Archive for March, 2010

Viral marketing news and other viral happenings in Denver Metro, Boulder and beyond.

Talking About the Weather – I have now lived in Colorado long enough that I am no longer surprised by the massive spring storms that inevitably pummel the Front Range. But I have to say that I still find the regular irregularity of the weather fascinating. In the past seven days we have seen beautiful 60-something degree weather and one of the biggest storms of the season. There is an odd YouTube subculture that captures such dramatic weather swings in the form of time-lapse video. Two such videos drew some attention this past week. The more popular of the two has better quality video, better music and nice placement of wind chimes in the foreground, but I find it kind of long. The  second is much lower quality video, but covers almost the same time span in a fifth of the time, and provides a nice view of the clouds in the sky. Watching the two, I would have to say that clouds are an essential ingredient of time lapse video. Here is the second:

What’s Not Happy About a Happy Meal? – Apparently, one thing that doesn’t look so interesting over time is a McDonalds Happy Meal. While some have agued that McDonalds’ food leads to anything but immortality, the food itself has remarkable staying power. That was the subject of a project and blog post undertaken by Colorado author Joann Bruso, who observed a Happy Meal over the course of a year and celebrated it’s first birthday several weeks ago. She wrote a blog post memorializing the anniversary, which has received quite a bit of coverage. The success of her project highlights the fact that a story doesn’t need a lot of pomp and circumstance to go viral if it is told sincerely and encapsulates a clear message.

Sixty Seconds, Forty Days – Several weeks back, I wrote about Ubuntu now’s Wall of Fame. That was a teeny bit interesting, but in retrospect they should have hired Denver agency Sukle Advertising and Design. The firm is responsible for creating a similar, but more compelling campaign to raise awareness and money for the cause of clean water for children around the world. The campaign is called the sixtyfortyproject, and allows a donor to post a message to one of two very public electronic billboards in downtown Denver in exchange for a donation of a dollar.  The name refers to the fact that a dollar buys sixty seconds of billboard time and  forty days of clean water for a child. Good cause and idea, but I’m surprised that there is not more of a web element to the project – it would garner much more attention (and money) if video of the billboards was displayed live on the web and if contributor’s messages were pushed out via Twitter and other channels.

Save the Tails! - While I can relate to the causes Bruso and Sukle’s are promoting, others mystify me. This Thursday there was a “save the animals” rally in Denver. But the animals in question are not the living and breathing kind, they are the animals painted on the tails of Frontier airplanes. Protesters were concerned that Frontier’s recent acquisition by Republic Airways may spell the end of the brand and it’s two-dimensional mascots. There is also a KEEP THE FRONTIER BRAND AND ANIMALS group on Facebook, with over 5,000 members. While I do see the event and group as a testament to branding, they also strike me as a colossal waste of energy and time.

In Longmont, Colorado Bar T’at – This one isn’t viral, but I can’t resist. The Denver Post did a story on Nature’s Casket, a business in Longmont that produces “green” coffins made out of beetle-killed Colorado pine. The coffins are part of a movement towards earth-friendly embalming and burial methods. Reading the article, I was immediately reminded of the song ‘On Ilkley Moor Bar T’at’. The song is the unofficial anthem of Yorkshire, England, and the lyrics are written in the old Yorkshire dialect. Here is a translation of the last few lines:

Then we will have to bury you
Then the worms will come and eat you up
Then the ducks will come and eat up the worms
Then we will go and eat up the ducks
Then we will have eaten you
That’s where we get our own back

I’m not sure if viral media and casket manufacturing go together, but a pine-beetle version of this song just has to be made. I will post what I come up with next week. Here is an interpretation of the original as sung by some of the lovely lads and lasses of Yorkshire:

Ring Girl Redux - Last month I mentioned how Colorado teen Conner Cordova had launched an all-out media campaign in order to land a senior prom date. The object of his obsession affection was UFC ring girl Arianny Celeste, who ultimately relented accepted. Well, I’m happy to report that the date did actually happen last Saturday night. The boy told Bill Husted of the Post that he got her number and “ended up getting a kiss, which was awesome.”

With Cordova’s penchant and savvy for media attention, he most certainly does have her number.

This is a weekly update, please comment if there are topics or items I have missed.

