July-August 2006 - Issue 52

• Intro
  
• Article - The Godfather Approach to High Search Rankings: by Karma Martell
  
• The Office Corner
  
• Grammar Question of the Month - Using "The" with place names
  
• Tech Tips by Terence Kierans - Excel and Outlook
  
• Tech Corner
  
• Writing Corner
  
• Word of the Month - Contrapositive
  
• Recommendations
  
• Judy's Corner
  
• Judy's Photo Gallery
  

* Gerry McGovern says, "There is no point in making the customer king. Royalty has had its day. What you need to do is make the customer your CEO. Make them the most important person in your organization. Make them the center of everything you do." Read the full article at http://tinyurl.com/qck5v.

* My daughter and family live near Colorado Springs, and recently their house got hit by lightning during a powerful storm. It ruined two of their TVs and blew out three of their phones. All of the boxes plugged into the walls were blown completely apart. They're still assessing the damages. Shannon said, "It's a good thing I had an extra telephone since all three of ours were totally ruined. My computer was plugged into one of those power strips and it was in one of the outlets that got zapped but it protected the computer. The power strip isn't working but the computer plugged in directly is."

The family had their TVs plugged into surge protectors, and while there are still some things wrong, the color and images are coming back on them. It doesn't hurt to plug your TVs into them as well as your computer(s). You never know. And what's next for Shannon and family? A lightning rod. And lots of repairs.

An addendum: Do you have a backup of your computer data in case it goes down? We'll have an article on this later this year.

By Karma Martell, President, KarmaCom Inc.

Are you an online marketer involved in search engine optimization? Let me introduce a new paradigm for you. If I were pitching it to a Hollywood studio exec (anyone remember Robert Altman's movie, "The Player?"), I would say, "It's interactive PR meets WOMMA (word of mouth marketing) meets SEO." If it were a movie title, I would call it "The Godfather," after Michael Corleone's famous line, "Just when I thought I was out they pull me back in."

Yes, we're going to talk about the advertising dynamic of pull versus push. Though the terms are bandied around often enough, in SEO, the target prospect is one step removed. When we optimize searches organically, we are pushing the search engines, not the search user, to give a web site a top 30 result. Here's some background:

For a long time, search engine optimization (SEO) was the great equalizer in online marketing. Search engine success was not determined solely by advertising clout. Winning the SEO game was determined by the level of the Ebusiness' awareness as to the importance of search in the overall marketing mix.

Lesser players in medium-large size niches could rub top-30-results shoulders with their larger counterparts--or even rise head and shoulders above them. Using marketing know-how and nuance, small fries could win coveted rankings by optimization of their core message through smart, keyword-rich, SE-friendly copy, the right site description and title tags, deep linking, etc.

Now the landscape is getting ever-more crowded. While I am still and always will be a strong advocate of organic (non-paid or "natural") SEO, I have become a realist in reining in clients' expectations as to what is possible to achieve in a 12-month period.

The irony is that new sites get indexed faster than ever, but are slower to come up in the rankings. The proliferation and sophistication of competition, combined with increasingly larger interactive advertising budgets, makes it very tough to see quick results. However, tenacious marketers, even those with small budgets, can still prevail. Organic search success requires patience and a long-term commitment.

Case in point: as of this writing, a microsite I put up for an independent teen pop artist and model now ranks #1 on Yahoo, All the Web, Go, Alta Vista, Lycos and MSN for the term, "cool teenager websites." On Google that phrase holds #10 and #13. The rankings coexist in a universe of over 8 million web citations for that key phrase. The site also places in the top thirty results for "tower record music" on several engines. All told the microsite has 55 listings in top 30 positions--including 11 first positions. But that didn't happen in a day. We have been at this for over two years - and with an indie-sized budget.

Pull: The Shorter - Term Solution

As an advocate and veteran of drive-to-web PR campaigns and strategy, I have encouraged many clients to include a PR effort as part of their traffic-building campaign. I call the mix of search-optimized PR feature placements and the combined buzz factor of online chatter from blogs, social network sites, user- generated content sites, viral email and offline word of mouth, "Interactive PR."

