By Link Moser
June 10, 2010

Define Your Goals and Identify How to Measure Success

Before you start working on any SEO project, you need to know three things.

• Who your target audience is
• what your message is
• how is it relevant to your audience

Without these key items, there is no need to proceed. Once you identify your audience, you may want to further segment that audience.  Next, define your goals for the SEO project. Do you want to increase traffic to the web site? If so, by how much? Are you looking to generate more ‘buzz’ and PR for your company brand through social media? If so, how will you measure this? If you conduct commerce on your web site, maybe you want to increase sales by X percent. Regardless of your company size or industry, you need to clearly define your goals for any SEO investment in advance and define how you measure them.

If you have a web site with lots of content, you may need to define multiple goals for different sections. For example, you may want to increase online sales by 10% and increase white paper downloads by 25% over the next six months. Be as specific as possible when it comes to your goals and be realistic when settings them.

Luckily, online marketing is highly tractable. Tools like Google Analytics give users a wealth of data including metrics like number of visits, length on page, top content/entry pages, traffic sources and more. Funnels can be setup that track site visitor’s actions through your site. This feedback is extremely helpful when it comes to determining the ROI for SEO investment. Accurately measuring your efforts will keep the SEO team from chasing it’s tale and make the most of the company’s investment.

Get Your Organization On Board with the SEO Campaign

You realize the value that a search engine optimized web site can bring to your business. However, your boss may not. In order for SEO to really succeed, several key departments need to be on board. Management is first. Without them, checks may not be written and the project will fail before it gets started.  Most managers will be asking what the return on investment is. Below are some compelling charts to help illustrate the value and help you ‘build your case’.

This graphic shows that web sites with more pages of quality content receive a substantially larger number of leads per month.

More leads means more sales. That isn’t difficult to understand. Clearly a content-rich website that participates in social media and blogging is more likely to realize a substantial increase in leads per month. Depending on the resistance you get to starting an SEO project, you may want to try and get permission to conduct a small test campaign first. Select a dozen or so pages for optimization and target a single keyword phrase. The larger the company and it’s web site, the longer it will take to educate key stakeholders to the value that SEO can bring to the organization. For more details and ideas on changing the tides, read this post.

Building Your SEO Team

Maybe your boss told you to look into ‘optimizing’ the company web site one Friday afternoon, thinking it would be a quick little project. Perhaps you are the IT guy and because web sites have to do with computers, were tasked with SEO.  There is often confusion and false assumptions about who is responsible for search engine optimization and online marketing within a company.  More often than not, someone in management decides that SEO needs some attention and then they go looking for someone to assign this to.

Your SEO team is made up of several departments.  Each one is critical to the success of the project.

• Creatives – The creatives are from marketing, public relations, and advertising. They are the team members who will answer questions like “Who are we targeting?”, “What is our message?”, and “Why does our target want what we offer?”.  The creative team members will be instrumental in researching keyword phrases, determining the context and content for web pages, and learning how to optimize future content for SEO.
• Technicals – The creatives may understand the message but they can’t deliver it without the help of the IT department and web team.  Those in charge of managing the company web server and web site must be onboard and work with the creative team members to deliver and implement their content.  The team leader must balance, and sometimes interpret, the needs of both the creatives and technical team members.  Because technical and creative people tend to use opposite sides of the brain, be warned that the two may have disagreements or fail to understand the other’s point of view. As team leader, you need to ref this situation and speak to both sides of the fence.
• Key Management Stakeholders – The key members from management should be part of your team. They may not be involved on a day to day basis but should be aware of milestones and have a basic understanding of the objectives. These are the people who have the power to authorize additional spending and secure outside resources, if needed. You want them to be on board and aware. Depending on the size of your organization, this might be the CEO, CMO, VP or marketing managers.

With your team in place, set your goals and work flow processes. Schedule regular meetings so that feedback and milestones can be discussed and reviewed. Constant communication among team members is critical to the success of your project. Even if you are a team of one or two people, it is important to define everyone’s responsibilities so that your project remains on track and your goals are met.

Link Moser is the Director of Online Strategies for HSG Global Services, Inc. HSG Global Services, Inc. provides management consulting and outsourced services to the international business community.

