A year or so back, I remember blog traffic was coming two thirds from social referral sources and one third from search engine traffic.  I don’t have the exact stats, but it was roughly that kind of split.  A few months back, I moved to a self-host platform. I wanted to play with a wider range of options and one of those was SEO – so as a starting point, I installed a simple free plugin which just gives me a nudge on each post to tune up the SEO a little – pick a keyword, check it appears in the right places, nothing much more than that really.

Three months on, I checked into the stats page to take a look at where traffic is coming from.  There’s something rather obvious to report:

Fair to say, the picture has changed slightly – and so far, I’ve done very little. There’s clearly much more I could do here (this gives an indication of exactly how much can be done with a WordPress blog to raise SEO). It’s something I’ll no doubt continue to learn about over the coming months.

In the meantime, I’ll leave with another article on why SEO will never die- this time, looking forward to the year 2063… enjoy!

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“I thought it would be interesting to record the number of friends/followers etc I have on each platform and their relative importance to me. So I built a little table graphic in a Google doc with my data. Then I started thinking that it would be interesting to compare my data with other social media nuts and so on Sunday night I posted the graphic and a link to the Google doc in the #trufriends FB group asking for people to share their data. The next day Suzi Tonini, Jacco Valkenburg and Balazs Paroczay sent me completed surveys. I decided to make a another graphic comparing the three footprints side by side. I styled the document as a ‘Contributor Hall of Fame’ to give those people a little recognition.”

As is often the case, the project took on a little life of its own at this point.  Swiftly, Max was persuaded Foursquare was in wider use than Vine, so a quick switch was made there.  Others began to jump in and there are a fair few more contributions to the project now (including my own).  As is always the case, debate ensued. Is seven platforms enough? Should more be included? Surely the data is skewed towards the preference of your initial network, so it’d be more valid with a wider range of contributions?

I agree with all the above points – but everything has to start somewhere.  The initial results reflect, to an extent, my own expectations – Twitter on top, followed closely by Facebook and LinkedIn – but then, I know Max’s network is relatively similar to my own, so that’s no surprise. Take a look at the first batch of contributions and scores (note: 1.00 is the highest score).

In addition to the close competition between the top three being unsurprising, it’s kinda gratifying to see my earlier thoughts on Pinterest and Google+ being mirrored by others too.  I guess Andy‘s upcoming talk really is well-timed!

There are many more platforms that could be included as the project rolls forward – but also some interesting details for the existing seven which could be explored further. For example, some I know maintain a relatively small network on LinkedIn and are picky about the invites they accept – but actually run active groups or participate in many discussions. The raw numbers alone don’t necessarily reflect influence or engagement. Some would say the platforms are equally important (I recall Balazs arguing this point at a debate previously).

I’m certainly intrigued to see where this goes. It’s an interesting reflection of a personal network and as Max told me:

“I want it to be by the community for the community”

What I want to see more than anything is for the project to gain contributions from outside Max’s own network. Max focusses very much on social recruiting and employer marketing, whereas my networks also touch on product and tech startups.

If you view your network as delving into other walks of life, please, get involved with your own stats by contributing here – and better still, share this post to widen the net!

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The event continues to evolve as time passes, this year showing a stronger focus than ever on mobile tech and a series of masterclasses also being run.

My particular interest this year will be Andy Headworth‘s session.  I’ve known Andy for years and we’ve sparred on a few topics before. This time around, Andy’s talking about Pinterest and Google+.  I do virtually nothing with the former and certainly not enough with the latter – as my recent contribution to #mysocialfootprint shows!

Pinterest, I admit, I’m a skeptic – but then as a user, I’m not into pictures or indeed videos. I noticed recently if I’m hitting up a news site, I tend to avoid video pieces and find actual articles – I can read an article and extract the highlights faster than I can from a video! However, with Pinterest hitting around  5om users now, I’m intrigued to find out more.

Google+ is a different beast entirely.  I don’t believe it’ll displace Facebook anytime soon as the leading social platform, but I certainly believe it makes a strong case for inclusion in any career (or indeed brand) marketing strategy. I have some activity there and I’m keen to explore more.

If you want to join on the day, tickets are here. They’re £50 off until June 30th – and if you use discount code JM50, you’ll get an extra £50 off.

See you there?

