Author: Atlantic BT

A great session of “Technical SEO” tonight at Phil’s SEO Meetup was mind bending and fun. Fun if you like twisting your mind into a pretzel which I do, but many were lost between Content Delivery Networks, Mod Rewrites and Canonical URLs. This post starts at the beginning focusing on 5 SEO BASICS every marketer MUST know since to NOT KNOW endangers everything including your ability to hire help.

Must Know SEO #1 = Page Titles

Your page titles are always the highest words on your rendered web pages. You can also see page titles in code. In FireFox, go to Tools > Web Developer > Page Source. Here is how your page title will look:

<title>SEO, LinkedIn and The Real You ScentTrail Marketing</title>

Page titles should be keyword rich and unique.

WordPress and other blog software provides a place for YOU to create a title. Your WordPress blog may have the ability to vary your titles. Sometimes you want to feed the search engine spider one title and customers another, but be careful to be sure this passive rewrite of your title is consistent with the page’s content. Titles that don’t speak the same language as the page get you in trouble with Google.

I’m writing this post after eating a great Cheeseburger at the Zaxy’s Restaurant on Glenwood. Here is the ZaxyRestaurant.com title:

<title>ZakyRestaurant.com: Homepage</title>

Anything in a tittle is a word you want the page to rank for, so keywords are your friends.
There are 5 MAJOR mistakes in the current ZakyRestaurant.com title including:

• No keywords such as “Raleigh”, “Mediterranean restaurant”, “Glenwood Ave”, “Gyro”, “Lebanese” or “Hummus”.
• Zaky is concatenated into “restaurant” (no space) signalling the two are one word to Google except they aren’t. People will search Zaxy Raleigh or Zaxy Restaurant not ZaxyRestaurant.
• Never put a period inside of a tag since periods can looks like code.
• Never use a : inside of a tag, use a | so the punctuation doesn’t look like code.
• Never put “homepage” or a keyword so general it is meaningless in a title.

Here are Zaky’s description and keyword tags:
<meta name=”description” content=”Zaky is a downtown Raleigh Mediterranean restaurant in a convenient Glenwood location.”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”Mediterranean, Raleigh, Restaurant, Glenwood, Food, Lebanese, Pita, Gyro, Hummous”>

These are not as terrible as the tittle. Too bad Google doesn’t even glance at these tags anymore. These tags tell me the person who created the page knows a little SEO, but not nearly enough.

TEST your title simply by making sure ANY word inside the tag (showing on the very top of the page) is an important KEYWORD you want your website to be found for (to rank for).

PS. Another quick page title note. Google assumes position = value. Your most important and defining keywords should be far left and count down toward things you should win anyway (like your name). Use of | doesn’t interfere with the spider’s “read” and creates better usability. Titles are “spider food” mostly, but the most important spider food on the page so create titles carefully, with research and don’t exceed Google’s 69 character (spaces count as characters) limit.

SEO Must Know #2 – Consistency

Your titles, page content, image alt text (the keywords attached to images to explain what they are) and navigation should tell a consistent story. This is why it is so damaging to use a keyword like “homepage” in a title.

Zaky won’t have homepage anywhere in the page’s content so the keyword will stand out like a sore thumb and look spammy to Google. You and I know the designer who created the page didn’t know better, but ignorance of SEO guidelines is NO EXCUSE. Google is clear. Knowing SEO’s “laws” stated and unstated is you and your designer’s /programmer’s job not Google’s. Doing a few hours of reading on SEO is a good idea.

SEO Must Know #3 – Unique & Accurate

The good news for ZakyRestaurant.com is at least their designer created unique page titles. Many templated sites simply copy the same title on every page. Make sure your have unique titles and that each page’s titles is accurate to the content on the page.

SEO Must Know #4 – Junk In The HEAD

Google’s bot starts counting the moment it enters. It works its way down through the head content, the content that controls important tags like your <title>. Many designers like fancy roll overs. They jam the controlling code in your website’s Head. Don’t let that happen. Keep your Head CLEAN.

If you want fancy rollovers there are ways to code them with less spammy code in the head. If you see lines and lines of code in your <head> you have a problem.

SEO Must Know #5 – First Rule = Do No Harm

If your website exists then Google knows it. This means Google has expectations for how your website will ACT (your update frequency, your link add frequency, your inbound link gain frequency, etc. to infinity).

