Suse Barnes, Author at Digital Marketing Consulting, Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Marketing

Susby Turns One

March 17, 2010 Suse Barnes Leave a comment

Happy Birthday to Susby! We have been in business for one year now and it has been a wonderful experience. This post is to say thank you to everyone who has helped us this year. Big thank yous to all of our loyal clients, for choosing to work with us and also to our excellent partners for being people we can depend upon to make clients dreams happen. While the only constant especially on the Internet is change, we are honored to know and be able to work with such a special group of people. Each of you has been instrumental in keeping Susby in business and helping us learn, grow and succeed.

Thank you to Sue, Courtney, Kathy, Sarah, Mel and Jodi at PIER 39. You are a dynamic team and it is a real pleasure to work with you. I love our brainstorming sessions.

Thank you to Taylor, Katie and Dennis at Blue and Gold Fleet. There is never a dull moment on the bay with RocketBoat and the Blue and Gold Ferries to promote.

Thanks to Louise, Rich and Gary at the Japan Center Garage Corporation. You are all delightful people and I feel very fortunate to know you.

Thanks to Greg of Galliant Group. You have no idea how much I admire your courage, drive and passion for your business. It’s truly an honor to work with you and your team.

Thanks to Tim, Alf, Reinald, Matthew, Nazy, and Ernaz at Netfira. I am thoroughly enjoying the start-up vibe and learning so much from you.

Thanks to Paul and Mitchell of G-Tatts. I love working with musicians!

Thanks to Michelle at Dome Construction, Morgan at Oakland Chamber of Commerce, Jodie at Poster Compliance Center and Drew, Kathryn, Kat and Vicki at MacKenzie.

Thank you to Michelle at The Law Office of Michelle Brodie, the best workers’ compensation attorney in San Francisco. You have taught me more than you can imagine and I am so proud to be part of your successful practice.

Thank you to D’Layna at Vocal Downloads who kept me going when I was just starting out and continues to be a source of inspiration for your persistence, courage and for always believing in your dream.

Thanks to Amy of A2B Strategy for being a fan, supporter and patient client.

Thanks to Jennifer, my programmer and Chief Technology Expert, you are the best person I have ever worked with on development projects and I am very lucky to be able to continue working with you after more than 6 years.

Thanks to SF State for employing me to teach classes which help me stay current on industry trends. I learn so much from my students and have started many excellent relationships with you. Thank you for your interest in my classes and for continuing to stay in touch.

Thanks to my friends, especially MD at Quiet Action, you are a constant source of grounding, support and inspiration all at the same time. Michaela of Hayes Marketing and Communications, you are one of my favorite people and someone I respect and admire more than I can express. To Sandra and Orah who probably know more about me than anyone should, thanks so much for all your listening. Thanks to Nic for being a true friend always and for opening my eyes to new ways of thinking and being. Thanks to Anna, Steph and Brad at Click to Play Media, and Rob, Rob and Karoline at iConfident, for your friendship and collaboration on the video. Thanks to Jose at WikiKreate Expansion, for your smart ideas. Thanks to Renata of Being Daring for always being in my corner, and last but not least, I am grateful to Kate, Pablo and Isabel for your service on the Classes for Causes board of directors, for your constant support and encouragement and for being people I can trust and rely on always.

After one year in business, most of all I am grateful for the relationships I have started, friendships I hope I have earned and connections you have made with me. It is a pleasure working with you, talking with you and collaborating with you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

business, Life thankyou

How Can You Compete?

March 10, 2010 Suse Barnes Leave a comment

I love teaching. It’s one of my favorite things to do on a list that includes playing the clarinet, oil painting, snorkeling in Maui, running marathons, hiking and snowboarding. And it’s up there in my top three.

I just taught the second in a three part class called Maximizing Search Engine Marketing at SF State for the Integrated Marketing Program. In the first class last Tuesday I had such a great time I almost lost my voice. Tonight’s was less intense, but just as fun and a few of the students even came up and told me how much they enjoyed the reader I created for the class. That reader is in addition to the recommended “Inbound Marketing” book, which is excellent and I am honored to recommend, so I feel really grateful for those kind remarks.

George Kao mentioned a something to me in one of his webinars which I really like and am shameless sharing in almost every presentation I make. He said: “There is no such thing as competitors, only teachers.” It is so true. It is very easy to learn from competitors on the web and indeed they are our very best teachers.

I learn from teaching, from competing and from listening to the people that participate in my industry. I hope I am conveying this way of learning to my students. And most of all, to my students, I hope you realize and appreciate how much I learn from you. Thank you.

Here’s a reminder link to that excellent resource for beginner SEOs, thanks to @NealShaeffer

SEO search engines, SEO

Evidence of the Long Tail

March 4, 2010 Suse Barnes One comment

If you haven’t read The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson, read it. The book is much more entertaining that the Wikipedia definition.

I was just referred to this blog titled “Social Media Will Change Your Business” from one of my favorite Facebook contacts. She’s not really a friend and I don’t even remember how I am connected to her, but she posts really great quotes on Facebook and I am inspired daily. Thank you @claudiaguzman who I just today discovered that you are on Twitter. I’m really going to enjoy following you on Twitter too.

