More WebProNews Videos

Michael Gray and Matt Cutts at SES San Jose

Matt Cutts: Hi there, my name is Matt Cutts and I work at Google.

Michael Gray: My name is Michael Gray and my name on line is GrayWolf.

Matt Cutts: So, there are a lot of ways to get links online and there are a lot of great links to get online.

Michael Gray: We know that a lot of you are willing to get creative and sometimes you are willing to break the rules.

Matt Cutts: So, we don’t know we see eye to eye, we don’t know where there is a gray on everything, but one thing Mike and I, both agree on is that hacking sites to get links is basically pure evil.

Michael Gray: We don’t think it is that something you should do.

Matt Cutts: So, if you are prepared to go hacking to get links to your site and do all sorts of bad things, don’t be surprised if your sites gets burned in Google’s index.

Michael Gray: If you are hacking for links, your sites are going to burn in hell.

Michael Gray: and Matt Cutts: Hacking is wrong, don’t do it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAFijoE1BHs[/youtube]

Getting Involved in Social Media

Michael Gray and Brett Tabke at SES San Jose August 2009

Brett Tabke: This is Record Unit SES San Jose joining Mr. Michael Gay of Atlas Web Services. Thanks for joining us Michael.

Michael Gray: Thank you Brett Tabke.

Brett Tabke: So what were you talking about the SES issue?

Michael Gray: I had been talking about some tools for social media monitoring and tracking that what is the stuff.

Brett Tabke: What’s new?

Michael Gray: You know there is a lot of this stuff, where people are trying stuff before its you know people trying to get the lion’s share of what everybody is talking about, but there are a lot of interesting services that are out there. You know there are some people who are experimenting with videos and pictures and that’s what the stuff that I think its as I suggest them, all some variation in there.

Brett Tabke: You know a year ago, we were talking about if a twitter can make it you know and there were talking how bigger it is going to get and you know these are moments that’s going to get too big, you know.
Michael Gray: It’s a hard thing that really kind of, I think that they are here to stay for, you know, at least a short-term in the next couple of years, you know, beyond that its hard to say anything in internet time but there definitely, you know, they are pretty in growing now to see more like all the major phone company commercials they are all integrating it as part of their play pitch.

Brett Tabke: Yeah, popping up on TV shows, it is almost kind the same way Google tipped, you know 6-7 years ago, when they finally tipped over. What else is new in social media, you know, we get a recent FriendFeed, is it just a blog on face book, those are having any impact at all.
Michael Gray: It depends on how they integrate it. If they are going to keep things kind of separate, there is a lot of tremendous amount of SEO value because everything out at FriendFeed is sort of, not everything is followed, so there is just not any SEO value. There is someone big who is a big networker when he is using FriendFeed and they may have a lot of followers that they tweet out, they can definitely drive some traffic, if they are going to integrate it in, you know, it may who knows what’s going to happen at that point and how they are going that because again the Facebook at least don’t get, they don’t get followed out but still they can probably, they can drive a decent amount of traffic because it is a much bigger network.

Brett Tabke: Right, right. It is a fairly pretty paining for it as it sounded like from the press releases, you know, I didn’t get many credence until pretty much, all my friends started following the FriendFeed.

Michael Gray: Yeah, I get, the FriendFeed, I just never kind of get into, it’s a very, very hard thing to manage. You think it’s a good idea just combining everybody’s their Flickr, their Youtube, their twitter feeds, and everything better, you have a couple of active people and you think that it just becomes this fire-hose of information and if you’ve only got a certain amount of time to put it in a day, it just can be really overwhelming.

Brett Tabke: This just like me trying to follow back everyone follows me on twitter, follow 20,000 and you just can’t follow it.

Michael Gray: Exactly, when you get into that level of numbers, you really, you know, you dip in your total and then you come back out of water just rushing by.
Brett Tabke: So is the social media revolution over it.

Michael Gray: Um, yeah, I do think it’s less of a buzz. I don’t think it’s every going to go away. One of the things that I think a lot of people a kind of miss from all this is fair that is going to go away but everybody only has a certain amount of attention during a day. They have only have so many hours a day that they can devote to whatever they working or they are not working or whatever their pleasure is, and if you are not part and a lot of them are taking part in that social space and if you are not participating there, there is less attention for you to actually get and that’s where I think people just kind of miss the boat.

Brett Tabke: Yeah. We talked a little bit about SEO just through social media but I see the buzz here at the conflicts about SEO, you say there is no buzz; that it’s almost like….

Michael Gray: It’s almost tag, yeah, it’s a lot of time it’s kind of become flat. I know Google just really set you in that same box, I think if you are calling it. You know, I felt a little bit a time to look at it. It looks a little bit that even Google currently is not again, but that’s just a quick look. You know I am glad that Bings did got a lot of attention that they did and kind of they brought themselves up and that really show how it is going to take for the whole Yahoo thing to integrate in, we are probably talking a year, two years may be three years before it becomes there, so it’s hard to say how that’s going to play up but I think that all if it evens the score a little bit, that’s better for everybody in space.

Brett Tabke: Right, from 3 to 2.

