If you want to know if social media traffic is worthwhile, or not, I recommend attending the free online Social Media: Should You Digg It? class. I sat in on today’s presentation and found it informative and insightful, especially when Matt Bailey delivered his statistical information.

This class is part of the ClickTracks Virtual Classroom Series: Online Marketing & Web Analytics. In today’s one hour offering, hosted by the charming John Marshall, (love his British accent) with Search Engine Guide’s Editor-in-chief, Jennifer Laycock and SiteLogic’s, Matt Bailey as presenters, social media marketing is discussed.

Because there is another day to sit in on the class, I won’t cover all the juicy stuff. Suffice it to say the information is not skewed as a social media love-fest. Jennifer delivers a highly detailed overview of what social media is, how it works and provides some demographic information on the types of audiences each social media website caters to. Matt invests his time into analyzing traffic data. He wants to know if the bombardment of traffic is worthwhile or provides any residual benefits.

His conclusions are interesting and may surprise you.

Do you know what types of sites bring you the most valuable traffic? Do you know why? Should you market to social media sites and if so, how? What works? What won’t work? Why?

Interestingly, while one social media bookmarking site, Digg, shuns search engine marketers by banning anything submitted by many in the SEO industry, it is this industry that is teaching people about social media by helping them understand its users, what they want and what they do. It’s not with the expectation that now that you know, you can go out and manipulate social media for your own marketing purposes. This presentation shows how doing that, on purpose, can bring wrath and also bad publicity or a negative impact on sales.

Matt and Jen approach social media with curiosity, research, evaluation and a willingness to understand interactive websites. When does it work for you? When does it not?

The presentation runs again tomorrow. It is free. Be sure to read the directions and give yourself about 10 minutes lead-time for installation and make sure you have MSIE. It doesn’t work with Firefox. They’ll email a transcript too.

Virtual classroom: Social Media: Should You Digg It? - March 27, :00 am PT / 10:00 am ET / 3:00 pm UK.

My friends at digital-telepathy passed something along to me for a look and a laugh. Turns out, it’s an interesting illustration of search engine optimization and a web design shooting blanks. The site is optimized but someone forgot to consider how to target it for customers, not just search engines. In addition, the design isn’t responding to one of the most popular reasons someone would go to the site.

In the writeup, called Search+ :: It’s All In The Grinds, the story goes that, upon hearing the office call for a Starbucks run, an office employee decided to order something different from Starbucks. He went to search for the Starbucks website to see what he could order differently. He writes,

If I head over to the Yahoo Search Marketing tool and look up “Starbucks Menu” I find that 4,541 people searched for this keyphrase in February 2007 as well as ten other similar variations of this keyphrase. What was Starbucks thinking? This keyphrase was the fourth most popular “Starbucks” themed keyphrase out of the list. So I thought to myself, well maybe their website just isn’t focused on organic search engine optimization, so let’s see if they’ve paid for this keyphrase. What do you think? Wrong again. When I searched under the other top keyphrases I found, Starbucks was organically positioned at the top of the list and rightfully so. What we have here is a classic case of a brand that has so much emphasis offline, missing opportunities online to connect with potential customers in all aspects of their life.

The website was found easily enough because the domain is the brand name. However, once arriving, there was no menu in sight. If you go to the website, its primary focus is on selling Starbucks’ products, providing a store locator and offering corporate-type information. It’s not designed for the casual Starbucks dash-in-and-grab-my-latte customer.

I tried my hand at finding drink types by taking wild guesses on where they stuck the information. From a usability perspective, it’s a mistake to assume visitors have time for a game of “hunt and peck”, especially when they want their coffee, and most especially, when it’s early in the morning and they’re still trying to wake up. The term “menu” isn’t chosen for navigation or heading titles. You know, the parts of a page the eyes scan for clues.

It’s called “Beverage Lineup” instead. It’s not placed on the homepage, nor does the homepage provide a call to action prompt to take anyone directly there. Rather, the beverages are found under a navigation link with a label that says “Our Stores”, which is not the most logical way to find it. How about “Our Menu” or “Our Beverages” which would at least hint that food items are discussed.

Trying another roundabout route, the digital-telepathy writer ran a Search on Starbucks Menu to see if that brought up the exact spot on their website where the menu would be.

