Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

Enhancing Your Networking (social or otherwise)

Tuesday, March 27th, 2012

Every entrepreneur needs to network in one  form or another in order to bring in new business. There are many different ways this can be done from local networking groups to online social networking and everywhere in-between. No matter how you you decide to network (and yes I am aware that the way you treat individual networks might vary greatly), the dynamics are universal. So when it comes to networking always remember to SPEW. No, not kind of spew (eww).  I mean S.P.E.W. as in Support, Participate, Engage, Woo. Still not getting it? Maybe this will help:

SupportGoing into any networking situation you should always be willing to give of yourself. No one knows your industry better than you so when questions and/or opportunities arise, it is time to rise to the occasion. Give advice and suggest where people can go for help. This will not only set you up as an authority within your group for your industry but it will stick with the members of your group when they are interacting with others. And when any questions come up in conversation that pertain to your area of expertise, they will think of you and refer you without another thought.
ParticipateGet involved in the conversation. No matter what is being said take the time to listen and offer your perspectives on the topic based on your experience. This will help people get to know you through shared experience and help build the trust needed for business exchange.
EngageBe sociable with people in your networks. Get to know them and help them get to know you on a more personal level. The key to networking is the “Know Me”, “Like Me”, “Trust Me”. Trust is obviously the most important when it comes to getting people to refer others to you for business but that trust has to start somewhere. That starting point can be as simple as a few words about a common interest
WooActively promote your network and the people in it to others. Listen to what your group members say so that when you are interacting with others and questions come up about group members areas of expertise, you can return the referral favor.

If you are serious about your networking or even if you are just dabbling, you defiantly need to SPEW. And once you start to SPEW, you will wonder why you weren’t SPEWing all along. You might even find yourself SPEWing in your daily life just for fun.

So why are you still hanging out here? Get out there and start SPEWing. SPEW in your social Networks, SPEW in your local networks and SPEW everywhere in-between.

Enhancing client interactions through social media promotions

Saturday, December 24th, 2011

Most every business these days have finally broken down and entered the social media arena in one way or another but just setting up an account is not enough to truly make the medium work for you. Sure, setting up the accounts alone can help you with SEO initially because every footprint you make in the name of your company can have a positive impact in that area but that is a short-lived benefit at best of you don’t commit. The only way to really engage clients and potential clients in this brave new world is through regular updates. These updates can take a great many forms from syndicated blog postings for outlets like Facebook or simple re-tweeting of relevant information on Twitter but one of the most effective ways of interacting is through the old school use of a simple promotion.

This Ain’t Your Mama’s Promotion

Historically promotions were done in the form of a drawing. Clients and potential clients would need to go to a physical location in order to put in their entry and this was a great way to not only bring in new potential clients and reconnect with existing clients but it offered the opportunity to actually speak with the people involved. Unfortunately as things evolved into direct mail and then to email, this interactive component was lost for the most part and participation waned. Enter Social Media. The use of social media in business is working to bring some of the interactivity of yore back to the silicone landscape of today’s hermit rich environment. True, you still may not physically see the client or potential client (at least initially) but it is allowing an actual conversation to begin rather than the unidirectional neediness that businesses were directing into the cyberspace ether.

Make it Work!

I can see some nodding heads. You are seeing the potential but you are not sure how to do the Tim Gunn and Make it Work. Well, that can be a little more tricky because what works for one type of business might not work for another but in general contests are pretty universal. Contests are the oldest marketing trick in the book because they work. You set up a scenario, ask people to enter and they can potentially win a prize. It is as simple as that. And they work because the only thing you want to get out of it is the interaction with the people who participate.

A Shamelessly Self-Serving Example

As an example of how I interact with my clients each year, I give you the 12 Days of Mas Chris. This is a contest that was born out of a friend of mine wanting me to post a picture of myself on Facebook wearing a Santa hat. Seems like a rather innocuous request but as with everything else in my life, I took it to the extreme and posted multiple. They were so well received by friends and clients that I began the 12 Days of Mas Chris in which I would post a new photo of myself in a different Santa/Holiday hat each day for twelve days (And from there it evolved to be me also being inserted into different TV or Movie scenes wearing a holiday hat).

