Pepsigate corporate exploitation of social media

It's blogocombat of the highest order. Nothing less than -- the war being waged to protect and defend the very heart and soul of the blogosphere itself.

A business that tries to hoodwink a social media community is doomed to go down blazing, roasting in falsification flames and fetid fanfare. The blogosphere has an immune system that will identify and defeat any alien intruders trying to bend it toward wayward hype and commercial illusion.

Pepsi attempted to enter the "Medicine and Health Channel" of the ScienceBlogs network with an obviously self-serving blog called Food Frontiers. This PR maneuver by PepsiCo triggered a mass exodus of talented writers from the ScienceBlogs fold, in rebellion against advertorial infomercial obfuscations.

This is similar to the strategy behind such monstrosities as Sponsored Links, Promoted Twitter Trending Topics, and Paid Listings, where a company pays to have their product included, intruding artificially, in search results and various categories of legitimate content.

Agency-derived PR/advertising messages masquerading as organic, community-friendly, uncompensated, customer-generated, objective, prompt-free, or directly spawned by algorithms corresponding to user input.

It amounts to pretending to be a viral topic, search result, news item, or normal user content -- when it's really not. The idea is to convey a sales or PR message in the (flimsy) disguise of unaffiliated social media contributions. Transparency, authenticity, and editorial integrity are sacrificed in the name of greed.

What makes it worse is that the blog was an ill conceived attempt to pose as science journalism, while functioning as corporate propaganda, and addressing it to a highly educated audience of critical thinkers and serious writers.

In their attempt to accommodate corporate opportunism, ScienceBlogs may have self-destructed in a crescendo of shame and sham.

Some outlets in mainstream media accused the science blogosphere of being full of non-credible kooks with axes to grind, whilst turning a blind eye to its own multiplicity of cases of dubious journalistic integrity.

ScienceBlogs, the leader in the science blogosphere, boasted of up to 1.2 million unique monthly visitors.

Quite a few top science bloggers defected, i.e., quit blogging for the network, because of their initial decision to allow Pepsico, Inc. to sponsor Food Frontiers blog on the site, but this blog has now been removed from the ScienceBlogs community.

PepsiCo announced that it would feature research and analysis from distinguished universities and centers of scientific discovery. Content would be provided by the Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Weizmann Institute of Science, the SETI Institute, CERN, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.


[QUOTE]

As part of this partnership, we'll hear from a wide range of experts on how the company is developing products rooted in rigorous, science-based nutrition standards to offer consumers more wholesome and enjoyable foods and beverages. The focus will be on innovations in science, nutrition and health policy. In addition to learning more about the transformation of PepsiCo's product portfolio, we'll be seeing some of the innovative ways it is planning to reduce its use of energy, water and packaging. . .

. . .We have some exciting things planned for this project, including a video series that will begin with a look at the role the food industry plays in health issues, and how industry research into chemistry, physiology, neuroscience, behavioral economics, medicine, and nutrition can improve health outcomes around the world.

[END QUOTE]


Many bloggers (like Rebecca Skloot, Grrl Scientist, and David Dobbs) saw this "nutrition blog" as a thinly veiled attempt by PepsiCo to exploit the social media realm.

To be more exact: the scientific community portion of the social media realm! We all know how easily duped those scientists and science journalists are, eh? Talk about inappropriate misappreciations.

PepsiCo would cavalierly post articles that supported their propaganda that "soda pop is good for you". Science enthusiasts were deemed stupid enough to be deceived. Bad deductive reasoning and ignorant marketing strategy, PepsiCo.

"Leveraging social networks to achieve business objectives" was unceremoniously unveiled as opportunistic corporate spin -- what some might call "taking advantage of online communities to promulgate biased reports with a goal to influence public opinion and inflate product sales".

Business As Usual is not welcome in the blogosphere, you capitalist lackeys.

Commercialism can't pose as user generated content, real time trends, viral velocities, or hard science. Get it through your head or end up unread and unfed.

Social media is all about caring and sharing. When you share sales messages in the form of biased or incentivized user generated content, which includes scientists paid to present information friendly to your brand and oblivious to true science, you will suffer the consequences.

