Join Robert Pasick, Ph.D. an author, executive coach, and leader in the Ann Arbor community as he gets on the Digital Bus for a podcast interview with Derek Mehraban of Ingenex Digital Marketing.

Rob organizes live social networking with business leaders - Leaders Connect for anyone in the leadership realm. People from University of Michgan and Eastern Michigan University come to speak.

Rob also organizes CEO Connect for CEO’s who come out and have monthly breakfast meetings to discuss their companies and ways to grow their businesses.

Rob answers the questions of how people reach their full potential as leaders. Rob also discusses his new book Balanced Leadership: Making a Difference In  Work, Family, Health, Community and Value. Professional speaker and coach Rob Pasick gives you some great coaching right on the Digital Bus Podcast.

More on Rob:

Robert Pasick Ph.D, is a Clinical and Organizational Psychologist and Executive Coach. Since earning his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1975 in Clinical Psychology and Public Practice he has provided leadership development services through teaching, coaching, speaking, and writing. He is currently the President of Leaders Connect and a Faculty Affiliate at the William Davidson Institute at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

Podcast Questions Rob Pasick:

1. Tell me about yourself and what you do? Trained as a psychologist. Executive coaching. Business leaders together - Leaders Connect, guest speakers to lead discussions about problems leaders encounter. Ann Arbor large university crowd, business professors from UM & Eastern. CEO Connect, people running companies - monthly breakfast series, people talk about what they’re doing. Opportunity for business leaders to learn from eachother.

2. What path did you take to get to where you are today? Fascinated by concept of leadership, and how we become leaders. 1963 Rob got into leadership at his high school in Ferndale, Michigan during the race riots. Bringing diverse groups together in Ferndale High School. How do people become leaders? Are you born with it?

3. You deal with leaders and CEO’s all the time - can you tell me what makes a good leader? Are leaders born or made? We are all born with traits that can be adapted to leadership. Do things that make people want to follow you.

1. Leaders are people who are followed by other people.
2. What is your core strength? Leverage your strength and select activities and jobs that maximize their strengths.
3. Get the right people on your bus first, get them in the right seats second, then figure out where you’re going… Good to Great.

4. How can people work to become better leaders in their personal or business lives? Take an honest look at yourself. Our self perception is not our most accurate perception. Help them get feedback from people who know them well. Create an email - I’m working on self improvement - where do you see me as my very best? People often don’t appreciate their strengths. We all have blind spots - what are they? Where have I failed before in my life? People keep falling into the same hole in their lives. Rob is writing a book called Balanced Leadership. Accountability group.

5. Has the web changed the way you or your clients are doing business today? Use the web to promote activities. Some is still too complicated to bring people along for the baby boomers. Get a lot of business through the web. Some major clients have found Rob through the internet. www.leadersconnect.com

6. What advice do you have for young people coming into business today - how can they achieve their dreams? Write down their goals and dreams. Start w/ short term goals, and put someplace you’re gonna see it often. Keep your goals small to start, then grow. Write down long term goals or dreams. What would success be like for you? Share that with somebody, get out and tell people about it. Ask for what you want, because you never know what’s gonna happen. It may just work out. Be bold in what you ask for, and follow up on it. Stick to it. Stay with people who will support you.

7. You are a leading edge boomer, so I have to ask - how have you embraced digital? How has your journey been to a digital world and web 2.0? It’s been challenging, typing is so important. Likes new things, forced himself to use the technology. Self published new book - David Crumm Media. Spiritual in nature.

Dean Krispin - CRM Customer Relationship Management. Here is a synopsis of our talk. The entire podcast gives a good picture of how corporations are using data to influence purchase. It’s fascinating if you have 30 minutes to listen.

- Tell us about yourself and what you do?
Data - and how data can be used to influence consumer purchase? Marketers don’t know how to utilize the data in a non-siloed manner. We know how to create optimal lists, but they exist in individual silos. We need to provide a 360 view of consumers to optimize sales, and keep them loyal. Auto industry is lucky in the fact they have enough data to truly see what is influencing purchase. The retail channel is the missing piece in all this, how can the retail channel handle the online traffic and the people coming into the stores.

- Why is your business: CRM/Market Research important to clients today? How do you tell when a customer is ready to buy through data?

Everyone is trying to overcome the model of current market research. People are looking at ClickStream or historical data, and purchase data. Is that data truly insightful? Does the data give you an accurate picture of what the consumers intent is? Everyone is trying to develop time sensitive research and data.

Statistical modeling of data provides insight to allow you to predict the likelihood of anyone purchasing a product. Learn how to treat the customers differently. Flip the creative process upside down. Look at demographic profile, then develop a creative brief to pass along to creative people, who are smart and use intuition to create messaging and images to reach those people.

More insight on exactly what the demographic profile really is. What are the key factors and elements that put consumers into a specific lifestyle stage to see if they really are likely to purchase a product. Cross functional teams all come together to make it all happen.

- What are some innovative systems or processes you are integrating for your clients right now?