The SERPS point to other websites that feature or discuss the menu, but the main Starbucks website did not appear. It’s not like Starbucks doesn’t provide nutritional information. They do. To get to it, however, you must search on the actual beverage name.

This requires a menu to know what that is.

This writer wanted to try a different drink that day.

And people like to tell me that search marketing and web design don’t require usability. The disconnect may not be tragic, or obvious at first. But sooner or later someone will be led by an engine to your website and not be able to do what they came there to do.

As if the list of judges isn’t dazzling enough, the prize offerings for this second contest in the Search Marketing industry is downright breathtaking. Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim site is once again sponsoring the popular Search Engine Marketing Scholarhship contest, and this one has learned some lessons from the first one.

For starters, the prize contributions have been doubled.

There are more judges, from various aspects in the SEM industry, including a peep from yours truly, from the usability chorus line.

Andy describes the fresh changes:

We listened to your feedback from last year and we’ve made the contest more streamlined, while tapping deeper into your search marketing skills. So, a few changes…

1. We’re giving you a little more time to get your entry in, the deadline is April 6th.
2. There will be ONLY ONE ROUND OF ENTRIES. Unlike last year - with four weekly deadlines - there will be just one chance to submit your article.
3. The biggest suggestion from last year was that one week to build traffic to an article, really didn’t demonstrate the true abilities of a search marketer. This time around, you’ll have a full 4 weeks to spread the word, drive traffic, build links, etc.
4. We’ll have five finalists this year, instead of four.

This is not your ordinary contest. The vehicle is writing. Entrants must compose a 400 - 1000 word article on any aspect related to search engine marketing or optimzation. This can includes PPC, social media, marketing tips or tricks and more. In the first contest, some people wrote about opinions and attitudes in the industry and humor pieces. Some chose a niche, pin-pointed an angle, researched it and presented a thoughtful, informative article.

That’s the easy part.

Next, they must raise awareness on their submission. They must walk the talk by promoting it and applying their expertise in SEO/M full-tilt to gain popularity, links, traffic, awareness, and most importantly, impress the judges. On May 15, five of the most popular will be announced and be presented to the panel of judges. Their decision on the winner will be announced on May 21.

For those who don’t wish to enter, simply reading the entries is fun. You may meet new people or read entries by familiar names. This page will take you to more information and a feed link to stay on top of progress.

Learn from your living room or heck, just stay in bed. The following are some educational and information opportunties coming up in the user centered design, human factors and search marketing industries.

Human Factors
Human Factors International (HFI) invites you to a free, live webcast: “Trends in user-centered design: What you need to know in 2007 that can help your business”

Suan and Jay explore the top 5 trends in user-centered design for 200.
Live Webcast: Thursday, March 29th at 3:30 pm Eastern time (US)
Co-hosts: Susan Weinschenk - Chief of Technical Staff, HFI
Jay More - President, HFI

Download free whitepaper and connect to webcast here.

Susan and Jay will explain why usability will never be the same again. Building on classic user-centered analysis and data gathering techniques, these new developments are expanding usability’s impact on product and technology design. Learn how your best practices can benefit from these cutting-edge approaches and lead to business success.

Search Marketing
Matt Bailey and Jennifer Laycock explore social media marketing via ClickTracks Virtual Classroom. They present Social Media: Should You Digg It? in two sessions.

Mon Mar 26th 10:00 am PT / 1:00 pm ET / 6:00 pm UK
Tue Mar 27th 7:00 am PT / 10:00 am ET / 3:00 pm UK

This month we’ve enlisted Search Engine Guide’s Editor-in-chief, Jennifer Laycock and SiteLogic’s, Matt Bailey to demystify the often-confusing world of social media and consumer-generated media web sites.

This is your chance to pose questions for the experts and learn:

* What social media means to the future of e-commerce
* Which social media marketing tactics are best suited for your company
* How SEO is affected by social media marketing campaigns
* Why you need to do more than just track social media traffic

User Centered Web Design
Next in line for UIE Virtual Seminars is Social Design: Designing for the Social Lives of Users

Joshua Porter, User Interface Engineering
Length: 90 Minutes
Live: April 11, 2007 — 1pm ET / Noon CT / 11am MT / 10am PT
Seminar Pricing: $129 (includes handout)

Web sites and apps focusing on social interactions are growing like wildfire. MySpace, Facebook, and Craigslist all sit in the top twenty most used web sites in the world. What is the secret to their success? What can we learn from them to apply to our own designs?