Michael Gray: Yeah, its just hanging on there, just waiting for somebody else to drop out.
Brett Tabke: Yeah, that’s right. You may even give it 24 months.

We are cut out of time here. So, thanks for joining us Mike.

Michael Gray: Thank you for inviting me.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16fuRZaKed8[/youtube]

How Effective is Twitter Search
Michael Gray SMX Advanced SMX June 2009 Abby Johnson of Web Pro News:

Abby Johnson: This is Abby Johnson with WebProNews and we’re in Seattle, Washington covering SMX Advanced. Joining me right now is Michael Gray of Atlas Web Service and we’re going to talk about Twitter, specifically searcher behavior on Twitter. It’s changed a lot, especially over the past year. So talk about Twitter being used as a search engine and what exactly that means and what you’re seeing for the future.
Michael Gray: They bought another search engine, Surmise. And now they brought it kind of in house and they’re trying to do a lot of different things with it. One of the more interesting things is they are trying to look at some of the hash tags and some of the terms that people are searching for and automatically figure out what are the popular terms so that other people might be doing it. And a lot of people are using it in a lot of different ways. There are some problems with it. Twitter’s reliability is a little sketchy sometimes but it has gotten better. But the search, they’re trying to claim it’s real time and it doesn’t always work that way. Sometime it’s a couple of hours behind for what it actually is so you’ve got to kind of be careful if you’re looking for real real time results. But it’s an interesting little search engine that kind of gives you the pulse of what’s going on now. I don’t know that anybody’s ever going to use it to say, “Hey I need to find a good thing” because they’re just going to go search on Google. But if someone’s looking at a hotel and saying, “Hm, maybe these three hotels” if they have a lot of followers or their followers might know. They could say, “Hey, you know I’ve never actually stayed here and is it a good thing or not?” Or looking for a computer or that type of thing. I don’t know that it’s going to completely replace Google but it’s definitely going to augment some of what’s going on out there.
Abby Johnson: So you said that it’s not really a threat but how do you think that the search engines are reacting to this?
Michael Gray: I know Google is talking with Twitter a lot and they’re trying to get a direct feed into there. The way Twitter’s changed their interface, it’s really hard to crawl through someone’s twitts especially if you get someone who’s a high-volume twitter, they tweet out a lot. So they’re trying to get some way so that they can get a lot of that information in. and there’s definitely some information in there that Google would like. Everybody always says Twitter’s all about their cat posts, but there’s definitely some information out there that has some value for a search engine.
Abby Johnson: All right. Great stuff. So I guess basically we just have to keep posted and see what happens?
Michael Gray: Yep. Another thing you’ve really got to pay attention to is for companies that are on Twitter. If you have a profile, you know, if you have a reputation manager problem, Twitter’s a really really easy way for you to control that so you can kind of in normal search. But if say you’ve got a profile and you’re not a company you say, “You know what, it’s not for us. We’re a very conservative company,” other people are going to start showing up for your company name and your terms. If they’re typing it in you know, “This pizza place was great. This pizza place sucked.” But if you’re not using it, you’ve kind of left that open to chance. So even if you’ve got an account, just fill it in with some little basic stuff so that you can control your domain. It’s important for people to do that.

More WebProNews Videos

Making Twitter Work for You
Michael Gray Atlas Web Service WebProNews Pubcon with Abby Johnson Austin Texas 2009