Finance, Automotive, Healthcare, Retail, etc. are creating best practices templates to be easily adopted by the marketing team to help them move quicker. Mortgage and Credit Card industry are using data to provide recommendations to the inbound call center. In the cell phone industry, Orange, Vodaphone and Verizon are taking the data and using an analytical approach to develop a complete profile that the call center agent sees, and can give tips on making recommendations live to you. To cross sell another product or get you to change your plan.

A new position is someone in these call centers to make recommendations to the person who is handling the call.

Data companies like Axiom. What are more data companies? Hybrid of companies - agencies are creating these analytic groups to provide post insight analysis, and understand how can we create the proper metrics and measurements to see what is working. And take the data to create proper profile, that really creates that relevant message. How can I use that data to help the retail side, or the call center. A lot of existing players are coming at it from different angles.

- Where do you see the digital marketing business going in the next 5-10 years?

Marketing and operations are coming together. Right now marketing may provide reports, but what does that mean to the operational side? It does nothing for the business side. Agencies and data companies are providing reports that go straight to the operational side of the business. Must make sense to the operational side. Social Networking provides better data to see where consumers are in their lifecycle, which then drives insight.

In market retail. Demand Sensing. To understand consumer intent, and be able to apply it to the operational side of the business. XXX What is the potential in the marketplace? What is the demand in the marketplace? Learn at a very local level what is in the minds of your consumer or potential consumers? Get this information from social networks.

7. If you could give advice to a recent college graduate who wanted a job like yours someday, what would that advice be?

Marketing is the space to be in. Media is going through a major change. More marketers today than ever before. The marketing space is going through Wholesale Change. Either specialize in one clear role - data, creative, interactive, direct, operational. The best advise is to be eclectic, broad reaching - technical, database, creative, marketing strategies, the business, statistics and analysis. These skills will allow people to work within these cross functional teams and win in the market place.

The Digital Bus Podcast interview conducted at The Brickyard by Derek Mehraban, CEO Ingenex Digital Marketing

Derek Mehraban: And welcome to The Digital Bus Podcast episode 4. Today, we’re having a slight change in format for The Digital Bus. The Digital Bus now is going to be more about connecting experts often Generation Y, Millennials, these expert Twenty Something, technology gurus connecting them with CEOs, leaders of companies that are really looking for information on how do they take their business to Web 2.0, how to use the internet to maximum exposure and but first we’re also going to be talking to those CEOs and executives who might have you know 10-20-30 years of business experience that they can then come down and share with the Twenty Something. So it’s going to become an information exchange, still all about getting on The Digital Bus and today to help us get on The Digital Bus we have someone who, great guy, I share office space with him, his name is Andrew Miller. Are you there Andrew?

Andrew Miller: I’m here, thank you for the compliment.

Derek Mehraban: Okay. So Andrew, he runs a company called yoursearchadvisor.com and Andrew you want to tell us a little bit about what you do?

Andrew Miller: Sure. I’m a search engine marketing consultant. So I work with companies that want to increase their presence online, on the major search engines Google, Yahoo, that type of thing as well as different types of search engines that they might not have previously considered such as local search engines, mobile search, social search networks, that type of thing.

Derek Mehraban: Okay. How do you get into something like that Andrew, that’s a pretty interesting career path there?

Andrew Miller: I kind of evolved into it. I started after college in the traditional advertising agency setting. I worked at the Martin Agency in Richmond, Virginia doing traditional media planning and over the course of the years my role evolved into more interactive planning and I decided I wanted to swing more towards the online part of the business because that’s what I was interested in, that’s what my experience was, and that’s where I felt like I could add to most value. So after a few years at Martin I moved over to a corporate job at CarMax, which is also headquartered in Richmond as a web marketing manager. So there I was working on a lot of different internet marketing initiatives, everything from banner ads to paid search to search engine optimization and online PR and through some luck, some twist of faith my wife was accepted to a residency here at Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan so we moved up here, I struck out on my own, and it’s actually coming up on the one year anniversary in about three weeks.

Derek Mehraban: Yeah, that’s great man. It’s a great story and you know we share office space here at The Brickyard and you know we have a lot of fun, I mean it’s nice to be around people that are smart, you know we can share ideas and we’re all…

Andrew Miller: Who’s smart? Who’d that be?

Derek Mehraban: Who’s that? You know, hey! The crew man, The Brickyard crew, all the people here. So anyways, so Andrew, so tell us a little bit about you know why is search engine marketing, search engine optimization important today and then let’s put that in the frame of reference of you know what about these companies that are out there, maybe they have an established business or making lots of money, they probably have some brochure where website, but they don’t really know how to take it to the next level, why is what you do important for them?

Andrew Miller: Well, I think what companies want to realize or what they need to realize and act upon is the fact that it’s no longer a one way conversation between the company and their customers, their prospects, and their promoters and their detractors. It’s more of a dialogue now online with all the different outlets that regular people like you and I have to communicate with each other, with the companies that we do business with, and also other people that have done business with companies we’re considering. So there’s this great information exchange that really levels the playing field. It no longer really allows a company to determine the direction of the message that they’re putting out. With the internet, they have to be aware of that conversations are going on about their business, within their business, and this is a great opportunity for them to kind of join the conversation and make sure that they understand what’s being said about them, what they’re saying back to the community, and basically understanding that the customer now has a voice that they didn’t have 10 or 15 years ago before mass adoption of the internet.