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Newsjacking has become very popular among bloggers over the past few years (if you’re not familiar, it’s the art of applying your take on a breaking news story, in real-time, in order to generate additional media visibility for yourself). Sometimes, I’ve seen it done beautifully – others, it can be rather crass.  However, I’ve just seen a perfect example of this technique being used by a freelancer looking to drum up future business.

First, some background. Those interested in online privacy may have been following the PRISM story over the last week or two. Following some leaked slides and a whistle-blower interview, a project which has (possibly?) been running since 2007 is now major news. In short, it’s a covert programme run by America’s NSA to secretly access the data of companies like Facebook, Apple, Google, etc.  I’m not going to touch that story, as I’m still trying to piece it together myself (if you’re interested, Mike Arrington wrote the best post I’ve seen here).

So how does this get into personal branding?  Emiland de Cubber is a freelance presentation designer.  He needs people to know what he does – and as a one-man outfit, he needs that message to travel for the least cost/effort possible. He also needs it to show off his abilities. When the PRISM slides were leaked, Emiland spotted an opportunity: they were terrible, and he could do better.  The genius part is, he made it fun.  People love to share humour – and in this instance, they shared his humour 324,000 times in 24 hours.

From the original slide…

To this…

You can see the full deck here on SlideShare.  The tone of voice used in the introduction to the deck is also crucial – this has been done as a humorous snark, not as a job-seeker piece. By the time I reached the end and saw the credits pop up, I had nothing but respect for both the work and the creativity.

That’s how it should be done!

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There’ll be a strong mix of suppliers to evaluate as always, but it’s the speaker line-up I’m interested in.  So, the hidden gems for this year? I’ve earmarked the following:

Antoine Lhosmot - Not seen Antoine speak before, but I’ve seen some great research come out of PotentialPark over the past couple of years. If you go with the maxim “In God we trust, everyone else bring data” – these guys are a great resource.

Dave Martin – Always ahead of the curve on what can be done with Mobile, Dave’s been quietly working on a new project for a while now. Annoyingly, I’ll have to corner him at another point to hear about that – when speaking, Dave always focusses on educating and never on pitching. Always a joy, been quiet for too long.

Josh Bersin – Very much delivering a view on enterprise level organisations.  Enjoyed his recent post for Forbes, looking forward to hearing more detail.

Chris Hoyt – Delivers for one of biggest names out there (Pepsi) but keeps it lively, pushes the boundaries of social and community. Brilliantly engaging, not often seen speaking on this side of the pond. Kudos to iRecruit for reeling him in.

Ben Van Stekelenburg – Groupon have been recognised as one of the fastest growing companies of all time. This comes with a special set of recruitment challenges and as I often work with tech startups who hope one day to face this challenge, this one holds special interest for me.

William Tincup - BOOM!  Trust Tincup to deliver.  Insight, entertainment, harsh analysis and a couple of f-bombs just to ensure lunch didn’t cause you to nod off.  He has 200k Twitter followers for a reason.

Thoroughly looking forward to this – bring it iRecruit, bring it!

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When kicking off a new venture, it’s certainly common to look for free services that one can use, or at least negotiate as hard as possible to get the best discount. In many senses, that’s just good business.  However, startups are beginning to get a reputation for it, which may not be entirely desirable.  For example, a comment I heard recently:

Many of the startups I see use other people’s startups to provide the tools and services they need in their own projects – whether it’s design templates, tracking/planning systems, marketing, access to events, etc.  One startup asking another for a freebie or discount seems somewhat rude, given they BOTH need to build revenue as well as product.

Is it rude? A lack of respect? Simply hard bargaining? I’m not sure – but I hear more and more comments on the general attitude of “I’m a startup, what’s your special deal for me?” which suggests it may be heading towards habitual behaviour. Maybe once a firm has raised outside investment, it should lose the right to demand such special treatment. Maybe firms need to be pushed that little bit harder to actually identify the things that provide them with value – and then actually pay for them.

Think of it this way: firms who consider themselves a startup with fifteen people and ask for special treatment already have a base cost in the tens of thousands a month – so spending a little more on things that truly help is a negligible drop in the ocean.