Somebody help PepsiCo and ScienceBlogs with what we web guys call "online reputation management" aka "internet brand defamation" i.e., corporate damage control. They're going to need as much as they can get.


Read more about Pepsigate:


Newsweek "The Pepsi Challenge"

Forbes "Pepsi Enrages Science Bloggers"

Letter from Seed Editor Adam Bly to ScienceBlog.com Contributors

Columbia Journalism Review "Uproar at ScienceBlogs"

PZ Meyers "Say Hello to PepsiCo??!? WTF?"

National Association of Science Writers "On Science Blogs This Week: Fizz"

Slashdot "ScienceBlogs.com Deals with Community Backlash Over PepsiCo Column"

Respectful Insolence "Blindsided by My Corporate Overlords and PepsiCo"

Jennifer Ouellette "Growing Pains"

Daily Kos "And Never the Twain Shall Meet"

Comprendia Bioscience Consulting Group "What Life Science Social Media Marketers Can Learn from ScienceBlog PepsiGate"

Watching the Watchers "The Corporation and the Community"

Lab Lemming "A Different Take on the PepSciBlog Scandal"

John Rennie "Teetering Chinese Wall Falls on Scienceblogs"

John Rennie "PepsiCo Scienceblog Goes Flat"

Martin Robbins "An Analysis of Pepsigate"

Abel Pharmboy "PepsiCo blog, Food Frontiers, is an affront to those who built the reputation of ScienceBlogs"

Uncertain Principles "Sodamageddon: Why I'm Not Leaving"

Knight Science Journalism Tracker "ScienceBlogs Trashes Credibility"

The Guardian "ScienceBlogs We Have a Problem"

Southern Fried Scientist "Blogging With Integrity"

Scholarly Kitchen "The Pepsi Syndrome"

Drug Monkey "Go It Alone or Form a Collective?"

ERV "Saturday Shillery: Quaker Oats"

The Frontal Cortex "Pepsigate and Why Diet Soda Makes People Fat"

A Blog Around the Clock "The PepsiGate Link Fest"

Str8 Sounds video submission to Guggenheim

Str8 Sounds "Dynamic Stellar Malfunction" is my video submission for the Guggenheim / YouTube Play showcase.

Produced April 20, 2009 with CyberLink Power Director, then processed through Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9.


[QUOTE]

"YouTube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video" aims to discover and showcase the most exceptional talent working in the ever-expanding realm of online video. Developed by YouTube and the Guggenheim Museum in collaboration with HP, YouTube Play hopes to attract innovative, original, and surprising videos from around the world, regardless of genre, technique, background, or budget. This global online initiative is not a search for what’s “now,” but a search for what’s next. Visit youtube.com/play to learn more and submit a video.

It is the goal of YouTube Play to reach the widest possible audience, inviting each and every individual with access to the Internet to submit a video for consideration. The end result will hopefully be the ultimate YouTube playlist: a selection of the most unique, innovative, groundbreaking video work being created and distributed online during the past two years.

The Jury:

Laurie Anderson

One of today’s most prolific performance artists, Laurie Anderson is renowned as a musician, inventor, and filmmaker. Her performance practice is diverse, ranging from riveting monologues to sophisticated multimedia events that combine and harmonize visual and aural elements. At once experimental and entertaining, Anderson’s work resists categorization, as the novel-inspired performance Songs and Stories for Moby Dick (1999–2000) illustrates. The impact of Anderson’s creative work has been acknowledged by NASA, which named her its first artist-in-residence in 2004. A traveling retrospective of Anderson’s visual work, The Record of the Time: Sound in the Work of Laurie Anderson, was organized by the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon in 2003. Recently Anderson released the album Homeland (her first in ten years) and premiered the new performance work Delusion at the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad.

Animal Collective, featuring Deakin (Josh Dibb), Geologist (Brian Weitz), and Panda Bear (Noah Lennox)

Hailing from Baltimore, Animal Collective is a decade-old group of musicians composed of childhood friends Avey Tare (Dave Portner), Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), Geologist (Brian Weitz), and Deakin (Josh Dibb). Known for their experimental sound and mysterious, psychedelic, and sometimes disorienting live performances, the band has produced eight studio records, one live record, and a variety of critically acclaimed side projects while touring extensively nationally and internationally.