Derek Mehraban: Right, right. So it’s less about companies talking at customers, more about talking with their customers these days. Is that how you’d say?

Andrew Miller: It’s definitely a large part of it. I don’t think the traditional push model of advertising will ever go away in fact it will become more rampant, but this opens up a whole new arena for marketers and PR professionals and company executives to really help leverage the internet to their advantage and unfortunately some fall by the wayside and really commit you know social and internet taboos, which will end them in a lot of hot water which I’m sure we’ll cover some of those examples later.

Derek Mehraban: Right, right. So you know because I’m thinking of a lot of companies that are out there and I think of your business, you are a search adviser, so I think these days findability on the internet, being able to be found on Google and Yahoo is very important, so you know if I type in the specific exact name of a company, they may come up, but in fact they still may come up lower on the results because other companies or businesses have that name. So tell me why specific is being able to be found search optimization as CEO important for these companies?

Andrew Miller: Well, primarily because regardless of what industry you’re in and no matter how niche you think your audience is, whether it’s B to B target audience or B to C you know business to consumer, there are people out there looking for your products and services and sometimes they look for you by brand name if they are already aware of you, if they happen to come across some of the other marketing material or have done business with you or a competitor in the past, but more often than not people are out there searching you know not only in our country, but around the world for the things that the company offers. They may not have been introduced to your company yet, so they may not be looking for you by brand name, they may be looking for the specific name or product or model of one of your offerings, one of your products, or a service that you would offer, so a lot of cases it’s in the best interest of the company to rank really well on search engines for those generic key words that are not really brand specific.

Derek Mehraban: Okay, okay. So we need to take into account the fact that consumers may not type in with perfect spelling your exact brand name, but they might be looking for barbecue grills in general or lawn fertilizers or I’m throwing out some spring summer topics, but they may be searching for more vague things, so it’s almost like we need to pay attention to how consumers think, what is their process when they’re searching?

Andrew Miller: That’s exactly right because it is ultimately if you think about the last time you used Google it’s all about what you want, it’s about what you typed into the search box. It’s not about what some company wants you to type into the search box. So you know a lot of times companies that sell specific products and are very entrenched in their industries are going to use a different vocabulary than their customers and I’ve seen this many times with very generic consumer-oriented things. A lot of companies will refer to things by product numbers, model numbers, brand names whereas consumers are using much more generic descriptors for those products and so as more companies…

Derek Mehraban: Can you give an example Andrew like a specific?

Andrew Miller: Off the top of my head, let’s see if I were looking for…well off the top of my head I’m not thinking of anything right off the top…

Derek Mehraban: Okay, okay.

Andrew Miller: …but you can imagine the situation where you’re going out and you’re looking for that barbecue grill that you mentioned before and most people might call it a barbecue or a grill or anything else that you Midwesterners call it, I can’t remember, I’m a Southerner, but to a company that produces or sells those products they may be known as liquefied propane, natural gas, they may be called something completely different range and so those could be an example of where the business and the consumer are disconnecting.

Derek Mehraban: Right, right. You know so that’s because you know we do some of that too. Ingenex, we do digital marketing, we do some SEO as well, so you know I think doing research, right? to really define what are people searching for, what is the terminology, you know that whole linguistic analysis does vary by region, you mentioned the South compared to the North compared to the you know the West, so obviously I think, so that’s pretty interesting. So companies I think need to think about that, you know and whether they go to a, you know niche firm like someone like you, right? a consultant and expert on search and then potentially agencies are starting to build up some of that expertise and offer that, you know companies that are building their websites. With Ingenex, we do build a website, we also optimize a website, but that is not happening too often yet, you know I think companies are still trying, they don’t even understand I think what you’re doing Andrew, this whole search engine optimization industry, they don’t understand it. So I think you’re in a good niche.

Andrew Miller: Well, thanks. I think you guys do some good work in this arena as well, so don’t sell yourself short, but you know maybe the best example would be the physical example. If you were to open a brand new store, you would want to make sure that the front of that store is well lit and wide open as possible, so you’re attracting all the traffic and the visitors and the drive-by’s into your storefront, but in the digital world we have to remember that there are the backdoors as well, there are the non-branded terms that people are looking for, there are the product names and specific you know the products or services that people are looking for that may not correlate to your brand, so you know opening up that backdoor, making that just as visible and accessible as the front door is an extremely technical difficult task sometimes, but it is in the business’ best interest to make sure that they are accessible from all sides for people searching for a variety of different terms.

Derek Mehraban: Yeah, I agree, I agree. Well, let’s go down, let’s talk to that CEO/President of the Company who may be listening to this podcast right now, maybe they want to you know become more internet savvy, they want to learn about Web 2.0. What do you think might be a good way for them to start? How can that CEO kind of dip his or her toe in the water and get started with using this new technology to help themselves and their company?

Andrew Miller: The one thing I would recommend first is if you are the CEO/President of the Company and you are not internet savvy I would not be the first to jump in into the waters and put your company out there and take that stance.

Derek Mehraban: Good point, good point.