Here is a good question to ask any SEO. Ask any potential SEO how they would change your page title to rank for a keyword you want. This is a trick question since I don’t operate unless I know WHAT is WHERE. The right answer is NOTHING until research is created.

Here are other danger signals. If you here hear or see any of these RUN:

* I can get your website ranked #1 on X keyword in Y time (no they can’t).
* I guarantee your will rank (VERY dangerous for many reasons, RUN).
* If you ask about the Google float and they stammer or make something unreal up RUN.

The “Google float” is Google’s increasingly individual search results. Social signals, your past browsing history and even your friends LIKES ans SHARES mean you and I see different results even if we do the same search at the same time. The only way to benchmark and understand SEO progress is via analytics. Any SEO who can’t explain the float is dangerous and you should RUN.

Hope these 5 tips help you avoid the Zaky problem where a little knowledge proved to be a real problem. If you are a Zaky make sure you ask for a simple WordPress blog YOU can maintain. That way if some goofystupid person make mistakes you can easily fix them AND you have the added benefit of being able to easily add content. Adding content is KEY for any website these days. Static 4 page websites don’t rank, so get a blog YOU can maintain.

Don’t worry. You can and will make mistakes, but there is only one Internet marketing mistake that is unrecoverable – doing nothing and you are already out there trying so keep it up and avoid these simple mistakes even if your designer makes them.

Moore’s Magic  Bus

Last week Facebook passed Google as the web’s top destination (chart at bottom). Comparing Google and Facebook is like comparing apples to oranges. Yes both apples and oranges are fruits and they taste good, but apples and oranges are distinctly different things. Instead of thinking about Google and Facebook as THINGS this post is about an experiment. What if we think of Google and Facebook as TIME. I’ve argued once Gordon Moore created his famous law noting how computational power would square even as costs dramatically fell every few years Google (or something) was inevitable.

Google is and always has been a must. Once content stretches toward infinity some  Dewey Decimal system had to be invented to assign priority or MORE = we drown. If Google wasn’t invented then someone would invent something to organize the content explosion Moore’s law promised. Arguing if Google is the best or worst is moot. Google simply is.

Perhaps Facebook was inevitable too?

Daniel Pink, one of my favorite authors, proposes an interesting idea in his book A Whole New Mind: Moving From The Information Age To The Conceptual Age. Pink suggests that we’ve exhausted the road left brain engineering was driving. The next age is a conceptual age, a creative right brain age. It is not that engineering doesn’t matter, but that engineering is exhausted and incapable of creating the kinds of connections and experience we seek.

We seek connection, meaning and value.

We know time is our most valuable nonrenewable treasure. We want to understand. We chase big questions. Think of a rubber band extended to its breaking point. We’ve snapped back home and want to know WHY something should be done. Just yesterday understanding HOW to play the game was enough. We were children with our first bicycles. We did wheelies and called our parents to watch.

We attached playing cards to spokes and, in our minds, we rode powerful hogs with full leathers and sunglasses. We were dangerous ten and twelve year old children at a time when anything was possible. We built fortes of cardboard and climbed trees because we could. Our joy was communal, competitive and  complete.

For a little bit there we Internet marketers got lost.

We became more intent on creating ladders than climbing trees. The more complicated the ladder instructions became the more obsessed and competitive we got. We would make the best ladder never mind the climbing. We were determined and solipsistic. We thought only of ladders and not the trees they were meant to climb. We were so invested in ladder production we stopped climbing trees.We dreamed of ladders and compared notes on construction. We attended conferences to learn how to create the most ornate ladder. We lost our sense of play.

Trees Not Ladders Are Magical

Then one day even the chief ladder maker realized the most important idea – we create ladders to climb trees. We climb trees because we can and because we are different for having climbed them. The magic is not in the tools. Magic exists within each and every one of us. A giant snapped his fingers and the percussion woke up millions. At first many ladder builders refused to believe. Some ladder builders were so vested and understood the old game so well they couldn’t accept what was so clear – we were asking the wrong questions in the wrong ways.

We should have known.

Any game that is both means and end is hollow. This game, the game of search engine optimization (SEO), became a tautology something whose manufactured truth reinforced itself over and over and in a million ways. If a game is complex enough and self reinforcing enough we will play it forever and for no reason other than because we can. Then the giant who organized the game realized his huge and spreading error. The giant too forgot. He forgot talking to yourself about yourself is no conversation at all.