With this added strategy, clients no longer have to wait for prospects to find their site as a result of a search query. They are no longer pushing the search engines; they are pulling in prospects and forcing the search engines to rank their content based on the sheer amount of activity. Prospects are driven to the site by contextual features they have heard or seen. The impression is editorial in nature and seizes a contextual opportunity. It's the equivalent of generating "brand buzz" so that prospects are proactively looking for your site. That's pull, literally.

The added benefits are many. The client's web site is pulled into the search engine radar because of the buzz generated. A proliferation of user queries and incoming site links from relevant content sources can change the search engine results landscape fairly quickly. For example, at this writing, Italy's soccer team won the World Cup three days ago. My Google query today for "Italy wins world cup" returned 1,220,000 exact results!

Your site or client may not garner millions of queries in a three-day period, but even a modest integrated marketing PR campaign can still achieve dramatic results. Community Voice Mail, www.cvm.org, a nonprofit client, saw (exact match) Google site citations rise to 10,000 in less than three months and then to over 36,000 in less than six months.

When the buzz reaches "critical mass," amazing things can happen. For CVM, the tipping point occurred when the founder of the world's most-read blog, Boing Boing, saw a post about CVM in a small-but-important blog he read regularly. Once Boing Boing wrote about Community Voice Mail, thousands of other bloggers did too. The critical mass occurred on Christmas week, in the midst of a holiday Ecard fundraiser my agency created for CVM. The bottom line: the ROI-driven integrated campaign resulted in helping the charity break all previous records for individual donations within a given year--and by a huge margin.

Think about how you can create brand evangelists to help pull your site into the search engine top 10 list. Magic? Science? It's a little of both and none of either. One thing is for sure: Creativity still pays off!

A New York City agency and consultancy bridging online, multimedia and traditional marketing, advertising, branding and public relations, KarmaCom Inc. was founded by marketing, public relations, branding, and business development expert Karma Martell. Visit her website at http://www.karmacom.com/.

1. THE VIRTUAL PRESENTATION ASSISTANT: an online tutorial for improving your public speaking skills. This site is designed to help you target your specific needs as a speaker by allowing you to access any or all of the contents listed.
http://www2.ku.edu/~coms/virtual_assistant/vpa/vpa.htm

2. PETER'S ONLINE TYPING COURSE: Set of free online typing lessons and typing exercises for beginning typists, and frustrated hunt-and-peckers who want to move from four-finger typing to full-blown touch typing.
http://www.typing-lessons.org/

3. DOWNLOAD WORLD TIME CLOCK, MULTI-CLIPBOARD, CALCULATOR, AND MORE. I've used these programs for years, and they are solid. There are others you may enjoy, as well.
http://www.programming.de/

Question: When do we use "The" in front of place names?

Answer: It's a bit complicated, so I'll direct you to some websites with the answer.

1. http://tinyurl.com/r7gws
2. http://tinyurl.com/m49cv
3. http://www.sdstate.edu/writingcenter/articles.htm

For lists of place names: http://www.asu.edu/lib/hayden/govdocs/maps/geogname.htm

EXCEL
ENTERING INFORMATION INTO MULTIPLE CELLS

There are occasions when you need to enter the same information into multiple cells in an Excel worksheet. Try this:

1.	Select all of the cells that you want to contain the same information. For non-contiguous cells, hold down the "Ctrl" key as you click on each cell in the set.
2.	Type the information you want to appear, but do not press the "Enter" key.
3.	Press "Ctrl+Enter".

Every cell that you selected now contains the same information.

OUTLOOK
USE TEMPLATES TO ELIMINATE REPETITIVE TASKS

If you have forms you need to fill out and submit periodically, then use a template; it will save you the trouble of retyping the information.

Templates can also be used to generating automatic replies. For example, someone might submit a query to you from a website. The query is addressed to you but has specific words in the subject. You can create a rule in Outlook to reply automatically with a template-based message.

To create a template is easy - just create the item and save it.

1.	Open the "Inbox" and click "New" on the toolbar.
2.	Enter common information such as "Subject", "CC" or "BCC" addresses, and the body copy.
3.	Choose "File / Save As".
4.	Select the location in which to store the template
5.	Select "Outlook Template" from the "Save As Type" drop-down list and enter a name for the template.

