I enjoyed some blog posts this week from people I’m not as familiar with. One of them wrote about the need for search engine marketing and/or Internet education in schools and universities. Another looked at the “SEO Rock Star” theme in a different way. More on them below.

It’s been an exciting week too. Cre8asiteforums loses three moderators and gains two new ones. Both are women, well known and respected in the search marketing industry. We’re celebrating the addition of Donna Fontenot (aka dazzlindonna) and Miriam Ellis (aka “SEOigloo) and look forward to their energy, passion for their work and dedication to helping people.

SEOMoz featured a guest post called Why Won’t You Let Me Study The Internet?. He writes:

While I am currently expected to do research, collaborate, and turn in my assignments online I am not given the resources to learn specifically about the medium that drives it all. The major universities (with the exception of Stanford) simply haven’t committed to the internet and as such, there is no way to major in something like internet science. I am not offered classes like SEO 290 or Social Networking 300.

My 14 year old son came home the other day from school grumping outloud, “I HATE FLASH!”. Turns out he’s learning FLASH design in his Tech Ed class and dislikes it (he’d rather be studying history). His school is a public school district Middle School equipped with all kinds of gadgets in the class rooms. They communicate via web sites with parents, teachers and students. Rooms have interactive stuff that bring lessons to life in ways I never dreamed could be done. My kids know how to research using Ask and Google because they’re taught it in school. Typing is a requirement for homework. But, in their web design classes, they don’t learn how to design pages to appear in search engines or make them accessible to special needs users. Usability? Not taught.

Should we be teaching our skills to school kids and college students?

This week many people were out at SMX West. One participant wrote a blog article on his experience that I felt offered a different perspective. He had some opinions and ideas that may be shared by others and I admired his willingness to come forth with his SMX West Day 3: “Matt & Danny and Rand! Oh My!” I “sphunn” the post, and if you follow that link from the Sphinn button on his blog post page, you’ll see that Danny Sullivan responded.

Other Inspiration

Turn Usable Content into Winning Content by Colleen Jones is a must-read. She writes,

What we don’t understand as well, however, is how to make content win users over to take the actions we want them to take or have the perceptions we want them to have. We don’t understand how to make Web content both usable and persuasive.

Diane Aull writes the brilliant Why Do The (Good) SEOs Cost So %&*# Much? One of the best articles I’ve read this year so far.

One of my favorite passions…How to Build a Green Business.

I liked Tech’s feminine side and finally, among the tons of articles out on user personas, this one stands out:

QA Session on User Persona Method with Lene Nielsen, who wrote her Ph.D. thesis “Engaging Personas and Narrative Scenarios”.

I was approached by a friend with an idea. It went along the lines of “What if we get a group together to promote this cause ….” and from that point on my imagination soared with what-ifs and can-we’s.

And I wondered about the can of worms we might be opening.

Those of you in Facebook know from experience that when someone who is your “friend” joins a cause, everyone gets a notice about it. After awhile, we begin to get a sense of what our friends are interested in, besides work. We can gauge how well matched we are, how different we might be from each other and see sides of friends we never knew about.

Also, in Facebook, we get alerts whenever someone signs up to be a fan of someone or something. We pick who is the “Most Beautiful”, “Who is Funniest”, and rate everything from smiles to who we’d like to marry. Some of it’s fun and games. Some of it is honest insight, such as when a friend backs a certain politician and it’s announced to everyone on their friends list.

When you do business with peers or are friends with CEO’s and company owners who have Facebook pages and profiles, is there a point where you think to yourself, “I didn’t need to know that” when they post something they’ve joined? If someone’s “status” is, “I’m naked in bed with my laptop”, is this TMI (Too Much Information)?

I remember how freeing it was when Threadwatch ran a long thread a few years back about SEO’s who work from home. It was a coming out party of men and a few women who admitted to working naked or in their PJ’s, odd hours and in varying environments, from home to Starbucks to heck, likely a few bars.

Is Social Networking Coming at a Price?

The social media networking phase of the Internet experience has allowed us to meet and talk to each other. It also lets us share bits and pieces of ourselves as if we were eating lunch at the same table at school and sitting with our group, or attending a company picnic and throwing horse shoes with fellow employees.

In other words, we’re starting to hang out together, as well as also doing business with each other. We’re moving beyond a professional networking, spell checked, politically correct version of ourselves and into a “This is the real me” version, where we’re more willing to share our interests and life events outside of work.

Instead of rows and rows of employment “cube farms” where you pop up over the wall to share potato chips with your neighbor and gossip about the manager, there’s now IM and Twitter. It’s easy to type that spontaneous thought begging to be leaked out and in seconds, it’s out there and going all over the place to who knows who?

Does this matter?

If a group of your industry peers banded together to support a cause you don’t believe in, would you not do business with them?

If a group of your industry peers supported a political view or candidate, set up a web site and promoted themselves as supporters, and you strongly disagree with that view or candidate, would you feel differently about them? Enough to not associate with them? Work with them? Refer work to them?