Several days ago, I found myself struggling to get this site to handle secondary navigation – meaning a layer of navigation below the top level. Specifically, I was trying to add pages below the Services page, but more on that in a second. This site is built on WordPress, which is both a hosted blogging solution at wordpress.com and a blog-centric content management system (CMS) that can be installed on any server (wordpress.org). I am using the latter. In WordPress, you can apply themes which alter the look and feel of the site. There are thousands of free themes available, as well as themes you can buy. The theme I was using for the site was nice to look at, but not very easy to extend beyond a basic blog.

I spent quite a bit of time trying to make the old theme work, and tried a bunch of new themes. I was reaching the point of total exasperation when my friend Kris suggested that I check out Artisteer. Artisteer is a software tool for creating and customizing WordPress, Joomla and other CMS platform themes. I installed it yesterday, and within hours had created a new theme, which is now being used on this site. Artisteer works a lot like a word processing program, allowing you to select elements of a page and select between various options regarding layout, colors, fonts, etc. What it does under the hood is to generate the cascading style sheet (CSS) files and images necessary to implement a theme on your site.

I described last week how I think most local/small businesses should stick with a themed, template driven CMS like Joomla or WordPress, rather than building a custom web site. Artisteer makes that process a lot easier if you don’t want to use one of the free, pre-built themes already available. It is also a lot of fun to use, because the WYSIWIG interface of Artisteer makes changes appear right before your eyes, and the engineers who created it have a pretty good idea of what works and doesn’t work on a web site. Even if you are a master of CSS manipulation (I am not), Artisteer makes the process of creating and editing styles blazing fast.

And why was I adding a Services page? That is because I am getting ready to launch a new business venture with Kris, the friend mentioned above. We have been working together on the new theme, as well as the copy for the site. Have a look at the services and about pages to get a better idea of what we will be doing, and check back soon for a more official announcement of our business launch.

This is a screen shot from Artisteer, taken when we were pretty close to done with the new design:

To demonstrate the flexibility of Artisteer, I also created the WordPress theme below. In fact, this theme only scratches the surface of what Artisteer can do. It took fifteen minutes or so to change colors, fonts, background images, etc. Artisteer also allows you to change the style and location of navigation, make 3D buttons, and a host of other options. I created this theme because I love monkeys, but Kris prefers the theme above. In the spirit of partnership, I’m going to concede this one.

This post may sound like a big advertisement for Artisteer, but really I just wanted to tell people about a very useful tool I found. I don’t have any connection to Artisteer. If your needs are similar to mine, I recommend giving it  a try. You can do so for free, and if you like it the license costs $50 for the Home and Academic Edition or $130 for the Standard Edition.

Viral marketing news and other viral happenings in Denver Metro, Boulder and beyond.

This Shelf for Rent - The Boulder Bookstore is one of my favorite places to visit after a nice meal on Pearl Street. It is also the subject of a lot of recent interest for how it is enabling authors promote their books. Writers who are having a difficult time getting shelf space in the local Barnes & Noble can pay Boulder Bookstore to carry their books on consignment. This program is strengthening ties to the local literary community, and many of the participating authors also end up promoting the store. I think this is an interesting model for local retailers of all sorts. Is there something you can be doing to cultivate a network of ambassadors for your business?

This Dome for Rent – In a trip to Tokyo a few years ago, I was struck by how advertising covered almost every available surface in the subway system. Well, I think this tops anything I saw there. The State of Colorado is looking to sell advertising space on the dome of the capitol building. The purpose of the plan is to raise money for restoration of the dome, and lawmakers seem to be hanging on to the idea that it will be executed in a “tasteful” way. I’d love to see what PETA would do if they got ahold of a giant dome, but I’m guessing that our dome will have to settle for something a little less controversial.

Everything Tastes Better with Bacon – Denver web design firm Data Incorporated created an interactive game called Find the Bacon to showcase Freebase, the “definitive open database of people, places and things.” The game is based on the six degrees of Kevin Bacon concept, and wins points for an engaging UI. What I find most interesting is that Find the Bacon is joining an already crowded field. The Oracle of Bacon has iPhone app for Bacon enthusiasts, and there’s even a thekevinbacongame.com. There may be such a thing as too much bacon. (I’m sure the PETA folks would agree.)