Andrew Miller: I would recommend highly that for anybody, it doesn’t have to be a CEO/President of anything, but anybody especially you know executives in particular, but anybody should be spending some time on the internet, getting to know the types of information that are out there, the types of channels that are delivering that information, you know it goes beyond the mainstream news sources that we’re used to seeing in the offline world, you know they have a big presence online, but there are literally millions of niche sites out there that deliver news and discussion and gossip and all different types of information in every conceivable field out there, so the first step is to kind of immerse yourself in the online world, poke around anonymously, get to know the environment, get to know the players, get to know the people, try to understand the audiences that are using these sites, so you can get a feel for the types of communications and interactions that are taking place.

Derek Mehraban: Okay, yeah that’s a great idea. So subscribe to different news feeds, right? Subscribe to different blogs, read the blogs, and even you know comment on blogs or like you said, but I like your point about you know don’t jump in wholeheartedly right off the bat because it’s true as a CEO you’re leading your company, you represent your company, we need to be careful when we jump into these things, you know you want to do it the right way strategically, portraying the right image for both yourself and your business.

Andrew Miller: Exactly. The case I’m pointing, one of the companies I’ve worked with in the past, our online PR approach was threefolds. Basically, first step was just listen, monitor, take note of the conversations that are going on the internet about the brand, about the company, about the products and services that we offered and try to identify the issues that are out there. What we found was surprising that a lot of the negative stories, obviously in any business you’re going to have detractors, but those were outweighed once we started quantifying everything, about three to one positive to negative and the negative press usually gets a lot more attention, but there are some brand advocates out there and some people that are very positively talking about the companies that they deal with, they’re just usually not as prominent, so you know don’t get discouraged right off the bat by the initial hits that you find that maybe people that have negative experiences, go beyond that and look for the communities that are built up around your company or around your brand or your industry that are really going to be able to partner with you and help push the message forward. When you are at that active stage, so the next stage beyond the monitoring after we identified these sites and these audiences was start to interact, start to engage people, leave comments on blogs and start to post to social networking sites like Twitter and MySpace and the third phase is where you actually contribute, so going beyond just joining the dialogue you can actually start to lead the dialogue once you’ve established yourself as legitimate credible source and you always want to be upfront and transparent about who you are, who work for, and you don’t want to have these ulterior marketing or sales emotives, but if you are immersing yourself in the environment you can certainly push out content to your networks that you’ve developed over time that is valuable to them and useful to them and they will reward you for it, they’ll start talking about you, they’ll start defending you in social arenas, they’ll start inquiring different people, you know asking you about more information about your company and how to get involved and how the company is involved in certain things and it really opens up a lot of that non-marketing related conversation that companies are really craving with their customers these days.

Derek Mehraban: Yeah, yeah that’s true. I fully agree because if you’re going to have a conversation like that with your customer then it becomes much more than a client-customer relationship, it’s not a sales process, it’s more of becoming a friend or an advocate.

Andrew Miller: Exactly and you know even if it’s just you putting your customers first in the sense of developing your community and letting them know of new releases that are coming out, you know letting them be the first ones to get your new information as it becomes available or inviting them to you know simple stuff, inviting your users to beta test your new site, you know all these new networks can really be harnessed to do some pretty powerful things and give you honest feedback that you’re not going to get from people inside of the company or you know unnecessarily a hired agency or anything like that. You know, the man on the street is a pretty powerful influence.

Derek Mehraban: Right, so then, but what’s the goal? So let’s say you get some of this good feedback, you know you discover the issues, you discover the chinks and the armor through monitoring this conversation then does that help promote change with the company? Does that give you some real time research where you could say, hey these are some issues we need to address internally, I mean how do you feel that place with that?

Andrew Miller: I think it should be a big part of the feedback process, you know brand surveys and brand tracking and all that are great and it really helps efficiently capture a lot of that market data that companies are looking for, but people aren’t always honest, people aren’t always complete in their answers, sometimes people don’t like filling out surveys, but I can almost guarantee you for almost any company out there of any size that has a customer base that is using the internet, there is some conversation going on about you whether you know it or not or whether you like it or not and you know it’s no longer acceptable to turn a blind eye to that and pretend like it doesn’t exist or pretend like that negative feedback doesn’t need to be taken into account by your marketing or your customer relations or your PR folks, you know that information is out there for a reason and you need to be able to take advantage of that and incorporate that into your internal processes, so that you can act on it and demonstrate back to the customers that you are listening, that you are interested in what they have to say, and they will reward you for that.

Derek Mehraban: You know, I agree. I think today’s consumers are too smart and if these companies do ignore or pretend that it doesn’t go on then, I mean to me that would mean that that brand isn’t listening, that that brand isn’t being progressive, and how would I take action? Well, you vote with your feet, you vote with your checkbook, your wallet and you don’t purchase those products.

Andrew Miller: That’s exactly right.

Derek Mehraban: Yeah and so the companies that do take the time to invest in this conversation I believe are going to hook more customers especially young people, you know say the under 40 crowd is probably even more heavily into this than 40 plus and higher, but I think that’s what companies want these days, they want that younger buyer, you know these new people coming in the market place where they really have a chance to impact their lifelong purchasing habits.