The blog (and introductory video) mentioned above, was last updated in February 2008. Yes, that’s a long time ago, but the story was first published in 2005 and the post is still receiving comments. That’s the power of the long tail. Post something once and it may just live on forever. If it’s on the web, people can find it, link to it, share it and help it spread. This is a great example of that and also the power of crowd sourcing.

What’s your favorite Long Tail story?

Blogging, business, Facebook, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter blogging, Social Media, Twitter

3 Reasons Why LinkedIn Polls are Useless

March 3, 2010 Suse Barnes Leave a comment

I’m not usually one to complain publicly about issues, but I think LinkedIn is missing a huge opportunity to improve user experience here.

Why LinkedIn Polls are Useless:

There is no way to share the poll to get feedback from your own network.
There is no way to share the poll on other social networks to solicit feedback
LinkedIn is not interested in fixing the issue.

So you have a business and you’re doing your due diligence and collecting feedback about your product or industry. LinkedIn seems like a good place to ask people for feedback because you’ve started building you network and there are people in it who may offer valuable opinions to your questions. You see a link to a poll that someone in your network has posted and because you’re like me and enjoy experimenting and learning by experience, you’re intrigued by the idea of creating your own poll on LinkedIn to see what kind of response you can get. So you set up the poll, which is really simple. Great job, LinkedIn, no problems there.

However, when you try to link to your handy dandy new poll to share it, you find you that the only share link that LinkedIn provides is one to the poll results. Well what good is that if no-one can find your poll and you can’t share it via Twitter, Facebook, your blog or other favorite social network? That’s right, a big fat zero! Thanks LinkedIn, you just lost my interest in this application.

So I wrote to LinkedIn customer support explaining that they are a little behind the times in this share economy that we live in today and suggested that they create a way for people to share the poll question screen with their network and provide a link to share this on other networks and here’s the response I received in return:
—-
Thread Response
(LinkedIn – Katie)
03/01/2010 02:04 PM
Dear Susan,

Thank you for contacting LinkedIn Customer Support.

The functionality described is not available.

Have a great day and thank you for being a valued member of our LinkedIn community!

Katie
LinkedIn Customer Support
—
Auto-Response
02/26/2010 02:11 PM
LinkedIn has received your question. A service professional will review and respond to your inquiry as quickly as possible. Thank you!

Check out our free Learning Center (http://learn.linkedin.com/training) offering learn at your own pace e-learning modules and free classes.
Search our online Customer Service Center (http://linkedin.custhelp.com) for LinkedIn FAQ topics.
—
Customer (Susan Barnes)
02/26/2010 02:11 PM
I would love to be able to share a poll that I create on LinkedIn with my other social networks so that I can get maximum reach and responses on the poll. Why don’t you make this easy?
I see the link to the results, but there is no link to share the actual poll.

Thanks,
Susan
—

In order to create a poll and share it with my LinkedIn network and other social communities, I am going to use something like Poll Daddy instead.

What do you think LinkedIn should do?

LinkedIn, Marketing, Social Media LinkedIn, Marketing, polls

WordPress Wickedness

February 8, 2010 Suse Barnes Leave a comment

I’ve been making a few updates to my site today and was frustrated by not seeing the changes showing up immediately, in real-time, after saving. This is annoying to me, because I am used to clicking the save button in content management sites where changes are instant. So trial and error is my friend today and if you’re reading this, hopefully my trial and error will save you from having to do it in the future. After an hour or so of investigation, I discovered that if you are saving changes in widgets and/or files in the Appearance editor, the changes don’t show until you have published or updated a blog post. Eureka! So simple right? Right!

Well if you missed it, here it is again: If you are struggling to see a change you made in a widget or on in files in the editor under the Appearance tab, try publishing a new post or even just updating one of your previous posts. Then review the other change you were trying to make. You will see the changes take effect immediately.

For example, I was changing the text in sidebar.php and it wasn’t updating on the live site. Finally after posting something and publishing, the text changes in the sidebar showed. Another issue was that I was trying to format my mailing list sign up widget (a form created with Google Spreadsheets) and it wasn’t letting me control the scrollbars. Update a post and Voila! scrollbars are gone.

This must have something to do with the way WordPress handles posts versus pages. The “save” button in pages and widgets is almost like a save to draft, in that there is a slight delay before you see the changes. Publishing posts seems to publish the whole site, i.e. all changes that have been saved are now published to the LIVE public site.

Another problem solved. Now I just need to remember it for the next time I am making edits to widgets or in the editor. Hopefully this post will joggle my memory and yours.

Have you had any similar experiences with WordPress?

Blogging, Uncategorized blogging, tip, WordPress

When you love what you do…

February 7, 2010 Suse Barnes Leave a comment

When you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like work. In fact it feels more like being on vacation. Last week I was on vacation in Salt Lake City Utah. I was snowboarding at a fabulous resort called Snowbird. Snowboarding Snowbird! Lucky me indeed!