Pia Bertone-Gross

June, 3 2010

This idea started when I was recently asked by a friend of mine, who for the purpose of this article we’ll call “John”, for branding help.  He is running for political office and prompted HSG with the question, “How do I make my name a ‘Household Name’?” I.e., “How do I Brand myself to align with my target market, recognizable both visually and perceptually?”

We’ll start with the “Why” and then move to the “How” and “What”. By starting with the Why, John will communicate his message with purpose and meaning, winning the hearts of his voters first. The How and What will then solidify the Why with explanation and facts.

Whether it’s a brand for a business or a person, it’s always a reputation, or the impression that will resonate, which begins with what we see. John thinks he knows who he is and what he stands for, but is unsure how to communicate that. Let’s start with these questions to find out who John is and what he stands for.

Goal: To empower John with the tools necessary to empower the people;

to help John help you.

1. What is your Vision? This may take some deep thinking into what embodies you. Start by jotting down words that are core to your principles/values.
2. Next, think about your Mission. Why are you in the business you are in? Are you trying to change the world? Are you looking to make a difference? Make a difference in what/who? What impression do you want to leave with them? Why? Think common sense here (Keep it simple). Don’t over think and Do be true to yourself. Overall, your Mission is your motivation, and you will carry it with you.
3. Who is your market? Whose attention do you want? Why?
4. “Why should I vote for you?”, is the inevitable question. What would attract me to purchase one good or service over another (in this case, vote for a particular person over another?) To break it down in everyday terms, if Wednesday night is pizza night, what do you take into consideration before dialing out? What are they looking for in a great pizza? How does it make you feel when you’re about to take that first bite? (Do you love thick crust, thin crust, different topping one place has, a special sauce another place has…) No matter how you slice it, people buy, or vote, off of emotion. How can you make their life better, easier, more fulfilling? What will people experience with you?
5. Think authenticity, consistency, and clarity. At HSG, we use the phrase “end in mind.” Expect the ideal result, and follow suit accordingly. If you are running for an office, prepare to be in office. Your Vision, Mission, and identity should fit you’re destination.

It’s important to take the time to think about this seriously. In many circumstances, we find that individuals and companies alike do not take the time to establish their own identity prior to launching a campaign, putting a damper on forward progression. Know thyself, know thy enemy, know thy terrain, is the idea behind one of many Sun Tzu Philosophies to keep in mind. Each aspect is important and deserves careful thought. This is your core…the base from which you determine your destiny.

Stay tuned to see John’s answers, the results of the campaign, and the effects on the community!!

John’s Check-List

Before John can market and advertise himself, HSG made a few suggestions for establishing a base behind his brand:

1. Set up a reader- this will allow John to as efficient as possible in keeping in the know (John chose Google Reader)
2. Set up alerts- this will allow John to monitor his reputation. By entering key words such as his name, the district in which he is running, events he attends, etc., he will be sent alerts on what is being said about him (keep in mind this is not limited to the web, but also includes print because most news in print is also posted on the web). This will allow him to acknowledge/capitalize on the great things and address the controversial topics that may pop up (hopefully as few as possible ; ) (John chose Google Alerts)
3. Although John currently has memberships with social networking sites such as Facebook  and LinkedIn  , we encourage him to better utilize the tools available for his specific purpose and seek out alternatives that are specific to his initiative. Not only will this increase his online presence, but just having an account and building his network will make him more credible and his brand more reputable.
4. Consistency- have a consistent, recognizable picture across all media. In most circumstances having a consistent image such as a logo or photo (depending on the circumstance) helps the audience quickly identify and recall previous references which provide a sense of familiarity. With familiarity, John begins to establish his brand.

By spending a couple hours setting up these tools, John has now made it possible for information to come to him, rather than being in search of it constantly, therefore freeing up time to do what he does best!…be with the people!

Nashua, N.H., May 25, 2010 – Ezenia! Inc. (OTCBB: EZEN.OB), a leading market provider of real-time situational awareness, command and control solutions for corporate and government networks, announced today the release and immediate availability of MxM Secure, the company’s latest software suite dedicated to real-time secure messaging and information sharing for the Commercial market segment.