To reply to a message with a template-based e-mail message:
1.	Open the "Rules Wizard".
2.	Create a new rule or modify an existing one.
3.	Select the condition "Reply Using A Specific Template" and choose the template you have just saved.

Terence Kierans
Cyberspace Virtual Services
tkierans@virtualservices.com.au
http://www.virtualservices.com.au/
We keep your project on the boil, while you sleep

1. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION: BEYOND SEARCH KEYWORDS
http://tinyurl.com/jdueu

2. GOOGLE COOP: Google Co-op is a platform that enables you to use your expertise to help other users find information. This is a work in progress; over time, you can expect to see evolution in both Co-op's structure and the means by which you can contribute your expertise to Google's goal of making information more discoverable for millions of people.
http://www.google.com/coop

1. CAN READERS CRACK YOUR CODE? Is your website confusion-proof? Is your copy describing your product to your target market in relative terms? Are you speaking in their lingo, using stories, analogies, metaphors and vivid mental imagery they can easily and instantly relate to? Do you describe your offer with something they can understand, appreciate and visualize? Read Mike Fortin's sizzling article on how to write more effectively.
http://tinyurl.com/ks338

2. 10 HOT TIPS FOR CONDUCTING A WINNING INTERVIEW
http://www.fictionfactor.com/guests/interviewing.html

3. HOW TO PROOFREAD TEXT AND LAYOUT
http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/wpgrammarediting/ht/proofread.htm

4. THE MAKING OF A BEST SELLER: Over 175,000 books are published every year: the odds are less than 1% to successfully climbing the bestseller list. What separates the winners in the battle for bestseller status? The exciting journey to the top of the bestseller lists, as seen through the eyes of celebrated authors, editors, and literary agents. Written by Arizona authors Dee Power and Brian Hill.
http://www.brianhillanddeepower.com/bestseller.html

Main Entry:con-tra-pos-i-tive
Pronunciation:-*p*-z*-tiv, -*p*z-tiv
Function:noun
Date:1870

: a proposition or theorem formed by contradicting both the subject and predicate or both the hypothesis and conclusion of a given proposition or theorem and interchanging them **if not-B then not-A** is the contrapositive of *if A then B***

*By permission. From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary at www.m-w.com by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated.

Also, see: http://regentsprep.org/Regents/Math/relcond/Lcontrap.htm

1. INFLATION CALCULATORS:
http://www.searchforancestors.com/utility/inflation.html

2. MEDIA COVERAGE: 5 MYTHS, 5 MUSTS
http://www.businessknowhow.com/marketing/media-coverage.htm

1. STOP WRIST PAIN: Hal Alpiar, of www.businessworks.us, sent me a SAFE-ZONE wrist support when he learned I'd had surgery on my right hand because of trigger finger. My left hand was beginning to give me problems: tingling and numbness in the fingers.

I used the wrist support for about a week, and the problems receded. I was so engrossed with my right hand that I didn't wear it as long as I should have. Yet it worked.

I found it easy to wear during the day, even while typing. I was prepared to wear it at night, but it wasn't necessary. Why was I prepared? Because while my hand surgery was successful, I was in a great deal of pain during recovery and physical therapy.

And this just in from my brother, David, who mentioned last week that he was having severe pain in his right hand and wrist not just when using the computer, but all the time. I loaned him my SAFE-ZONE support, and he wore it all day. Every day. Within a week, he was pain free. And he can't lie: he's a pastor!

If you're at the point of not yet going to the doctor, but are thinking of heading to the drugstore to buy a wrist support, may I recommend that you visit http://www.stopwristpain.com/. SAFE-ZONE exceeds the kind of supports I've bought through the years at my local drugstore. This is NOT a paid commercial! I was willing to try this support because I trust and respect Hal Alpiar.

Chinese Goose with Teeth: photo by Michelle Burton

Parrots by David Crook - redigitizing by Judy Crook Vorfeld

Parrots by David Crook - redigitizing by Judy Crook Vorfeld

Flamingoes Wildlife World Zoo photo and redigitizing by Judy Crook Vorfeld

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