SEO is aging. Google, after all, was born in 1999, and nearly twenty years old (or more, depending on how you count). Continue reading
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To Make Your Mark In Today’s High-Tech World You MUST Engage In Social Media Marketing
Here in San Francisco many high-tech companies need to generate “buzz.” Continue reading
The Bay Area Is Big. Over 6 Million People Live Here, But Wherever You Are I Can Help You With SEO.
The Bay Area is big, stretching all the way from Marin County to San Jose and home to more than 6 million people, which is half as big again as the population of Los Angeles. However, the great thing about the Internet for helping you with SEO is that you can be in Marin County and I could be in San Jose (I’m not – I’m actually in SF) or we could be on the same street. It doesn’t matter. Continue reading
The Ridiculously High ROI of Blogging for SEO and Social Media Marketing
What if I told you that there was a tactic that you could use for your Internet marketing, that could be used for both SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and and SMM (Social Media Marketing), and that it would cost you nothing but the blood, sweat, and tears, of your own time? What if I told you that this tactic was so easy that nearly anyone could do it with just a little practice? And, what if I told you that what you are reading right now is an example of this tactic? Continue reading
San Francisco vs. San Jose: A Visibility Puzzle
I love the San Francisco Bay Area! Having moved here in 1986 to get my Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, Continue reading
Do You Need a San Francisco SEO Expert? A Consultant? Or Company?
Being the top-ranked SEO expert in the San Francisco Bay Area is a great honor. Continue reading
A New Bay Area Social Media Marketing Class: The Brand Called You
Long ago, I read Tom Peter’s article, “The Brand Called You.” This was published in 1997, but was prescient. (I love words like prescient, words that are exactly right but uncommon enough that when you see them, you pay attention. Prescient (adj): having or showing knowledge of events before they take place.). The Internet had just been born, and Tom Peters saw just how important “personal branding” would become in the fragmented, ‘World is Flat,’ New economy.
Almost all of us – individual writers, bloggers, marketers, CEO’s, anyone who wants to ‘stand out’ or be a ‘thought leader’ has to think about the ‘brand called you.’
Enter Social Media Marketing
Now, when Tom Peter’s wrote this prescient article, there were just websites and the tiny beginnings of blogging. Today, we have Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest… the Googling of potential employees before a hire, the Internet-never-forgets phenomenon and on and on and on. People go first to Google for information, and if they read your blog post, and see you as the expert… POW you get the job interview, the consulting gig, the link from the New York Times or whatever.
Being the BEST brand called you is one of the newest and most important personal marketing challenges.
Negative SEO and Negative Personal Branding
There’s a dark side (isn’t there always a ‘dark side?’). Negative SEO – the use of Internet publicity to damage someone’s personal brand – is out there, too. I’ve consulting with people who were being extorted by bloggers, with marketing folk whose CEO had affairs with interns (all over the Internet), and wanted to suppress that information. So on both a positive and a negative light, we need to ‘manage’ the brand called you.
If you are in or near the San Francisco Bay Area, I invite you to my Stanford Course, The Brand Called You: Personal Branding and Online Reputation Management, November 8-9 (Saturday / Sunday) at Stanford. Anyone interested in social media marketing, and especially those interested in reputation management and personal branding, will find it a lively, fun, and practical workshop on personal branding.