Well as we round out 2007, we look back to the year that it was.  In the Spring of 2007, we launched our new blog "ASK Enquiro" where we would answer questions that we received from clients, industry folk, co-workers and even the search engines themselves.  ASK Enquiro has kept us busy and 2008 looks to be even more busy as we have big plans for ASK Enquiro.  You'll have to stay tuned to see what we have planned over the next few months.

We received a number of questions on everything from search engine trends to video optimization, from Facebook to Web Analytics.  We're still sifting through the number of questions that we have received and you can expect to find commentary on them soon… but for now here's a look at a sample of some of the issues that we have discussed in 2007.

• What’s Hot at the Search Insider Summit? Two Words: Sep Kamvar
• Discover Your Ideal Blogging Formula
• Mobile SEO as a Part of B2B Online Marketing
• Ten Ways B2B Marketers Can Become Cutting Edge with Online Marketing
• Podcast: Marketing in the Google Era
• An Intimate View of the World through the Eyes of Google
• The New Role for Outsourced SEM
• The Three C’s of Search
• Advantages of In-house SEO
• Yahoo + Yang = Google + (Page + Brin)?
• B2B Marketing: What Do You Want as Part of Your Online Strategy?
• Come on Canada, It’s Time to Clue into Search!
• What Influences Universal Search?
• Planning for Personalization
• SEO 2.0: Will Content Still Be King?
• What is Google’s Universal Search?
• Should Google Acquire Facebook?
• Why is Online Reputation Management Important?
• Personalization doesn’t have to make search perfect, it just has to make search better
• What Should I do if my Blog’s Traffic has Plateaued?
• Google Alerts: Can You Use them for Online Reputation Management?
• What Are Some Organizational Challenges with SEO?
• How do I Leverage On-Site/Behavioral Targeting?
• How Important is the Yahoo Directory?
• What is Often Overlooked in a Web Analytics Implementation
• Website Usability: How Can You Improve It?
• Eye Tracking on Personalized Search: A Tough Nut to Crack
• Buzzing ‘Bout Ask
• How Can I Optimize My Videos?
• How Should I Compare Thee to Google?
• Is Facebook a Serious Threat to Google?
• In Search of B to B Landmarks
• Which Key Performance Indicators Will Be Important with Web 2.0?
• What Are Some Useful Video Optimization Resources?
• 4000 Ads a Day, and Counting
• What are 5 Great Mobile Marketing Resources?
• Your Facebook Group is Setup, Now What?
• How Can Yahoo Search Assist Be Leveraged as an SEO Tool
• Agencies Get Search? Don’t Hold Your Breath
• Does the Fact that Your Site is Hosted in a Different Country Affect Your Search Engine Rankings?
• Can Facebook Ads Work for You?
• Do Reciprocal Links Get More Weight Than Paid Links?
• Why Should I Set Up a Blog?
• Highlights from the Search: 2010 Webinar
• Where Can I Submit My Videos?
• What’s In Store for Search Marketing in 2008?

Over the duration of several days, I was given the task of uploading and optimizing online videos for a client. Over twenty videos were uploaded to Yahoo video, Google video, Metacafe and Youtube. It definitely doesn’t take a rocket scientist to upload videos or to optimize the content, but there are a few things that I would like to share if you plan on shooting your own video and then plan on uploading it to the internet.

1) Production

First and foremost, if one of your friends owns a professional series digital video camera (ie.Panasonic dvx series) or at the very least, a point and shoot digital video camera, do yourself a favor, borrow the camera. Unfortunately, Professional cameras are not as easy to operate as point and shoot digital video cameras. Chances are, if your friend owns a professional camera, they'll know how to operate it, and, if you’re really lucky this friend of yours will most likely lend a hand with your shoot. Obviously the aforementioned is an ideal situation and let’s face it, Mick Jagger said it best in the song “You can't always get what you want”. When this happens, it usually results in working with what you have. If you don't have the option of using a professional camera don't lose all faith in your production. Simply make sure you are using a digital camera with a still image optimizer; like a tripod. This will aid in any unwanted movement more commonly refereed to as pointless or unnecessary “noise”. Additionally, remember not to overuse both the zoom  controls or tilt and panning shots. The excessive use of both of these movements will add unnecessary noise. The more noise will actually decrease the amount in which your video can be compressed, leaving you with a larger sized and possibly choppy video. 