Darren Aronofsky

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, director Darren Aronofsky won the Director’s Award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival and an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay for his first feature, π. In 2000 Aronofsky premiered Requiem for a Dream at the Cannes International Film Festival. The film was named to more than 150 Top Ten lists, including those of the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and the American Film Institute. His third feature, The Fountain, a science-fiction romance that he wrote and directed, starred Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. Aronofsky’s most recent film, The Wrestler, premiered in 2008 at the Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Lion, making it only the third American film in history to win this prize. Among his honors, the American Film Institute has awarded Aronofsky the prestigious Franklin J. Schaffner Alumni Medal, and the Stockholm Film Festival presented him the Golden Horse Visionary Award. His next release, Black Swan, is a horror film set in the world of ballet that stars Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis, forthcoming in late fall 2010.

Douglas Gordon

Scottish-born artist Douglas Gordon utilizes a variety of mediums, including installation, video, and photography, to investigate memory and time. For his landmark video 24 Hour Psycho (1993), he slowed Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film to last an entire day; the tension of this famous thriller was heightened by the mesmerizing, protracted action. In 2006, Gordon collaborated with artist Philippe Parreno on Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, a film that presents the movements of French soccer star Zinedine Zidane in real time over the course of a single match to create a complex study of portraiture and mediated spectacle. Exhibited globally, Gordon's work has been the subject of considerable critical attention. Gordon received the 1996 Turner Prize, the Duemila Prize for best young artist at the 1997 Venice Biennale, and the 1998 Hugo Boss Prize. In 2008 he received the Roswitha Haftmann Prize and served as an International Juror at the 65th Venice International Film Festival.

Ryan McGinley

Ryan McGinley is a photographer whose work celebrates raw youth, with all its connotations of revolt, hedonism, and subversion. Subjects have ranged from fans of the musician Morrissey (in the series Irregular Regulars, 2004–07), to nude young men and women playing and living in nature (I Know Where the Summer Goes, 2007–08) or captured in intimate studio portraiture (Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, 2010). In 2003, at the age of twenty-five, McGinley became the youngest artist to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. McGinley has been the recipient of two important photographic prizes, the ICP Infinity Award for best young photographer from the International Center of Photography in 2007 and American Photo magazine’s Photographer of the Year award in 2003. In addition to projects in which he documents his own friends and community, McGinley has created editorial portfolios for such publications as Index, Esquire, and the New York Times Magazine, for which he has photographed athletes at the 2004 summer and 2010 winter Olympic games, 2007 Oscar nominees, and the singer M.I.A.

Marilyn Minter

Artist Marilyn Minter merges high art with commercial imagery throughout her practice, which includes painting, video, and photography. Minter’s work frequently focuses on the female body, creating hyperrealistic artworks that offset sensuality with lurid colors. Her second video work, Green Pink Caviar (2009), has been screened in locations around the world, including Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, Times Square in New York, Madonna’s 2009 European tour, and, at present, the lobby of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The manipulation of glamour and desire, recurrent themes for Minter, converged in her appropriation of Pamela Anderson’s iconic pin-up image in a 2007 series of photographic portraits. Minter has exhibited internationally, with notable solo shows organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2005); Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati (2009); and La Conservera, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Murcia, Spain (2009).

Takashi Murakami

World-renowned Japanese artist Takashi Murakami blurs the boundaries between East and West, past and present, in his paintings, sculptures, and videos. Influenced by such varied traditions as Japanese manga, anime, and classical nihonga painting and Western Pop art, Murakami has developed a unique practice that situates the artist at the cusp of high art and mass culture. In his work as a curator, Murakami has organized such seminal exhibitions of contemporary Japanese art and culture as Superflat (2000) and Little Boy: The Art of Japan’s Exploding Subcultures (2005). As an entrepreneur, he promotes emerging artists through his art production and management company Kaikai Kiki Co. Having exhibited widely throughout the world, Murakami is currently preparing for an exhibition at the Château de Versailles in September 2010.