Yarnbombing – I came across this via the Denver Egotist this week, though it’s not a new story. A group of women called the Ladies Fancywork Society have been terrorizing the city with guerilla knitting. In the dark hours of the night they practice their craft by covering bike racks, light poles, sculptures and other urban miscellany with delightful crochet. If there was such a thing as a Nobel Prize for knitting, these women would deserve it for doing their best to cover up the heinous sculpture outside the Performing Arts complex. Knit on ladies, I love what you do!

Topless Gardening – I am starting to work on a taxonomy of viral media, which I will publish soon. In the taxonomy, I am recording the various principles that contribute to an article, video or other media going viral. One of the most interesting principles I’ve found is what I am calling “piggybacking”. This is where a story gains some of its interest by piggybacking on to another story. This week provided a perfect example of this, when a Boulder resident decided to do some topless gardening. The “news” got picked up by a number of sites, in spite of the fact that it is profoundly uninteresting. What I think happened is that this story piggybacked on all the recent coverage of Boulder’s increasingly strict nudity laws (which I mentioned a few weeks back).

I am still pondering on the viral taxonomy of the skunk that got it’s head stuck in a peanut butter jar. I’m thinking that may deserve a classification all to itself.

This is a weekly update, please comment if there are topics or items I have missed.

Building a Restaurant as an Analogy for Constructing a Search-Engine-Friendly Web Site

The topic of how to plan for search engine optimization (SEO) often comes up when I am talking to small businesses and has been the topic of several discussions in just this last week. SEO is a very complex subject, but I like to frame the conversation with a high-level paradigm for how to think about and plan for ongoing success. With that in mind, here is an analogy:

Imagine you are opening a restaurant in an ordinary town on an ordinary budget, but you want your business to be an extraordinary success. Let’s look at three steps to achieving that success:

• Building the Restaurant
• Creating the Ambiance and the Menu
• Promoting the Restaurant

Building the Restaurant

Since we are making the analogy to building a web site, we will assume that you are building your restaurant from scratch. Will you hire an avant-garde architect who specializes in hay-bale construction, or stick with standard building materials and a straightforward design? Unless you are not concerned about budget, you will probably choose the latter. Building a web site is similar. At this point, there are a number of established content management systems (CMS’s) that provide all of the tools necessary to build a solid, feature-rich and search-engine-friendly site. I have been involved in web site projects recently that built upon WordPress, Joomla and Magento – all well-documented platforms with templates readily available that get the search engine basics right. Be very wary of a web developer who wants to build a site without leveraging one of these or a similar standardized tool set. In my experience, a web developer with self-described expertise in SEO will almost always do a worse job than what you would get with an unmodified WordPress template-based site. That is not to say that you can’t do well with a custom-designed site, but this advice is written for someone starting out and on a budget.

And as with the restaurant, getting the construction right will have little to do with your ultimate success. If you don’t follow standard design practices, or even worse if you don’t follow building codes, you are starting off on the wrong foot. But getting those things right just puts you on level ground with most of the other businesses in town. Using a platform or technology that follows search engine best practices will position you for success, but the content you create is what is going to attract visitors.

Creating the Ambiance and the Menu

How your restaurant is laid out and decorated will start to differentiate you from the competition. And even more important is what’s on the menu. Creating an ambiance that is pleasant and inviting will make visitors feel comfortable and encourage them to come back. And an interesting, original and well-executed menu is above all else what gets people interested in the first place, and it is what is going to get word of your restaurant to spread. The analogy here is to user experience and content.

Using one of the standard platforms I described above is the first step towards providing good user experience, but choosing where content will go and how users will navigate your content is a critical part of your success. When laying out your site, think about how people search for and find what they are looking for. For example, labeling a section “grub” rather than “menu” may sound cool, but by doing so you are asking people to think. People don’t want to think when they navigate, so make things as simple and obvious as you can. This reflects how search engines will evaluate the site as well, since few people search for “grub”, but many search for “menu”. Words on your web site are like ingredients to a restaurant. Get too weird and you will have a very small audience.

Your content is like what comes out of the kitchen. Make it interesting. Make it original. Make it so that visitors will want to tell their friends about it. Most importantly, don’t rely on an SEO consultant to develop your content for you. You know your business and you are passionate about what you do. It’s good to get the advice of someone who understands how search engines work, but get in the habit of creating and updating your own content. That isn’t to say you can’t hire a chef – but that person should be part of your business and share in your vision.