In general, keep your production simple and remember the following:

1. Use a digital camera.
2. Minimize the amount of unwanted noise by keeping your camera mounted to a tripod.
3. Keep your actor still. 
4. Reduce the use of zooming, panning and tilt shots.  

2) Optimizing Video 

Optimizing video content online is just as important as optimizing content for webpage’s. I found there wasn't much difference between the two, however, there are a few things to consider when optimizing online video content:

1. Submit your videos to the appropriate video directories.
2. Make sure your videos are associated within a relevant category.
3. Use keyword rich file names when naming your video (for example use, “Extreme-Off-Roading.wmv”, instead of “video_099123_01.wmv”).
4. Optimize the content in the description area of your video with keyword rich content. 5) Add relevant keyword rich tags.

I am sure you can now understand,  as I mentioned earlier in this article, optimizing online video content is not rocket science, anyone in their right mind can do it. 

It's that time of year when anybody and everybody with an opinion start making predictions for the upcoming year.  In order to make a prediction, you usually need to refer to some existing baseline or current event.  So as we wind down 2007 we reflect on what happend in search in 2007.  If you would like a recap, over at SEO-Space, I posted about some of the top search stories of 2007.  While, I'm not big on making predictions, it's always fun to reflect on what has happened and see what others are predicting will happen in 2008.

2007: The Year Search Got Personal

This past year saw search engines trying to get personal with their search results.  Whether it's through an iGoogle page or your own "My Stuff" page over at ASK, users were able to determine (somewhat) which results were presented to them.  ASK even went so far to offer users the ability to opt out of having their search history removed with their ASK Eraser feature. 

One of the most innovative moves by the search engines collectively was the transformation of the search results page.  It began with Google displaying Universal search results to include images, video, news stories, books, blog post and the like within their main search results.  From there ASK rolled out their ASK 3-D interface with a multi-panel search results page (my personal favorite) that offers a great user experience.  The other engines were a little slower out of the gate, but are now also incoporating the use of "blended search results".  All steps to get more personal with their users.  2007 was the year that search got personal.  For users who want to give up a little of their anonimity they received a richer search experience.

So what's in store for search in 2008?  Lee Odden over at Top Rank Online Marketing actually has a poll going on, on what will be the big stories in search marketing in 2008.  Some of the choices include:

• Death of Universal Search - (uh no, I highly doubt it)
• Mobile Search Explodes - this one's a gimme
• Social Media Marketing Explodes - not sure about this one.  Social media marketing tends to be over-rated in my opinion…. that is it doesn't work for everyone.
• Search Engine Consolidation - this is an interestig thought
• "Real" Solutions to Click Fraud - is click fraud truly that large of an issue?  This can be debated.
• Death of SEO as we know it - many are predicting and calling for this.  The one thing about SEO and online marketing is that change is inevitable.  SEO will undergo a major transformation, the fact is it already has.

You can see the entire list by visting Lee's blog.  As mentioned, I'm not big on making predictions, here are some things that I would like to see in 2008:

