Pixel Position . Conversational SEO

Online marketers have a code, culture and vocabulary that is a foreign language to people who don’t live and breath Internet marketing geek speak.

A search marketer’s daily lexicon includes words about tactics and actions for sharing and virally spreading messages, building brands and helping rank websites on the front pages of search engines. Geek speak represents daily life online, our Internet marketing jargon and lingo used while participating in online communities.

Geek Speak for Tactics

Geek Speak relating to methods, or tactics,  for marketing and positioning a company’s products and services include some of the following:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Blogging, User Generated Content (UGC), Social Media Marketing (SMM), Social Media Optimization (SMO), Email Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Social Networking, Reputation Management

Does online marketing have more acronyms than government work?

Translate and learn some of this lingo at MarketingTerms.com, an Internet marketing terms reference.

Geek Speak for Actions

Internet marketers, as well as customers and non-marketing types who surf the Web and/or buy products online, are all part of the process. Our actions become part of the marketing message. You may not know the word or term for what you are doing when you’re online, but when you are speaking about a product or service, your language becomes part of that company’s brand.

Geek speak for daily actions through which we share include:

Tweet, Stumble, Thumb, Sphinn, Digg, Post, Tag

• Tweet - a message less than or equal to 140 characters posted on Twitter
• Thumb - the act of giving a thumbs up or thumbs down to cast your vote on a website post, article, photo on StumbleUpon. People who look through StumbleUpon then Stumble upon sites for which others have voted.
• Sphinn - voting approval or disapproval (desphinning) submissions made on Sphinn, the site where many in search marketing hang out to share stories
• Digg - another “vote” of approval to say you like an article
• Post - creating an article for a blog, a blog post
• Tag - adding a keyword to posts or inserting words into a tweet or bookmarking a site with tags (Delicious)

These terms relate to participation on social networks, also known as “socnets.”

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Affiliate Summit West, one of THE premier conferences on affiliate marketing, provided 3 days of rich, golden content. The hashtag and Twitter were premier online marketing tools used throughout the conference, making the information a gold mine for those who know where to search.

Are you interested in making money online? Pan for gold nuggets by sifting through the #ASWO9 hashtag. You’ll find tips, tricks, tools and insights into the lives of affiliate marketers.

Hashtag 101

A hashtag is a way of marking up a tag  with the pound sign, aka a “hash” – #. People who send messages via Twitter can use a common term (keyword or acronym) to ensure all messages related to the topic of the hashtag can be grouped together for reference.

Hashtag explained:

Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.

Hashtags were developed as a means to create “groupings” on Twitter.

#ASWO9 = Affiliate Summit West 2009

Attendees of Affiliate Summit West posted their notes, emotions, current happenings, and emotions by appending #ASW09 in their <=140-character tweets. These tweets into Twitter were sent through laptops and mobile phones. The #ASW09 hashtag grouped all these updates together for viewing in Twitter search for #ASW09.

This screen shot was taken on Jan 15, 2 days after the conference. (Yes, the conversation continues after Affiliate Summit West ended.)

• Twitter search was displayed on many projector screens throughout and during conference sessions. To say “the crowd was engaged” is an understatement!
• Speakers received questions while moderators watched Twitter for #ASW09 during Q&A.
• I panned for gold throughout the conference by checking my mobile phone and watching the stream of #ASW09 nuggets. (I was unable to take copious notes, because my laptop battery wouldn’t charge. The hashtag was my lifesaver.)

I posted a tweet to let others know about one excellent note-taker:

Read @VegasBill tweets for good ASW09 notes.

(I later met Bill and learned he is quite well known in Las Vegas and is a real estate agent and entrepreneur who keeps his followers informed about local Vegas news!)

The #ASW09 hashtag was also the method of letting others know about “after parties” and networking events.

Thanks to #ASW09, I knew where @rickgalan, one of my friends on Twitter and fellow winner of Copyblogger’s Gold Passes to Affiliate Summit, was during the conference. We met up a few times, thanks to this shiny Twitter hashtag.

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How do you feel about a news service on Twitter asking for donation requests?

I follow @BreakingNewsOn on Twitter. They do a great job of providing latest news and information. They have been the first to break some very big stories. I’m not sure how much I want to pay for this news service. How about you?

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Social Media goes pink for breast cancer awareness during October, and so have I. The month of October was declared “Breast Cancer Awareness Month” in 1985. Think Pink October!

Breast Cancer Awareness, a Brief History

Pink ribbons are often worn to commemorate a survivor or a love one who lost the battle. In recent years, corporations sponsored events, organizations put on races, grocery products were imprinted with pink ribbons. The goal has been increased awareness of and raising of money to fight breast cancer. Many of these campaigns continue. Some are still successful while others have not been. (More about that shortly.)

In 2007, viral marketing expanded reach of this campaign with the launch of television shows dedicated to breast cancer awareness – Deal or No Deal and Warriors in Pink were dedicated to raise awareness of breast cancer.

Social Media has gone pink for October in 2008. Read the rest of this entry »

Our conversation makes up your brand. We talk about our experiences with your product, your services, your customer service reps, your employees… We talk about you. Your brand is our conversation! Our perceptions of your company affect how we talk about you, how we influence other people, and how we open our wallets. We put our money where our mouths are!

Branding & Reputation Management

A brand is what someone associates with something else.

• What do people associate with you? Is it positive?
• What is your company trying to project?
• Who are you in the minds of your audience?

I just attended an online seminar, a Twebinar titled, “Who Owns Your Brand?” This was the second of a Summer Series on Social Media by Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan on Twitter).

Below are my top four nuggets from the Twebinar and my “take” on the importance of branding and reputation management.

Nugget 1: Social Media is like the Gutenberg Press for the Bible.

The Bible was once owned by the church. The people didn’t have access. Reading and interpretation of the Bible was controlled. The Gutenberg Press put the Bible into the hands of the people. It became cheap enough for them to have their own Bibles. Social Media and blogging have paralleled the power of information. Companies used to own and control their message. The Internet and blogging has redistributed control. We, the people, now have access – a voice. Read the rest of this entry »