MxM Secure is the culmination of over four years of development and incorporates all of our knowledge and experience into an intuitive, secure and elegant product for the marketplace. The lessons learned from the deployment over the last ten years of the Company’s flagship product line, InfoWorkSpace, for use by the Warfighters and Intelligence agencies have been leveraged at every possible opportunity. Architected and designed from the ground up, MxM Secure provides granular depth and flexible breadth of data protection and audit capabilities with extensive security capabilities as robust as in InfoWorkSpace. However, MxM Secure is optimized for simplicity of use, user configurable graphical user interface, adaptable configuration of functionality, and ease of deployment either on premise, available now, or via software as a service (SaaS) available in the second half of the year.
MxM Secure is an ideal fit for organizations that want to communicate and collaborate in real-time but need to satisfy regulatory compliance such as conformance to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), Title 21 CFR Part 11 of the Code of Federal Regulations (21CFR11), Massachusetts regulations (201CMR17) concerning the Protection of Personal Information of Residents of the Commonwealth, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), or for those organizations with a keen and urgent interest in securing company information such as trade secrets, sensitive negotiations, corporate policies, privacy concerns, and/or protection of its corporate digital reputation.

MxM Secure has been undergoing intense beta trials in a variety of environments over the last several months ranging from insurance companies, charity organizations, providers of healthcare transcription solutions, military colleges, emergency telecommunication providers for first responders, and partners in Infrastructure Technology (IT) business solutions. This week, MxM Secure is being showcased at the 24th Annual Governor’s Hurricane Conference held May 23-28 in Fort Lauderdale, FL.

According to Andrew Hoffmann, President of HSG Global Services in Framingham, MA, “MxM Secure allows organizations to leverage efficient means of digital communication such as instant messaging and desktop sharing in a secure and auditable fashion. We recommend the use of MxM to clients who wish to restore efficiency through these methods of interaction which have previously been stifled due to security and compliance risks.”

“Almost four years ago when I arrived at Ezenia to lead the development efforts of MxM Secure, our architecture and design objectives were first and foremost to create a truly secure and trusted environment for real-time interactions. Those guiding principles along with flexibility, granularity, and intuitiveness in all aspects of operation and configuration were the cornerstones of the engineering effort” stated Michael Fitzell, Vice President of Engineering at Ezenia. “Not only have we achieved these objectives, going forward as part of our strategic plan we intend to provide, an easily deployed hosted solution, continued conformance to open and emerging standards, and interoperability and compatibility, where applicable, with our DOD-centric offering InfoWorkSpace.”

“When it comes to real time communication and collaboration, MxM Secure is the only solution to meet our compliance and privacy needs. It’s just icing on the cake that Ezenia is such a responsive and agile provider of an elegant solution to keep our distributed work force productive,” declared Tammy Mickelson, Vice President of Infrastructure Technology, Easter Seals in New Hampshire.

“We’re delighted to have Easter Seals in NH as our first Commercial customer and look forward to seeing MxM deployment expand into other states within Easter Seals in New England as well as nationally,” remarked Rene Rodriguez, Vice President of Government Business at Ezenia. “While MxM Secure will allow many private sector companies to deploy trusted means of messaging and information sharing with the protection from inherent security exposures and insufficient audit capabilities, its cost effectiveness and ease of deployment will facilitate Ezenia expansion into new government agencies and augment our existing product portfolio.”

According to Tom McCann, Chief Financial Officer at Ezenia, “With prudent investments over the course of the last four years, MxM Secure has been wholly a US-based and formidable engineering undertaking within Ezenia at our headquarters in Nashua, NH, focusing primarily on the Commercial market. As such, we own a hundred percent of its intellectual property and are virtually free of any external technology dependency in terms of royalty and/or licensing obligations. As the acceptance and penetration of MxM Secure grow, not only will our margin improve accordingly, but Ezenia will retain control of its course of actions and independence in its product directions.”

MxM Sample List of Features in its Current Release and Future Roadmap

• Secure instant messaging
• Secure audio chat
• Secure desktop and document sharing
• Secure synchronous and asynchronous file transfer
• Secure document management
• Granular permissions and access control
• Granular auditing capabilities
• Intuitive and customizable virtual places for situational awareness
• Simple and user-configurable graphical user interface
• Web-based administration
• “Open standards”-based
• Modular component design
• Synchronization with multiple Active Directory (AD) and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) servers
• Private or public messaging capabilities
• User status and customizable presence
• Whiteboard and audio record/playback
• Audio transcoding: G.711, G.729A, G.722.1-Annex C (Siren 14)
• Automatic gain control
• Multi-national language support for text chat
• Mobile device support
• Integration with third party video capabilities
• Notifications with simple workflow
• Compatibility and interoperability with InfoWorkSpace, where applicable

MxM Secure currently has two product offerings available for immediate delivery worldwide: Basic and Advanced. A third product offering, Premium / Enterprise, is targeted for release in the first half of 2011. For a comparison between the current releases of MxM Secure and InfoWorkSpace, please visit http://www.ezenia.com/?page_id=921. For pricing information, call Sales at 603-589-7600.