• ASK gaining a couple of percentage points in search market share - the team over at ASK has been working pretty hard to improve the user experience.  They have a really great product.  While it still needs a little work in terms of working to improve relevancy, the experience on an ASK results page is unlike no other search engine. 
• Somewhat accurate search volume numbers from a search engine - think that this will never happen?  Well Microsoft just happens to be gearing up with a very cool keyword tool (Keyword Service Platform) that will change how Webmasters, Ad agencies and site owners manage their keyword baskets.  I was lucky enough to be a part of a demo from Microsoft yesterday.  I must say that this tool was impressive unlike anything out there right now.  I personally have been waiting for such as tool.  Having somewhat accurate search volume numbers can help us improve our client's sites to ensure that when a user completes a query in a search engine, the most relevant result(s) shows up.  We're not looking to manipulate search engine results, we're looking to improve the results.  We've done our part now it's up to the search engines.
• PubCon becoming the Main Search Engine Conference - from what I have heard this may have already happened.  There seems to be some disappointment with Search Engine Strategies and the Search Marketing Expo conferences.  However, based on a number of reports from Pubcon 2007 suggest that the December event was the best search related conference of the year.  I'd like to see PubCon improve further and offer a better pricepoint so that more marketers and site owners could attend.
• Social Media Marketing to Mature - As mentioned earlier, I think that social media marketing is over-rated.  It simply doesn't work for everyone unless you are simply using it to crate a buzz about your business or brand.  As a lead gen tool I'm not so sure… at least not yet until we see more consistent success stories.  (and yes I know that it has worked well for some, but it depends on what your goals are.  If anyone can provide me with a bunch of successful case studies on social media marketing maybe I'll change my view on this, but for now there is too much hype around social media marketing.)
• Search Engines working together more often - I would like to see the search engines work together on consistent protocol to improve the user experience.  Let's take for example directory or Wikipedia listings.  I have an issue when I perform a query in Google or Yahoo or any other engine and Wikipedia listing show up at the top or near the top of the results.  Is there no way (other than opting in to a personalized page) that the engines can get together and determine a consistent way of dealing with Wikipedia listings?  Or how about reporting on external links to one's site?  Google Webmaster tools and Yahoo Site Explorer do an ok job, but what about more consistency?  And what about video, why should I have to submit a video to 5 or 10 video aggregator sites?
• A new search player to emerge - how cool would it be to see a new player in the search engine world emerge in 2008?  Can Google dominate forever?  (I'm specifically referring to the North American market here.)  Will we ever see another Google again when it comes to search?
• An affordable iPhone or gPhone (I know, no gPhone we have Android) that is made available here in Canada.  Mobile marketing will be big in 2008, no question.

So while I'm not sure about what's in store for search in 2008, I know what I'd like to see in '08.  What about you?  Where do you see search going in 2008?

Karl from Victoria, BC asks: Where Can I Look for a Career in Online Marketing?

Karl, from what I have heard and read there are a plethora of Search Marketing Jobs available at this time. For both Employers and Job Seekers it can be quite overwhelming to figure where to post/look for jobs in search marketing. Below are a list of resources to Find the right person or to Find the right online marketing career:

• CrunchBoard (from TechCrunch): The CrunchBoard job board gives you access to millions of technology and business savvy readers of TechCrunch and other top technology blogs. CrunchBoard is permanently linked from these sites.
• Marketing Pilgrim Job Board: This job board reaches an audience specialized in search marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing, web design & development, and many other Internet marketing skills.
• Web Analytics Association Job Listings: Search Marketing and Web Analytics jobs powered by the Web Analytics Association.
• Jobs in Search: Jobs In Search is a specialist international job site advertising Jobs and Careers within the Search Engine Industry.
• SEO Services Marketplace (from SEOMoz): The SEOmoz Marketplace is the single best resource for finding quality SEO companies, employees, jobs & contracts.
• SEO Jobs Gaolore: Oaseo: The primary goal of Oaseo is to serve as a vibrant job community for the growing numbers of search engine optimization and marketing professionals and employers throughout the U.S and eventually, hopefully the world.
• SEMPO Job Board: SEMPO is an industry organization designed to promote search engine marketing in general.
• MarketingJobs.com: Sales and Marketing Jobs across the US.
• SEOConsultatnts.com Jobs: A highly targeted audience and have a high rate of filling job positions in the search engine marketing industry. Review our listings of SEO jobs and careers below. SEO help wanted ads posted here are current as of 2007 November 04, Sunday.
• Web Analytics Jobs (Web Analytics Demystified): A Site Dedicated To Making Web Analytics Professionals More Successful.
• American Marketing Association - Job Listings: Job Board from American Marketing Association
• Ad Age Talent Networks: Marketing Resource for Job Seekers and Employers.

One of the most frequent questions that we get asked in recent months is where can I submit my videos.  We all know about YouTube and Google Video, but where else can you submit videos to?