Shirin Neshat

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian-born artist/filmmaker living in New York. Neshat’s early photographic works, including the Unveiling (1993) and Women of Allah (1993–97) series, explored notions of gender in relation to Islamic fundamentalism and militancy. Her subsequent video works departed from overtly political content or critique in favor of more poetic imagery and narratives. Neshat recently directed her first feature-length film, Women without Men, which received the Silver Lion Award at the 66th Venice International Film Festival in 2009. Neshat has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at galleries and museums internationally, including the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Serpentine Gallery in London, Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Musee d’Art Contemporain de Montreal.

Stefan Sagmeister

Stefan Sagmeister is one of today’s most innovative and influential graphic designers. His conception and application of graphic design goes above and beyond traditional notions of the practice, taking it to the realm of performative, conceptual, and installation-based art. Sagmeister is most widely known for his album cover artwork for bands like the Rolling Stones, Talking Heads, and Lou Reed, and for books like Mariko Mori’s Wave UFO for the Kunsthaus Bregenz, which function as sculptural objects.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Working in both feature-length and short forms, Apichatpong Weerasethakul plays with various narrative devices and nonlinear structures in his profoundly expressive, lyrical films, which are produced in his native Thailand. Exploring memory, political oppression, and spiritual quests, the works blend naturalism with stylized, dreamlike sequences. Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century was the first Thai film to be selected for the Venice International Film Festival, where it premiered in 2006 at the 63rd festival. Recent screenings and exhibitions of his films and installations include Phantoms of Nabua, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio; Moderne de la Ville de Paris/ARC (2009); and at Life on Mars, 55th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2008–09), at which he was awarded the inaugural Fine Prize. His feature films have won several prizes from the Cannes International Film Festival, including the Prix Un Certain Regard (2003), the Prix du Jury (2004), and for his most recent film, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, the prestigious Palme d’Or (2010).

Nancy Spector, Jury Chair

Nancy Spector is the Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, where she oversees the acquisition strategy for the permanent collection and the global exhibition calendar for the institution and its affiliates. She has organized exhibitions on conceptual photography, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Richard Prince, Tino Sehgal, and Matthew Barney’s Cremaster cycle. She was adjunct curator of the 1997 Venice Biennale and co-organizer of the first Berlin Biennale in 1998. She has contributed to numerous books on contemporary visual culture with essays on artists such as Maurizio Cattelan, Luc Tuymans, and Lawrence Weiner.


[END QUOTE]

Avery Willis tweets his own death

Twitter is a micro-blogging, reverse chronology (first message seen is the last to be posted) status update site. A social network where you share your thoughts and what's happening in your life.

Christian evangelist Avery Willis used Twitter to tweet his own death.

RIP Man of God.

He had 626 followers and he followed 125 people on Twitter.

• Bio Lover of God, family, friends, unreached, oral learners, disciples, missionaries, Cowboys and Baseball Cardinals, chocolate, you.

This is a very poignant series of Twitter messages, yet I admire the courage of this religious man. To tweet step by step your progress toward what you hope is recovery, but you then realize is death is quite amazing. I feel sad and triumphant at the same time.

It's like he made death itself become transparent.





Check out the NavPress description of Avery Willis.

What strikes me is how he did not retreat into morbid silence as he saw his end arriving. His answer to the Twitter question "What's happening?" gradually became basically, if you read between the lines, "I'm dying and I see the end approaching."

He never gave up hope. His positive faith is a shining example for us all. He trusted and believed God for deliverance. But it was his time to go. His mission on earth had ended. His expiration date had arrived.

Welcome to your eternal home, faithful servant.

(I promise that I too, if I have access to a computer, will tweet my own death.)

Avery Willis. A true Twitter hero.

