It’s been a few weeks since I posted here and for good reason. But this really isn’t the time or place to talk about it. (If you’re my Facebook friend and you know me personally, you already know why I haven’t posted.)

I’ve written here before about the need to post frequently and maintain a  constant presence. Consistently creating high-quality content is the best way to build influence in the social media sphere and to increase the chances that  posts be featured high in search results.

What if you’re not up to creating high-quality content? Jim Rome the popular sports DJ jokes that he has to go “down in the basement and recharge the batteries” every now and then to keep the quality of his program up to  his standards. This is a human and normal thing to do – yet professionals still feel the need to tweet their vacations away. Stop it.

If you’re in a corporate environment you need a plan for your personal time. For the agency blog, we keep a couple generic articles in reserve that can be posted when people are on vacation – we advise clients to do the same. If you’re a personal blogger you can do something similar, posting before your vacation but not have the posts go live  till you’re far away from responsibility – WordPress makes this really easy. Or you can just give yourself a break. I did and I don’t feel guilty.

Most ad agencies have historically hired specialists to handle the digital part of the equation – leaving creatives to play and not worry so much about the technical details. After all, they’ve got plenty on their plate learning programs, production skills, and just cranking out killer creative. Who needs another skill set to worry about?

Now with job scarcity the way it is, agencies are raising their expectations of digital knowledge. Partially because clients are starting to demand it of agencies as well. And, of course, they haven’t done a great job of training creatives in these concepts.

It’s up to us as professionals to take our own development seriously. Shit always rolls down hill, doesn’t it? So here are a few things copywriters should think be thinking about in relationship to SEO.

1. SEO isn’t an even suckier new version of REO Speedwagon. It means Search Engine Optimization.
2. You cannot ignore SEO anymore. Your job now includes digital and no one else will fix your mistakes.
3. Even if your boss doesn’t get it, you better. It’s called responsibility.
4. Their are no magic bullets or techniques that make it easy. That was Black Hat SEO and its days are over.
5. Never let the developer or Art Director put the content in Flash or images.
6. Buy a book on SEO like this one. (Worthwhile, I’ve actually read it).
7. Google doesn’t want you to game the system so there are no hard and fast rules.
8. You won’t loose your membership to the creative club if you add keywords to your copy. Well, unless you do it hackneyed.
9. If you’re aware of SEO when you start a project, you can make smart word choices and design decisions that won’t screw up your concept.
10. Search engines rank keyword density but they are also programmed to notice too many keywords. If your copy is super-laden with keywords it will suck and no one will read it or share it. Double foul, shame on you.
11. You can still make fun of the tech guys if you take digital seriously.
12. SEO isn’t everything. Social Media Optimization is now very important. Oh, and there’s that whole well designed and written thing too.
13. People will think you’re a geek when you correct them on SEO in meetings. But at least they’ll respect you.

With two daughters under the age of four, I don’t get a lot of time to watch football. But I’m going to make some time this Sunday for some football — and for the ads, of course. More on the Kilganon blog.

Lets face it not everybody likes hot dogs or buns but it doesn’t mean you can ignore either if you’re trying to have a party. This is something I’ve been noticing gets messed up enough that it was worth writing about. The article is posted on the agency blog.

This was 7:30 AM. Just dropped off the girls and went for a short hike. Had nowhere to be for the rest of the day really. Taking a deep breath today. Hope you have a chance for one too. Have a great weekend.

Well, that blows. Really, it does.

I know a lot of people just like you. After all, the economy is awful, so who would quit any job? Even if you’re severely overworked.

There have been days, where I’ve felt just like you. Thankfully, it’s not persistent.

Fortunately, my job is pretty diverse. Wasn’t always that way. But possibly becuase I demonstrate to the people that I work for I have a passion for more than just my core competency, they let me do more. That means that yesterday I was a photographer and today I’ll be a social media strategist and copywriter.

So maybe my passion for copywriting is running a little low. So what, I’ve got plenty of social media stuff to do to. Just power through the writing and get to the juicy stuff.

Extra hats around the office are often viewed as a problem. But they’re not if you can find a passion for them. Like I have for this blog or say my photography.

You knew it would happen. An employee was gonna blow a gasket on Twitter.

So now you’re thinking maybe this social media thing needs to be clamped down on. And just when it was starting to pay off too.

Well did you plan for when the implosion happens? You’ve got a plan for workplace accidents, legal issues, and even bad PR.

Did you have a clear set of guidelines for your employees before they started talking?