So over at SEO-Space I compiled a list of the ultimate list of video sites which is being reproduced in it's entirety here.

Video optimization is one of the great ways to get your site into blended search results such as Google Universal Search results. The one thing to keep in mind is to optimize your videos so that they will be relevant to a user's query. If you have a video on eye tracking make sure that after you submit your video it is optimized and tagged for "eye tracking" and other eye -tracking related phrases.

So then that brings us to the next question. Where Should I Submit my Videos? Well currently some of our favorite video aggregator sites to submit to are:

YouTube - one of the most popular online video destinations out there right now.

Meta Cafe - Another popular video sharing site, where it is extremely easy to submit video to.

Yahoo! Video - as Yahoo begins to display more blended search results, having optimized video in Yahoo may prove beneficial.

Google Video - ditto for Google.

Veoh.com - Veoh.com is an advanced video hosting and sharing site with over 70,000 content publishers.

But guess what there are a ton of other video aggregator sites to submit to. With that here is the definitive list of Ultimate video sites as presented by SEO-Space.

Yesterday at the Search Insider Summit at Park City, I was precariously perched out on a limb. I kicked off the summit by defending my position that big agencies won’t “get” search. Given that the Summit attracts a fair number of attendees from the world of big agencies, I’m wondering if the organizers of the show (thanks Nick..thanks Ken) were setting me up for an unfortunate ski jump accident.

My opponent in the debate was Mike Margolin. If you’ll check the comments on the blog from the previous column, you’ll see that Mike and I started the debate there, and have now brought it to the ski hills of Utah.

“Doing” and “Getting” are Two Different Things 

My position is that search is something big agencies will “do” because they have to, but they’ll do so reluctantly. Search is not aligned to the cultural or creative DNA that defines a big agency. So, they’ll never “get” search. 

Mike’s position is that big agencies will absolutely “get” search, because they have no choice. The big agency table is where the brand strategies are determined, and search will play an integral role in that. In fact, if you’re not at the table, you’ll be shut out. 

What Does History Teach Us? 

The argument is a good one. It’s logical and seeming inevitable. But if you look at history, it’s also without much precedent. 

When discontinuous innovation happens (and search is definitely a discontinuous innovation) it’s almost never the established power players that adopt it and capitalize on it. I previously used the example of the adoption of electricity by corporate America, another discontinuous innovation. Then, the big, established companies had invested heavily in steam power. It took them 50 years to adopt electricity, even though the advantages of electrical power were obvious. By the time they make the move, younger, smaller, faster moving and more nimble companies had passed them by. Many of the industrial dinosaurs never recovered and died away.  

That’s how evolution works. The succeeding species replaces the previously entrenched one because of a change in DNA. But it’s also because of an underestimation of the importance of that change on the part of existing power species. Why would the dinosaurs change? From their vantage point, towering over the mammals, they were invulnerable. It was inevitable that they would prevail. Or so it seemed at the time. 

How’s the View up There? 

From the agency perspective, high atop their vast media buying empire, the agency monoliths seem invulnerable. It’s only if you’re scurrying around down here at ground level that you see the cracks in the ground underneath them.  

Finally, let’s touch on the fact of just how important search is. Search is just the thin edge of the wedge that’s forever changing the nature of marketing. Mass marketing is gone. Micro marketing is here, but the thing that makes search so fundamentally important is pull versus push. It’s about people (as fellow columnist Kaila Colbin pointed out in Tuesday’s column), but more than that, it’s about knowing them and meeting them half way, one person at a time. That’s what search does, and what it will do with increasing effectiveness over the next decade. This market doesn’t lend itself to mass campaigns. it means millions of micro campaigns.  

But here’s the fundamental reason why agencies won’t embrace search and it’s pull versus push paradigm. Agencies persuade. It’s why they exist. Their jobs are to use everything at their disposal – creativity, cleverness, research, targeting, emotional appeals..whatever it takes – to get us to buy something. That fits well with their push mentality. That’s why agencies love TV. At this point, TV is still the most persuasive medium out there. 