Abby Johnson: This is Abby Johnson with WebProNews and we’re at Pubcon South in Austin, Texas. Joining me right now is Michael Gray of Atlas Web Services. How are you?
Michael Gray: I’m good. How are you?
Abby Johnson: Great. We’re going to talk about Twitter, social media, different things like that. First of all you just spoke on a Twitter session. And talk to us about what not to do with Twitter first of all and then following up with what to do.
Michael Gray: I think a lot of people they obsess too much about the rules on Twitter. The big thing is find what’s working for you. Determine what your goals are. You want to do on Twitter what’s helping you meet that. There are a lot of people who come and say you shouldn’t be tweeting commercial links, you shouldn’t be tweeting product links. If that’s your goal you’ve got to try and find a way to make that work. Maybe you don’t want to do that your know 8 or 9 or 10 times a day. Maybe that’s not all you want to do but you want to try to find a way to make that work. Other than just your basic common sense stuff. Be a good person in the community and be polite you’re pretty much open game.
Abby Johnson: You also threw out examples of company’s brands that, you know, typical rule of thumb, people shouldn’t talk about themselves all the time. But there are people who do, and it works
Michael Gray: Yeah, this is kind of the way it works in bigger business too. The bigger your business is, the more you can get a way with. If you’re a big fortune 500 company, you can get away with being a lot more shamelessly self-promotional, as oppose to someone who’s a small mom and pop or even a mid-sized company so you’ve got to kind of figure out where you fit into the ecosystem how big a fish you are in the pond and that’s directly proportional to how much you can get away with. I don’t know that I’d recommend saying let’s see what I can get away with first. I’d kind of say let’s start pushing stuff and see where I start losing people and where they start getting annoyed. Again, but that’s up to you to decide where you’re going.
Abby Johnson: Okay then. Well earlier this week you wrote an intriguing blog post in which you said, “Social media should not be used to waste time and money on awareness and branding exercises broadcasting messages that are unremarkable to the uninterested masses.” So explain your thoughts here and how it is easy to fall into these practices and there are so many people doing this.
Michael Gray: The big thing is a lot of companies they just approach it as we’re just trying to get exposure. There’s no conversion in there. It’s like what are you trying to get them to do? An example is Skittles. Skittles was in the news recently and you’ll say, Skittles got mentioned a lot. What was Skittles’ goal? Did they want people to go out and buy candy? Was that their goal? Were they just trying to engage people and say hey we’re trying something new? Were they just trying to get links? I don’t know that that helped them sell any candy. Maybe it got them on the radar screen and it got them a lot press and if that was their goal, that’s fine. But I think you have to kind of determine what you want to get out of something and go and find about what the ways to do that are. If you’re just sitting on Twitter saying this is what I had for breakfast and my cat rolled over, and that kind of stuff, occasionally that stuff is fine and it lets you know there’s a real person behind the account. But if you’ve got to kind of work with your goals to say what am I trying to do and how can I create an interesting Twitter profile that people want to follow and how can I get from where I am now to where I want to be.
Abby Johnson: And ultimately, that will better engage with your other followers and help produce productivity.
Michael Gray: Right. Again, you want to talk to the people who are doing what it is your doing. If you’re selling wedding dresses, you’re probably not interested in guys who are talking about sports all day because they’re not your customer and they’re probably not going to be sending it to their fiancée. It’s not something that’s interesting to them. So target the people who you’re interested in. Find the people who are going to get you the most value. And that’s where you get the most out of Twitter. Having fifty thousand people is great but if only five thousand of them are interested in you, that’s really what your metric is so find the people who are talking about what it is you want to be talking about.
Abby Johnson: Michael Gray, thanks so much. This is Abby Johnson with WebProNews covering Pubcon South in Austin, Texas.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4LZ1StW_F8[/youtube]

SES Chicago Michael Gray AIM Clear Interview December 2008

AIM Clear: I’m here with Michael Gray. Michael Gray, known as is a bona fide celebrity in the search marketing universe, known for challenging authority especially Google while deftly playing well with others. Gray Wolf, it’s a pleasure to be here with you this afternoon.
Michael Gray: Thank you. Thank you.
AIMClear: Without further ado, we’ll get right into the questions.
Michael Gray: Okay, sure.
AIMClear: So how did you get into search in the first place?
Michael Gray: Pretty much like everybody else. It started out as kind of an accident. I was working in-house developer for a local specialty retailer. And we kind of stumbled into search. We started ranking for a bunch of terms and we started to put a little time and energy into understanding what it is that works, what are the things that are making us rank and then basically it just sort of grew into an internal search position. That’s just where I went from the programming and then after doing that for a number of years, I just basically went out on my own.
AIMClear: All right. So do you think Google has too much power?
Michael Gray: I think they do. It’s very close to being a monopoly at this stage. There are other search engines but their market share is so small, it’s a Google game and if you’re not in Google, basically you’re not anywhere. And that’s a really bad spot for people to be. It’d be really nice if we had a 30/30/30 blend but I don’t know that that’s ever going to happen. But even if there was something where it was close. Like some sectors, like tech, any of the tech stuff, the computer stuff, it’s so Google dominated, it’s almost impossible if you’re not there.
AIMClear: Alright. So what steps should marketers take to diversify their traffic referrals?
Michael Gray: If you’re a marketer, you really want to try to be as un-dependent on Google as possible. Using things like a blog with RSS, using email lists so you’re getting people subscribed. Make it so that people are coming to you. You start looking at alternative engines. I know like there are web appliances out. I’m a big fan of a thing called a Chumby. Basically it’s a little application you develop and you can send content out there. And a lot of the bigger new sites are doing it. I know like In Gadget’s doing it. Anything you can do to get people loyal to whatever it is your site is about. That gets them coming and not using Google. The term is defensible traffic. And that’s a really good thing for people to start building. Again, you never want to ignore search but you want to have as much of your traffic not dependent on Google as possible.
AIMClear: Great. So do you think it’s possible to be removed from Google for being publicly critical in comments about Google?
Michael Gray: If you’re publicly critical and you’ve got a point, then you’re fine. If you’re just out there saying this is a bad thing, this is something they shouldn’t be doing, you’re talking out of your butt so to speak, you’re in a bad spot. The one thing I will say is if you are going to be critical, make sure your house is in order. Don’t be calling other people out for something, especially Google, if you’re doing something very similar because at some point someone’s going to look into you and if you’re not comfortable with what they’re seeing, you’re probably going to end up with a world bit of trouble later on.
AIMClear: What’s your philosophy about buying links?
Michael Gray: I don’t think that it’s bad. I think Google’s made it worse than it actually is. Google’s tried to make it like it’s a crime so to speak. And it’s really not a crime. It just goes against what their engine is relying upon. And that’s why they’re trying to keep people from doing the particular practice. Have they done a really good job at scaring people out of it? Absolutely. Is there some risk associated with the behavior? Yes, there definitely is so you’ve got to be kind of careful about what you’re doing. If you’re going to be buying links, do it smart; don’t be doing a lot of silly things. You know buying five hundred links tomorrow is probably not a smart strategy, whereas buying ten, fifteen links this week, ten, fifteen links the next week, then that’s going to be a different story.
AIMClear: So where do you think search is headed and what should marketers do to hedge their bets?
Michael Gray: Multimedia’s going to be a really big thing, like video, pictures, and audio, that sort of thing. Anything that you can do that diversifies where you’re going. Universal search is going to really be big. A lot of the engines are looking into doing that now. So that’s something that I’d be looking into doing.
AIMClear: Okay. So last question: What sessions are you speaking at here?
Michael Gray: Speaking today at 4:15 on advanced link development. I’m going to be talking about some of the darker elements.
AIMClear: Alright. Well, thank you so much for your time, Michael, and looking forward to hearing that this afternoon.
Michael: Thanks for having me.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqbeBki3_6A[/youtube]