If life seems less sure now then you are getting it.

Life always becomes less sure. We march toward entropy and entropy is our friend. Not that entropy and the great unknown isn’t scary and foreboding, but scary and foreboding is a challenge and less known or knowable. This new book careens from pillar to post. We hang on with fingernails and sweat. This is how life should be and we know it. Life should be a magical mystery tour always and for everyone. If life is an interpreted art understood only by some elite priesthood we can’t actualize, we can’t find or know our human potential.

Last week Facebook passed Google as the largest web destination signaling the truth of Pink’s 2005 prediction and snapping the giant’s fingers loudly one more time. One train’s journey is complete and we’ve taken seats on the Merry Prankster’s bus with its single destination proudly proclaimed on its brow, “FURTHER”.

Link to the Facebook vs. Google infographic

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What: Benefit For Sandy Hook Event

When: February 27th, 6-9 pm

Where: Downtown Raleigh’s Tir Na nOg Irish Pub 218 S Blount St

Website: TriangleCares.com (100% of donations go to Sandy Hook victims)

.

Why I Gave Money To Triangle Cares For Sandy Hook

Money is a poor proxy for love or support, but it creates a meaningful exchange. Some love and support even via a poor proxy is better than none. When the monster of senseless chaos visits we use money as a proxy exchange.

We give money to:

• Share our hearts.
• Reestablish meaning and order in the face of meaningless chaos.
• Make a statement, a vote really, for GOOD over EVIL.
• Because we can.
• Because giving changes US.

Because Giving Changes Us

I spent yesterday signing my life savings into the Elizabeth Martin and Duncan Smith Story of Cancer Trust. I could be bitter about saving for a “retirement” that thanks to having leukemia is unlikely, or I can give money as a proxy for love.  I help others and in so doing help myself.

Time is much too valuable to spend being bitter. I’m an Internet marketer. The web only has one direction, forward and one speed, faster. Turns out that is a good way to live one’s life.

I am not Eckart Tolle. I always write braver and more generous than I am (lol), but I give because it helps create connection and find meaning even when there is no “meaning” and we will never be able to understand.

Triangle Cares is the pure essence of the give. 100% of money raised is headed to ease, to whatever tiny degree, the void chaos created in Sandy Hook. We know “the monster”. The monster has many names such as cancer, hurricanes and random acts of violence. Sometimes the monster touches us.

In the moment when things we fear come to steal our life, love and belief, there is only one way to survive – with kindness and love from friends and family. Even if we never meet or know those who support and love us when the monster comes we know we are not alone. I gave money, a poor proxy for love, to Triangle Cares for Sandy Hook because giving allowed me to touch the face of God.

Donate To Triangle Cares For Sandy Hook 

Why Q&A Content Rocks Content Marketing

After joining Atlantic BT I was asked to evaluate client websites in 5 different business verticals. These verticals varied from Business Intelligence software to high end government research. A single theme kept coming up in my research – the power of Questions and Answer content. Q&A content was consistently over subscribed (high search counts) and under published (low competition). Why? Who knows, but conjecture says we often overlook the most basic things. Turns out those “basic things” when formed as Q&A content can be worth millions. This post is about how any small to medium sized business can mine the rich vein of golden Q&A content.

Evaluate websites by asking a series of cascading and linked questions such as:

Homepage PageRank (Use PageRank Checker)
Highest PageRank of Category Pages (use PageRank Checker)
# Links In (use Alexa)
PageSpread (#pages in Google, use site:www.URL.com and site:URL.com use higher number)
# of Twitter Followers (go to their Twitter page)
# Facebook Likes (go to their Facebook page)
Top 3 Competitors (who they think and then online)
* Same data as above for top 3 competitors.

Note: This post limits tool suggestions to free tools. We also use Raven Tools and SEOmoz but they aren’t free.

Know these metrics and you can know a website’s past and predict its future. One of the most difficult things to understand is how these metrics are tied to each other.

• PageRank is a signal of SEO strength or weakness.
• PageRank is tied to inbound links since Google places primary SEO value in links.
• High PageRank, low # of links in means the links in are highly valuable (probably .edu).
• High PageSpread (pages in Google) and LOW PageRank predicts low links in too.
• etc.

Look at Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) like these often enough and long enough and patterns form. Patterns form maps for where to dive for more detail.