But you can’t persuade someone in search. Advertisers have tried, and it’s failed miserably. Search is, at best, multiple choice. Pick from A, B, C or D, based on which you think is the best match for your intent. There’s no room for persuasion. There’s only present, and picking, and the last of these, the fundamental outcome of search, is totally in the user’s control. We spend a few seconds making our decision. We don’t even read the text. We don’t need to be persuaded to learn more. We’ve already made that choice. So we’re immune to persuasion when we’re on a search engine. In fact, we’ll purposely ignore it. By trying to do search, agencies are going against their most fundamental nature.

Originally published in Mediapost's Search Insider, December 14, 2007  

Originally posted by Gord Hotchkiss on December 12 (www.outofmygord.com) 

Yesterday, I had the tremendous privilege of moderating a Webinar with our Search 2010 Panel: Marissa Mayer from Google, Larry Cornett from Yahoo, Justin Osmer from Microsoft, Daniel Read from Ask, Jakob Nielsen from the Nielsen Norman Group, Chris Sherman from Search Engine Land and Greg Sterling from Sterling Market Intelligence. It was a great conversation, and the full one hour Webinar is now available.

I won’t steal the panelists thunder, but the first question I posed to them was what they see as the biggest change to search in the coming year. Most pointed to the continued emergence of blended search results on the page, as well as more advances in disambiguating intent. A few panelists looked at the promise of mobile, driven by advances in mobile technology such as multi touch displays, embodied in the iPhone. After listening again to the various comments, I’ve put them together into 4 major driving forces for Search in 2008 and beyond:

Disambiguation

The quest to understand what we want when we launch our search is nothing new. How do you deal with the complexities and ambiguity of the English language (or any language, for that matter) when you’re trying to make the connection between the vagaries of unexpressed intent and billions of possible matches? All we have to go by is a word or two, which may have multiple meanings. While this has always been the holy grail of search, expect to see some new approaches tested in 2008. We’ve already seen some of this with the search refinement and assist features seen on Yahoo, Live and Ask. Google also has their query refinement tool (at the bottom of the results page), but as Marissa Mayer pointed out in the Webinar, Google believes that as much disambiguation as possible should happen behind the scenes, transparent to the user.

The challenge with this, as Marissa also acknowledged in the Webinar, is that there are no big innovations on the horizon to help with untangling intent in the background. Personalization probably holds the biggest promise in this regard, and although it was regarded with varying degrees of optimism in the Webinar, no one believes personalization will make too much of a difference to the user in the next year or so. All the engines are still just dipping their toes in the murky waters of personalization. Using the social graph, or tracking the behavior of communities is another potential signal to use for disambiguation, but again, we’re at the earliest stages of this. And, as Jakob Nielsen pointed out, looking at community patterns might offer some help for the head phrases, but the numbers get too small as we move into the long tail to offer much guidance.

For the foreseeable future, disambiguation seems to rest with the user, through offering tools to help refine and focus queries, and possibly doing some behind the scenes disambiguation on the most popular and least ambiguous of queries, where the engines can be reasonably confident in the intent of the user. The example we used in the Webinar was Feist, a very popular Canadian recording artist. But “Feist” is also a breed of dog. If there’s a search for Feist, the engines can be fairly confident, based on the popularity of the artist, that the user is probably looking for information on her, not the dog.

More Useful Results

The second of the 4 major areas goes to the nature of the results themselves, and what is returned to us with our query. Universal (Federated, Blended, etc) results are the first step in this direction. Expect to see more of this. Daniel Read from Ask led the charge in this direction, with their much lauded 3D interface. As engines crawl more sources of information, including videos, audio, news stories, books and local directories, they can match more of this information to user’s interpreted intent. This will drive the biggest visible changes in search over the short term. For the head phrases, those high volume, less ambiguous queries, engines will become increasing confident in providing us a richer, more functional result set. This will mean media results for entertainment queries, maps and directory information for local queries and news results for topics of interest.