Your employees will make you look dumb and like you’re not in control. But they used to do it with friends, coworkers, and sometimes customers over drinks. But they do say 100 times more positive things online. And now you it’s all on their permanent record and they should have a clear idea of the consequences of their actions.

So you may as well keep it out in open rather than drive it underground. Because they’ve always been talking about you and the company anyway. Only now that word of mouth can be Googgled.

The interwebs got me in touch with an old friend last week I had not talked to since I moved east. I picked up the phone and we picked up where we had left off – it was a great conversation. It was also connection worth renewing. But there are some people I see every week where the connection isn’t as valuable to me.

In social media, connections are the same way. Most will read this post and never think to comment on it. Some may comment but never think to connect personally. Some will connect personally but never choose to do business. This is all great. Because some will.

How many followers/friends/fans does it take to make a million dollars? Well, that depends on what you’re selling and even if you’re selling. This website has only been at it’s current address for a month, doesn’t have a lot of readers yet, isn’t overtly selling anything, but it has gotten me back in touch with an old colleague who needs some help. No, not a million dollars worth of help. But help.

Focusing on the value of connections is not really new thinking in marketing. Direct marketers have always focused on the quality of their lists – it can cost a lot to mail a compelling direct mail piece.

Social media practitioners should think about their target too when they’re planning a social media effort. If you’re trying to sell a enterprise software, a select group of fans, followers, or readers may be a lot more valuable than 100,000 fans on Facebook. But if you’re selling potato chips, heck, just about everyone buys those occasionally – by all means, talk to everyone.

I was talking with a group of social media folks about metrics the other day and it made me think of a famous quote by William Goldman, the Hollywood screenwriter “Nobody knows anything.”

Goldman was talking about how nobody in Hollywood knows if a movie is going to do well. There are just so many variables that go into a production that it’s nearly impossible to predict how a movie will fare on opening day and beyond. No one has a clue, no matter how much they protest, how a movie will do creatively or at the box office until it hits theaters.

Tracking the effectiveness of social media is much the same way. It’s incredibly difficult to track spending to actual return on investment. Especially for brands that aren’t selling their products online. I won’t bore you with the analytics problems involved in even measuring links coming to your site from say Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, or YouTube. The problem is most brands don’t actually sell their products or a majority of their products on their own online store. How do you measure if Tweet influenced the purchase of chewing gum at the 7–11?

Chris Brogan says it’s all about the dollars. Meaning how much money is coming in currently vs before. He’s right that it’s about the money but how do you connect the purchase to the tweet when you’re selling insurance? Or if you’re selling potato chips, was it the POP or the sale price that moved the product in the aisle?

In advertising, we’ve been working with this kind of fuzzy math for years with television, radio, and brand advertising. But social media is on the Internet where people have been using Google Analytics and Omniture for years so it’s held up to a higher standard, even though it’s the shiny new toy. So what do we do?

We do what we did with TV. Look and see if our investment correlates with growth. But since the spending won’t necessarily create as immediate an impact, we also have to look at activity over time – examining trends in both purchases and brand mentions. If these things correlate, then you can begin to estimate a ROI. That said, it’s still very difficult to factor out other variables.

We’re fortunate people can’t say nobody know anything about social media ROI. But we should be honest and say, nobody know everything.

Like all parents of young children, I hate, hate, hate how much it costs to keep my kids in diapers. So when I opened a new pack of Huggies® I was happy to be notified I possibly had won a lifetime supply. All I had to do was fill out an online form. OK.

But the form kept going and I got to feeling they wanted more information than was appropriate. (Full disclosure, I’ve been a victim of identity theft.) Like my kids’ ages, birthdays, and names. Come on Huggies®, you’re kidding me. Right?

So I poked around for an email address. Fail again. But there’s a form, so I fill it out only to get a “do not reply”, canned email from a Huggie®. No, not Sue at Huggie®. But from a registerd trademark. Wow, I have confidence now. Let me send you my social security number too.

I’m bashing a little on Kimberly Clarke, but, really, a whole lot of companies are guilty of this kind of lack of respect for the individual. Hey, they’re giving something of value away, so they should get something, right? Some marketing data that can be used for the next direct mail piece and research for the next ad campaign or product line.

But actually they could have gotten similar data and much cheaper and frequent reach just by requiring I fan them on Facebook. And I would be using them as positive example right now. But as annoyed as I am about this, my wife will still buy those diapers. At least for another year.