Promoting the Restaurant

Last but not least is getting out there and making sure that people know you exist. How many restaurants with great food have failed because people didn’t know to try them out? SEO is very much the same way. THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR in search engine ranking is the number of quality links you have pointing to your site. And keep in mind that the context and authority of the source of the link matter a great deal. Just as a restaurant review written by a random blogger matters less than one written by the local paper, you want to get links from authoritative sites in your subject matter domain or geographic area. If you sell running shoes, get out there on the top running-focused sites. If you sell accounting services, make sure the most popular local business-resource sites link to you.  Good content is key to this process. If you have interesting, original content, people will want to link to it. If you have thin or boilerplate content, you are going to struggle to get every link.

I have simplified things quite a bit, but I believe that small business SEO is not all that complex. Some people like to make it complicated because it serves their personal interests. Search engines put a colossal amount of effort into determining who genuinely has the best content to match a user’s query, and for the most part do their job well. But I won’t deny that there is benefit to understanding the minutiae. There are a number of great sites dedicated to the details and latest developments in search engine optimization, including several of those highlighted in my blog roll to the right. I recommend that you check those out if that’s where your interest lies.

To recap, here is how you can position yourself for ongoing success:

• Start with a standardized, well documented platform (Building the Restaurant)
• Lay out your site so that it is easy to understand and navigate and fill it with original, interesting content (Creating the Ambiance and the Menu)
• Get authoritative, local and topical sites to link to you (Promoting the Restaurant)

Viral marketing news and other viral happenings in the Denver Metro and Boulder area.

Un-Affiliated in Colorado – People all over were talking about Amazon’s move to cut off their affiliates in the State of Colorado, in protest against state law HB10-1183. The law obliges online retailers to collect Colorado sales tax for goods sold in the state, or make consumers aware that they owe the tax. Within the state, opinions were divided and heated. I myself have gotten in to a few arguments on the subject. Carol Hedges, of the Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute, wrote a piece on Huffington Post describing the debate. What is odd about Amazon’s move is that it is directed against affiliates, who are unaffected by the law. Clearly the intent is to get people fired up, without any significant risk to Amazon revenue. Since many bloggers and internet cognoscenti are also Amazon affiliates, cutting them off has proven to be a very effective tactic.

It’s In Your Hands – There is one topic everyone can agree on: periOperative Registered Nurses should know how to wash their hands. This was the message behind a video contest put on by the Denver-based Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN), with the winner to be announced at this week’s AORN Congress in Denver. Sadly, I could not find any Colorado entrants in the contest, but in any case it would have been embarrassing to see them lose to this remarkable entry from Billings, Montana:

The contest is quirky and goofy, but a great way to spread a message on a budget. The rest of the entrants can be found here.

Friended a Ghost Lately? – I’m not sure how I ended up there, but I came across this on the Nachos of Doom blog. Apparently, the Stanley Hotel is pulling out the social-media stops with regards to promoting their paranormal history. Their Facebook Page is abuzz with would-be ghost hunters, and hotel staff actively engage in the discussions. Here’s a little sample from their Facebook Wall:

This is a clever way to capitalize on a colorful past, and create awareness about a beautiful hotel in a beautiful setting.

Snow at First Sight – Unfortunately, I think this one falls short. With the best of intentions, the Colorado Board of Tourism staged a contest called Snow at First Sight. The winners are finishing up their prize this month, which was an all-expenses-paid trip to Colorado for three full months of skiing, snowmobiling and carousing around the state. To participate, contest entrants had to submit a video explaining how they had never even seen snow, and why they deserved to win the trip. There is a web site dedicated to the promotion, a Facebook Fan Page. And the winners have been tweeting away. But considering all of the rigmarole, not very many people are paying attention. One reason may be that it’s hard (impossible?) to find said Facebook Page and Twitter feed from the Snow at First Sight web site. Rule one for getting followed is to make yourself easy to follow. But I think the bigger reason is that it just isn’t all that interesting to watch people play in the snow for three months. I will never forget being with a friend from Costa Rica when he saw snow for the first time. It was great to vicariously experience the wonder of snow. But that was entertaining for an hour or so. Most of the media value of this contest expired shortly after it began.