What’s New for Social Media
Michael Gray Atlas Web Service and Brett Tabke of WebmasterWorld at Blogworld 2009
Brett Tabke: Hey it’s Brett Tabke. We’re back here again at Blog World. Joining us today is Mr. Michael Gray of Atlas Web Service. Michael, well-known in this space, long-time webmaster, world moderator, Pubcon speaker, known far and wide on the circuit. Thanks for taking time to be with us.
Michael Gray: Thanks for having me.
Brett Tabke: We were just talking a little bit about what was hot in the space, in SCO, social media. What’s the deal with this blog poster? We were just talking about Sirgy.
Michael Gray: Yeah actually. Sirgy Brin, the founder of Google…. Someone else’s… one of the wives in Google, they started a company at Twenty-three and Me. And basically what they do is they do DNA testing to try and figure out if you’ve got any likelihood for diseases. And it turned out that he happens to have a higher-than-normal likelihood of getting Parkinson’s disease. And if you go through (and they put this on a Blogspot blog) and he actually links to the Michael J. Fox Foundation and the Parkinson’s health group. And the interesting thing is both of those links are nofollow. Now the way Google set the nofollow up is they tricked us all that it was for blog and spam comments and then they came back and said it was for comments that weren’t editorially vetted but those two links he put there on purpose. They should have…
Brett Tabke: One of the co-founders of Google
Michael Gray: Right. He should understand the value of that link. He should be putting in a straight link. And again those are normal links. They should absolutely be getting the credit. This is just another example of how Google…the nofollow has just completely distorted the natural linking of the web. They’re trying to fix it and they ended up breaking it is what happened.
Brett Tabke: Right. And instead of trying to play just gotcha with Google on…you know you’re saying one thing with the left hand and doing different with the right hand, as you say they’re so distorted PR on the web. Linking is just…it’s a cluster.
Michael Gray: Yahoo Shine, if you read that, basically it’s a woman’s magazine type of thing that Yahoo runs. And they have editors that actually write stories and they link to things in there like fashion to lipstick or you know magazines and that sort of thing. And again all of the links inside of the articles that people put in are completely no-fallen and again it’s just another gross distortion that they created down there.
Brett Tabke: Right, agreed. So let’s kind of shift gears here. So SMO it seems like the last year, year and a half really two years, the new kid on the block is social media. Nice shiny you know twinkle. We’ve got Twitter, Facebook. Facebook is kind of, almost come and gone.
Michael Gray: It’s on its comeback. I think actually the biggest thing I think that turned a lot of people off of Facebook was Adspam. Everybody getting bitten by zombies and vampires and you know that sort of stuff. It took over your page and I think they kind of realized ok we kind of lost sight of things a little bit. And they pulled it back and they relaunched and they redesigned things a little bit and the apps are a little bit more hidden so you know your page looks a little cleaner now. It doesn’t look like a MySpace page with fifty million blinking widgets all over the place. So they’re starting to come back and again you know are they ever going to get back to where they were? I don’t know because they’ve introduced advertising into there and that’s always just going to turn off a certain sector of the population.
Brett Tabke: Right. Right. So the other big things have been LinkedIn. LinkedIn is very…
Michael Gray: LinkedIn has pretty much kind of locked the business market in and they’re doing some interesting things. If you’re on the iPhone. I don’t know if you have an iPhone, they’ve all got some really nice apps and they work really well as contact management systems so you don’t have to carry around ten thousand people in your contact address book anymore. You can just kind of use the app and it’ll mail and if the person’s actually gone through and put a phone number in it will actually dial it. It’s a pretty sweet little application.
Brett Tabke: And then of course Twitter, it went from being extremely useful to extremely annoying to extremely useful again.
Michael Gray: I know. Twitter’s an interesting thing. I guess it kind of depends on how you use it. You can completely use Twitter just for personal stuff and goof on people and have fun and that sort of thing. But you can also use it for a lot of business purposes. And again people kind of say, it’s a social thing. How do I use it for business? And to make a real-life analogy that probably people understand. If you have a client that maybe you do business with. Maybe you’ll go to the golf course and you’ll play with them. Maybe you’ll go out to dinner. Maybe you’ll go on a little mini-vacation and you’ll have some social interaction with them. And that’s why when you’re doing Twitter, it’s the little social things that actually make it that much more interesting.