I snowboarded for three days and then took a day off from vacation to get some work done. If work is work for you, you’re probably thinking I’m crazy, but if you really love what you do, you understand the meaning of work being fun. When work is fun and fulfilling it makes you smile, it’s motivating, it can make you laugh and feel happy. Admittedly I was a bit concerned that I enjoyed my day off from vacation so much, but then I looked at this video created by Click to Play Media and saw how happy this work makes me.

The video came out of an opportunity to consult with a very interesting start-up called iConfident. The make dental implant software to help dental professionals improve communication, build loyalty, and grow their practice. We looked at their website in terms of search engine optimization and discussed social media opportunities. Susby was collaborating with Click to Play Media who graciously produced this one minute video about Susby in the process. I think you can tell that how much fun it was. On days like this I really love my job.

BIG thank yous to Anna, Brad and Stephanie at Click to Play Media and also to Rob, Robbie and Karoline of iConfident for allowing us to shoot.

My advice to you if you’re not enjoying what you do: Find a way to play more. Do something that makes you smile, i.e. Do what you love, the money will follow. Connect, collaborate and start some conversations. The world revolves around relationships and communication and both are equally important.

Are you working or playing?

Marketing, Search, SEO, Social Media Search, SEO, Social Media, Susan Barnes, susby, video

Susan Barnes

January 6, 2010 Suse Barnes 4 comments

Hello, my name is Susan Barnes.

Since you’re reading this post, you either already know that I am Susan Barnes, or you found me through a search for “Susan Barnes.”

“So what?” you say. Well, as of the date of this post there are 1,130,000 results for a search on “Susan Barnes.” This number is likely to continue growing dramatically, so if you’re stumbling upon this post months or years after it was uploaded, look at the number of search results for Susan Barnes now.

How many search results does your name show on Google? Simply enter your name into the search box, and you’ll see either how common your name is, or how famous you are on Google. The higher the number of search results, the more common your name, and the more challenging it will be for you to get a first page ranking on Google or any other search engine for that matter, unless you control all the listings, because no-one else with your name is doing anything worth mentioning.

Since Susan Barnes is a very common name and there are several Susan Barnes’ with strong online presences (and also quite importantly that I am passionate about search engines,) I am intrigued by the phenomenon of getting a good ranking for your name on Google.

A recent book called Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah of HubSpot recommend that if you are hiring anyone to do any web, social media or online marketing work for you, you must confirm that they have a good digital footprint. This means that if you were looking to hire Susan Barnes to help you with Internet Marketing or Social Media, you would want her name and profile to have a high ranking on the first page of Google.

Today (January 6, 2010) if you Google “Susan Barnes” you’ll see results for Susan Barnes the actress, Susan Barnes the author, who also has the Susan Barnes Twitter handle. There’s Susan Barnes the realtor in Orlando, Florida, Susan Barnes the Firegoddess jewelry maker, Susan Barnes the painter in Mendocino, California, (incidentally I used to do a lot of oil painting in college too,) Susan Barnes the writer, Susan Barnes the art historian, Susan Barnes the social media expert on the east coast, among 1,129,990 others. There’s even a Susan Barnes somewhere back east who has no period in her gmail account (susanbarnes @ gmail . com) where my personal email is susan . barnes @ gmail . com and for I frequently get her mail. This is very disconcerting, since I’m sure she is likely getting my mail as well. When is Google going to fix this problem? Larry? Sergei?

As I write this post, the Susan Barnes that is me, is indeed listed on the first page of Google, but currently only because I have a Google profile. So lesson number one for those of you with common names like “Susan Barnes,” make sure you create your public Google profile.

Susan Barnes

Other ways to get your name listed at the top of a Google search:
2. Be someone that other people want to write about, i.e. get your name eg. Susan Barnes linked from websites that don’t belong to you. This is the same for keywords and search engine optimization. If your keyword appears in link text, it has more value to a search engine.
3. Use your name as your handle in Social Networks. This particular Susan Barnes did not do that, because there are too many Susan Barnes’ in the world (yes I am a bit bitter… grrrrrrr) and when I tried to get SusanBarnes on Facebook, SusanBarnes on Twitter they were already taken. I am Susan Barnes Internet Solutions Consultant on LinkedIn, where I was able to use my name as my handle. I am using Susby on Facebook, Susby on Twitter and Susan Barnes on LinkedIn.
For good examples/role models, see George Kao, Chris Brogan, or Brian Solis.
4. Write a blog post about yourself like this one.
5. Register a domain name with your name it, like susanbarnes.com, susanbarnes.net or susanbarnesauthor.com or susanbarneswriter.com.
6. Use your name in the title tag and meta description of your page or post.
7. Participate in social networks, because reputation is the new currency. Every time you post to Twitter for example, Google is still picking it up and indexing it. What does that tell those of you who can’t fathom why anyone would use Twitter?
8. If all else fails, start a new presence with a catchy name like Shoemoney, Daggle or Susby, but you’ll still need to spend a ton of time blogging, tweeting, updating and participating in order to be considered someone worth listing to Google.

Thank you for reading about the many Susan Barnes’.

Now it’s your turn: What’s your name and how often do you appear in search results?

Internet, Marketing, Search, SEO Marketing, SEO, Susan Barnes

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