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How to use Twitter to prove you’re an absolute moron.

Posted by ben on July 28th, 2009

There’s been an overwhelming amount of love for Twitter this year, but Larry King might be single handedly responsible for starting my disenchantment with the most recent installment of the seemingly annual progression of the latest and greatest social media wunderkinds.  To be fair, my disenchantment began a few months ago, but a tweet a few days ago (2:58PM on July 26 to be exact) from Larry King’s official Twitter account (@kingsthings) sealed the deal:

Larry, I’ve got some news for you. For at least three reasons Twitter is the absolutely, positively WRONG medium to use for finding out why a Marathon is 26.2 miles.

First off, Larry, it demonstrates what we’ve kinda been suspecting all along – namely that you’re a no-talent, hack who’s risen to your station through merely the arbitrary caprice of fortune.  The standard answer to this question is pretty much conventional wisdom. I’ve taught middle school kids that could answer it.

Second, Larry, you can actually get your answer faster by using this crazy, new technology called a search engine. I’m sure this whole Internet thing is probably brand new to you and has to be pretty confusing (in fact, it’s probably pretty safe to assume that you’ve got some ghost writer Tweeting on your behalf to solicit the questions for your interview with Colin Powell that you’re unable to prepare on your own). But just in case you actually do get on the Internet someday, I created a demonstration of how this new-fangled thing called a “search engine” can help you find answers to life’s persistent questions.  Just CLICK HERE to see how it works!  Then, to get your answer click on the blue, underlined text at the top of the page that says “Marathon – Wikipedia the free encyclopedia”.

Third, Larry, the answer is actually more nuanced than you might think at first blush. Turns out that the distance from Marathon to Athens is shorter than 26.2 miles.  Turns out that primary historical sources disagree about whehter or not the first “Marathon runner” ran before or after the battle of Marathon.  Turns out that the 26.2 mile distance was the result of a series of last-minute changes made to the first modern marathon route established for the 1908 Olympics in London.  Maybe you knew that the standard answer wasn’t 100% accurate (I doubt it). But even if I stretch my imagination beyond the comprehensible and give you this benefit of the doubt, the fact still remains that crowd sourcing via your celebrity Twitter account is the least effective and most time consuming way to actually get your answer.  Just take a look at the overwhelming volume of responses your question generated by CLICKING HERE. You’ll notice something pretty quickly: a lot of people know some version of the standard answer, but nobody agrees on the more nuanced details.  If you’re really into crowd sourcing your answer, you should just cut to the chase and go to Wikipedia where the crowd sourcing has already been done for you.  Plus, Wikipedia has at least a modicum of editing that’s gone into their content.

Which brings me back to how Larry King finally brought about my disenchantment with Twitter.  In short, Twitter has become filled with crap and wading through all that crap takes more time and effort than regular people should have to put into it.  It takes a considerable investment of one’s time to follow Jeb’s advice about having a meaningful online converstaion and craft your Twitter network to a manageable level so that it’s actually useful and doesn’t become a ridiculous time sink.  What we need first and foremost in an answer is “correctness”. I have yet to find a better way to get “correctness” than by identifying an authority that can be trusted.  It’s way too easy to present the appearance of authoritativeness on the web without actually being an authority.  Just look at all the self-proclaimed authorities who wound up giving Larry a technically incorrect answer to his question.  Finding an authority is hard work (even off line).  Crowd sourcing via Twitter doesn’t get you any closer to an authoritative answer.  It just compounds the problem (especially when you use a celebrity account).  I know it’s tempting to think that crowd sourcing via Twitter is the way to go when it’s been so successful for Wikipedia, but Twitter just doesn’t work like Wikipedia.