But Marissa Mayer feels we’re still a long ways from maximizing the potential of the plain old traditional web results. She pointed out some examples of results where Google’s teams had been working on pulling more relevant and informative snippets, and showing fresher results for time sensitive topics. Jakob Nielsen chimed in by saying that none of the examples shown during the Webinar were particularly useful. And here comes the crux of a search engine’s job. Just using relevance as the sole criteria isn’t good enough. For someone looking for when the iPhone might be available in Canada, there are a number of pages that could be equally relevant, based on content alone, but some of those pages could be far more useful than others. The concept of usefulness as a ranking factor hasn’t really been explored by any of the algorithms, and it’s a far more subtle and nuanced factor than pure relevance. It depends on gathering the interactions of users with the pages themselves. And, in this case, we’re again reliant on the popularity of a page. It will be much easier to gather data and accurately determine “usefulness” for popular queries than it will be for long tail queries.

By the way, the concept of usefulness extends to advertising as well. A good portion of the Webinar was devoted to how advertising might remain in sync with organic results, whatever their form. Increasingly, as long as usefulness is the criteria, I see the line blurring between what is editorial content and what is advertising on the page. If it gets a user closer to their intent, then it’s served its purpose.

Mobile

When we’re talking innovation, the panel seems to see only incremental innovation in the near term on the desktop. But as a few panelists pointed out in the interview, mobile is in the midst of disruptive innovation right now. The iPhone marked a significant upping of the bar, with its multitouch capabilities and smoother user experience. What the iPhone did in the mobile world is move the user experience up to a whole new level. With that, there’s suddenly a competitive storm brewing to meet and exceed the iPhone’s capabilities. As the hardware and operating systems queue up for a series of dramatic improvements, it can only bode well for the mobile online experience, including search.

Remember, there’s a pent up flood of functionality just waiting in the mobile space for the hardware to handle it. The triad of bottlenecks that have restricted mobile innovation – speed of connectivity, processing power and limitations of the user interface – all appear that they could break loose at the same time. When those give way, all the players are ready to significantly up the ante in what the mobile search experience could look like.

Mash Ups

One area that we were only able to touch on tangentially (an hour was far too short a time with this group!) is how search functionality will start showing up in more and more places. Already, we’re seeing search being a key component in many mash ups. The ability to put this functionality under the hood and have it power more and more functional interfaces, combined with other 2.0 and 3.0 capabilities, will drive the web forward.

But it’s not only on the desktop that we’ll see search go undercover. We’ve already touched on mobile, but also expect to see search functionality built into smarter appliances (a fridge that scans for recipes and specials at the grocery store) and entertainment centers (on the fly searching for a video or audio file). Microsoft’s surface computing technology will bring smart interfaces to every corner of our home, and connectivity and searchability goes hand in hand with these interfaces between our physical and virtual worlds.

That touches on just some of the topics we covered in our one hour with the panelists. You can access the full Webinar at http://www.enquiroresearch.com/future-of-search-2010.aspx. We’ll be following up in 2008 with more topics, so stay tuned!

As chair of SEMPO, one of the things I’ve seen establish itself is the regular SEMPO state of the market survey. Every year about this time, we field a gargantuan survey (in excess of over 400 questions, including all the possible branches) in which we attempt to capture a relatively complete snapshot of where search is at at this given point in time. We use the data captured to analyze year over year trends and attempt to project forward at how these trends might develop over the coming year. This year, in addition to the main survey, which primarily collects North American data, we’ll also be launching a smaller European version, scheduled for the New Year. 

One of the things that are interesting about the survey is that it can act as an early warning system for emerging trends. One of the biggest variances last year was the clear signal that many marketers would ideally like to move their search marketing management in-house. Over the course of the year, we’ve certainly seen this start to happen, and my suspicion is that we’ll continue to see this trend play out in 2008 and beyond. In house marketers are the fastest growing SEMPO membership segment. By digging this point out of the data, we were able to put it on the radar of search agencies, letting them know that perhaps the value provided wasn’t quite up to what clients were looking for. It may not have been good news, but it was vital. 

Two years ago, click fraud emerged as a major concern. While the urgency of click fraud seems to have lessened, it’s still a nagging doubt that seems to linger in the background and throw a shadow on the effectiveness of search as a marketing channel. 