In some ways, this is like joining a forums where you feel you fit. You like how you’re treated there and the people have similar beliefs or attitudes as you do. I’m reminded of blog writing, when we had asked if it’s proper to write about our personal lives in our business or professional blogs.

Whenever we remove our mask and people see the real us, there’s a risk. How much of yourself are you willing to reveal? Is it important to doing business online?

What do you think? Does someone’s choices in their personal life alter your opinion of their business services?

Would you have the courage to stand up and defend a cause you believe in, and bring attention to it in your web site or blog if you could, even though it has nothing to do with your business, products or services?

Added: Discussion Could What You Stand Up For Detract From Your Reputation?

I’ve been thinking about two popular discussions currently taking place in the search engine marketing industry about “Seo Rock Stars”. First was Lee Odden’s, The Fallacy of SEO Celebrity, which was followed up with Rand Fishkin’s take in The Desire for Fame in the SEO World. Both men flung the doors wide open.

I enjoy any discussion that offers up a chance to look at where we are as people, community or industry.

There are far less rock star personalities in the Human Factors and Usability/User Experience fields, but they do exist. In those industry circles, the so-called fame can be directly traced to their achievements, such as case studies, white papers, books, popular educational blogs, videos or podcasts or events such as hosting conferences. Only recently did My Catalyze quietly launch. It’s no Sphinn. The content at Catalyze tends to be more academic and not self-promotional.

Reading the comments in both Rand and Lee’s highly rated posts, I was reminded of my early days in the 1990’s, when I made the online acquaintance of Jill Whalen, Kalena Jordan, Ralph Tegtmeier (aka “Fantomaster”), and Ammon Johns (aka “Black Knight”). Danny Sullivan was the most authoritative guide for me, followed soon by Mike Grehan.

What struck me as the most positive role each of these people played back then was that they shared what they learned, while they were learning it. Brett Tabke did the same thing by launching Webmasterworld. In those first years, WMW was an online lab where Brett tested theories and practices and freely shared his findings. Members followed up with their testing and feedback. Eventually “best practices” could be flushed out from all this free flow. If you came into WMW believing you were a smarty pants with an attitude of being a guru, you didn’t survive long.

Flash forward to today. I founded Cre8asiteforums, Jill founded High Rankings Forums and many other forums came long before us, like Jim World and DigitalPoint. The one thing you can count on in forums is self promotion.

There are always exceptions. Some members of Cre8asiteforums contribute day in and day out, giving advice, helping figure out problem code, and offering moral support with no link drops or hints that they’re only being nice because they want your business. The moderating staff and I keep track of humble contributors. Some of them are eventually given opportunities to join the team or write in our blog. We look for self respect, hard workers, generosity, and expertise that have been proven.

Power plays are out. A constant presence that says “Look at me! Look at me! I’m over here!” doesn’t work either. I see this happening in Facebook. Everyone has a different use for it. I go there to have fun, but I’m a professional person, forums owner, business owner and tied to many companies who use my services. What I share in Facebook about my personal life is limited.

When people who have seen me online for years finally meet me at a conference, they meet the “real” Kim. I’m goofy. I’m terrible with names. I’m shy and uncomfortable in crowds until I get a sense of the place. I laugh. A lot. I swear after a few drinks if we’re on a hot topic and am more likely to say things that might surprise you. I rarely have the nerve to approach “SEO Rock Stars” I haven’t met yet or if I do, I’ve had to get the courage up for about 20 minutes first. I figure nobody knows me and will wonder who that strange woman is walking up to them.

I suppose being famous in an industry is a head trip at first. It doesn’t always last long in such a socially driven environment. I’ve seen some new people rise to the top by pushing uphill a boulder of content and involvement in all the “right” places, only to write something that’s in poor judgment online somewhere and they tumble back down the mountain. Some of them will align themselves with someone famous and toot that horn, in essence using the famous person to gain notice.

What’s kept Danny, Ralph, Aaron Wall, Jill, Christine Churchill, Mike Grehan and Ammon going strong over the past 12 years is their devotion to their craft, their interest in upholding the integrity and continued growth of the industry, their consistent ability to stay focused on their work and their personalities. Each of them is genuine. You know it the moment you meet them in person and when you see them anywhere online. They are interested in YOU and YOUR success.

True leaders gain loyalty because people can tell the difference between those who really want their peers to succeed and those who are in it for their own personal agenda.

There’s tremendous talent out there, with some exciting new voices and faces. There are also a lot of well known industry leaders, business owners and conference speakers. Eventually they’ll want to move on, retire, or try something else. The SEO/M industry would do well to nurture and guide the newcomers and support individuals who have impressed them.

It makes little sense to wave fingers at so called “rock stars” because time has a way of filtering out the frauds from the real deal.

As a contributing columnist for Search Marketing Standard, who covers usability topics for the search engine marketing industry, it’s always exciting to get my copies in the mail. A perk of being a contributor is that I get complimentary magazines to give away. My husband hands them out in the IT department for the company where he works, showing off his wife of course.

