Geoff Manning

It has been way too quiet at GeoffManning.com lately. My wife and I are getting ready for our first child (any day now) and there are some big changes coming up career wise. So both of those have consumed most of my time lately.

What Else I am Working On:

1. I am working with a friend at Partner Alliances on a site redesign for a Boston based Nonprofit Legal Assistance organization. The site is in Wordpress using a custom theme designed by my friend Jeff Baker (of Partner Alliances) and themed by David Bissett at Dimension Media.
2. I am helping out a friend launch her photography website. The site is Wordpress using the Sharpfolio theme created by WebRevolutionary.
3. Preparing for baby!!

I recently had the opportunity to exchange questions via email with Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com on a topic of my choosing in the area of Search Engine Marketing/Search Engine Optimization. My topic was how nonprofits can leverage search engine optimization and marketing tools to further their cause.

[ Geoff ] The recent announcement of the Google Grants program will certainly help level the playing field for non-profits. Could you tell me in your opinion just how important the Google Grants program will be for non-profits from an SEM standpoint?

[ Aaron ] The one area where Google Grants will help bring in direct revenues is for some fake charities set up to push business interests, where people donate valuable goods that get auctioned off in order to receive a tax break. Donate your car offers come to mind, because the tax loophole makes many people donating not care who gets the donation. Some donors may even shop for the maximum write off potential.

But for real charities, I think Google Grants should help them somewhat on an awareness front, but not to directly achieve donations…more to help them bring about awareness of issues that they support. Many non-profits have enough link equity that if they use some of the leading keyword research tools, use clarity in their language, and then make sure they optimize their page titles to focus on issues like world hunger, starving children, etc. that they should be able to get exposure for the issues. Then if people decide they care about those issues and how the non-profit wants to address them then they may donate and/or subscribe.

[ Geoff ] On SEOBook.com you have an article called “101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website”. Do you feel there are certain link building methods on that list that are more important to non-profits than others methods? Would you revise that list at all for non-profits or do they apply across the spectrum of businesses and industries?

[ Aaron ] I think that even more than with other issues, non-profits tend to be budget limited and fight some of the more destructive elements of corporate externalities.

Given their limited capital (and the vast capital of some competing forces in many markets) non-profits really need to connect to people on an emotional level. They need to make people enraged or concerned, and they need to turn their readers/watchers/learners into teachers to help spread their message.

Here are 6 concepts stemming from that idea

1. Syndicate content on sites like YouTube, like UNICEF did. This does 4 powerful things:
   • Video content is quite captivating, and helps make the invisible visible (see the above UNICEF video)
   • YouTube is a high authority site which has a lot of viewers
   • YouTube foots the bandwidth bill
   • Embeddable videos are easy to spread…and make your message go viral
2. Use newsletters and create a central blog people can subscribe to.
3. Some non-profits may even want to encourage guest bloggers from outsiders who really are passionate about the organization.
4. Outside of videos it helps to have other widgets too…sites like Kiva allow donors to become the marketers by syndicating a widget to their website.
5. Get people to feel involved in the process…let them feel ownership. I recently saw Brave New Films allow people to sponsor a message in the movie. Of course anyone who does that not only helps pay for the film, but they will also buy a copy, and watch it with their friends.
6. If possible try to sell media or other goodies in pairs to try to get people to share it with friends. Host bring a friend nights, etc.

I appreciate and thank Aaron taking the time to answer my questions. You can learn more about Aaron and SEO/SEM at SEOBook.com

Gary Vaynerchuk (from Wine Library TV) has marked today, April 3 2008 as “Good People Day”. The point behind it is to sing the praises of “good people” through your communication vehicle of choice: blog, twitter, pownce, facebook, etc.

Now, this assumes that you are creating media in those channels. If you aren’t, then take the time to talk about or make a recommendation for these “good people”. People that are doing good things in your community whether it is a physical place or an online community.

If you want an example of who I think is “good people” and really helping out communities that I am a part of then please visit these people. If you like what they are saying please let THEM know about it. It’s not an exhaustive list but these people are doing great things:

• CC Chapman
• Christopher S Penn
• Chris Brogan
• Curt Schilling
• Gary Vaynerchuk
• Jeff Pulver
• John Wall
• Mitch Joel

If you were to help bring an old-world marketing person into the new world of social media, how would you do it? What would you tell them? With so many great minds out there sharing their knowledge with all of us, many of what you would need to tell them has already been said.

I would like to work with a few close friends in the old-world of marketing to help bring them forward. Get them into the fishbowl with the rest of us and try to shatter this thing (as CC Chapman would say!).

Here is a list of the marketing blogs and podcasts that I currently follow:

• Awaken your Superhero - Christopher S Penn
• ChrisBrogan.com - Chris Brogan
• Gary Vaynerchuk - Gary Vaynerchuk
• Jaffe Juice - Joseph Jaffe
• Managing the Gray - CC Chapman
• Marketing over Coffee - Christopher S Penn and John Wall
• Ronin Marketeer - John Wall
• Seth’s Blog - Seth Godin
• Six Pixels of Separation - Mitch Joel

And here is my challenge:

To the community: I challenge you to fill in the gaps above. While they are all brilliant, I can’t be smart enough to have compiled a complete list.

To the bloggers and podcasters: What is your one or two best posts or episodes that would really explain the fundamental shift towards social media, networks, etc. that is currently happening?

Have a nagging computer or server issue? DNS or email not working the way you expect? I am offering free technical support/advice tonight March 28th 2008. If you have any questions or issues you can email them to me at geoff@geoffmanning.com and I will try to answer as many questions as I can.