1. From son Randy: My dad graduated to Glory early this morning, July 30. He died peacefully, without pain or anxiety. More info on CBridge about 1 hour ago via web
2. Home from hospital. Tired from transport from hospital, visiting with family and friends. It is so good to be home. about 13 hours ago via web
3. Discharge from hospital delayed because of transfusions.Hopefully, can go home Thurs. God and family are very precious right now. Praise God 4:38 PM Jul 28th via web
4. Leukemia is back, and the doctors feel treating it will push me over the edge. I may go home Wed to die at home rather than at the hospital. 9:00 PM Jul 27th via web
5. I have improved a little today. Kidneys are better, but heart accelerating. Pray for heart rate to go down. God is with me. 9:10 PM Jul 26th via web
6. I am stable in poor condition. Family is all coming in. Pray for a miracle in recovery and/or a glorious homegoing. To God be the glory! 7:18 AM Jul 26th via web
7. In hospital in NWA but major systems are working against each other and kidneys will probably shut down. Heart weakened. Praise strengthened 6:12 PM Jul 24th via web
8. I have taken a turn for the worse. Leukemia has returned aggressively. Heart is weakened. Fluid is on lungs. Kidneys not work right. PRAY 8:37 PM Jul 23rd via web
9. PTL! Dismissed from hospital. A friend is providing a plane home tomorrow. Still have all the symptoms of what is wrong with me but Glory! 3:57 PM Jul 22nd via web
10. The hospital will dismiss me Thu. if no fever tonight. I'll travel on oxygen. Still short of breath, A fib is better and pneumonia present. 6:49 PM Jul 21st via web
11. Leukmia may not be in relapse but it could be neulasta shots. Cancelled our tickets home til I get stable. Feeling about the same. 8:19 PM Jul 20th via web
12. The bottom dropped out. Sun. nite I entered the hospital in RVA. My leukemia has returned; I have atrial fibrillation and fluid on lungs. 5:08 PM Jul 19th via web
13. The trip to Richmond went as well as could be expected. But I laid down (which creates fever) & got a fever. IMB medical staff helped me. 10:30 AM Jul 18th via web
14. I am ready to go to Rankin's retirement in RVA and see my friends Sat.-Tues. I am still weak and have little energy so pray for me. Adios. 9:06 PM Jul 16th via web
15. The video taping for LifeWay discipleship week went well. Hopefully I can go home tomorrow after 13 days in the hospital with pneumonia. 8:20 PM Jul 13th via web
16. Progress! The LifeWay taping of my discipleship testimony is on for Tuesday at 10:00 AM. Dr. said I may can still go to Rankin retirement. 6:32 PM Jul 12th via web
17. I am better and making progress. Chest not hurting as bad. Back pain gone. No fever. Read my www.caringbridge.org for my focus on "Focus". 9:48 PM Jul 11th via web
18. No fever for three days but I don't feel well with the pneumonia. I'll need to cancel the Rankin retirement & miss seeing friends on staff 8:54 PM Jul 10th via web
19. No fever last night so am better today. Dr. Bandy brought a "band" of researchers into the process and said they will find the problem. 7:01 PM Jul 9th via web
20. My doctors have decided that I am dealing with more then just pneumonia so are doing cat scans, cultures to discover where the infection is. 8:59 PM Jul 8th via web
21. My fever has kept pretty low so I am feeling better. Dr. hopes I can go home by the weekend. Each of the 5 doctors has different ideas. 10:28 PM Jul 7th via web
22. My temperature is back to 103 and they are still trying to find why in addition to my pneumonia. More radical tests tomorrow. Hurt all over. 7:09 PM Jul 6th via web
23. X-rays showed fluid in part of my lungs so the doctors are treating me for pneumonia while doing more cultures and keeping me in hospital. 6:21 PM Jul 5th via web
24. Still waiting on tests but my lungs seem to be filling up and I am short of breath which could indicate pneumonia. Not feeling good on 4th. 4:54 PM Jul 4th via web
25. My fever has gone down, up and down again. The doctors still aren't sure of the cause but it could be pneumonia or "pick line" infection. 6:45 PM Jul 3rd via web
26. Missed last night because I am back in the hospital. Had to go to emergency room with 103 temp. Dr. said infection was a risk. More later. 12:35 PM Jul 3rd via web
27. Praise God for my Twitter friends. 140 words are not many but they can pack a punch. JESUS IS LORD! Of Everything and every one. 1 9:25 PM Jul 2nd via web
28. What a blessing from God to have such a godly family from youngest to oldest. God is so good. The members visiting us went home today. 8:14 PM Jun 30th via web
29. The shot to make white blood cells has given me a terrific headache that doesn't respond. Since the pain goes to bone I must be a bonehead. 8:14 PM Jun 29th via web
30. I got a shot to help my bone marrow make white blood cells so my bones will hurt most of the week. But a great time with family here. 8:42 PM Jun 28th via web
31. 300,000 look for Christ every day on CCCI websites. 30,000 accept Christ & 7,000 ask for online help. Find out www.MissionaryFromHome.com 9:02 PM Jun 26th via web