After all 12 days have been posted, people are able to vote on their favorite photo once a day for 5-7 days. I do a first, second and third place drawing from the entries and award prizes to the lucky few. In this case I give first place $50 toward any upcoming work, second place $25 toward upcoming work and third place a $10 Starbucks gift card.

Along the way clients comment on the photos and it allows me the opportunity to interact even if I am not currently doing any work for them.

The contest is so successful that I have clients asking when it is going to start because they enjoy my ridiculous photos almost as much as driving around their local neighborhoods looking at Christmas lights and have incorporated the 12 Days of Mas Chris into their annual Christmas traditions.

I enjoy creating the photos almost as much as clients and friends seem to enjoy seeing them each year and I get the added benefit of the additional interaction so it is a Win/Win/Win.

The Moral

The moral of the story is that no matter what you decide to do whether it is a simple concept or a very complex one, running promotions through your social media outlets can have a very positive impact on your customer relationships and you might just have a little fun along the way.

 

Making your Facebook Fan Page work for you

Thursday, November 10th, 2011

Ok, so you have joined the Social Media revolution. You have one of the basics covered with Facebook but just being out there only keeps you in the game. What you need now is to take the next step and find a way to enhance your position. Something that can help with online reputation management, brand visibility, and customer engagement all at the same time. So what is this glorious next step? Well, I can name that tune in one note… Optimization. Or to be more specific, optimizing your presence to maximize your reach. I know what you are thinking, “that sounds great, but it also sounds complicated”. Well, it is a lot simpler than you might think.

Here are some simple steps that you can take to optimize your online presence to help your new social media presence help you:

Branding
First things first. Before you do anything else you need to make sure that you are properly branded on your Facebook Fan Page. This is easy enough to do as long as you have at least 25 Fans already in place. Once you have 25 fans, Facebook will allow you to create a Vanity Name for your page so rather than www.facebook.com/80536624725 you can have www.facebook.com/GraphicTechnique. Big difference right? So instead of an accountants nightmare for a URL, you can make sure that people know who they are going to see and more importantly, they can then more easily tell their friends :). Just make sure to choose wisely when you setup your name because there are no takesy backsies. Once it is set you are stuck so make sure to come as close to your brand as possible when creating your ID.

Linking
It sounds pretty simple but you would be surprised how many companies do not take the simple step of connecting their website to their Facebook page. You have seen it on many sites and likely used it one some of them too. That little blue “F” icon that connects your brand to your new social network. You can do it any way you like and get as creative as you want with the art you use for the link (just make sure to brand it when you do by using your Facebook Page Vanity Name). Then just make sure to add it to as many of your pages as possible to increase the number of links to your page.

Accumulation
Now is where you bring the traffic by accumulating fans (or “Likes”) by driving traffic to your page. First up you can try some of the widgets that Facebook offers to display fan page content within your websites. You can follow it up with staying active on your page so that your content gets out there in the news feed. And if you are feeling really frisky you can even sponsor content or place ads on Facebook to help draw in new blood.

Once you are done setting up the basics for your Facebook traffic, it will be time to put the social media circle of life into motion letting Facebook show you some of its hidden potential by allowing it to drive traffic back to your regular website. Simply add Share and Like buttons to the nuggets of wisdom on your site and sit back and watch your brilliance be spread to the content hungry masses.

As your social media circle builds steam so to will the search engine links that help drive your organic SEO. And that organic SEO boost will in turn add more positive links for reputation management, which will also increase you brand visibility and customer engagement opportunities.