The Spring issue has arrived and seeing the words “Spring 2008″ on a day where we’re expecting snow is sweet. For this issue, I was assigned a topic that required me to download software to explore because I’m not comfortable writing about topics that I haven’t played with. My topic was Flash usability. It was the most difficult article I’ve written to date (poor Andrey, my patient Editor!) It’s called “Is it Time to Reconsider Flash?”. If you get your magazine copy and read the article, please let me know what you think.

Other articles include an interview with Cameron Olthuis on social media marketing. He’s the handsome Founder and CEO of Factive Media. Industry Analysis is juiced up with 4 interesting articles covering social media, search engines, and privacy issues. Eric Ward has a piece called “Linking Analysis: Making Sense of the Mess”. One of my favorite writers, Gord Hotchkiss, wrote “How We Shortlist Our Buying Decisions through Search”.

The Featured Authors section is a regular section where SMS introduces two or more of its contributors. This issue I’m featured and I’m in great company along with Grant Crowell of Grantastic Designs. Grant wrote the feature article called “Add Video Search Optimization to Your Playlist”.

This issue is not only informational, it’s inspiring and educational. Going into its third year, Search Marketing Standard is the pride of the industry. Free copies are available at most search engine marketing conferences and to make sure you get your’s, SMS subscription fees are very reasonable.

I laughed when I read SEO and Usability: Don’t Beat a Dead Horse, which is a response to my SEO and Usability: Be That Stallion and Round Up The Herd. He has a point and I though it was likely a sign that I’m a usability idealist.

Carlos del Rio wrote:

You need to reach with both (SEO and Usability) hands to efficiently take advantage of your site changes. But wait… word of mouth advertising? Brand building? I love design but I certainly don’t send out e-mails to my friends saying “Check out this site! It’s amazingly usable.”

I don’t evangelize products based on packaging, I spread the value of function. I tell people things like: value for your money, shipping policy, better than the alternative, or full of bright people. Certainly SEO and usability will create both volume and return on investment, but they are never going to be the basis of word-of-mouth advertising. You can dress a duck in a prom dress but that doesn’t mean that anyone is going to tell all their friends that they went to prom with a duck.

I say that if the duck can dance hip hop, drive a Ford Mustang (my teenage daughter’s boyfriend says that’s his choice for cool even if you’re a “dork”) and willingly pay for your date’s prom dress, then who cares?

As a user advocate, I dream of navigation that’s a cakewalk. Do I think people tell their friends to buy from a company because their navigation is easy? Well. No. It’s a combination of things that includes ease of use, as well as confidence, being persuaded to join/browse/buy/search, and extraordinary customer service. Among 134 other things…

I return to Amazon over and over again, even though they change their homepage all the time so I must re-learn it and the order process is always tweaked, forcing me to take my time so I don’t screw up. I refer Amazon because of their prices, not their user interface. Are Amazon web site designers satisfied with this?

I’d like to tell my friends it’s the easiest, most delightful site to buy books from but really, I’m a die-hard physical world bookstore person. Nothing has replaced a few hours of roaming bookstore aisles, sipping tea while flipping through a magazine and pretending to read while curled up in a big leather chair but really I’m people watching. Web sites haven’t competed with human experiences like this yet.

Sometimes I long for them to create a moment that just sizzles with me. Why? Because it shows they know I want that experience and they want to make it happen.

I happened to catch this from Waiting: A Necessary Part of Life by Donald Norman:

“To the analyst, such as me, interfaces are where the fun lies. Interfaces between people, people and machines, machines and machines, people and organizations. Anytime one system or set of activities abuts another, there must be an interface. Interfaces are where problems arise, where miscommunications and conflicting assumptions collide. Mismatched anything: schedules, communication protocols, cultures, conventions, impedances, coding schemes, nomenclature, procedures. it is a designer’s heaven and the practitioners hell. And it is where I prefer to be.”

I get this. For me, the bliss is in the wanting to strive for perfection and believing in that Utopian moment where the user interface totally blows away the person experiencing it. Sometimes I think I’d be bummed if we discovered the perfect web site. What would we strive for next?

Other Finds

Reading about Virginia DeBolt’s resistence to Twitter in New, improved and better than ever has just about tipped me over the edge. I love Virginia’s writings. She has an open mind and she’s mighty smart.

Designing Ethical Experiences: Social Media and the Conflicted Future

When conflicts between businesses and customers—or any groups of stakeholders—remain unresolved, UX practitioners frequently find themselves facing ethical dilemmas, searching for design compromises that satisfy competing camps. This dynamic is the essential pattern by which conflicts in goals and perspectives become ethical concerns for UX designers. Unchecked, it can lead to the creation of unethical experiences that are hostile to users—the very people most designers work hard to benefit—and damaging to the reputations and brand identities of the businesses responsible.

Webstock 2008 coverage - by LukeW is on my must-read list. So nice to see Kathy Sierra again.

And the last word belongs to Jeffrey Zeldman’s Facebook, Twitter, and Bird Flu where he writes:

So the planet warms and the Kenyans kill their neighbors and we tweet about nothing and hope the servers hold out.