SEO and small business VIDEO

My old friend Robert Scoble has an interesting blog post -- "2010: the year SEO isn'nt important anymore?"

"Talking about SEO and Small Business"

[QUOTE]

It no longer is good enough to be just an SEO expert to get items onto pages like these. You’ve gotta be great at creating content that gets Google’s algorithms to trust it enough to shove it onto these new hybrid pages.

[END QUOTE]

Discussed on the video:

"SEO providers might get you some leads, but you should ask them how much of the budget is going to media. Online small spend commission should be 30%."

"A few hours a week goes to bid management, by real human beings."

"Pay the setup fee, then after 4 months, try to bring down the bid management fee, $500 to $1,500."

"Watch out for competitors who misuse Google Local. One gimmick is to take out multiple PO boxes, IP phone numbers, then pretend they have multiple offices in one area. Big brands are doing this, not just the locksmith category."

"Black hat techniques are not about optimizing a site, but harming the indexing of competitor's sites."

"It's hard for small businesses to calculate ROI (Return on Investment) and keyword lifetime value. They're too busy selling and managing."

"Small business should focus on bounce rate and goal conversion in Google Analytics" ... then draw conclusions about how to optimize your content for the two-fold readership: human visitors and search engine spiders.

Increasingly the two readers want the same things.

"We coach our clients on how to generate tons of good content."

There's no escaping it. When it comes to SEO, content is king, but content is slave to the needs and interests of customers and fans...and presentation is queen.

6 Tips on Organic SEO

SEO is Search Engine Optimization.

SEO is the science and art, the machinery and poetry, of driving qualified traffic to a blog or website, enabling marketing strategies to convert some of them to paying customers and loyal fans.

A website or blog is "optimized" (made as effective as technically possible) for search engines when a potential customer or fan is able to find you on a Google, Yahoo, MSN, Bing, Ask or other internet search.

Sometimes web users search for a long time, dreaming up new keywords and catchphrases that might possibly be how a certain entity (product, celebrity, news item, company, political event, health warning, movie, or solution to a problem) has been tagged and indexed in the web.

"Will I find it by using this phrase?" we wonder, "or will it just dredge up a bunch of crazy offensive material?"

Have you ever wondered why certain really weird photos come up when you do an image search on Google? You type in your phrase, word, or name. Hit enter. Wait a second. In the midst of relevant pictures, you see some racey or inappropriate images that have nothing to do with your search term, the person or organization or product or idea.

It may be because the irrelevant graphic was tagged with the keywords you used in your search for your topic of interest.

The tags are called "Alt tags", though they're actually Alt attributes, and some people either enter the wrong information, or they intend to deceive and disrupt the web by using disingenuous labels on their JPEGs and GIFs. (They may also embed dangerous code, or malware, in their images and try to send them to you as email attachments.)

Your website or blog should strive to remain in compliance with best practices in web usability, content management, audience relevance, social media participation, user value escalation, online interaction, multimedia implementation, and search engine optimization.

The murky world of SEO, where, like everywhere else in life, good guys and bad guys hang out.

The bad guys are called "black hat SEO". They use hidden text and covert HTML to game the search engines in hopes of tricking them into ranking a website higher in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). The gimmicks backfire, and eventually these deceptive sites are banned from SERPs. Thus, disposable websites arise and vanish, often leaving link rot (deactivated URLs), and decreased trust in the web, in their wake.

You can buy keywords from search engine marketers, as a way to boost your SERP ranking. There are many other methods, diagnostics, tools, and strategies for SEO, but once you start playing SEO games, you have to keep reviewing, adjusting, and reinventing your efforts.