Next Stop: Keywords

Who is your competition? Competition in the world is not necessarily the same as competition online. Use Google’s free Adwords Keyword tool to review and understand keyword demand. This is not the post to explain Google’s keyword tool, but a quick note.

There are three kinds of searches: broad, phrase and exact. Think of these as BIG, MEDIUM and SMALL result set generators. At this stage we are creating a model of keyword demand. Use broad match terms because actual values don’t matter as much as the relationships or patterns in the data.

Everything online is a model. In a model the veracity of numbers is not as important as being consistent with treatment. You aren’t searching for a mathematical truth as much as modeled patterns, actionable patterns.

You need to know three things about keywords:

• Search demand over some time (monthly is what is normally used).
• Estimated cost of buying the term (we aren’t buying but cost is an important data point).
• Competitiveness of the term (sites with the term in anchors or title).

Construct a spreadsheet and then create a simple calculation of “efficiency”. Efficiency divides competitive supply by keyword search demand to identify over subscribed and under published terms, the nirvana of all keyword research. Sort the sheet by the efficiency and you’ve created a “long tail” list of keywords.

Q&A Content: The American Meltdown Food Truck Test

In virtually every vertical we’ve studied the most commonly over subscribed and under published content is Questions and Answers. I’ve been fascinated by food trucks since reading a feature about how popular food trucks were becoming in LA.

Today’s content strategy test is to quickly determine Q&A content to help American Meltdown.

The American Meltdown Food Truck looks delicious. The team is hard working. Let’s pretend the American Meltdown gourmet food truck and team are our clients.

American Meltdown KPIs

Homepage PR: 4
Menu Page PR: 3
Photos Page PR: 2
PageSpread: 272
Links In: 33

* Seeing these metrics American Meltdown had to be good in social since a PR4 with only 33 inbound links means support has to come from social or they wouldn’t have a PR4.

Facebook Likes: 851
Twitter Follows: 2,021

** Social strength is indeed why American Meltdown earns a PR4 with only 33 inbound links.

American Meltdown Food Truck Keywords

There are probably 3 to 7 keyword “silos” for American Meltdown. It can take a day or two to fully explore a keyword silo such as “food truck”. Today’s research is condensed into a few hours to provide a general idea of how to explore keywords.

Legend: Keyword phrase, competitive ratio from Google higher is more competitive, Global Monthly Search demand for the keyword, Local Monthly Search Demand for the keyword, CPC or Cost Per Click when advertising on the keyword, Docs = documents returned a good competitive indicator with lower being less competitive and so better, Effic = Efficiency or demand divide by supply (documents) with higher being more “efficient” or more likely to generate positive Return On Investment (ROI). ..
. 

Q&A Content Wins Again

FoodTruck spelled with no space is our standout winner with high search demand and a small number of pages focusing on the term generating the highest “efficiency”. Efficiency means the chance of creating a positive return on investment (ROI) for work done on a keyword. It may seem strange to say “small” when there are a quarter of a million pages, but most search terms have millions of returns.

Another solid content phrase is, “What is a food truck”. If we use a tool such as the AnswerHub to create Q&A content to answer these questions there is a very good chance our content will rank well. There is something about forming a Question combined with an Answer that Google loves.

The best way to use a tool such as AnswerHub.com is seed some starter Q&A content, provide social capital for customers to create User Generated Content (UGC) and gamify the environment so it is easy to find loyal supporters.

American Meltdown needs a content strategy that can work while they are on the truck. This is another advantage of UGC generated Q&A content. Setting up an AnswerHub mini-site is easy and cheap compared to the SEO returns.

There are other Q&A tools from Bazaar Voice and OSQA, but I like AnswerHub’s gamification, ease of use and easy installation. AnswerHub.com is located in Cary and they have a supportive, creative and smart team.

Every website should have a store and every website, including our friends at American Meltdown, should have a dedicated Q&A environment powered by UGC and an occasional post from the team. I should have included AnswerHub in our 5 Magical Do More With Less Curation Tools, a post that went “mega-viral” with an audience past 1M thanks to power retweeters.

Q&A content can be worth millions in traffic and conversions for B2B and B2C websites. The keyword research above is only a beginning. If American Meltdown was our customer I would spend several days before finding the 5 keywords like “FoodTruck” that could be magical.