Andrew Miller: Well and I’m sure that’s true, you know young people are usually labeled as more tech savvy and it’s easy for those of us in the industry just to assume that, but you know I’m always reminding myself of the fact that you know my mother and grandmother, I won’t disclose their ages because again I’m a Southerner and they would woop me, but let’s just say they are in the, they’re several generations removed from me, they are as almost as web savvy as you know as I was in high school, they’re online playing games across the internet with people around the world, they’re emailing, they’re instant messaging, they’re doing their research when they’re shopping for something and you know again it’s not everybody, but we don’t want to ignore those audiences of different generations.

Derek Mehraban: Excellent point, excellent point. Okay, so let’s talk about, okay here’s a question for you Andrew, how do you think search engine marketing is going to impact businesses over the next 10 years? Let’s kind of you know take a mile high view, where do you think its going? What’s going to happen? What are your ideas?

Andrew Miller: I think that search engines really are going to open up new channels for people to interact with companies and I base that assumption on the fact that you can go into your favorite search engine whether it’s you know Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, or Ask, you know which comprise about 95% of the search market share or any of the others that you want to use, type in the name of your favorite company and just see what comes up on the first page, you know you can literally look for listing by listing and see okay here’s the company’s corporate website, you know that should usually be ranking first again unless you’re doing something really wrong in terms of SEO, but you get past the first couple of listings that may be the company’s websites and different versions of their website or something like that, but then you really start getting down into what are the other communities that are based around this company, what are other people saying about them, and you’ll be surprise what you would see showing up near the top of the list for any brand name out there. Some of them are positive, some of them are negative, some of them are fan groups, some of them are you know so and so sucks dot com and I think it’s really important for companies to pay attention to the types of websites that are forming around their company and search engine marketing is only going to expose more of those, you know as the search engines get more sophisticated about the types of content that they want to promote, they’re looking for more well rounded search results, so they’re not only going to be showing websites from now on, but in the last year or so we’re seeing search engines start to roll out different formats of results, so integrated within you know just the 10 links on a page, you’re starting to see videos, you’re starting to see images, you’re starting to see product results, and news search results, blog search results, so all of that is incorporated into one search results page, so you know in theory not only could a potential customer or business partner or potential employee or new hire look at a company’s website when they go to search for it, but they’re also going to be looking at everything there is to know about that company, you know good, bad, or neutral.

Derek Mehraban: Alright. I’ll tell you that’s really interesting and I think monitoring as a company or as a, say the president of your company, I think monitoring what comes up is really powerful, so whether you’re a small company and obviously these larger corporations probably have whole departments that are monitoring and tracking all that, okay that’s just very interesting, you got me thinking on a lot of topics, but…

Andrew Miller: But I’ll add one more point to that.

Derek Mehraban: Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Miller: You got me, that’s a good point, you know monitoring is obviously the way that companies need to first get involved in and what we’re talking about that, you know there’s a variety of tools out there that make that job a lot easier, you don’t have to sift through all the thousands or millions of web pages that mentioned your company, you know it’s as easy as signing up for rss feeds like you said or Google or Yahoo news alerts that automatically email you on a periodic basis when they find new results, getting into some of the different search engines like technorati.com which searches all the blogs. There’s literally, I would say in my arsenal there’s probably about a dozen go-to websites that I go to on a regular basis, you know daily sometimes, to look for news about particular companies that I’m working with and see what’s going on that just a regular Google search results page does not going to turn up, so we should, why don’t we post a list of the most important ones after we finish the podcast and really help give people the tools that they need to make sure they’re looking in all the right avenues for information about their company.

Derek Mehraban: Okay, you know here’s a question Andrew that I get a lot, these companies are hesitant sometimes to engage in social media for example by having a blog or even paying attention to it too much because the thing comes up is what if someone says something negative, what do we do if you know I type in my corporate business name into Google and the feeds result down is a negative comment, that scares a lot of companies, what do you say to something like that?

Andrew Miller: Well, the fact of the matter is that it’s out there you know it’s out there already and you can’t hide from it. It’s going to show up whether, you know if you want to hide your head in the sand and not even look for it, you know if you’re afraid to type your own company name into Google then maybe there are some operational things you need to be exploring first.

Derek Mehraban: Okay.

Andrew Miller: But, no I would say the smarter companies may decide that they don’t want to get involved, you know I’ve certainly come across examples of that where they say we don’t want to actively contribute content to the social networks or the online community, but they’re still monitoring and out there looking for people have had bad experiences or good experiences and then actually taking the conversation offline. I think one of the big things to point out is not all of these interactions that you’re having with your customers have to take place in a public forum, you know on a blog or in a community setting, you know you can certainly find information about people through their profiles or through their you know About Us pages or anything like that, that would allow you to contact them through normal channels and I’ll tell you in my experience it’s extremely powerful thing to post something on your blog one day saying, oh you know the company X sucks because they screwed me over and their customer service is horrible and then almost like magic the next day your phone rings and it’s a customer service representative from them, literally coming back to you on their hands and knees saying we’re sorry, what can we do to make it right and it’s really impressive to see companies that do reach out without trying to rebut you online or throw your concern away like it doesn’t matter because you know by reaching out to those customers that have bad experiences whether you do it online or in a more traditional channel via regular mail or phone call, you’re really telling those customers that they matter and that you care about them and that you want to make their experience right no matter what it is, so I think you know that’s another important point to highlight.