Now if you only had a blog things could be really awesome…

Crock Pot Marketing: A fix to and forget it appraoch to online marketing

Tuesday, October 4th, 2011

Marketing is the bane of most entrepreneurs existence. On one hand it is necessary to communicate with your potential customer base while on the other hand it can be an incredible time suck taking you away from the business of running your business. It needs to be done and as the business owner you are the ideal person to get potential customers the info they need, so what is the answer? I can name that tune in one note…Automation.

Marketing, Marketing, Will Robinson

Ok, so maybe Robbie the robot is not exactly the type of automation we are talking about here but a factory analogy is not too far off. Think about it, the key to marketing (once you have figured out your message and the best way to present it of course) is messaging consistently over time to your potential customer base. The problem that most entrepreneurs face is the same issue that plagued the manufacturing industry in years past, volume. And how did manufacturers resolve the issue? Automation. So why not apply a similar principle to your marketing efforts? I know I am not making an apples-to-apples comparison here but you get the idea. It is all about having the time to generate the appropriate volume whether it be physical product or marketing content. We have established that the key to marketing is the number of touches (and no, not bad touches) you make with a potential client over time but just because you want to connect with them on an ongoing basis does not mean that you have to come back next week at the same bat-time and same bat-channel to bang out more brilliant insights. It is hard enough for entrepreneurs to get into a marketing frame of mind for their own business (even if that is what they do for others) so why not maximize that time when lightning strikes and begin filling a crock pot with marketing gems so you can set it to cook slowly, releasing your brilliance as it heats over the course of an automated campaign?

Recipes for Success

Ok, now you are sold. You know you can count on one or two good days each quarter when you can not only concentrate on marketing your company but you are actually interested in doing it. You have the ingredients, now all that is left is to find the right appliance to turn your marketing recipe into the culinary masterpiece you know it to be. So what are the Consumer Reports best buys for automated marketing:

Blog
One of the easiest ways to automate your marketing efforts is through Scheduled blog posting.  Blog platforms often allow you to set a date and time for your postings to go live. WordPress is especially good at this. You can hack out 10 blog draft blog postings and then schedule them to go live at the date and time of your choosing. This allows you to sit down on that one day a quarter and get it all out, all of the industry innovations, customer epiphanies and other nuggets of brilliance related to your business that have been building up but you had not been able to release to the wild. Then once you have extracted every last drop of insight, you can go through and set your wisdom to a slow drip so its magic fingers will touch your clients as regularly as possible. So then you can get back to the business of running your business secure in the knowledge that even though you are not even thinking about marketing anymore, your clients are receiving the benefit of your experience. And once your marketing build up reaches a critical level again you can just rinse and repeat to reset the circle of life.

Email
Email can work in much the same way with the added benefit of your appliance restarting itself for each new subscription so each individual feels the magic fingers at the exact same rate and in the exact same order no matter when they turned on the heat. How does this miracle appliance work you ask? The simple answer is “AutoResponder”. Now I know what you are thinking, “hey, wait a minute, that is what I set when I go on vacation, how can that possible fulfill the promise that you have laid out?” But worry not, the name might be the same but the function is drastically different. Email providers like MailChimp, aWeber or even a more involved service like 1ShoppingCart allow you to set up serialized  autoresponders that run as a result of a subscription to a given email list. These autoresponders generally allow you to set up multiple emails as well as a time delay from the initial subscription so that they can be sent in the order you want them received and with the appropriate time delay between each so your touches can trickle out at the proper rate.

Social Media
Social Media content distribution can also be automated  as an additional prong in your email and/or blogging efforts. Most blogging platforms and email providers offer options for direct social media integration so as soon as your blast of radiance hits your blog or email system, the same information can be immediately distributed to your different social media outlets like Facebook, and Twitter allowing you to magnify your audience all while you are focusing your time on servicing existing customer and business needs.

The bottom line is that through small time commitments and simple automation, entrepreneurs can effectively market themselves without sacrificing the business they are trying to build in the process.