How would I use “FoodTruck”? Write content such as:

• 5 Differences between Food Trucks and FoodTrucks
• The FoodTruck Manifesto.
• Why FoodTrucks are way cooler than Food Trucks.
• Why American Meltdown is a FoodTruck not a Food Truck.
• FoodTruck Swag (the t-shirts etc. to support American Meltdown’s brand building).
• Etc.

If we wanted to create a castle around the keyword “FoodTruck” we might buy 2 to 7 URLs such as FoodTruckSwag, FoodTruckManifesto and FoodTruckGifts. These URLs are available and could prove immensely supportive to American Meltdown’s content strategy.

I would also be sure to create pages for Durham Food Truck Rodeo, What is a Food Truck and Food Truck Locations. American Meltdown has a calendar, but it is hard to engage with and understand. Since knowing where they are = money, I would rework the locations and calendar page substantially.

Since it seems like they have a regular circuit I would create pages for each place in the circuit. On these pages I would have a link to the “tracker”, pictures, some copy about what they like about that location and a Twitter roll. Twitter rolls, if positioned in the code correctly, can keep a webpage “alive” to Google. Some of this content I would put in the Q&A area, some I would include in the “stack” of American Meltdown pages.

Might want to take a quick look at Advanced SEO: Bleeding, Siloing and Bottling for more on how to form content silos for maximum impact.

Don’t Forget SEO Basics

Buying URLs with keywords is advanced Internet marketing. Before you go there, check SEO basics such as:

• Is your page title keyword dense?
• Do you have unique page titles?
• Is your body copy aligned with the listings you want?
• Are your images using alt text with keywords?
• Can visitors easily share your content via Facebook, Twitter and G+?

American Meltdown needs some SEO tuning. These days I tune AFTER working out a storytelling and User Generated Content (UGC) strategy. Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm changes made constantly improving site heuristics the most important metrics.

“Constantly improving” heuristics imply:

• Storytelling to promote page views.
• Photos and videos to promote time on site.
• Contests and games to promote user engagement.

Overwhelmed yet? Remember the power of Q&A content and you’ve found the secret RPG of content marketing.

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Scoop.it Leading The Lean Content Movement

Listening to Scoop.it CEO Guillaume Decugis discuss “Lean Content” on Blog Talk Radio it felt like they are on to something important. The Scoop.it team defines “lean content”  on their #leancontent Scoop as, “Resources, tools, tips, and tricks for the most efficient use of content with the minimum use of resources”. This definition echos one of my most viral posts 5 Magical Do More With Less Curation Tools. I tweeted into the broadcast to ask if “lean content” also meant creating less content that does more.

Yes, the Scoop.it team confirmed. One dimension of “lean content” is creating a deeper message faster with less effort. Seth Godin’s blog is very lean, usually only one idea at a time and rarely more than a three hundred words. Godin’s latest book, The Icarus Deception, isn’t really a “book” as much as a series of threaded vignettes.

Trends driving the lean content movement include:

• Content explosion even as available attention remains constant. 
• Advanced visualization techniques and skills. 
• Video gamification of everything. 
• Mobile tsunami. 
• Rise of Content Curation
• Nature of human attention.

The Content Explosion

Eric Schmidt tagged the content explosion at the 2010 Techonomy Conference when he said, “Every two days we create as much content as from the dawn of man up to the year 2003”. Schmidt also correctly identified the content explosion’s source – UGC (User Generated Content) flooding in from social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. UGC isn’t the only content driver these days. Velocity Partners, in an excellent SlideShare, notes how 9 out of 10 marketers plan much more content this year (2013). Here is Google Trends for the phrase “content marketing”:

The content marketing, or “inbound marketing”, worm has surely turned. When I preached content marketing in 2003 no one cared. Now everyone cares, but few know how to create or support great content. This means, as Velocity Partners in the UK noted, CRAP content is exploding too. Now your GREAT content will need to be twice as good to cut through the clutter.

Advancement In Visualization Techniques – Infographics

Have you noticed the Infogrpahics explosion? Some say infographics are over killed by their own success. I disagree. The visual representation of complex ideas will increase in value as content continues to flood over the dam. Lean content means lean presentation or gaining as much understanding from as few words as possible.