The rules keep changing in Pay Per Click SEO.

If you become reliant on Sponsored Links, Featured Content, Incentivized Ranking, Pay Per Inclusion, Pay Per Post, Pay Per Click and the like, instead of grinding out fantastic content, you'll find your budget is locked into an expensive addiction.

When a gimmick or legitimate feature is imitated and used by too many websites, users become immune to it, and it no longer pulls them in. Or people start using trendy new buzzwords to refer to something. Or something new becomes popular, so the content abruptly incorporates it into editorial offerings, resulting in more effective, but transient, keywords.

Many web surfers have trained their eyes to ignore Sponsored Links, Paid Listings, and Promoted Twitter Trending topics, just as they've developed the ability to disregard sales banners, interstitial pop-ups, and animated ads.

SEO methods also change constantly because the way people search, including the keywords they use, are changing constantly, moment by moment. Here's the real heavy lifting work that search engines do: monitoring, categorizing, analyzing, interpreting, responding to, and predicting behavioral trends in internet search activity.

Automated programs can spider your website, assess the usability, and index the contents. It takes mathematical geniuses to create algorhythms (formulas) that accurately guess what you want when you do an internet search, and show you only the relevant, authoritative, reliable web pages and files.

Your website should be designed and written with these user search trends in mind. Meet user needs and accommodate they way they search for relevant information and tools, and you'll have great SEO.

Then it's up to your content and marketing (and ultimately: the qualities of the product and the after-sale service) to convert those web visitors to paying customers, loyal fans, and positive buzz-spreaders.

6 Tips
on
Organic SEO

(1) Organic SEO is no SEO.

Meaning: it's SEO that occurs naturally, in a healthy website, without SEO tricks or techniques, no gaming the system to make a website seem more relevant and timely than it really is.

Organic SEO is based on longevity (how long your site's been on the web), who cites, quotes, and links to it, and how much unique, relevant, well written content is added to it and at what frequency.

The SECRET of Organic SEO, difficult to compete with or circumvent, is this: you ride on the the wave of your exceptional content that you're constantly grinding out.

Poorly written, rarely updated, static, hard to use, rotten coded websites turn off human visitors as well as search engine spiders. If you don't put links to relevant web pages in your permanent content and your editorial articles, you violate web norms, standing outside the engrained culture of the internet.

Online newspapers and magazines are notorious for refusing to link to sources, yet they strut around as having "higher journalistic standards" than bloggers, and now their model is so bad, they're begging the federal government (taxpayers) to bail them out.




(2) Organic SEO uses super-charged content geysers.

Your content literally pours out of every orifice you maintain on the internet. It's coming out of your blog, your ecommerce site, your Facebook, your Twitter, your YouTube, all your various social networks and web presences.

You generously provide fans with answers to questions, solutions to problems, news about trends, announcements of events, video tutorials, filmed demonstrations, audio of interviews, whatever you think might be of value.

You research your market so you know pretty certainly what your audience is already pursuing on the internet. Is it coupons and deals? Insight and recommendations? Product usage reports? Book reviews? Humor? How To's? Model comparisons? Personal advice? Get good at it, and give it to them.




(3) Organic SEO is compliant with social media norms.

You don't just spew hype and sales messages and self-congratulatory PR.

You act like a normal guy or gal, a decent and valuable member of a digital tribe, an online community that expands to the most remote edges of the worldwide web. You participate like a person, not an organization, or a team of ghostwriters. Enrich. Advise. Share expertise.

Only occasionally try to promote a product or service. Let that be in the background. Nobody joins a social network to receive ads or news about income opportunities.

People join social networks to socialize. But if you're polite and intelligent, they may be inclined to listen to your advice, your recommendations, your product offerings. Establish your kind and wonderful essence, then prudently represent your commercial interests and customer solutinons.

"Let people know you're nice, before you try to get them to buy your rice." (Old Chinese proverb).

It's all original content, often controversial without being brutally adversarial and hostile, but you also add some material by others, crediting and linking back to them, to help drive traffic to their sites.

It's called internet altruism.

You're doing unto other bloggers as you wish them to do unto you.