Brett Tabke: Right. Right. And following along here at the conference. You’ve been very helpful in Vegas. You know knowing the hot spots, where to go, where to key up for tickets or get good deals. Now that kind of aside, SMO at the same time clearly matured. What’s next? Do you know?
Michael Gray: Social’s still going to be a bigger part. I don’t know that it’s going to completely overrun search. I know there are people that just say you know, “Social. That’s the way things are going to be.” But I still think search is still dominant. Social’s just going to be a part of it. Again you know reviews that sort of stuff. People still use Google to vet that kind of stuff because you know there’s sock puppets, there’s spamming, there’s all that kind of stuff. Wouldn’t know anything about that. [laughter] And again there has to be some sort of control. Just because you’ve got a bunch of reviews…You know you go to any of the travel sites, you’ll always find a couple kooky people that say, “I love this better than Cats. I’ll go twice more. And then there’s the other guy who says you know, “This is the worst site ever.” And basically you do what most people do and throw out the high and the low and you look for what’s in the middle and if the middle’s good, usually you kind of go with it.
Brett Tabke: Well you know we’re always trying to figure out what’s next, what’s coming you know get that twelve, twenty-four month…do you…
Michael Gray: Video. I really see a lot of people experimenting with video, doing a lot of interesting things. The search engines definitely have a hard time figuring out but there are transcription services out there. And there’s multilingual translation that’s actually kind of interesting too so you can pay services that do lots of different languages too so that’s something that a lot of people are trying. I see a lot of people going back to email newsletters. Going really really old school with that. And that’s an interesting little trend.
Brett Tabke: Um hm. Well you know I tried to do that with robots txt blog and that’s essentially what that was was a newsletter [laughter]. You know it’s text. I just don’t have time to keep up with it or you know how everybody starts blogging and they kind of lose interest in it too.
Michael Gray: Yeah. And again for a lot of people, blogging was an experiment and you know now if you’re running a blog, the thing is, you’ve got to keep updating it. And you know are people in it for the long haul? And if you’re not, you know then it just becomes this thing you’ve left to die on your site and it looks awful.
Brett Tabke: Well what do you think’s going to happen with SMO, search, SEM, say next twelve months? Once we get through this little downturn in the economy and things turn back up.
Michael Gray: Unless Yahoo makes some big internal changes, I don’t see them coming along and doing anything really big to Google. I’d say Google’s kind of got the lock on the market I think for the next two years or so. Unless there’s something out there nobody’s talking about I don’t see anybody getting their act together.
Brett Tabke: So do you see search marketing increasing, staying the same?
Michael Gray: I see marketing getting better. I think mobile. I know people have been talking about mobile for a long time but I think the iPhone has really changed that. I really was not a big iPhone supporter and it took me a long time to get there but browsing…it is the best browser that you could possibly carry in your pocket and I do more searches on it just because of it. You know I had a smart phone before but I use this more now just because the interface is that much better.
Brett Tabke: It’s so much easier. It’s got a ways to go. We all know that, flash all the [?], but it’s just amazing. It’s just amazing for now. What else is coming up just around the corner? Is there any real undercut buzz? It just seems like this year it’s been more of the same, more of the same, more of the same.
Michael Gray: Yeah. I don’t see too much new out there that’s going to come and like knock stuff off. I think people are just trying to refine what’s out there. You know realizing, How do I make a blog long-term strategy? If I’m not going to be able to update this, you know how can I make it so that I still use it but it doesn’t have to be maintained on a regular basis? How can I take advantage of reviews that people are doing? How can I add the user-generated content that people are out there creating? How can I make it so that people rate great things on my site, rate my post, or rate whatever we happen to be talking about. You know ways to engage that, again build some of the community on the site. You know, it’s funny how it comes back. You know forums were really big for awhile and everyone kind of went off and built their own blog. And people realized, hey, it was fun to be a content producer but I don’t necessarily want to be a content producer all the time. So, you know, have other people come on and give them a space to do that, and facilitate that. And if you can do that, that makes it really interesting. You’ve just got to make sure it fits your community.
Brett Tabke: Cool. Well, I appreciate you taking the time. We’re out of YouTube time so I appreciate you taking the time, Michael.
Michael Gray: Thank you.

