I’ve had great success on all three and along the way the first two have taught me a bit about the third.

1. Listen – Marriage is about listening. So is marketing.  Just as you will occasionally misunderstand, or don’t listen to your spouse, it’s easy to misread a customer’s desires and intentions. Be sure you listen to and understand the true meaning of the data, in the context in which it was delivered.
2. Content – Always consider the timing and content of what you’re saying. With spouses and customers there is a right time and way to deliver a message.  In both cases, knowing what each wants to hear in relation to their mood or buying stage, will get you a lot more attention than simply selling your benefits. It’s always about them, as it should be.
3. Delivery – A smile will help you sell almost anything. Almost. How you deliver your message can make the difference on your spouse or customer listening and understanding. Deliver you message with a smile.
4. Follow up – You told your spouse that you were going out Friday night, but despite their listening, understanding the content and with perfect delivery, they forgot.  Well timed and gentle reminders will go a long way.  Reminding customers of specials, appointments, new products and more can go a long way to building a relationship. Just be careful not to over-do it, they might get cranky.
5. Social Support - My wife is one of my biggest fans, whose support has more than once made my day, and endeared her to me even more. Support your best  customers and they will support you. Continually build a close group of evangelists, and reward them publicly with praise and support.
6. Show the Love – Every morning, every night, and every time I leave her side, I kiss my wife. I thank her for common every day chores. I never go to bed angry. I never forget she’s a critical part of my life and happiness. This isn’t marketing, it’s just love, but I’m sure you can figure out how it relates.

Love you honey! Nick

1. BE HELPFUL: Make sure your content is unique, original and helpful to consumers. Shift focus from only getting backlinks to providing rich information to visitors.
2. BE BUZZWORTHY: Start working on creating viral videos, blogs, whitepapers, webinars and +1 feature to create buzz and allow visitors to voice their views.
3.  BE INFORMATIVE: Research more about the website before submitting your content for not just higher page rank but also for good authority in terms of traffic and social sharing, less ads more information etc.
4. DO THE BASICS: On-Page optimization techniques (Focus on robust inter linking, image and header optimization).
5. PROVIDE VALUE: Actively promote & update blogs/forums by providing expert guidance vs. simply looking for a backlink.

I’d like to expand upon this a bit.

1. Be Helpful: Providing good content is always critical. Try and  go “beyond” good content to focused content, which at once informs your visitor about your products, trains them in what they are looking for and entertains. Simple product desctiprions are not enough anymore.
2. Be Buzzworthy: Before starting your videos, blog posts, white papers and webinars pick a “image” you’d like to project. Ordinary won’t cut it. You need to pick an Image/Brand/Emotion/Message that says you’ve got something special no one else does. Now make sure your message is portrayed cosistantly across all your media. Don’t forget to make your content easy to share.
3. Be Informative: When looking for others to point to your site authority is key. Also look for for sites with very active communities. Be active in those communities with participants that show authroity. Deliver your message in an open and sharing manner. Never pander or self promote, but teach instead.
4. Do the Basics: You could probably write a book on the basics of SEO alone. Deep linking to your own site with appropriate keywords is certainly critical as is making sure you’ve covered images tags and headers. Pay particular attention to your title and descripton tags. Too many people spend time and money getting to the top of the search results only to find that no one clicks on their links because the copy the sercher sees does not reflect their goals.
5.  Provide Value: And we have our title. This is the overarching goal of the first four recommendations. Value is helpful, buzzworthy, Informative and cannot exist unless you do the basics.

Bottom line – Panda is here, it’s done what Google had to do, it cleared out a lot of junk sites and hopefuly making search better for all of us. Unfortunately it may have hit many good sites as well. The key is to focus on continuing to deliver great content that meets the objectives of a searcher.

Thanks to Nick at NetElixir for this great email and reminding me that the time for action is “always now”.

Pencil image from PSD Graphics

Google explains the numbers: The numbers on the graph reflect how many searches have been done for a particular term, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. They don’t represent absolute search volume numbers, because the data is normalized and presented on a scale from 0-100. Each point on the graph is divided by the highest point, or 100. When we don’t have enough data, 0 is shown. The numbers next to the search terms above the graph are summaries, or totals.

Successful technology always spawns imitators. When the imitators are pumped up by a social cause (no pun intended) one has to take heed. Witness Diaspora, a privacy focused social networking project funded by Kickstarter and being built by 4 college students this summer.

What does this mean for social media marketers?

At the moment not much. But the lesson from AOL continues to become more relevant as we look at Facebook. We should continue to invest in the spaces that are working today with a keen eye on where things are moving.

Actions to take?

• Continue to work with your Facebook communities
• Introduce your Facebook communities to other ways to interact with your company
• Keep an  eye on emerging technologies and communities
• Invest resources  in the “old” social media like forums, product reviews, and blogging

As in most investments diversity is key, especially if you can easily see the trends.

From the user standpoint Webpro news asked the question Is deleting your Facebook account a good idea? They also note that Matt Cutts and other Googlers de-activated their accounts soon after the Open Graph initiative was announced. Remember, you don’t have to delete the account to de-activate it.

Also see my article on Social Media, It’s not Just Facebook