This is a social media expectation endorsed by all participants. You care and share. A kind, encouraging remark on Twitter could result in the Twitter user linking to your blog in one of their blog posts, which cause their readers to blogroll and quote you...on and on it goes, leading to mass-viral or niche-viral effects.



(4) Organic SEO thrives on originality.

Just be you, but have a plan.

You must have a content management strategy, not just an administrative panel to your blogs and websites that you occasionally tweak or add a news item to. Your content must be idiosyncratic, hard to imitate, personalized, warts and all, perhaps typos, definitely a presence of a real, honest, sincere, amusing human being being the source of the content.

Even when quoting another blog, you must surround it with your own speculations, expertise, and opinion. Make it your own. Put your individual stamp upon it.

Take a brilliantly stated idea and ponder it, chew it up, until you can explain it, in your own words, to a friend or spouse or random stranger. It you communicated it well, then use those words in your web content.




(5) Organic SEO requires variety.

Content that relates your products and expertise to a wide spectrum of other things is content that remains unique, offers interest value, and is targeted to more people who could become friends, fans, and customers.

Tie your content in with celebrities, or global events, or news reports, or famous places, or hotly debated topics.

Don't just write a blog that contains only words.

Provide photos, audio, video, art, polls, widgets, games, and other tools and information. Think of new angles on the interests your audience has.

Your websites can't just sit there with unchanging material. Your websites, to survive, must be constantly evolving, growing, improving, gushing with interesting, helpful, astonishing, correct, satisfying, enlightening CONTENT.




(6) Organic SEO is user oriented.


Keep a website of value and interest to your customers, and the search engines will like it too.

You never design a website for a search engine. To please the search engine, it has to sense that you put the user first, because that's the kind of website that it wants to show to people who use a search engine.

You and the search engine have the same audience.

If you try to deceive the search engines, they'll catch on, and shun you. If you try to please users, your code and content and presentation will progressively, naturally, organically drive traffic to your site.


Tweet

5 new Twitter terms for your glossary

I haven't invented any blogospheric neologisms for quite a while now, so here's some new Twitter terms you can bandy about and inflict on others, displaying how much more hip you are than them or making a point about an important Twitter-related issue.

Twitter is a sub-division of the blogosphere neighborhood in web land on the internet plane of existence. It needs new words crafted specifically for the nutty and beneficial things that transpire there.

The first neologisms, newly minted verbal coinage, for Twitter were tweet (Twitter transmitted message), retweet (to quote another user's message, typically with a link to their account profile page (RT @username blah blah blah), DM (direct message), and the names of the many apps that evolved around the Twitter platform.


(1) fake Trending Topic = when a sponsoring company or celebrity's agent pays Twitter to list them under Trending in the Twitter sidebar, with a Promoted badge attached, but they're not really hot, viral, or "trending", the payment is to make it seem so, by getting Twitter to list them under Trending.

(2) link-list = List of Twitter users, preceded by @s (@username1, @username2, etc.) in a tweet (Twitter message), so others can click on their name & visit their profiles.

(3) key interactors = Twitter users who RT (re-tweet) or DM (direct message) you. To acknowledge and promote them, in appreciation for interacting with you, you can lump them into this one category, then link-list them in a tweet. Many users thank people for RTing them, but it's rare that anyone thanks people for DMing them.

(4) inspirgitator (in-spur'-jit-tay-tur) = inspire + regurgitate. Twitter user who tweets inspirational quotes relentlessly, mixed in with self-promotional, product advertising, or scam opportunity tweets, in order to make you think they're spiritual, ethical, motivational, positive, cheerful, non-misanthropic...but it's all just a hare-brained attempt to trick you into following them and getting their sales hype messages. It's regurgitating because it's the vomiting up of the undigested thoughts of other people, rather than authentic, transparent self-expression, putting a profound, uplifting thought in their own words.

(5) absentee flamer = a Twitter user who did a search on their account, personal, or company name and read a message you tweeted about them, who then replies (@s) you with a snide remark or verbal abuse, then retreats to the safety of the love fest of followers who don't question or critique them, by blocking you or telling you to leave them alone (fear of retaliation) after they've stuck their blade in you.

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