SES: Tapping Twitter As A Marketing Tool
Michael Gray Atlas Web Service Mike McDonald Web Pro News August 2009

Mike McDonald: This is Mike McDonald with WebProNews. I’m with Michael Gray. We’re in sunny San Jose at the SES show and we were talking a few minutes ago about Twitter. Let’s share with everybody some of your thoughts on Twitter and how people are using this and how you can take advantage of it in your marketing
Michael Gray:: I think Twitter’s a really really interesting tool for people who are in the right sectors. It’s a short medium. Basically you’re limited to a hundred and forty characters per message, so there’s not a lot of room for marketing hype or things like planes flying over. You’ve got to kind of be direct with your audience. So you can’t really fluff around. So it’s a really really easy way for you to communicate directly with customers or people you’re trying to reach.
Mike McDonald: So what are some of the techniques? I know Todd Frison has uses the hash with TTWT to brand his twits or tweets in Google I guess for the index search. Is that something you recommend?
Michael Gray:: Those are better for events or if you’ve got isolated kind of things. Basically that’s hash tags. You want to try to keep them as short as possible so they don’t eat up into your twit space. Cuz a hundred and forty characters…cuz characters do really learn to get small. And again, learn to abbreviate. That’s another really really powerful tool. But for companies, it’s a really really powerful customer service tool. For example of who’s doing really really well with it: Jet Blue does really really well. Comcast Cares, basically run by Comcast. They have a bunch of people who sit around just basically using different monitoring tools. Surmise is one of the big search engine tools. I know Twitter just bought them. I use them. Tweet Beep. That’s another one basically that monitors people who you put in. You can put in any number of key words; you can put in user names. You can also put in full URLs. And the interesting thing is if somebody tiny URL’s your URL, it’ll send you a full link to that so you can figure out, oh okay, so this is somebody who’s mentioned me today. Is that good or bad? Is that someone I should be reaching out to or communicating with in some way?
Mike McDonald: Okay. And I know you’re excited to go try Twello, our new thing, the directory for Twitter users. You have to go check that out.
Michael Gray:: Yeah. Actually I’m going to go check that out.
Mike McDonald: It’s pretty cool. Alright man, well thanks again. Appreciate it.
Michael Gray:: Thank you.
Mike McDonald: This is Mike MacDonald with Mike Gray and we are in San Jose.

Michael Gray Atlas Web Service On Inbound Links Mike McDonald Web Pro News August 2008

Mike McDonald: This is Mike McDonald with WebProNews. We are at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose and I’m with Michael Gray from Atlas Web Services. Michael, let’s talk a little about links. It’s kind of a widely known and generally accepted thing that Google considers you know the whole link economy a no no. So what are some things that webmasters can do to develop their inbound links and stay in Google’s good graces at the same time?
Michael Gray: Yeah. Google’s like I said Google’s kind of really cracking down on the paid links and the real reason is that paid links work. And you know they’re trying to keep it from influencing their results as much as possible. So everybody’s trying to skirt the line as much as they can. You know they’re doing social stuff as much as they can because Google says that that’s not manipulated at this point, although that’s up for debate. Widgets, that kind of stuff. Again, they’re trying to keep an eye on that kind of stuff. It’s a hard line for webmasters to keep inside of because again Google kind of changes the rules of what they consider acceptable. It’s a difficult spot for people now.
Mike McDonald: At what point or in what kind of circumstances should people just say Google is going to do what they’re going to do and I’m going to have to go buy me some links anyway? Is that ever advisable or is that just universally a bad thing and never to be done or are there some circumstances where you know you’re just going to have to a little bit?
Michael Gray: Well there’s a couple ways to look at it. The big problem is if you’re a person buying it and you’re in a competitive space, it’s almost impossible to be able to rank without some link buys in there or link advertising, however you want to frame it, as much as Google doesn’t like to say that is the reality. That is the reality. From a site owner perspective, there’s probably very very isolated cases where you’ve actually been banned. Most of the people who are getting banned are on the receiving end and you know…are you okay with going ahead and putting someone’s site at risk of being nuked? And is that something that you’re ethically ok with? You’ve got to kind of think, I’m in this space; I’m in it for a long term. Am I doing harm to the other person at that point? So that’s something publishers do have to worry about too.
Mike McDonald: So as an SEO though, if you have a client and they come in and say, look I want to buy some links, I mean really all you can do is say, look, understand the risks and go buy them some links. I mean at the end of the day, that’s your client.
Michael Gray: Yeah. You’ve got to kind of make some smart buys, because you don’t want to be purchasing links…you don’t want them to be wasting money buying links from a site that doesn’t work. That’s just throwing money away. So if you’ve got some people that you’re evaluating, look at some of the other sites you’re buying links from and see if those links are actually working because you want to make sure you’re spending your money wisely at that point. And I can’t say that it’s something that I’d say don’t do, but at some point you do have to understand the risk and if somebody’s not communicating that to a client, that’s a bad spot to be in.
Mike McDonald: Alright, well, Michael, I appreciate your taking time to talk to us today, man. This is Mike McDonald with Michael Gray. We’re at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose. This is WebProNews. Thanks for watching.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj29NknXzhw[/youtube]
Twitter for Online Retailers
Michael Gray and Todd Malicoat Jason Billingsley SES San Jose August 2008
Jason Billingsley: here with Get Elastic. I’m chatting with Michael Gray and Todd Malicoat. Hi guys. Why don’t you tell me what you guys do and who you work for.
Michael Gray: I work for my own consulting company, Atlas Web Service and I’m a general all around troublemaker.
Jason Billingsley: And you have a pretty popular blog, don’t you?
Michael Gray: Yes, I do. Wolf-howl.com
Jason Billingsley: Alright. Todd?
Todd Malicoat: Todd Malicoat, aka Stunt Double, do the SEO consulting thing, same kind of thing, consulting and build some sites here and there and get in a little less trouble than Michael.

