I am asked every so often to put together a few thoughts, books, and links on SEO. Usually these go into an email or ppt deck used to kick off what always turns into a larger discussion about traffic acquisition as a whole. SEO is not the magic pill but it does force you to ask hard questions about your company and product.

Question #1 - Did I hire an engineer to build my web site? Someone who really understands best practices from information architecture or did I find the backyard mechanic … “yeah, it works but that thing won’t pass inspection!”

Question #2 - Does my marketing department keep current with what Google is doing?

Quesion #3 - Did my designers, content producers, and product team build something that is easy to use, informative, and worth sharing? If no one links to your site, if no one talks about you on Twitter or Facebook - chances are you have an elevated perception of your own site.

And without further interruption here are a few links -

Good house keeping:

• Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites
• Search Engine Visibility (old, but a good primer on SEO and I’ve used it for teaching a few times)

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If you are a marketer understanding how to create a sensation and influence perception are powerful tools to have in your tool kit. If you are an SEO you may not have allowed yourself to think about these psychological concepts as you are probably knee deep in policing your web site, fixing massive information architecture issues, wishing your link graph was better, and hoping that the folks in editorial would just create something that would go viral.

Perception – the way we interpret the information we take in and thus what is used to build our mental model of that which we are interacting with. Perception is unique to each individual and thus our perception of reality is our own reality.

It is however perception that triggers how we respond to a situation. In short, did you do anything to impact the user’s perception of your site in a positive way? So much so that they want to tweet about your site? Was the user left feeling as though they need to share your site via a link from their blog?

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A friend of mine wrote me this morning with the question “What are the first 5 Ted Talks I should watch?” As many times as I have talked with friends, family, and co-workers about TED I have never thought about introducing the conference to them in this format. Generally a talk comes to mind when I am having a conversation with someone and we wonder into TED as a result of mentioning something that reminds me of a talk I have watched.

I have been known to blurt out in the middle of a conversation: “oh, I loved that TED Talk too!” This generally results in a much confused look, a reaction normally kept for instances when you think someone is quoting a comedian and it turns out to be their original joke. Thus my natural rudeness then turns into an introduction to TED, but only as it relates to the conversation at hand. This method of indoctrination has been less than successful so let’s try another route.

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Why the traditional newspaper will fail: “Readers don’t want to pay for yesterday’s news and advertisers follow them.” This is the game we all play in media and perhaps this is what separates art from business. Jacek Utko, a Polish newspaper designer, would strongly disagree with that statement. As a trained architect he applied the basic rule of function & form to newspaper.

“I wanted my artist statement, my interpretation of reality, I wanted to make posters - not newspapers or even magazines.”

Utko made it his business to save newspapers across Eastern Europe and from looking at the circulation numbers after he took the job it is clear that his ideas worked.

• Russia - up 29%
• Poland - up 35%
• Bulgaria - up 100%

For more information about Jacek Utko visit http://www.utko.com/

Presented by Pattie Maes’ lab at MIT, developed by Pranav Mistry. This is one of the most incredible things I have ever seen. It is a small collection of wearable devices that work together to allow you to quickly discover a vast amount of information about your world.

From Amazon reviews of the book in your hand, to projecting a biographical keyword cluster on to the person you are talking with. It does so much! In one of the demos: Pranav picked up a book, the device recognized the title, projected an Amazon review on to the cover of the book that was in hand, and then showed him the average Amazon rating. How incredible! In another demo Pranav gestured to his wrist, drawing an imaginary circle, and half a second later a clock is projected onto his wrist. Amazing!!

Want to hear the best part? This was assembled with $350 in off the shelf parts!!! $350 is cheaper than my IPhone =(

Why is it that somedays you are ready to innovate and other days… well, not so much? There has to be some logical explanation: your environment, previous events, the weather, home life, trouble with co-workers, sick? Although these are all plausible and do take you away, I would like to focus on environment. Specifically, the kind of environment the innovator needs in order to do their thing.