I used to think that Twitter was pretty cool and pretty useful before the proliferation of celebrity accounts from the likes of Larry, Oprah and Martha.  So it looks like I am now beating Jeb to the punch in writing his next latest-social-media-fad-jumps-the-shark-blog-post.   Why is it that all these social media sites go through the same cycle of explosive growth that eventually brings about their demise? I suspect it’s because no one’s figured out a really good way to make the hard work of identifying authorities become easy. Finding an answer “that works” by playing a numbers game through social media sites can work OK for a while so long as the numbers stay fairly small.  However, once they reach their critical mass these social media fads just implode. Plus, playing the social media numbers games just skirts the fact that the answer is by no means guaranteed to be authoritative.  In attempting to make finding an authority easy, Twitter seems to have thrown their lot in with the celebrities. Or have the celebrities high-jacked Twitter?  Either way, that celebrities have made a good thing bad should be pretty self-evident.  I hate to say it but it seems that counting backlinks and other artificial “signs of trust” like the search engine algorithms do is the best thing we’ve got going so far.

So, Google don’t be worried by Jeb’s post that opined whether Twitter is a Google-slayer.  It isn’t and it won’t be.  In fact, it’ll probably be something our kids and grandkids reference when making fun of our generation.  I can already hear my daughter incredulously asking her friends, “Can you believe our parents spent their time at work reading ghost writers typing ‘In da house ATL!!!’ on some rapper’s Twitter account?”.

And if you’re wondering, yes, I probably woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.  So feel free to flame me in the comments below for being so hard on the beloved institutions like Larry King and Twitter. But be forewarned: I’ll probably be just as snarky in my responses as I am now.

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Posted in google, search engine optimization, search engines, seo, social media, social networks, twitter | 14 Comments »

Easily Approachable and Quite Deep

Posted by pj on July 10th, 2009

Seth Godin writes

“There are very few products, services or organizations that are simultaneously easily approachable and quite deep. That’s an opportunity for you if you can figure out how to be both, but choosing just one is a more likely scenario. So, which are you?”

It’s a good question, here’s how I would answer:

The web seems really complicated but not to me. I just see it as a series of decisions that require particular expertise to do correctly. The best decision is the one that makes the next one seem more apparent. There is never going to be one person who is right about everything all the time. What’s important in doing a web site, or marketing strategy, or making any series of decisions is to make each one as close to right as you can so the next one is clearer.

We do that by first and foremost attracting the top talent in the region. Then we challenge them to do more, to understand the implications of these important decisions. Then we provide what we hope to be the top level of customer service for our clients.

The results are clear to me, some are big and some are small. I take a small amount of pride in knowing that we are growing while other web companies are going out of business or shrinking. But what I take the most pride above all is the relationships that I have built with those in the box with me, and the way we extend it to our clients. Of the huge number of sites we have helped produce, 99% of them are still online exactly as we launched them.

Key to our growth is the way we have extended our services beyond designing and programming websites. It is a complete array of services our clients need, and some they don’t. That’s the real Small Box difference right there, whatever people think they know about us, there is more.

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Posted in Everything Else, content management systems, culture, design, indianapolis, marketing, pay per click, search engine optimization, sem, seo, smallbox, technology, usability, web design, web development | 1 Comment »

SEO Tip: Google Local Listings for Businesses

Posted by jeb on May 11th, 2009

Here’s a Search Engine tip that many businesses don’t know about but should. It’s really, really easy to have a nice Google Local listing for your business. Also, these local listings often show up above the normal organic listings. Here’s the thing, it’s much easier to get to the top of your Google Local listings than the top of the normal listings. Check out the screenshot below. (click on the image to see the live search, results may differ depending on whether you are logged in or not located in Indianapolis, etc)
Note how our client Antique Helper Auctions is at the top of the Local Business results and then #2 for the organic listings that start below.

Now there are some “tricks” to getting a top local listing but the Google Local listings run on a different algorithm than the normal listings. It is widely agreed that the Local listings are much less competitive since you are only competing against your local competition. Why does this matter? Look below at the results for the search “auctions”. Google knows I’m coming from Indianapolis by my IP address (I wasn’t logged in to my Google account for these screenshots btw) so it gives me local results mixed in with general results. It knows what I want is probably a local service. Most services have a mostly local customer base.