Building your business without getting lost in the minutia

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

Every entrepreneur wants to build their business but most new businesses have to be very lean in order to get off the ground. Unfortunately for most businesses that means doing without key things that can help their business thrive but that does not have to be the case. Just because you do not have the specific skills needed for a task and you cannot afford to have a full or even part-time employee around to get the things done that you need does not mean that you have to do without. There are inexpensive options available to give you the help you need so you can focus more on the business of building your business.

Picture it, your office, now. You, focusing on meeting your clients needs while your daily office/business needs are effortlessly handled by an unseen force? It is an amazing feeling right? You, focusing on the stuff that made you want to start your own business in the first place, not a care in the world. Sound too good to be true? What could this amazing unseen force be? It is none other than your Virtual Assistant. That’s right, your heard me…Virtual. And I am not talking about The H.A.L 9000 or some scary SkyNet kind of thing that will take your data in a desperate plot to take over the world. I am talking about highly skilled professionals working from home that can remotely help your back office run at peak efficiency.

Think about it like hiring a temp from an agency but rather than getting basic computer skills and the task for providing office space and equipment, you get someone with experience doing exactly what you need done who provides their own equipment and can help you at just about any hour of the day (within reason of course). You can find VA’s with skills that run the gamut from very broad skill sets to help you take care of stuff that piles up and keeps you from getting to more important things to very narrow specializations to help you with more of a surgical focus and everything in-between.

Need someone to answer the phones so you can get out for a few hours a day unencumbered?
No problem. There are many ways in which your local business calls can be routed to a VA so they make appointments, take messages or anything else you require.

Perhaps you have great marketing ideas and have no clue hoe to implement them?
That’s not a problem either. You can find marketing writers to help with your website and other marketing content.

Does Social Networking completely elude you?
You are covered there too with social media experts who can not only get you setup with the likes of Facebook and Twitter but will also keep it updated for you to keep your presence fresh.

Bookkeeping not really your bag, baby?
You can find a VA to handle your payables and receivables to ensure that you are always in good standing with your vendors while making sure that your clients are in good standing with you.

Web Guys getting you down?
You can even find someone to make your website updates for you so you don’t have to pay outrageous maintenance costs to unscrupulous web developers.

And instead of paying for someone 25-40 hours a week, you only pay for the time you use and the rates are very reasonable. So what all can you get? The sky’s the limit. If there is a need, chances are the is a VA out the that is specializing in easing that pain.

And the list goes on. If you need it done, chances are there is someone out there with the expertise you need, ready to help.

So what are you waiting for? You can get exactly the help you need without the unnecessary overhead so have a seat at the table, tuck in and help your business grow.

Adding some pizazz to your social media

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

As more and more marketing relies on the use of social media, and more and more customers use social media outlets as a primary means if communication, companies have to make more of a concerted effort to integrate their corporate identity into their different media outlets. It is no longer enough to just “Be” on Facebook or Twitter you have to be recognizable to your customers and potential customers but how to do it?

As social media has evolved so have the platforms on which they were built allowing users more and more control over the message they are sending. But not everyone is taking advantage of this personalization. Too many businesses make do with base templates rather than customizing the experience for their customers.

Blogging
WordPress is arguable the most prevalent blogging platform out there with literally thousands of free themes available to customize the look, feel and functionality of any given blog. Themes are easy to install, and easy to modify (OK, maybe easy is not the right word, and not all themes allow customization through the admin area but you can at very least change the header graphic to make it more in line with your current identity). Unfortunately, many site owners do not even get this far. Changing out that header graphic should be done at a minimum but with WordPress you can take it even further depending on your need.

Custom themes
So how do you know if you could benefit from a custom word press theme. Well, riddle me this, Batman – Do you have an established identity for your company? Wouldn’t it be great if a customer reading your blog KNEW they were reading a product from your company rather than having only a vague notion that they might have some affiliation with the writer (like their best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with the girl who is pretty sure she once had an out-of-body experience that possibly involved a company like the one who was writing all this great content). Well then what you might need is a custom theme. Custom themes can be as simple as a unique design and layout that is specifically created for your company and as involved as a great deal of custom functionality that allows you to show and maintain everything exactly they way you want it, in other words something that “ain’t your mammas blog”.