To tackle these questions, Joshua Porter, UIE’s Director of Web Development, has put together an information-packed presentation that delves into the common traits of these successful web sites: they all focus on Social Design, or design that focuses on the social lives of users.

One way to keep up with educational opportunities is to check SEO SEM Training & Certification and Human Factors International Training and Usability Courses.

Earlier I had written about “Grumpy Week”. Now, it’s Nothing Makes Any Sense Week. Where to begin?

1. I received this email:

I was looking for laser eye surgery online for my clients when I came accross your web site that I’m reviewing right now. Based on what I see here, you look like a good fit for my group. I’m looking to make an exclusive arrangement with one laser eye surgery doctor in your area today.

My job is to show my clients a relevant web site when they are searching for an laser eye surgery. Your web site looks like a strong fit.

COME AGAIN?

[Update - Found the part about the email above was reposted on a laser eye surgery scraper site. The bots look for the words to match, not the actual meaning or intent of a piece.]

2. See if you can follow this one.

First, when SearchEngineLand launched, they linked to Cre8asiteforums in its blogroll and life was good. However, I noticed a lot of my friends’ blogs were also listed, so I dropped an email, in total fear, asking if this one could be added. I mean, it covers the SEO/M industry, right? I felt it was a fit, else I wouldn’t have bothered. So, it was added, but it was mis-labled as “Cre8asite Usability Blog”. Kinda surprising they’d even permit the word “usability” there, but they did.

However, that’s not the name of this blog. I waited to see if anyone there would catch the mistake but since nobody did, I emailed this, in total fear:

I wasn’t sure whom to address this to, and I apologize. I wonder if I
could suggest a fix for the blogroll, regarding Cre8asiteforums and my blog?

Presently, it lists:

Cre8aSite Forums
Cre8aSite Usability Blog

Actually, the forums has its own blog (not listed), and mine is separate.
The accurate info is as follows:

Cre8asiteforums (http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/index.php)

Cre8tive Flow (http://blog.cre8asite.net/) - This is the blog for Cre8asiteforums.

Cre8pc SEO and Usability (http://www.cre8pc.com/blog/index.php)- This is
my blog.

Thanks for considering this fix.
Warm regards,

Firstly, my request was sent to someone with a nice note about making repairs. This was followed up with another email that said, “OK, I’ve changed the usability blog now to point at the forum blog.”

So now the forums and the forums’ blog are listed, but this blog is gone all together.

I was willing to be brave and just accept my losses, when I saw this from Bill Slawski’s Positive and Negative Quality Ranking Factors from Google’s Blog Search (Patent Application). In it, he states that one of the positive indicators of blog quality is:

Existence of the blog in high quality blogrolls

‘A high quality blogroll is a blogroll that links to well-known or trusted bloggers. Therefore, a high quality blogroll that also links to the blog document is a positive indicator of the quality of the blog document.’

This is also based upon the assumption that a well-known or trusted blogger would not link to a “spamming blogger.”

I’m so sad.

3. Brian Thibault writes, in Usability & Domain Names, “Having a domain which is not easy to spell. If your site should ever get featured on radio or TV, you want viewers to be able to easily type it into a browser after hearing it. Otherwise you’re going to lose a percentage of them.”

There’s always someone, from the usability or SEO industries, that writes about domain names and the right ones to pick. While technically they are correct, it torments someone like me, who has had the same domain since 1996…LONG before search engines and usability killed off creativity.

4. Forum Admin life. I often wish I could tell you the tales of what running a large forums is like, but some things aren’t meant to be made fun of. It’s a management job for no pay, which is why it’s on this list today. Working for no pay is completely insane. To make matters worse, I saw a local job in usability testing advertised for a company close to my house, for an enormous salary.

If I disappear suddenly, you’ll know why.

5. April Fools Day is around the corner. Don’t think we, at Cre8asiteforums, are letting it go by quietly. We never do. Any rumors that we are for sale, again, are simply not true. We did that one already, and the horrified emails we got were real.

You all believe everything you hear?