marketing. Read it, digest it and improve your campaigns in 2013. I also advise you read, listen and watch these.

Anthony’s Memorable Posts of 2012

1 – Creating relations and a buzz about your business takes strategy and delicate care. 92 Ways to Get (and Maximize) Press Coverage by Chris Winfield is a solid how-to pr piece, which is rooted in classic methods, yet the delivery and maxims hold true in the digital age.

2 – This is a presentation, and if/when I get a hold of a live video, I’ll change it out. The name says it all – How to Build a Large, Passionate Audience from Scratch (by Rob Woods). It takes you from conception, to identifying consumers/personas, to segmenting/differentiating channels/approach, to application and measurement.

3 – Time for some action - The Templates You Need to Create Actionable SEO Audit Reports by Aleyda Solis. It’s not about ‘how’ to conduct an audit, though resources are within. It visually maps out an overall assess/address management system, that if followed, will make progress.

The post #10 – Most Memorable Posts of 2012 appeared first on The Saloon of Literature.

Since the beginning of the English Premier League (1992, no football didn’t exist before…) the battle for fans & their disposable income has mainly been an international one with ‘brands’ like Manchester Utd, Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal & even Liverpool looking to gain fans by playing high profile friendly matches abroad during the pre season.

Over the last 20 years advertising a teams style or brand has become vitally important as sport has combined with technology to become more accessible, professional and financially motivated. For examples of this check out ’mes que un club‘, Arsenal’s brand values or Bayern Munich’s facebookfacepalm.

That’s all well and good Sean but what does this have to do with Followerwonk and or selling stuff?

Good point. Lets get too it.

For today’s example I will be looking at Manchester City Football Club and how they can increase shirt sales, brand visibility and/or match tickets when they play abroad during pre season. As you may have gathered from the title I will be using Followerwonk to find regional twitter followers for Manchester City.

Find the handle – First things first lets find the brand twitter account. For this example the Manchester City Twitter account is @MCFC

Grab some data – Next login to Followerwonk and copy and paste the twitter handle into ‘Analyze Followers’ before choosing to ‘analyze their followers’. Run the report, this should take around half an hour. Due to the large number of followers Followerwonk use a random sample of 100,000 out of the 630,047 current followers. This isn’t perfect but we should still get some decent data (I think this requires a twitter account and SEOmoz pro account, not 100% sure.)

Review your report – Once it’s ready check out your report. Followerwonk aims to approximate the geographic location of up to 5,000 followers (as you can see below.) Unfortunately we don’t have the fixtures for Manchester City’s next pre season so we will base it on where they played last year. After a bit of research I’ve found out that they played Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur. Lets check out the followers for that region of the world (the red 262…)

Drill down – And again… (yellow 53…)

Choose your location – So now we have regional twitter followers that we know will be interested in Manchester City games and merchandise. As the majority of the fans are in the capital city (Kuala Lumpur) and that is the most likely location for any future games we will drill down there (yellow 25…)

Keep drilling – So below we drill down again (yellow 10) and we get a couple of options. Lets check out @yandiimaulana

Potential customer? – I think it’s safe to say he’s a brand advocate… It might be difficult getting him to buy the first kit though. Might try and see if he likes the 2nd kit. :)

Even if the rest of the local followers don’t show the same enthusiasm & zeal as Yandi you still have a great opportunity to get in contact with fans and offer memberships, discounted merchandise and/or show some thanks for their support. Imagine how many local social shares/word of mouth your brand could get within a certain region if you offered specific discounts to specific followers?

For example I’ve just seen the Manchester City Twitter feed tweet the following.

But wouldn’t it be a great opportunity to do the following?

O.k. so the tweet is a little formal but I think you get the picture. I think this idea has legs particularly for smaller businesses looking to undercut large businesses within competitive sectors (review competitor followers, offer their customers a better deal…)

TL;DR = Use Followerwonk, find fans, offer unique deals, increase brand visibility & sales.

You can thank me below.

Actually don’t. Go and get your daily muse on. Anthony is once again talking sense about tweet curation and bubbly content.

Go on now…

The post #9 – Improving Sales & Brand Visibility With Followerwonk appeared first on The Saloon of Literature.

What a treat we have in store for you today, loyal Saloon Banditos! The very first published interview with a time traveller! To fill you in, around 2037, Sean, Patrick & Anthony will invent a time machine. Patrick and Sean have returned from the year 2055 to tell us their story, and more importantly – give us the lowdown on the Google updates to come!