Why I Am Not a Zamboni Driver – Coloradan Kenneth Waesche got his 15 minutes of viral fame this week when he snapped this photo of a Zamboni fallen through the ice, with a “Caution Thin Ice!” sign in the foreground. The photo got Dugg, Farked, Tweeted and everything else. Kudos to Waesche for lining up the perfect shot.

The Librarian’s Revenge – And last but not least, it’s time to scour your shelves and make sure you haven’t forgotten to return any books or movies to the library. A Colorado teenager was arrested because of an overdue DVD he had failed to return to the Littleton Public Library. The Consumerist asks “Is there a difference between not returning a library DVD and stealing one from a video store?” Well, yes there is, because one isn’t stealing. And if my video store puts out a warrant for my arrest for not returning a movie, I’m switching to Netflix.

This is a weekly update, please comment if there are topics or items I have missed.

This is the second in my series of posts describing the steps involved in adding a business to the Top 10 Free Places to List a Business. In this post, I will describe the process of adding a Facebook Fan Page for my friend Kelton’s business, QUICK-BEND design. Note that I say Fan Page, but Facebook mostly says “Page” without the “Fan” – they used to say “Fan Page”, but I guess they found it too limiting. There’s no difference between the two, but I find it confusing to just say Facebook Page, so stick with the old naming.

To add a page, you have to be logged in to a Facebook account to add a page. Then go to the Create a Page page. You can create a page from any account, and unlike the Google Local Business Center, more than one account can have administrative access to a Fan Page.

From the Create a Page page, I selected “Local” and the category “Other Business”. I also selected “Do not make Page publicly visible at this time.” – I figured I’d let Kelton decide when he wants to make it public.

Believe it or not, that’s it. I could have stopped there and make the page live, but of course it’s nice to put up something for people to look at if they visit, so I added photos from the QUICK-BEND design web site. To keep things simple, I created photo folders to match the categories on QUICK-BEND. It may seem unnecessary to duplicate all of the photos, but I don’t think so. People are very familiar with Facebook photo navigation, and frankly I find the WordPress navigation on the QUICK-BEND site a little tedious. Case in point: I’d been to the QUICK-BEND site a number of times, but had no idea how talented and prolific an artist Kelton is:

Tip: if you are uploading a bunch of photos at once, you can select the option “Edit Album” after the photos have been uploaded. This will allow you to add captions to all of the photos at once, which saves a lot of time.

The other important things to do are:

• Upload a profile photo – you can do this by clicking on the place where the profile photo goes.
• Add a web site URL and location information – you can do this by clicking on the “Info” tab, then “Edit”
• Add a description – this is just below the profile photo, click on the pencil icon

The whole process would have taken 15-20 minutes tops, save for the fact that I had to go to Kelton’s web site and save all of the photos to my computer before I could upload them. That and adding captions to the photos took a little longer. The thing I like most about Facebook Fan Pages for businesses is that they are a very unobtrusive way to let people know of recent news and upcoming events. Much better than email in my opinion. And the Facebook environment encourages users to share content and see what their friends are sharing.

Here is the finished page, if you’d like to check it out and become a fan.

And a couple of other posts highlighting cool things businesses are doing on their Fan Pages:
Einstein Bros + Facebook: Good Bagels Make Good Friends
Titus Cycles Tattoo Contest

A couple of weeks ago I posted a list of the Top 10 Free Places To List Your Business. This post is the first in a series describing my experiences adding a business to each of these sites.

A friend of mine recently lost his architecture job due to the recession. He’s decided to take this as an opportunity to start his own business. His name is Kelton Osborn and his business is QUICK-BEND design. He is a brilliant designer, but I’ll let his pictures speak for themselves. This is his website. Since he’s not in any directories, and he is looking to get exposure for his business, he is a perfect test candidate for my project.