Jason Billingsly: Right. Getting hit by traffic and not cars, right?
Todd Malicoat: Exactly
Jason Billingsley: So Todd had a pretty successful event last night and he had a charity party and I think there’s a lot of SEO people here today that are pretty red-eyed and sleepy so thanks, Todd. So today we want to talk a little bit about how online retailers are using Twitter as a marketing channel. So what have you guys seen? What’s creative and what’s really good?
Michael Gray: Twitter’s an interesting tool. You know the limitations of the medium are a hundred and forty characters so that kind of removes a lot of the marketing spiel from it and you’ve got to kind of embrace the customer relations a little bit more direct. So the companies that are willing to deal more directly and face that kind of raw customer interaction, those are the companies that do well with Twitter.
Jason Billingsley: And do you think they have to put some people that are dedicated to the resources they can add it as an ad hoc channel to their marketing mix?
Michael Gray: People have to understand how the online marketing world works. There’s certain etiquette with blogs and email and that sort of thing. And if you don’t understand the etiquette, it’s a really hard thing. If you come at it from saying, “Hey, this is a marketing approach,” you’re probably going to make some mistakes. If you come at it saying, “Hey this is more of a customer service approach,” you’ll probably do a little bit better with it.
Todd Malicoat: I would never let anybody who hasn’t read the Cluetrain Manifesto near my brain on Twitter or any other social media.
Michael Gray: Yeah. That’s probably like a prerequisite.
Todd Malicoat: The best quote I’ve heard recently was Ben from at Word Press said Twitter’s like the new social command line. Kind of like DOS for social. You have your few characters, you can ask a question, and you can do whatever and interact in that small little space. But it’s still that social medium and a way to create the conversation with customers and everything else. Regular retailers are a little different. I don’t think we’ve seen a lot of retailers yet.
Michael Gray: I don’t see a lot of the big box people out there. You see people who are kind of at the forefront of customer service. People like Jet Blue, Southwest, Zappos. People who are really into the customer service and interacting more with people as oppose to staying mile high, ivory tower kind of stuff. Those are the people that are moving into Twitter.
Jason Billingsley: Right. Todd, you said an interesting word: conversation. Twitter often is conversational, right, with reply tweets and whatnot? For a retailer that doesn’t have the staff to do bi-directional messaging and they’re very omni-directional, is there still value in that for them?
Todd Malicoat: It depends on the business model. Like Zappos is built off customer service and Jet Blue is built off customer service. That’s why customers love them and they like having that conversation and everything else. You know, United Airlines really doesn’t talk to the customer. Their whole business model is let’s push people off as much as possible. Cell phone providers, AT&T being my least favorite one, really pushes people off and they don’t want to have that conversation. So I think it depends on the model. If you want to have that conversation, if you want to be a company like that or you just want to be cheap. So you can do the cheap way and be United or AT&T or whoever and just have customer service delegates that their whole responsibility is putting people off and not necessarily answering the questions or the really helpful ones. And you’re going to pay more for the helpful ones so you’re going to pay a premium both as the consumer and as the business. So it really depends on the model I think if it’s going to be useful as a medium for them.
Jason Billingsley: So we see a lot of retailers that do live chat on their own web properties. Can Twitter just be seen as an offsite live chat service.
Michael Gray: You can use it in different ways. For companies that are kind of looking to save money and make it more efficient, there are ways to work Twitter. You know there are a lot of Twitter search engines. Twitter actually just bought Surmise. You can use them. There’s Tweet Beep. There are a couple of other tools basically you can program to scan in and it makes the Twitter thing not so much of a burden on the retailer so it makes it a little bit easier to manage and basically they can have somebody scan it maybe two or three times a day you can have email alert comes in, RSS comes in, again, you’re kind of going into that customer service thing. And again, Comcast Cares, is another one where some other customers don’t like them so much and but they’re trying to go out there and use Twitter to address those customer concerns. And for big retailers, they kind of say, we’re afraid of this because what if our customers say bad things about us. And basically if you’re in that position, your customers are saying bad things about you anyway. So are you burying your head in the sand and pretending it’s not there or are you going to try and do some to at least acknowledge it, embrace it, and maybe try to fix some of those problems.
Jason Billingsley: So some of these retailers can be using Twitter for online reputation management.
Michael Gray: Yeah. If you can get in there and do everything that you can. Firefox I know when they released the new version, some people had a lot of buggy experiences with it. And they had someone monitoring, creating a channel. Like “Firefox answers” I think was the profile they were using. And basically they were picking up people who were having problems and trying to make suggestions. Again, were they able to solve everybody’s problem? No, but having somebody there saying hey here’s something to try and trying to help you, that’s a big step. Jason Billingsly: Cool. So, last question. We talked a little bit about Woot.com earlier today. What about retailers that are having Deal of the Day like Amazon Gold Box. Twitter seems to be a good medium for that. What’s your take?
Michael Gray: I would isolate your promotional stuff from your customer service stuff because you’re going to kind of have mixed messages there. And you’ve got to kind of be careful with how you do that. You know some people can get away with doing it but I would say keep your sales channel separate from your customer service channel because you don’t want to be giving people that mixed message.
Todd Malicoat: Yeah. And people would likely want one or the other. I’m there to get deals or I’m there to get help. So I don’t need my help and my deals mixed.
Michael Gray: Yeah. [?] for the right product. That’s a good strategy for Twitter. And again, if you can offer something unique with some sense of immediacy or time expiration, that’s a really really powerful tool. Jason Billingsly: And I think it’d be a mistake for me not to bring up the notion of SEO and Twitter. Is there anything that people are doing creatively for SEO?
Michael Gray: Well if you look at Barrack Obama, if you do a search for his name, Twitter profile is number four for his particular name. For someone who’s a presidential candidate in a site that’s maybe a year, a year and a half old, that’s a pretty impressive result. So again if you’re a company that maybe doesn’t have such a good customer service reputation, having another spot in there that you can control, that’s to your benefit.