Video Gamification of Everything

Steven Johnson correctly speculated that video games have many benefits to managing contemporary life in an information age in his book Everything Bad Is Good For You. You don’t have to reach far to see “video gamification” whether it is in becoming the Mayor of Starbucks via FourSquare or how LinkedIn is using crowdsourced tagging to clean its records and set its algorithm via “recommendations”. What are smart phones if not amazing video game consoles.

Mobile Tsunami

We are connected 24/7/365. Most people have their phone within ten feet most of the day. Phones are the curators of our lives. We fill up every moment of “free time” with email curation, texting and watching video of crazy cats on smart phones, iPads and other mobile devices. The “Mobile First” movement suggests to begin any content marketing journey mobile and work backwards. I agree since to NOT use mobile devices as any content or campaign’s first view is to deny an important trend. Mobile also brings additional needs for lean content such as:

• Need for speed on the slower more densely packed mobile network.
• Different ergonomics as typing becomes a pain and visuals become critical.
• Need for arresting and informing visuals in less space and with less depth of field.

Rise of Content Curation

When I saw the Google Trends chart for “Content Curation” below in 2011 I created Atlantic Bt’s Content Curation Contest. Our contest would be followed by a flood of books, ideas and blog posts about the benefits of curating content such as: more efficient to create more reach, reinforces brand and SEO authority and plays well with Google’s “Quality Deserves Freshness” changes in their Panda and Penguin algorithm updates.

Nature of Human Attention

You don’t have to look far to see confirmation of the, “No one reads anymore”. Facebook pictures generate 35% more LIKES than other post.  A picture is worth a thousand words especially when discussing how much more visual we are than textual:

Lean Content Movement’s Three Legged Stool

The lean content movement is is about writing less but saying more, using curation, fast feedback loops and tools such as Scoop.it to live up to the promise of “less is more”. I’m a big fan of movements not campaigns and think my friends at Scoop.it are on to a big one with #leancontent.

How Small Businesses Create Sticky Content Marketing

During Free Internet Marketing Consulting Saturday this week, a clearly exasperated small business person asked a great question. “You say we have to create great content, but there is already a sea of great content. How can my content stand out?” A chiropractor named Todd asked this excellent question and, after some further discussion, we decided that VIDEO Q&A would be very sticky. As he shared, “I get asked the same questions over and over.”

Sticky Is as Sticky Does – VIDEO Marketing

Video content isn’t as deeply rooted as written content. Video, thanks to embed codes, skims along the surface of the web and is easily shared and promoted on social networks. In fact, Facebook is already the 2nd largest video player behind YouTube, because pictures and videos are the best kind of Facebook content. If Todd the Chiropractor decided to create five videos answering questions about back health, those questions his customers ask over and over, there’s no telling where his Q&A videos could show up.

Couple of things to remember when creating video marketing:

• Don’t JUST host on YouTube.
• Include transcripts to help SEO.
• Short is better than long (1 minute = great).
• Create an umbrella brand, such as Atlantic BT’s “conversations”.
• Q&A is a great format.
• Mix in “B-Roll” and graphics so it’s more than just talking heads.

Use Cliche, Convention and Common Understanding

Made to Stick, the Heath brothers’ book, is my favorite source for HOW TO make Internet marketing ideas sticky.  Their biggest lesson? Sell NEW from OLD. The Heath brothers created one of the best examples of how to build awareness of the NEW from an old archetype, analogy or metaphor by pasting a piece of duct tape on the cover of Made To Stick. You don’t have to teach anyone that duct tape is sticky, so their book concept is instantly understood.

Create Personas and Segments

When I describe Cure Cancer Starter, my Story of Cancer nonprofit foundation’s first project, I say, “It is like Kickstarter for cancer research,” to a technical audience. For a non-technical audience, an audience that may not know the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, I change my pitch to, “Cure Cancer Starter is like Facebook for cancer researchers and patients.”  Always use Made to Stick’s main lesson, build the new from the old, but modify your message to your audience.

Persona Examples

Dan the Overworked Man

• Age: 40’s
• Profession: White collar, IT 
• Sports: Runs, was a long distance runner in college
• Average Work Week: 60 hours plus some off hour tech support
• Commute: Drives an hour to and from work each day with some traffic
• Family: Married to Sally Stressed and has two teenagers, son Chip and daughter Mary. 
• History: Long history of back trouble since college, wears prescription orthopedics when runs.  
• Lifetime Value: Customer for more than a year with weekly adjustments.
• Social: Active on social media. 
• Technology: Desktop at work, laptop at home and phone when “on call” for tech support. 
• Gladwell: Connector / Maven. 