So where do we begin:

#1 Being too focused on customers - innovators know that people are not able to accurately gauge how their future selves will react. Most importantly, what will make them happy in the future (Thanks Dan Gilbert!). An innovator must accept that they are pushing the envelope, and that they might not be designing/building/creating for a current audience. They build because they see a need, even if it is not right this moment.

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I don’t know about you, but the education I received from public schools didn’t exactly teach me the finer parts of the English language. If it were not for spell check (love that Firefox has it built in so I appear literate when filling in web forms) and the “define” operator on Google I would most certainly be incapable of constructing complete sentences. It is bad enough at times that writing without spell check causes a mild anxiety attack… but I digress.

I have a passion for the define operator on Google. If you have not used it I suggest you start today as it will most certainly change your life for the better. For this post I entered “define: inspiration” and here is how the magic black box we know as Google answered.

Inspiration According to Google:

• Arousal of the mind to special unusual activity or creativity
• A product of your creative thinking and work; “he had little respect for the inspirations of other artists”; “after years of work his brainchild was a tangible reality”
• A sudden intuition as part of solving a problem
• Divine guidance: (theology) a special influence of a divinity on the minds of human beings; “they believe that the books of Scripture were written under divine guidance”
• Arousing to a particular emotion or action

I must say that I like definition #2, “a product of my creative thinking and work”. I like this concept as this implies that inspiration is NOT what I seek, rather, inspiration is what I receive after I have done the work. Too often I think we have the wrong approach; we are looking for inspiration to get started on the work, or the inspiration to do the work. I know I am guilty of this from time to time, you may hear me say “Wow, I am just not feeling it today.” But I guess what this really means is that I am having a temporary moment where I am afraid by the work ahead of me and that if I only had some inspiration, the task would magically become easier.

The short version of how this story ends: inspiration comes from doing. Results produce inspiration, and inspiration produces results!

Developed by James Caplin, a former professional scriptwriter of corporate videos specializing in technical subjects and internal communications.

Consider the following framework for your next presentation:

G (Goal) - put time into finding out what the audience wants from your presentation. How do you find this out? A.) Call them, go have coffee together, read their corporate blog. Bottom line, know why they brought you there.

O (Outline) - By using 3 Level Listening, Mind Mapping, and Meaning Generator you can be sure you will satisfy what your audience wants.

E (Eleborate) - Flesh our your outline - make notes, take pictures, draw diagrams, talk it through with friends and family. Produce something unique, compelling, and personal.

R (Refine) - Aim for a crisp, professional, and personable presentation that can deliver the message without distraction.

Reference: http://www.jamescaplin.com/

A number of months back I had the opportuntiy to have lunch with the president of my company and talk with him about his career. Being that he is someone who has both acheived a great deal of success and had little handed to him, I take what he says quite serious.

At this lunch I took the opportunity to ask him “If it were possible for the present you to give the you of 25 advice, what would it be?” His response “get comfortable being in uncomfortable places, always be willing to push yourself further”.

I was recently reminded of this conversation after watching Honda - the Power of Dreams and this same concept was talked about, however it was referred to as “setting the ladder on fire”. This is a popular phrase at Honda used to inspire and motivate. So what does this mean? Simply put I think it means assigning yourself tasks that don’t involve a safety net, it means promising to deliver on something you haven’t ever done before, and setting goals that at first may seem unobtainable.

We all go through times where we are not pushing ourselves to the fullest or we are hesitant to take on a challenge when there isnt a backup plan. But when did playing it safe ever really get you anything of real value?

Nick Vujicic has an incredible story and does amazing things despite his physical challenges. I couldn’t imagine waking up tomorrow with no limbs and being able to find the will to make it a great day and he does! The will to push through such adversity is simply incredible.

YouTube - Get Back Up

What I also appreciate about Nick is his willingness to share the low points in his life. It would be very easy to watch this video and think this guy is just blowing smoke, but to hear him share his thoughts as a young child is quite gripping.