My final thought on this? The financial crash across the globe in recent years showed one thing very clearly: when trust goes, so does liquidity. When that happens in an ecosystem, nothing moves. If startups truly believe in the need to move fast, this potential end result is surely the opposite of what’s really required?

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This Chrome plugin takes advantage of some of the experimental features of the Google Chrome browser. It adds a little performance icon to the top right of your browser window, giving a neat visual indication of browser CPU usage (it also monitors memory usage). With a single click, it opens up to reveal all processes currently running – allowing you to identify whatever is slowing things down or crashing tabs at that particular moment. It’ll then allow you to terminate the tab or extension or reload it if you prefer.

You’ll have to turn on the experimental features in Chrome – but Andy’s instructions are pretty clear and the install took me only a minute or two.  I’m fighting with some plugin conflicts and page load times on my blog at the moment and this has already offered me a little extra insight.

Download and installation instructions are here - and for the coders among you, the source is on GitHub here.

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If you need a quick on the Twitter client landscape or you’re looking at how people use Twitter, this is most certainly a handy place to check in.  It’s a free site, doesn’t event ask for any details.

The screen updates constantly – here’s my current snapshot;

Better still, if you’re looking a building Twitter-related products, the source code is right there and available on Git too!

There are some issues I see (for example, Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for iPad are broken out as separate elements – but I also see “iOS” as a separate element – so what’s this about?). On the whole though, it’s a quick, free, real-time research utility.

Click here to go see current usage, or here for the code on GitHub.

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Click for larger image

As a tool for sales and marketing people, I can see this as being highly useful. The monitisation here is obvious, with a clear indication that this is a taster – for access to a load more, you pay a small fee to go premium.

The other site of interest is certainly less attractive – but from what I can tell, BuiltWith actually probes the site in real time and lets you know what it finds – so you’re not reliant on a pre-built list of firms, you can go examine everything. It doesn’t do so well on some of the business-focussed aspects (support tickets etc) – but it delivers more in technical detail. Examining the same site, Twitter, gives me the following:

Click for larger image

And that’s just the first of four pages!

Fascinating and useful, in many different ways.  It also highlights what I’d like to see next…. an equivalent site covering the aspect that ALL these firms say is the most important for them…. talent.  A lot of this information can be extracted from various sources (I’m thinking a combination of LinkedIn, GlassDoor etc.) but if I were a startup CEO, something that combined all available data from those sources and made it as accessible as the above would be an awesome resource for benchmarking.  Yeah, I’d pay for access to that…

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In his words:

Each day the entire hierarchy of the company is constructed as a tree with each employee represented by a circle, and a line connecting each employee with his or her manager. Larger circles represent managers with more employees working under them. The tree is then laid out using a force-directed layout algorithm. From day to day, there are three types of changes that are possible:

• Employees join the company
• Employees leave the company
• Employees change managers

Instead of recomputing the full layout each day, we animate the transitions from one day to the next.

So why offer to do this for others? Again, Justin explains for me:

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the biggest revelation for me has been just the total amount of activity going on. You can see the day counter in the top left, and there is stuff going on almost every single day. In your own little corner of the company, you hear about some org changes going on, but typically most people have no idea about the total amount of activity.

It would be really great to compare what we see in the Autodesk example, with what is going on in other companies. Maybe they have more or less activity? Maybe they have a deeper or flatter hierarchy? Maybe other companies have more isolated “activity periods”? I think it could be really interesting.

In order to produce the video, data is obviously required. To make this as easy as possible, what’s needed is simply the manager name / employee name / date stamp.  Privacy is obviously important – so the work can easily be done anonymously using employee/payroll numbers instead of actual names – and nothing at all will be visible on the final video (as the Autodesk example shows).  If this format is a problem, Justin may still be able to do so something – please do step up and ask. The key aspects are when employees join, move or leave – Justin has the ability to do a certain amount of work to reshape data, depending on what you can provide!

Final thoughts from Justin:

There would be no charge for this, but it is part of a research project, so I would ideally like to publicly release the resulting animation. It could be released without disclosing the company name if that made things easier. If releasing the results is really not an option, I might still be interested in creating the visualization for the organization’s internal-only viewing, but that would be less ideal.

If you’re interested in discussing directly with Autodesk, just leave a comment below or contact me by any of these means. I’ll intro you to Justin and leave you to enjoy a visual journey of discovery!

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