Derek Mehraban: You know I love that point Andrew because to me that’s it’s almost like the new etiquette, you know you mentioned you’re from the South right?

Andrew Miller: Uh-hm.

Derek Mehraban: You know it’s like proper etiquette, good manners. So sending a thank you card, sending a birthday note, letting people know you care and I think just what you said monitoring the conversation and then addressing it personally is gold for these companies. It’s a perfect opportunity. It should be almost the new standard of corporate etiquette, I would think.

Andrew Miller: Oh certainly and you know and regardless of where that responsibility falls within your company, whether its marketing or PR customer relations or you know if you’re smaller or mid size company and you know you’re the president you reach out to them personally. I think the point is that you know there is some response from the company. It’s no longer a big faceless corporation, it’s somebody with a name, you know, it’s somebody reaching out to you to say hey you know how can I help?

Derek Mehraban: Yeah, yeah, okay well final question, final question because you’re Twenty Something, you’re Generation Y, you’re a business owner, so if you had a question that you could ask you know a seasoned executive, someone who’s been very successful in their career, been doing it a long time, what would you want to know from them? You know let me just preference this a little bit because I think there’s a big issue out there where there’s a lack of mentorship coming down from top to bottom, it’s one of the reasons we’re doing The Digital Bus podcast like this because I feel not only that you have a ton of information that you can share with those execs, but I think they have a ton of information to share and they’re very busy, they’re very high paid, you know they’re almost inaccessible, but you know if you could ask them one question what would you want to know?

Andrew Miller: I would say the response I’d like to see from the more seasoned executives out there is what are they doing within their own companies to open up the lines of communication internally, how are they preparing to deal with this onslaught of new information in the future because it’s one thing to just say okay you know if they do decide to get involved with the internet or at least do a little bit more research into what could be achieved or what their objectives are going to be, you know it shouldn’t be purely just a marketing or PR role, it should involve all parts of the operation, everything from sales to production to distribution, anything that your company involves, they should all have a seat at the table when it comes to saying you know how should we address these things, what can we do to interact with the online community because I think you’ll see that if people across the organization feel like they’re involved and they can contribute, you’re going to get a lot more positive feedbacks. So my question to the executives is what other examples you have in your company of cross functional integration like this have you seen success with, and you know are there any obstacles or objections that you would see internally to incorporating something this when it comes to a more traditionally marketing or PR role.

Derek Mehraban: Okay, great question, great question. So I guess we’re about out of time. So I want to thank you very much Andrew for being part of The Digital Bus podcast.

Andrew Miller: Thank you for having me. I appreciate the time and I hope everybody out there, if there are anymore specific questions, you know leave a response on The Digital Bus blog and we’ll be sure to get back to you.

Derek Mehraban: Great and thanks for listening folks. Adios. So this is Derek Mehraban.

The Digital Bus is brought to you by Ingenex Digital Marketing.

Episode 4 features an interview with search engine marketing expert Andrew C. Miller. Andrew runs a company called Your Search Advisor. He knows the SEO and PPC business very well, and provides an interesting interview for this podcast. Read Podcast transcription here.

The Digital Bus Podcast features interviews conducted by Derek Mehraban, CEO of Ingenex Digital Marketing.

Derek will alternate between interviewing web savvy, social media, Millenials and GenX or Baby Boomer executives, CEO’s, and Marketing Directors who have tons of business experience to share, and are looking to learn from the uber-geek crowd.

This episode answers the following questions:

1. Introduction of who Andrew Miller is, and what is Your Search Advisor.

2. Why is search engine optimization and web 2.0 important today, especially for young companies?

3. For a CEO or President of a company looking to build an online presence and become web 2.0 savvy, what would you suggest they do to begin?

4. Does the CEO/President of a company need to be online - or just the people in marketing/IT?

5. How will search engine marketing impact business over the next 10 years - what’s your best guess?

6. As a 20 something (Gen Y) business owner, what is the biggest question you have for CEO’s and executives out there? What advice or topic would you like to hear about in future podcasts?

This podcast recorded live at The Brickyard by Derek Mehraban.

Here are 12 sites that Andrew suggests for tracking your online presence. You can subscribe to the RSS feed from these sites to see what people are saying about your company, clients or competitors.

Most of the feeds are for search results or specific articles so they automatically update when new content is found. Changes show up instantly and it eliminates the need to check each site manually. You can subscribe to the RSS feeds by clicking on the RSS button on each site or simply visit the URLs directly. Here is the Digital Bus RSS as an example.

These resources cover the largest networks on the Internet. Obviously there are thousands more, but keeping an eye on these will alert you to the latest news and gossip about your company.