Example topics:

• Desktop/Server issues
• email
• DNS
• Web hosting
• Wordpress
• Spam
• Anti-virus
• etc.

Note: This is not to be confused with the show Chris Pirillo has hosted in the past called: Free Live Tech Support Friday. I will try to answer as many questions as I can but I can’t make any guarantees! If I need to, I can connect remotely via my CrossLoop account.

I received an email from a close friend of mine today that happens to be a runner. He started running marathons last year and has battled through some tough injuries that would have certainly forced me to quit.

This year he wants to run for a charity, a cause. Here is the email he sent me (reprinted with his permission):

As you know I started running marathons last year. I completed the San Diego marathon in 4 hrs 27 minutes, the Cape Cod Marathon in 4 hrs 4 minutes and the Hartford 1/2 Marathon. I logged over 1300 miles and 6 pairs of sneakers last year. I also spent 12 weeks in physical therapy (bad knees).

Now I want to do it all over again this year, except I want to do it to help out other people. This year I am going to run for Curt’s Pitch for ALS (better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). I will be the first EVER to run the San Diego Marathon for Curt’s Pitch. If you could please help me raise money for this devastating disease, I and the ALS patients would really appreciate it.

If you would like to help out my friend please consider a donation by way of a check made out to:

The ALS Association MA Chapter

The check can be sent to Matt’s home:

Matt Labrie
82 West Central Street
Natick, Ma 01760

Please check out the Curt’s Pitch for ALS website for more information about the charity. The website also has more information about Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

While it is not necessarily a day, more of a concept, Adopt a Newb Day 2008 (AND 2008) has begun for me in full swing. If you follow the excellent tech podcast: Caffination then you have heard that Paul has started his AND 2008 campaign already as well. We first talked Adopt a Newb Day last month and if you don’t listen to Caffination, and your are a tech geek like me, then you should!

The concept is simple and it follows the ‘give a man a fish’/'teach a man to fish’ theory. Paul has turned that into ‘teach a man to tech’ and it is brilliant in it’s simplicity. There are so many things that come naturally to those more technologically inclined, it would be great for us to pay it forward.

So one of my AND 2008 projects has been to deploy a website for a close friend of mine that runs his own company. He has just started up recently and did not yet have a website. Slapping on my marketing geek hat I urged him to let me put up a website for him as it will open up a new sales channel for him and even the playing field with the competition. He agreed and here we are.

The ‘teach a man to fish’ concept here is that I developed the site entirely using the blogging platform wordpress (which runs geoffmanning.com by the way). I setup the templates and the general page structure and taught him how to manage his content using wordpress as a content management system (CMS).

The site is now live at Elite Sales and Marketing and he is starting to promote the site. The next step for us will be to drive traffic (and hopefully sales!) to the site. So Adopt a Newb yourself and keep us updated with the results!

I was on my way to dinner at Oceanaire Boston for Restaurant Week and recorded this great video of a dance performance by a local group.

If anyone knows who this group is then please let me know so I can give them credit.

Update:
I received a message via YouTube that the group is called: You Already Know (Y.A.K.) Thanks for the tip kesmalle

I have just completed the book Join the Conversation by Joseph Jaffe and as someone new to the Marketing and New Media space it certainly was an eye opener. Jaffe’s first book Life after the 30-second Spot ‘reveals how today’s brightest marketers are using new tactics to engage consumers and new avenues to take the place of TV, radio, and print’ (from the books website). Join the Conversation takes a similar approach and reveals ways brands and companies can reach consumers that are already fed-up or blind to traditional marketing techniques.

I first came upon Join the Conversation as part of Jaffe’s Use New Marketing to Prove New Marketing campaign (UNM2PNM for short). In UNM2PNM, Jaffe offered this book for free to individuals willing to read it and give it an honest review. He wanted to use the marketing techniques is his books to prove their own effectiveness, turning the book into it’s own case study. This is a pretty bold move as the reviewers are free to disagree with him and criticize his hard work. But after reading the book, I realized that it is a case of ‘eating ones own dog food‘, that Jaffe stands behind his work and feels confident that you will find value in it.

The biggest takeaway for me is that as a marketer (or brand manager, public relations, etc) you truly need to engage your customers as honestly as possible. This can be as simple as starting a blog and allowing comments on your corporate website, to one of several interesting techniques used by brands described in Jaffe’s book…sorry no spoilers here! But the key is that it is done honestly with no contrived conversations.

Jaffe incorporates this exact technique as the embodiment of the book where he references and provides a web link to posts on Jaffe Juice or the books website to get certain points across. The beauty of this technique is that you, as the consumer of the book, are free to follow that link and formulate your own opinion. If you disagree (or agree for that matter) you can post a comment and let him know. How’s that for opening the lines of communication between brand and consumer!

How much are you willing to spend to save time? When my wife and I had dinner Friday night we realized we were extremely short on…well, just about everything. So we fired up the old laptop and logged into our Peapod account to pick out some items.

• Fruit
• Veggies
• Cereal
• Snacks
• Bottled water
• Cat food
• Cat litter

All coming to a grand total of $85 plus a delivery charge of $10. We selected Sunday 9am delivery and the driver was here right on schedule for essentially an 8.5% convenience surcharge (plus a little tip). Well worth the money as opposed to going to the store and selecting the items aisle-by-aisle.

Peapod is a service provided by Stop and Shop  but I am sure there are similar services elsewhere and hopefully in your neck of the woods. What do you think? Is a $10 delivery charge for groceries worth it to you? Especially with the added convenience of a categorized and search based online shopping experience.