 

Sally Stressed

• Age: 40’s
• Profession: White collar, IT.
• Sports: Plays tennis with a group on Sundays after church.
• Average Work Week: 80 hours (job + managing home front).
• Commute: Drives half an hour to work dropping off junior high school age son Chip and daughter Macy before work.
• Family: Married to Dan the Overworked Man with two teenagers.
• History: Back trouble started after 2nd pregnancy and Macy’s birth.
• Lifetime Value: New customer, only comes once a month when she “can find the time”.
• Social: Active on Facebook and uses Facebook to organize tennis and book club. Also active in PTA.
• Technology: Lives on her phone and iPad.
• Gladwell: Salesperson (Sally is the organizer of her group selling tennis, book club and impromptu meetings).

 

How to Use Personas & Segments

Dan the Overworked Man and Sally Stressed are the same age and share many of the same environmental stresses. Despite their similarities, Todd the Chiropractor wouldn’t want to make the same offers or use the same language when communicating with Sally and Dan. Sally Stressed is more time compressed and less devoted to adjustments than is Dan the Overworked Man. Chances are good that Dan the Overworked Man sent Sally Stressed to see Todd the chiropractor for her first adjustment.  Sally would be defined by Gladwell, in his highly recommended marketing book The Tipping Point, as a “Salesperson”.

Gladwell would define Dan a Maven, a technical expert who shares with his peers. Mavens crave details and may embed and share Todd the Chiropractor’s videos. It is a great idea to ASK A MAVEN what subjects would appeal. Mavens love sharing their advice. Mavens may take Todd the Chiropractor’s videos and embed them on Facebook or include Todd’s videos on their personal blog, especially if they’ve been consulted.

Sally Stressed is unlikely to embed videos, but she might share a video with her friends at tennis or during a book club session. Sally responds to GROUP incentive, so her video should feature more people than Dan’s. Connection is more important than technical details for the Sally Stressed archetype. Todd the Chiropractor might have 15 seconds where 3 to 5 women discuss their adjustments in the round for the Sally Stressed group. Sally Stressed likes to sell her friends, so asking Sally how to appeal to her friends would increase her engagement and help shape Todd the Chiropractor’s message for women in the Sally Stressed group.

How Segments are Different From Personas

It can be tough, when creating personas, to remember you need enough specific information to enable marketing TO the persona and not so much that you’ve created a group of one. An archetype is a macro grouping. Sally Stressed represents a larger group of similar women who balance life, work and family. Dan the Overworked Man represents a group of men who were active in sports in college and have had to make compromises as life’s demands changed their journey. The Dan the Overworked Man group works too much and exercises too little (familiar right?, lol).

Personas and segments are different. You might only have two segments: new and returning customers, with a handful of personas within those two segments. If personas are organized by customer characteristics, then segments are more about how a business operates. Todd the Chiropractor might have a segment each for Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh (location), a segment for insurance and non (way customers pay) and a segment for customers who respond to deals (offers). Segments come from a small business’s data and operations. Personas come from customer characteristics (demographics and psychographics).

Data may show the Sally Stressed archetype responds to Groupon promotions, shares Groupon deals with friends and uses those offers in 30 days. The same data may show Dan the Overworked Man hates Groupon offers (low redemption). Some in the Dan the Overworked Man group may go beyond low redemption to complain about how crowded the office becomes with “new people”. Great marketers take feedback like Dan the Overworked Man’s and find ways to create marketing that feeds Sally Stressed’s need for group savings and Dan the Overworked Man’s need for a more intimate relationship with his Chiropractor.

All businesses must grow to prosper. A satisfied customer is the best advertising no business can “buy”. Risking a loyal customer like Dan for more sporadic customers like Sally would be a mistake, as Todd the Chiropractor’s data would show. Use personas to understand your customer’s needs and desires. Use segments to craft offers that don’t rob Peter to pay Paul.  Yes, “rob Peter to pay Paul” is an example of a Made to Stick-ism. Also highly recommend: Managing Content Marketing by Rose and Pulizzi for more “How To” help creating personas and segments.

What about you? Did you find this Tip of the Week helpful? What is your tip? Share your experience creating personas and segments, and we will curate your thoughts in.

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