You can also take it a step further while you are at it. Word press has evolved into a full on CMS (content management system) and as such it is good for more than just blogging anymore. If you have a site and a blog hosted separately and would love to have it all under the same roof, now is the time. You can have a custom theme created to match your existing site (if it totally rocks) or if it is nothing to write home about and you are apt to put on your best John Cleese and say “now for something completely different”, you can just go with a whole new design. Either way you will be able to have the best of both worlds with your regular site pages and your blog posts all housed in the same easy to use CMS you have been used to. And depending on your functional requirements, the costs can be very reasonable too. Just think, a new site with built-in blog all while removing the need for a Web professional for ongoing updates. And if you are updating your site as often as is prudent for SEO that can begin to add up.

Twitter
I would bet that a day has not gone by of late when you have not heard about someone “tweeting” or how many followers someone might have but even if you were the one doing the talking, have you ever given any thought to what people see when they come across your brilliance while searching twitter for the absolutely most current info on your area of expertise? Chances are you are like far too many twitter users, you set up your account using the defaults and just started spewing your wisdom to anyone who would listen. This is not a bad thing by any means, after all as I have stated many times before, content is king. But in order to increase the number of subjects under your thought leadership you have to pay at least some attention to your identity so they when someone happens upon you, they’ll tell two friends or at very least be able to figure out how to learn more about their newest addiction…you.

In order to feed the masses chasing the dragon of your wisdom, you need make sure they can find your blog (I mean you can only get so much across 140 characters at a time) or better yet, your website so they can tell all of their friends about this great new resource for products and services. The best way to do this with twitter is by creating a custom theme for your twitter profile. There are a number of tools available to edit your account look and feel with something as simple as a color scheme that matches your corporate identity and something as involved as a custom background image that has your logo, photo and/or other pertinent information staring at your users as they soak up your brilliance.

Facebook
Many companies have bitten the bullet and setup a fan page for their company or product but like with their blogs, very few have taken the time to take advantage of all of the resources that are available to enhance the experience for their fans.

Profile picture
At very least, anyone with a Facebook fan page should use a custom profile picture that includes your logo as well as other pertinent company information so when someone arrives at you Wall page they know exactly where they are and how else to get in contact with you and although company info is available on the “info” tab, it is always better to make sure that your customers and potential customers do not have to hunt around for ways to get in contact with you.

Custom tabs
When a sweet profile picture is not enough, and getting them to the wall is not the goal, it is time create a custom landing page for your users. Making use of Facebook’s HTML Application allows you to add completely customized content to your fan page so you carry your corporate identity right into your fan page as well as add custom forms and more. And for those of you who want your fans and wannabe fans to land right in the middle of all this greatness, you are I luck because Facebook allows you to decide where they land.

Blog
The Networked Blogging application allows you to syndicate your blog content so other Facebook users can subscribe to it while at the same time displaying it for your Facebook Fans on its own tab of your Fan page.

These are just three examples of ways to enhance the user experience with your social media. Identity consistency across all marketing mediums helps customers and potential customers to know they are in the right place right away so they can concentrate on the pressing business of engaging you in conversations that will help them while providing you with valuable interactions that will ultimately help you grow your business.

Social networking for your social network

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

Just when you thought you were the last one to arrive at the social networking party, you realize that you got there just before your blog. Everyone talks about how you can leverage social media for your business but did you know that your blog can now take care of that all on its own? Thanks to one of the thousands of brilliant developers out there who make your life easier by developing applications for everyone’s favorite time suck, you can now syndicate your blog on Facebook allowing the teeming masses of yet undiscovered business potential to see your ramblings (good or bad) while they busily catch up with that varied list of butterflies that they try to keep up with daily.