Other data points worth mentioning: Last year, for the first time, search seemed to pierce the consciousness of C Level executives. They started paying attention to search as a channel. This literally appeared out of nowhere, as one year previous they were barely aware of search. Heightened awareness on the executive floor might be responsible for some of the directives to bring search in-house. If you want something to capture the attention of executives, make it a budget line item. For many companies, search broke this threshold in 2007. 

Also, while many marketers seemed to feel there was still room to up their keyphrase bid amounts, the ceiling seemed closer than ever before. Pricing fatigue became a reality for more and more search marketers.  

This was the backwards look at the findings of last year’s survey. This time around, it will be interesting to see how what has arguably been the biggest year of change in search has impacted marketers. With the rollout of unified (or universal, or blended, or 3D, or whatever the label du jour is) and personalized search, the interface of search has undergone some pretty dramatic changes. While the impact on most of our campaigns has been minimal to this point, we’re all thinking about how this might change the game. It will be interesting to see what changes in attitudes towards search as a channel boil out of the data.  

So, if you have a few minutes to spare (about 10 to 15 should do the trick) make sure you take this year’s survey. Like any survey, its accuracy is totally dependent on how many people volunteer their information. The more that take it, the more we can slice and dice the data and pull more nuggets out of it. And, by taking it, you get the first look at the findings. 

Finally, a word of thanks to my SEMPO research co-hort, Kevin Lee from Did-It. He puts a lot of hours into question formulation and testing every year, all of them as a volunteer. This survey is really his baby.

Originally published in Mediapost's Search Insider, December 6, 2007  

We recently held an open house at Enquiro to let people from Kelowna, see what we do at Enquiro.  I was a part of a panel for two sessions that discussed everything from social networks, to PPC to search engine optimization and web design.  After the sessions a number of people came up to me and asked me about SEO, Facebook, Google and the like.  However I was surprised at the number of questions that I received on the topic of blogs and about blogging. 

A couple people wondered why they should blog and what blogging could do for them.  In fact one person made a comment that the Internet has too many blogs… that's a topic that can be debated another time.  After speaking with a few folks, I thought that there must be a number of people who are outside of the SEO industry who may not know just how powerful blogging can be. Hence this post… I wanted to step back and in simple terms review why seting up a blog can be a useful venture.

People create blogs for a wide variety of reasons.  Some of the reasons why people blog include:

• You can blog to share your thoughts about a specific topic such as a product you're interested in, an experience you ad.  Frankly you can blog about pretty much anything you like.
• You can blog to communicate your satisfaction or frustration with a product or company
• You can blog to drive traffic to your other web properties.
• You can blog to earn money.
• From an SEO standpoint, you can blog to obtain links from other sites and blogs.
• You can blog to add content to your site.

Remember how students would pass notes in school or how people would write letters to the editor of a newspaper or magazine?  Well blogging is the equivalent to this in the new online world that has taken shape over the past decade.

From a business poing of view, you can blog for a variety of other reasons some of which include:

• To interact with your clients and customers.
• To build your authority on a topic of interest.
• To communicate the upcoming launch of a new product.
• To build brand awareness.
• To address reputation management issues.
• To build trust with others.  Blogging can help humanize you and your business.
• To provide a feedback mechanism via comments where users can address your point of view with one of their own.
• To generate a viral buzz about your product, your company or your industry.

So as you can see there are many reasons why people blog.  Some people even blog just for fun.  The have a lot to say about nothing… but to them they are communicating everything.  While blogging isn't for everyone, it is a great way for people to obtain a presence in the online world.  It's a great way to be heard and it's a great way to find out information fast (by the way did you know that Britney Spears is pregnant again?)

If you are looking to start a blog here are a couple of quick tips to remember.

Three Overlooked Blogging Tips

Blog Consistently - try to blog on a regular basis.  Once you establish a following, your readers will appreciate regular posts.

Write your own blog posts - It's ok to have a guest writer from time to time, but if you create a blog make sure that you participate.

Keep Your Posts Interesting - don't ramble on an on about something that nobody cares about… while you may start a blog to vent, keep your post interesting and informative.