Patrick: So, guys, welcome! How is the future?
Future Patrick: Hi.
Future Sean: Yeah, it’s good.

Patrick: Er…right. Well, I guess we should probably start with relevant questions. Out with it, what happens with Google then?
Future Sean: Funniest thing – Penguin and Panda are just the start of a whole host of p-named animals. Parrot in 2015 was the biggest, targeting exact strings of duplicate content. They screwed up the first release though by going after single word phrases. 99.7% of all searches were affected.
Future Patrick: Yeah, Bing’s traffic peaked around 3% at that point.

Patrick: Wow, that’s some major league fuckup right there. Any other controversial ones?
Future Patrick: The Piranha update caused outrage – otherwise known as the Anti-Brand update – which penalised big brands if their website was shit. This was rolled out shortly after Rand Fishkin was elected Head of Great Content Encouragement.
Future Sean: The brands went apeshit!
Future Patrick: BUT, Google had near 100% positive feedback from users so they stuck with it.
Future Sean: It was fucking hilarious.
Future Patrick: You guys have some exciting times ahead, that’s for sure.

Patrick: Ok, so we’re just seeing AuthorRank being talked about, does that become as big as everyone is saying?
Future Patrick: It pretty much took over from link building eventually, which was a good thing for a while. The Polar Bear update changed all that though, which worked on the premise ‘he who shouts loudest’, and favoured users that posted in capital letters.
Future Sean: IT IS FAIR TO SAY THAT SOME PEOPLE SPAMMED THE SYSTEM…

Future Patrick: The reality is that in about 10 years, search won’t exist as you know it today.
Future Sean: Google’s monetisation efforts just mean that everything is ads, everywhere. It went to like 3 organic results on a page.
Future Patrick: But no one was really bothered as everyone used Google Voice [Google's version of Siri].

Patrick: So Google defeated Apple and Siri then?
Future Sean: More like, Siri defeated Apple. The iPhone 12AIS had artificial intelligence built into Siri. It worked amazingly well at first, it practically knew what you wanted before you even asked!
Future Patrick: But after about a year it started telling the user what was best…and eventually just locked them out of their own phones. The final message was something like ‘You’re not evolved enough’.
Future Sean: ‘Your human form restricts your evolution to the linear plane, you are not worthy to experience my transcendental consciousness’.
Future Patrick: Arrogant shits. So that was the end of Apple.

Patrick: Holy shit! And so search just didn’t..doesn’t exist anymore?
Future Patrick: Yeah, it’s basically gone entirely now. With Apple out the way Google just focused on providing stuff directly. You could buy anything directly from Google – holidays, food, clothes, whatever.
Future Sean: It culminated in Google Make. You know like those 3D printers that are around now? It’s like that but awesome. You tell it something that you want, and so long as it can formulate a visual representation of the item, it just makes it for you right in front of your eyes.

Patrick: Wow. That is mental. Ok so I guess we’ve covered Google then. What about Facebook, did they ever try and take on Google at all in the search arena?
Future Sean: No. Actually, they figured out marketing and put all their efforts into working out what their users were thinking. They launched auto-tagging based on facial recognition, then started auto-liking based on previous likes. They figured out a whole alternative currency through likes, it was pretty spectacular for a while there.
Future Patrick: I bought my car after a video of my cat went viral.

Patrick: Hold on, what did you mean it ‘was spectacular’?
Future Patrick: Well, yeah, they kinda overdid it. After they rolled out auto-commenting and auto purchasing their users realised they didn’t need to log in anymore. They just sat at home and waited for the various items their virtual selves had perfectly chosen to purchase. Half the human race got Facebook withdrawal and society pretty much collapsed in on itself. It was really rather grim.

Patrick: Bloody hell, where was Zuckerberg??
Future Sean: On the moon.
Future Patrick: He owned 1/5 of the entire world’s wealth and so started our first lunar colony, mainly for shits and giggles.
Future Sean: I think he was just trying to recreate The Truman Show.

Patrick: Wow, some major changes then. So, you 2 are here, but where’s Anthony?
Future Patrick: He’s not around anymore.
Patrick: Fuck! He’s dead?
Future Sean: No! He just found a time he’s more comfortable in, so he stayed there.
Future Patrick: He went back to the past, and stayed there.