Networked Blogs allows users to subscribe to your blog feed and have it displayed directly on their personal or Facebook Fan page. The best part is that rather than needing to go back and check out your favorite rantings (and/or astute business knowledge – tomato, tomato), the new entries post directly your wall as soon as they hit the net (you are there all day anyway, may as well make it time well spent).

And what is the bottom line of this wonderful new toy, you ask? Aside from the obvious user benefits, in essence, it allows your blog to have a go at social networking on its own. Just imagine what it can accomplish when left to its own devices in the worlds largest shampoo commercial. Think about it. You apply your brilliance to your keyboard and hit publish, but now instead of it just going to your Great Aunt Ruby and her Bridge club, you are now reaching John in Des Moines and Roxanne in Nelson, B.C.. But it doesn’t stop there because as the commercial goes, they tell two friends and so on and so on and so on…or at least one of their friends sees the feed and decides to read your post, and then one of his sees it when he subscribes and all of a sudden you have a whole new market of suburbanite professionals.

So who says that your social interactions actually require you? Just do with your blog what you have always done with you dog, make sure it is well fed and well-groomed, then head out in public and let it draw the chicks…uh, I mean people, to you.

How do I measure success with social media?

Friday, October 22nd, 2010

Success in any marketing endeavor all starts from the same basic formula: define your objectives, determine your placement and measure your results. Simple, right? Then why does social media marketing seem so daunting? Well, it may look daunting but looks can be deceiving. Although social media does not necessarily conform to traditional methods of measurement, the basics still apply, you just have to adjust your thinking from the outset and everything will fall into place.

Define objectives
Social media is a different animal from most marketing because the objectives are drastically different. Rather than trying to convince someone to buy your product directly, social media is more about capturing mind share. So the real objective in most cases is simply to start a conversation with potential customers that allows you to display your thought leadership about a certain topic. Once engaged in this manner, potential customers begin to see the benefits that you offer over your competition.

Placement
Once you have defined the objectives for your social media marketing the next thing to determine is a proper venue. Blogging, Facebook and Twitter have great broad reaching appeal but make sure to look into smaller more industry or interest centric social networks as well to determine the best place to start your conversation.

Measure
Now that you have the what and the where, the how of success measurement becomes infinitely easier. Since your objectives and placement are different for social media than they are for your other marketing efforts you need to conform your measurements to fit situation as well and in this case you will conform your measurement to the individual venue.

  • Members/Comments
    If you run a membership site or blog that allows users to comment on posting, you can use the number of members/comments as a barometer for the usefulness of the content. Not only that but the comments themselves can contain invaluable information related to your individual postings that can help you in other areas of marketing and product development.
  • Fans/Followers
    The number of “fans” or followers on sites like Facebook and Twitter indicate the popularity of specific content you are providing. While growth in the number of these over a period of time can show how well your messages are penetrating your target markets.
  • Social bookmarks
    The number of times your content has been posted to sites like Digg or Stumbleupon can indicate that not only is your message effective but that you are also building the mind share among potential customers.

And the list goes on and on. A unique measurement criterion can be determined for each type of if not each individual social media outlet but once the objective of your social media marketing campaign, the measurement metrics will very quickly present themselves for you.

Once you go through the process once you will have it down. Then all that you need to do is rinse and repeat with the basics for your different campaigns and don’t be afraid to tell people about your success. Who knows, your success with one campaign could be the source of another success just by spreading the word.

Know your reputation – Ignoring it won’t make it go away…

Friday, September 10th, 2010

Companies spend years building their reputations but all of that work can be for naught if they don’t know how to manage it. I know what you are thinking, you have a great reputation for excellent products and outstanding customer service, but the reputation you have cultivated with your loyal customers over the years may not be the same thing that potential clients are seeing online. The main reason for this is that once something gets loose on the Net it is almost (if not completely) impossible to remove.