Technorati - Tracks over 110 million blogs
Google Alerts - Sends alerts when your company appears in News, Blogs, Web, Video, or Groups results
Digg - Social media site that allows users to vote on stories
Yahoo! Answers - Over 75 million users ask questions and post answers on a variety of topics
LinkedIn Answers - A social network for professionals with a Q&A section
Wikipedia Article Edits - Track specific articles to get updates when anybody makes edits
Tweetscan - Alerts you when your company name is mentioned on Twitter
MySpace - The world’s largest social network
Facebook Lexicon - Counts occurrences of any keywords on users’ Walls over time
Google Trends - Provides search volume over time for any keyword
Yelp.com - Allows users to rate and review local businesses
Del.icio.us - Online bookmarking service allows users to share links

Ross Johnson, CCO of Ingenex Digital Marketing and Derek Mehraban, CEO of Ingenex Digital Marketing give their thoughts on Online Public Relations.

Show Notes:

• What is online PR?
  • Explain Traditional PR
  • Explain Online PR
• Who / What are you targeting with online PR?
  • online news sources
  • online publications
  • bloggers
  • forums
  • Twitters / Microblogs
  • Comments on FlickR / etc
    
• Why use online PR over traditional?
  • Different crowd
  • More conversation, engagement, interaction
    
  • More people online
  • Trust online more then traditional media (really?)
    
  • Lower barrier to entry, larger audience in some cases
    
• How might you use online PR?
  • track, monitor, engage in converstations about your brand / products / service
  • pitch bloggers, online publications to write about you

• market research
• SEO
• Exposure
  

• Tools for online PR
  • Google Alerts / Yahoo Alerts
  • Google News / RSS
    
  • Technorati
  • pr.com
  • BlogPulse
  • http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=seobook
  • http://buzzingo.com/
  • bloglines
  • http://rankingleader.com

• Blogger Outreach Etiquette

  • Take time to find the actual name of the blogger

  • Clearly disclose who you are and where you work in the outreach

  • Offer comments on the blog to show that you are reading the bloggers content

  • Thoroughly check the blogs preferences and advertising sections to make sure that no indications have been made by the blogger that they do not want to be solicited

  • If there is a specific way they wish to be reached, reach them that way

  • Connect with each blogger individually

  • Indicate that you know/have read topics they frequently write about

  • Establish a tone in the outreach emails and keep it consistent

  • Indicate communication is encouraged; private or public comments and suggestions are welcome

  • Include a call to action in addition to the trial

  • The blogger outreach email should include a link to the code of ethics for blogger outreach

  • Offer an “opt-out” link in the email so they may choose not to participate

  • Make a list of those who have blogged about the company in a specific time frame

  • Keep track of the bloggers to whom you have solicited

  • Subscribe to the feeds of the blogs that you have commented on

  • Draw a conclusion to the trial/process

Being from Michigan and growing up in a Ford family, the Ford brand is near and dear to my heart. Watching Ford fall from a great company, to a company barely hanging on has been a difficult thing for me. I feel that Ford has the cars today to compete. They have improved their quality, their designs are nice, and they have many options for a young family man like myself.

Ford has even managed to get through 30 years of some of the worst advertising I have ever seen. Plus bad ideas, like having every car name begin with the letter “F”. That is the silliest thing I ever heard. Ford has survived in spite of themselves.

Ford is a company that could benefit from Digital Marketing. I know they are making some efforts. However, I don’t know if they are fully connecting with consumers. Or fully utilizing their Iconic brand. For example, how could they let me go from being a Ford owner to now a two Honda car family? It was far too easy to leave Ford. And I am not being asked back.

My guess is there are a whole wave of 30-something people who are moving away from Ford. Despite new traditional advertising attempts to bring them back in. I don’t pay attention to TV advertising. And what is Ford doing in Digital? I don’t know. I don’t see it. It’s certainly not anywhere I am spending time.

This company that I LOVE. Hear that, LOVE. Needs to revolutionize the industry again. So what’s next Ford? You gave us the assembly line, about 100 years ago. What can you give us now? I challenge you to change the game - again.

If you are looking to go online and join the Social Networking community, then you are in the right place. The Digital Bus marketing podcast will provide you with all the information you need about How To Engage in Social Networking. Learn Twitter for starters - you will enjoy it!

Follow Derek Mehraban on Twitter.

Follow Ross Johnson on Twitter. 

This is the first episode of The Digital Bus podcast. Mentions in the podcast for Joseph Jaffe, David Armano and Seth Godin. Also a nice reference to David Ogilvy. Enjoy!

TOP 5 SOCIAL NETWORKING TIPS
DEREK MEHRABAN
1. Be Social. Social networking is first and foremost social. Get out there and network. Then bring people into your Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Plaxo, etc. Build the online network that will stay with you throughout time and space.

2. Optimize Your Network. Use social networks to optimize search engine results. Keyword optimize your Linkedin profile. Send your blog posts to twitter and use RSS to extend your blog into other social media.

3. Spread Good Karma. Comment on blogs, DIGG people’s posts, comment on Flickr photos, take a minute to recommend someone on Linkedin. Good karma comes back to you in social networking. That’s how it works.

4. Pay Attention. Track people you like/respect on social bookmarking sites like Delicious to see what they’re saving. Set up Google Alerts to know when topics you like are talked about. Pay attention and be rewarded.

5. Work It. Commit to social media, whether a blog, podcast, or Linkedin. Commit to it and build it over time. Your social network adds value to you and your business.