Have you created your Google Local account for your business? If not, do it today, it’s free, easy and will definitely result in business coming your way. Getting to the top of the local and organic listings won’t happen overnight. But we can help…. :)

Sign up for Google Local

Posted in search engine optimization, search engines, sem, seo | No Comments »

A Website is never “Done”

Posted by jeb on April 21st, 2009

I was reminded of this today as I went into the Small Box CMS (Content Management System) to update some pages and adjust some of the titles in order to improve our ranking for target search keywords. In case you are curious- I want Small Box to be on page one for the search Indianapolis Internet Marketing so I tweaked some things to improve our chances. We are currently on page 2, as of this blog, and I’m not ok with that. We are at the top of page one for many other searches but not this one, yet.

The reality is that sometimes people still think of their website as being “built” and therefore “done”. A good website is never done, it is a constant work in motion. You need to add content to it regularly, update existing pages, obsess over how those pages are ranking in search engines, adjust tweak and repeat and then do it all over again!

Think of your website like a grocery store rack. You need to switch out products, move things around, find out what works and doesn’t work. Or you lose out to a competitor that is being more proactive. It used to be every company’s web presence consisted of a static, brochure style, website. This is no longer the case. Many companies have a dynamic, rich website that is complemented by their active engagement across many different web platforms including Twitter, Linkedin, etc.

A website is no longer enough. But it’s still the best place to start….and end. You want to use all the other avenues out there to drive people back to your site. That means you need to obsess over it continually. These are real people visiting your site, not robots. Pay attention to them, find out what they are looking for, be there when they are looking and be the site, and company, they need when they land on your page.

Posted in search engine optimization, web design, web development | 2 Comments »

Does Small Box Outsource?

Posted by jeb on April 13th, 2009

We had the interesting experience recently of a prospective client receiving a call from “someone” who made the statement that “Small Box outsources their SEO work”. Meaning that we had other companies actually do our Search Engine Optimization work for our clients. Since we have spent the last 2 years developing and expanding our team to specifically grow this area of our business I was a little irked that someone would actively spread a false rumor. So let me address the issue here as clearly as possible:

Small Box does not outsource any work- SEO, Web Design, Web Development, etc.

Now we do use part time freelancers regularly. These are talented individuals that we have trained on our systems and can help us manage additional work when our full timers are maxed. Also, it is part of our hiring process to bring potential hires on part time as freelancers to see if they are a good fit for the company. But I don’t think anyone puts part time freelancers in the same group with outsourcing since they are actually part time employees and not some anonymous firm over in India pounding out websites or building links.

We have considered outsourcing though, to be honest. But up to now we haven’t opted to explore it any further than entertain the occasional phone call from India. Bottom line, we want to spend our money locally and have a real relationship with the people that work for our clients. We realize this might make us a little more expensive than other firms that outsource but the outcome is better work done right the first time and on time.

We also partner with other companies when needed and sub-contract work, or act as sub-contractors, when the right fit is a hybrid of our respective services. This often done at the request of the client since they want what they consider the right mix of talent for their project. We like working this way and do so often. Sometimes we develop and another company designs, sometimes we project manage and do SEO. It’s a great way to learn and meet new companies doing cool work. The client is fully informed and since it’s usually their idea everything goes smoothly with few exceptions.

I’ve always thought that a rising tide raises all boats so I actively seek ways to promote companies that I know do good work. This town is full of them. I would make a list but I know I would leave so many off so let’s skip that. I’m really proud to be part of a tech/web scene here that is doing cool stuff. But when someone comes after my company and talks trash I will defend it since I know how hard we work and I can’t stand to see my team denegrated.

So I hope this little post has cleared things up or given you an idea of how we work. Our goal is to be as transparent as possible while still protecting what we consider propritary to our business. Have a great week!

Posted in search engine optimization, seo, web design, web development | 3 Comments »

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