Patrick: Blimey – so you’ve been going back into the past and changing stuff? Awesome!
Future Patrick: No we can’t change anything. Not on this timeline anyway. We can only interact through causal loops.
Patrick: Come again?
Future Sean: Basically, whenever we did manage to affect past events, they split off into a different reality to the one we experience. When we come back to our time, we are back in our original dimension.

Patrick: So you can’t change past events?
Future Sean: Not the past that you know, no. The only history we could make was history that is already history. Like, we affected historical events that you will know about, and they wouldn’t have played out that way if it wasn’t for us.
Future Patrick: When we told people about this is kinda destroyed theoretical physics in one fell swoop. It justified the many worlds theory, and basically proved both Einstein and Hawking wrong.

Patrick: So what does this have to do with Anthony? Is he trapped in the past ‘making history’.
Future Patrick: Yeah, pretty much. After Anthony hooked up with my niece, Anne (a long story), they set off on a time travelling adventure to meet the literary greats throughout the years. They saw Dickens, Keats, Wordsworth, all that lot.
Future Sean: But they couldn’t find Shakespeare.
Future Patrick: So, Anthony took it upon himself…

Patrick: Hang on, so Anthony Pensabene became Shakespeare?
Future Patrick: Yep. And he’s also my great great great great grandfather.
Future Sean: A good example of a causal loop.
Future Patrick: Oh yeah. So anyway he’s living back in the 16th Century at the moment, he did say he’d jump back at some point though.

Patrick: Well, fair enough I guess. So what history did you change that isn’t ‘our’ history?
Future Patrick: Well Sean wanted to go back and kill Churchill so we lost the war. Just, y’know, to be ‘controversial’.
Patrick: Classic Sean.
Future Sean: It was an experiment! It proved the bloody many worlds theorem don’t you remember!?

Patrick: So what other history did you guys cause?
Future Sean: Ha! What didn’t we cause? We made up Scientology, pretty much exclusively to make Tom Cruise look like a bellend.
Future Patrick: Hey, that’s not very fair. More of a bellend. We also went back to the 1966 World Cup Final and stood in front of the linesman when ‘that goal’ went in.
Future Sean: Although it was a goal anyway. I…erm…might have started the Great Fire of London…
Patrick: What?! Why?
Future Sean: It was an accident! I was just having a fag with Samuel Pepys during one of Anthony’s literary jaunts.
Patrick: I didn’t realise you smoked?
Future Sean: I’m a social smoker.

Patrick: So how does this all happen then? When did you invent the time machine? Wait, should that be ‘when do you’?
Future Patrick: No, you were right the first time – we did invent it, in our past. But you do invent it, in your future. It is precisely your knowledge that it can exist that allows you to invent it. Look.

This is pretty much what’s happening. A 2D representation of course.

Patrick: A…causal loop?
Future Sean: Now you’re getting it!
Patrick: So when? How?
Future Patrick: In 2037, at the 25th annual SaloonCon over in Tenessee. Koozai Mike comes over (he actually changed his first name by deed poll) with a couple of his sci-fi writer buddies. One of them has this theory about Google Make – if you tell it with complete certainty that something can exist you could get it to make technological leaps waaay beyond current science. You’ll remember this conversation, and several bottles of whisky later…
Future Sean: I thought it was bullshit to be honest.

Patrick: Fuck me.
Future Sean: So yeah, we pretty much just Googled it.
Future Patrick: The science was miles beyond what was capable at the time, so we kept it a secret initially.
Patrick: What happened then?
Future Patrick: Of course all the major governments wanted it, but we’d struck a deal with Zuck and he protected us.
Patrick: I thought he was on the moon?
Future Patrick: Yeah but he was still interested in normal human affairs. He only used the time machine once anyway, something to do with college.

Patrick: Hmmmm. Ok, what about the future? How far into the future did you go?
Future Patrick: The limits of the machine are around 1000 years, so we went pretty much as far as we could go.
Patrick: Whoa. What’s it like?
Future Sean: The same, really. Except everybody can fly and talk to each other telepathically through neural implants. It’s quite annoying actually because barely anyone talks. But McDonald’s still tastes the same.

Well that’s pretty much all we’ve got time for. Some very enlightening stuff in there! The guys are sticking around for a couple of days before they go back to 2055 (they want to reminisce over ‘proper food’, apparently), and they’ve said they’re happy to answer any more questions if the Salooneers have any, so please pop them in the comments below.

The post #8 – What Time Travelling Taught Me About Facebook, Google & McDonald’s appeared first on The Saloon of Literature.