Google is on top of my top 10 list, so I started with them. My first step was to follow the link on my top 10 post to the Google Local Business Center. I clicked on the “Add A New Business” link, and filled out address, phone number and description text – piece of cake. On the next screen, I could add photos and a video. I added some photos from the QUICK-BEND site. Google allows you to point to a picture URL, which makes it very easy. You can get the URL of a web photo by right-clicking and selecting “properties”, or control-clicking and selecting “copy image address” on a Mac. I strongly recommend adding photos to a business listing. Don’t assume people will click through to your web site to see pictures. They might, but you have to capture their interest first, and pictures are a good way to do that. Video is a great idea too, and Google is one of the only places where you can add a video to a listing for free. On most other sites this is a “premium” option that you only get if you pay. Once I finished filling out the business information, I was given the option for how I wanted to validate the listing. The two choices are by phone and by postcard.

I selected “by phone” and got this:

Google called right away. I got the PIN, entered it, and about 10 hours later voila:

And you can see the full Google Local Listing for QUICK-BEND design here. I don’t know about you, but I find that pretty exciting! The whole thing took less than an hour to do, including finding photos and getting the PIN. Next up: Facebook Fan Page.
A couple of related posts: why Google Maps is so important and why it would be good to get some customer reviews on this listing.

Viral marketing news and other viral happenings in the Denver Metro and Boulder area.

Ok, I guess I’ll take a short break from watching the This Too Shall Pass video from OkGo to write this update. Since the video doesn’t have anything to do with Colorado, I won’t include it here.

More Colorado Cleavage – Last week Colorado Springs was banning puppet cleavage, this week the human variety is under siege in Aurora. Local coffee shop Perky Cups had to remove a banner featuring a bikini-clad barista. Apparently, Perky Cups’ schtick is scantily clad servers. Of course the fact that the banner was taken down has generated far more attention than if it had stayed up, with the story making national news and generating a lot of internet buzz. Personally, I prefer coffee shops that share my obsession for the bean itself, such as Ozo in Boulder and Kaladi in Denver.

Epic Longboard Sliding – I have a number of cycling friends who view longboarders as a nuisance and nothing more. If you share their opinion, you’d better watch this video. It is produced by longboard company Bustin Boards and shot in the mountains of Colorado. Grace and athleticism, that’s all I have to say.

Cubicle Wars 2010 – If the longboard dudes had spent less time boarding and more time playing World of Warcraft, they might have produced this video instead. It was created by Boulder software company Windward Reports, and is the sequel to 2006′s Cubicle Wars. The original has been watched almost two and a half million times. The sequel is funnier.

IE6, May It Rest In Peace - And speaking of software geeks, Denver-based Aten Design Group hit the viral jackpot when they were written up in Techcrunch for staging a funeral for Microsoft’s IE 6 web browser. This was a brilliant stunt all around, combining absurdity and niche-enthusiasm with just the right amount of media savvy. Perhaps the icing on the cake was the fact that Microsoft actually sent flowers to the event. Long live Aten Design, and may IE6 rest in peace.

A High Fiber Diet? – Google is looking for a suitable community to test their planned ultra high-speed broadband network, and several local communities are putting on their Sunday best. The network will deliver up to one gigabyte per second to the home. That’s enough to deliver a typical DVD in a few seconds, and roughly a thousand times what most people have today. The City of Boulder has created a web site, Facebook fan page and Twitter feed dedicated to the effort. And a map showing the location of all the residents hungry to watch Cubicle Wars in high-def.

Self-Promotion for Good – This one isn’t viral yet, but it should be. Colorado non-profit Ubuntunow.org has created a virtual wall of supporters, which you can join for a donation of $10 (or more if you want). The donation goes to help promote gender equality and support the fight against rape and HIV/AIDs in South Africa. And you get your face on the wall and a link to whatever you would like to promote to boot.

Little Green Lobbyists – When I first saw the Peeping Tom Alien a few years ago, I was scared to be alone in the dark. This might be a little freakier. Jeff Peckman, the man who introduced the Peeping Tom Alien to David Letterman, held the Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission’s “Welcome to Earth” campaign launch at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds on Thursday. In case you weren’t there, he was campaigning for support for the group to become an official part of Denver city government. Elected officials in Boulder and Colorado Springs are in favor of the measure, as it would make both cities appear uncharacteristically level-headed in comparison.

Back to This Too Shall Pass. Amazing what you pick up the second hundred times you watch it.

This is a weekly update, please comment if there are topics or items I have missed.