Derek Mehraban
CEO Ingenex Digital Marketing
http://ingenexdigital.com/social-media.html
http://thedigitalbus.com
http://linkedin.com/in/mehraban

EDWARD VIELMETTI
1. That which is measured improves (Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems)
If you are going to keep track of something, it will improve. Take good notes. Build systems that take notes for you so that you don’t have to think about taking notes.
http://vielmetti.typepad.com/vacuum/2005/08/this_which_is_m.html

2. Reciprocity is a human universal (Wayne Baker, Ross School of Business)
People respond in kind to action. You can get a lot of benefit by generalized reciprocity, where you are generous to a group, and the group is in turn generous to you (and to the rest of the group).
http://vielmetti.typepad.com/vacuum/2007/04/social_capital_.html

3. The strength of weak ties (Mark Granovetter)
Most of the value of networks is not in the set of people you see day-in and day-out but in the space of friend-of-a-friend, people you don’t know but for whom an introduction will be easy.
http://www.networkweaving.com/blog/2007/12/perplexing-economy.html

4. Own page one (Pure Visibility)
On all networks there is a search function; people will search for you there; own that page. Decide how you want to be presented and present yourself that way.
http://www.purevisibility.com

5. Proximity is the killer application
A lot of your success depends on who you are near in physical, real, tangible space, not just in cyberspace. Distances are real.
http://vielmetti.typepad.com/vacuum/2007/04/proximity_is_th.html

Edward Vielmetti
Chief Economist, Pure Visibility
http://purevisibility.com
http://vielmetti.typepad.com
http://linkedin.com/in/edwardvielmetti

LORI LAURENT SMITH
1. Wordpress. Start a business blog. Doesn’t matter if you are a middle manager or 1-man band, you need to blog. It’s a great way to open up a dialogue with your customers, and that connection is the reason social marketing exists. WordPress is free, open source software—so the price is right. It’s easy to use and the content you develop is portable. Don’t forget to comment on other blogs as well. The time investment is completely up to you for blogging and commenting, but the more you put into it, the more you’ll get out.

2. Yahoo Answers or Linked-in Answers. If you’re a service-based small business, you already know that your expertise is your No. 1 marketing tool. Yahoo Answers is a great way to share your knowledge with people (consumers) who are looking for it—a direct connection with potential customers. As a B2B (business-to-business) marketer, I use Linked-in Answers, but I’ve found some great contacts through the questions I’ve asked and the answers I’ve given. Spend an hour or two a week on this task and you will be rewarded with an uptick in blog traffic (which is why starting a blog is the most important task).

3. YouTube. Many laptops are made with web cams nowadays. If yours isn’t, a good video camera can be found pretty are cheap on eBay. Editing is ridiculously easy and the software is also inexpensive (or included with newer machines) How-to videos are an obvious choice. So are interviews or other ways to share your expertise. In addition to using them on your own web site and blog, You Tube allows users to create their own channel – a great brand building opportunity. Don’t just produce for YouTube — local search is also embracing video with CitySearch and Yellowpages allowing local video ads on its listings.

4. Flickr. A picture is worth a thousand words, or, in the digital realm, tags. Flickr is a great marketing tool. The time and cost investment is minimal. And thanks to Flickr’s incredibly active photo groups, you can share photos of your products with people who are interested. A veterinarian could share photos with the 25,000+ members of the Dogs, Dogs, Dogs group, which is one of hundreds of animal-related groups. A crafter who makes iPhone and iPod cases could post nice product photos in the Apple group, with its 4500+ members. A construction company that makes custom homes could post photos on one of the many architecture groups or in the appropriate city group, like Ann Arbor.

5. StumbleUpon. Of all the pliggs (Digg, Reddit, etc), StumbleUpon is perfect for the lazy marketer. Joining groups related to your industry and adding friends from those groups can be done quickly. Once you do that, as you add pages to StumbleUpon—including your own great content—other users will “stumble upon” what you’ve added. As those visitors give it the “thumbs up”, your content is then shown to even more users, creating greater awareness and reach for your brand and company.

Lori Laurent Smith
Founder Media Meme
http://mediameme.com
http://linkedin.com/pub/2/AA9/03A

TERRY BEAN
1. Determine on which side of the Quantity (open networker) V. Quality (closed networker) debate you fall.

2. Create and stick to a strategy, but be pragmatic when it comes to evaluating new platforms/tools

3. Realize that social networking is very similar to face to face or traditional networking in that the results you seek are totally correlated to the efforts you make.

4. Have a focus and try to stay with it. It’s a very big world. Most of it can find you online.

5. Be cognizant of how you present yourself online. Everything is part of your digital footprint so tread carefully.

Terry Bean
CNO, Networked Inc.
http://networkedinc.com
http://motorcityconnect.com
http://linkedin.com/in/terrybean

The Digital Bus blog and podcast will help business owners, CEOs and CMOs make the transition to Digital Marketing for themselves and their companies.

Our mission is to teach you:

• How to build your digital brand
• How to engage your customers using digital media
• How to manage your online presence
• How to build your business through social networking
• How to create a business blog or podcast that works
• How to maximize your SEO, SEM and PPC
• How to develop a web site that is community focused

Get on The Digital Bus!