Todd Malicoat: And really just the social media tie-in too of pushing stuff out via social media. If you’re doing stuff all the time and you’re getting readership, and you have a bunch of people following and everything else, at some point you’re going do that promotional post or it wasn’t necessarily SEO but even promoting the party was kind of…there’s that cross between the guerrilla marketing and marketing and everything else and then pushing it out via Twitter.
Jason Billingsly: Yeah, we certainly heard about every hour someone talking about the party. Hey guys, thanks a lot for chatting with me about Twitter and how online retailers can use it for another marketing channel.
Todd Malicoat: Absolutely.
Michael Gray: Thank you.

SMX Social Media, NYC 2007
Michael Gray Atlas Web Service Kara Ratliff Web Pro News SMX Social 2007
Kara Ratliff: Hi, Kara Ratliff here reporting for WebProNews at SMX Social Media in New York City. Standing here with me is Michael Gray, President of Atlas Web Service. How are you today?
Michael Gray: I’m good. Thank you. How are you?
Kara Ratliff: I’m quite well. Thank you. Michael, you just had a session, a marketers guide to social bookmarking and tagging. Tell me a little bit about the main topic that you were covering.

Michael Gray: I was mostly talking about Delicious and I tried to take the approach of understanding how it worked and then how a marketer could know the rules of the game and use them to get the most success out of any campaign that they’re trying to do.
Kara Ratfliff: Ok. And with the success, what is first step that somebody needs to look at when they are trying to have success on Delicious?
Michael Gray: I think the first thing is you really have to understand how it works. Don’t jump right in and say I’m going to push my story out is the first thing. Understand how the system works, see what’s working, do a little research. See whatever your particular industry is and see what stories are more successful. Try and find a way to give it a new spin or emulate that and see what’s working and what’s not and learn what to stay away from.
Kara Ratliff: Ok. When you are trying to research and seeing what works and what doesn’t, what’s the first step that you need to look at?
Michael Gray: Try and figure out what it is that people are tagging your site with. The words that you may use may be industry jargon and that’s not necessarily how the consumer interprets something. They are going to tag things in a way that makes the most sense to them and makes it most relevant. Even though it’s not your word, you want to try and make it so that it’s their word so that it’s the hold they’re trying to put it in.
Kara Ratliff: Ok. Tell our viewers a little bit about the Tag Cloud.
Michael Gray: The Tag Cloud basically lists the most poplular tags within Delicious. And it orders them by size. The more people who are tagging something, the bigger the tag happens to be. The less people who are tagging something, the smaller the tag happens to be. And then there’s some color indication to let it know whether it’s a tag that you’re using a lot or not.
Kara Ratliff: Ok. Is Delicious the only social bookmarking site that you actually use? Or is it your favorite? Or tell me a little bit about why you were talking specifically on Delicious.

Michael Gray: If I actually wasn’t a marketer, I would still be using Delicious just because it’s a really powerful tool. But I use a lot of the bookmarking sites, just because it works for me. I use Stumble Upon. I use Digg. I use Reddit. I use basically all just because it understands. And you have to understand that every site is different for different things. Again, there’s a big concentration on Dig of tech stories. If whatever you’re selling doesn’t happen to involve tech, Dig is probably not a good spot for you and Delicious is probably a better alternative. So you’ve got to try and figure out where does it fit best for you and then try and go after that.
Kara Ratfliff: Ok. What about the future of social media?
Michael Gray: We’re definitely in a growth stage. And I could see there’s lots of little sites out there. Just yesterday on Tech Crunch, they had about six or seven different celebrity fashion news Dig clones. Is there enough out there to support all of those? Probably not. Well, we’ll see some consolidation but at this point it’s really really early so it’s hard to say who’s going to come out the leader in all of that.
Kara Ratliff: Ok. Have you learned anything here that you would like to share with the viewers, maybe something unusual?

Michael Gray: I know a lot of the people here, most of the people speaking on the panel so we kind of have informal chats beforehand. So I don’t know that there’s anything that I didn’t learn. But if you’re not a big player in this space and you don’t have all these people on IM or on email, there’s probably a lot of things that you learned out here.
Kara Ratliff: Alright. Thank you very much, Michael Gray. Reporting for WebProNews at SMX Social Media, I’m Kara Ratliff.