I wrote on the Local Matters blog yesterday about the value of monitoring online conversations for mentions of a brand or business in comparison to buying broadcast advertising media. My argument there was that monitoring and responding to mentions of a brand has the same person-to-person connection and comparable costs as customer service calls. And I believe that monitoring and responding to online conversations is money better spent than most broadcast media. Any time someone is talking about you or your business, you have a chance to promote what you do and add value to the conversation. That is worth a lot more than buying an ad that doesn’t talk back.

But for most local SMB’s, I wouldn’t recommend hiring a call center or paying for a reputation management service. Unless the scale of your business is such that people are talking about you frequently throughout the day, outsourcing is probably overkill. But I do recommend setting up some Google Alerts. Google Alerts are a free and incredibly powerful way to keep track of what’s being said about you, your business and important topics in your industry. Google Alerts work a lot like Google search, but only notify you when new things come up, and you get results via email or an RSS feed.

Setting up a basic Google Alert is very straightforward. For example, if I wanted to monitor for mentions of Thomas Edison, I would go to http://www.google.com/alerts and create an alert.

By setting the type of the alert to “Comprehensive”, this alert will search the web including news media and blogs for the phrase “Thomas Edison”. Like Google.com search, it will find results that have the words “Thomas” and “Edison” in the text, but not necessarily together. If I want to only find results that have “Thomas Edison” as a phrase, I put quotes around the search term. That’s the basics. Google offers more detail on their Alerts help page. Now for some recommendations for how to set up alerts for your business.

First, while you can create an alert and have it sent to any email address, I recommend that you create a Google account if you don’t already have one. This will give you the ability to manage alerts, along with various other advantages. It will also result in alert emails being sent to the Gmail address that is created as part of your account. But you can still receive alerts at another address by setting up forwarding on your Gmail address. To do this, open Gmail and click “Settings” in the upper right-hand corner. Then click on the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab. From there, select “Forward a copy of incoming mail to,” and enter your email address. This will deliver all alerts to the email account you specify. You will still need to log in to your Google account to add or edit alerts, but you don’t have to worry about checking another email account.

Second, use Google’s advanced search options to refine your alerts. Unfortunately, Google didn’t build this in to the Alerts interface, but most advanced search options also work in Alerts. The easiest method I’ve found is to build queries on the Advanced Search screen, then copy them to Alerts.  As you are building a query using the form fields, a properly constructed query will show up at the top of the screen, which you can select and copy. Unfortunately, some advanced search options don’t work. Notably, there is no way on the advanced search screen to add region to the query even though you can specify a region in the form. Strangely, you can add a “location:” parameter to News alerts, but this is undocumented and doesn’t work for web or blog search.  Using the “location:” parameter, you can specify any two-letter state abbreviation and some countries. For example, if you want to limit your News Alert to search New Jersey news sources, you add “location:nj” to the query. For more than you probably want to know on the undocumented (and documented) features of Google Search, the site Googleguide.com is a great resource.

Using advanced search features, here are examples of alerts Thomas Edison might set up for his business:

• Comprehensive alert for: “thomas edison” ”menlo park” OR inventor –high -school
  Since Thomas Edison is a fairly common name, this refines the name search by only including pages that also have the phrase “menlo park” or the keyword “inventor”. And since there are a lot of high schools named “Thomas Edison”, it also excludes pages that include the words “high” and “school”.
• Comprehensive alert for: link:ge.com
  This alerts to any new inbound links to ge.com.
• Comprehensive alert for: “edison electric light company” OR “edison general electric” OR “general electric”
  This alerts to any mentions of one of Thomas Edison’s companies.
• Blog alert for: “ac current”
  Thomas Edison was a vehement opponent of alternating current, and would surely have wanted to know of any blog mentioning it, so that he could proselytize his preference for direct current.

I have found that sometimes I need to tweak my alerts by adding and excluding keywords, to prevent getting too much information. For example, you may need to put the town your business is in as a keyword if your business name is fairly common.

Lastly, I prefer to view my alerts as RSS feeds in Google reader versus getting them as emails. This is too big a topic to cover here, but if you are already subscribing to RSS feeds in Google Reader, iGoogle, My Yahoo, Netvibes, or another RSS reader, you may want to give it a try.

The value of an idea lies in the using of it. – Thomas A. Edison