All it takes is one negative blog posting on a popular site and new prospects might overlook you out of hand because that negative posting about your inferior quality products or your non-existent customer service is showing up with higher rankings than your well designed, fully optimized corporate site. This type of information can hang around long after they are posted whether or not they were ever true or have since been fixed. And although these things may never go away completely, there are things that can be done to mitigate their impact:

  1. Control the message
    The key to any reputation management plan is to control the message. Make sure that all of your online communications follow the same guidelines. Wherever the company is mentioned, it should always be portrayed in the same light which means knowing what is being said on Blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other online outlets is a must. It is a big job but you need to set aside time to review these sites every week.
  2. What to monitor?
    Find a group of blogs or other social medial outlets to monitor. Not just your company but competition, industry as a whole and messages to see what is resonating. You can usually start this with a simple Google search to see what is going on in your space. But don’t stop there, it is also a good idea to keep en eye on employee blogs and personal websites to identify possible internal risks to your online reputation as well.
  3. Making sense of it all
    Not all conversations will affect the company. Focus on the ones that impact perception. Make note of the audience impacted using each platform as a guide (Twitter=followers, Facebook=Fans, etc). Know what is being said and to whom so you can determine the best way to respond.

Once you are set controlling, monitoring and interpreting, you will be ready if things go south and you suddenly find yourself facing some high-ranking negative information. If this happens, you can use social media to set it right again. Time is of the essence and with the recent roll out of Google’s Caffeine, and the fact that you have been paying attention, you can now make a bigger impact even faster. Keeping track of your online reputation allows you to take out those negative blips before they fester into any significant business impact by pushing them down to the level of insignificance in the search engines.

Everyone can benefit from a little Caffeine

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

Regular content updates have always been key to any successful organic SEO campaign but not it is more important than ever with the recent roll out of Google’s new indexing system, Caffeine.

Big deal, right? What could possibly be so different that it will have any real impact on your already strongly positions site? Well, let me explain. The old indexing system was set up in layers, some would update faster than others but essentially it had to analyze the entire web before new updates would be seen causing significant delays between the time new information became available and when it would start to show up in a search. Now enter Caffeine. With Caffeine the system analyzes the web is much smaller segments allowing for new updates to be added to the index on a continual basis thus constantly refreshing results with the most up to date info for a given search.

From a searchers perspective, picture a deck of cards on a table and the only way to get to the card they want is by going through each card individually and sometimes upon reaching the bottom of the deck they realize that their card was not in the deck. Frustrating right? Now picture that same deck of cards but in order to access the card they want, they just through the deck in the air and the card they want lands in their hand while the other cards fall neatly back into the pile. That is essentially the difference between the way the old system worked compared to Caffeine. And with Caffeine’s faster updating, a person could just keep picking up the deck and throwing the cards in the air over and over and although sometimes their card would not be there, eventually it would. You can check out the differences for yourself at CompareCaffeine.com and if you don’t see anything significant right away, just wait a few minutes, I am sure one of your competitors will be catching up with you shortly.

Wow! Faster searches, and more relevant information, the Hell you say! I do and so what does this mean to you? It means it is time to get back into the game. No longer can you sit back on your rankings laughing gaily at your competition who is desperately trying to unseat you from your top ten Mt. Olympus. You need to get in shape and fight to keep that position. Thought Leadership is the name of the game and if your content does not support you as the authority, then some young upstart with better formed and more regularly updated content will unseat you in a quiet coup taking all you have gained.

Keeping your ranking, now more than ever, means making a commitment to regularly creating valuable content. This can be done in a variety of ways but the simplest way is by starting a blog because Caffeine checks news sites and blogs more often than it does regular site content. Got your blog set up already, great! Now make sure to augment your highly prized pros with effective cross linking through your other social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, del.icio.us and Technorati to further establish dominance over your competition.

Grab that scepter of authority and begin regaling your followers with tales of wonder with your unique content. And once you have begun, set a schedule and keep to it because although no every update will appear immediately in this brave new and highly Caffeinated world, the more regularly you make valuable updates to your content, the faster your site will be crawled going forward thus allowing you to tame the Organic SEO beast.