About Ezenia! Inc.

Ezenia! Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: EZEN.OB), founded in 1991, is a leading provider of real-time collaboration solutions, bringing new and valuable levels of interaction and collaboration to corporate networks and Internet. By integrating voice, video and data collaboration, the Company’s award-winning products enable groups to interact through a natural meeting experience regardless of geographic distance. Ezenia! products allow dispersed groups to work together in real-time using powerful capabilities such as instant audio and text chat, white boarding, screen sharing and secure file storage. The ability to discuss projects, share information, and modify documents allows users to significantly improve team communication, enhance overall situational awareness and accelerate the decision-making process. More information about Ezenia! Inc. and its product and service offerings can be found at the Company’s Web site, http://www.ezenia.com.

Note to Investors Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Statements included herein that are not historical facts may be considered forward-looking statements. You can identify these forward-looking statements by use of the words “expects,” “anticipates,” “estimates,” “believes,” “projects,” “intends,” “plans,” “will,” “may,” and similar words. Such forward-looking statements, which include statements regarding the Company’s business and financial outlook, expense control and cash preservation efforts, pursuit of sales opportunities and resulting effects, and long-term strategy, involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include the considerations that are discussed in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2009, such as the evolution of Ezenia!’s market, dependence on the United States government as its largest customer and on other major customers, continued funding of defense programs by the United States government and the timing of such funding, uncertainties associated with procurement processes and on-going bidding activities for government programs, rapid technological change and competition within the collaborative software market, the Company’s reliance on third-party technology, protection of its propriety technology, customer acceptance of InfoWorkSpace and other new products including the acceptance of InfoWorkSpace in the commercial market, retention of key employees, stock price volatility, the Company’s history of liquidity concerns and operating losses, and other considerations that are discussed further in such report. You should not place undue reliance upon any such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. The Company disclaims any obligation to update forward-looking statements after the date of such statements.

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Note: Ezenia! is a registered trademark of Ezenia! Inc., and the Ezenia! Logo and InfoWorkSpace are trademarks of Ezenia! Inc. Additional information on Ezenia! and its products is available at www.ezenia.com .

Andrew Hoffmann

May 19, 2010

In the world of business improvement, consultants are expected to bring strategic expertise and innovative ideas to correct business deficiencies.  Typically, clients demand one of two primary results; increase revenue or reduce costs.

In early meetings and discussions, clients commonly target specific deficiencies such as marketing or expense control as the primary cause for limited growth.  Surprisingly, these discussions rarely circle around fundamentals, or what’s commonly referred to as good solid business practices.   In many circumstances, however, correcting those fundamentals may have a much more significant impact,  creating residual enablement for deficiencies to correct themselves.  Good fundamentals are the foundation of business, without them, your greatest innovations, ideas, and changes will eventually sink.

Below are 5 quick and easy fundamental fixes that have tremendous short term positive impact in struggling organizations.  Although making these changes most likely will not solve all of your business challenges, they certainly may help ready the house and improve your odds of success before the next major hire or consultant walks in the door:

1. Start managing the management:

When working with clients, one of the first questions we ask managers is, “how are you measured?”  The answers are sometimes alarming.  Some leaders become so trusting of key managers, they begin to detach and start assuming; assuming they will know the vision, prioritize the objectives, and just ‘make it happen.’  But somewhere, somehow, it all goes awry.  The ship begins to drift off course, the vision gets skewed, and business suffers.  What happened?

Part of the answer may lie in how your managers are managed.  Take a few minutes and approach your top managers and ask them “how do I measure you?”  The answer should be brief, clear, and without hesitation.  If instead you receive blank stares and confusing circle talk, it’s time to get on track.  Performance is best obtained when individuals know where they stand, where they’re going, and how they’re measured; top talent and senior executives are no exception.  To paraphrase the great Sun Tzu…’when battles are lost because orders are not clear, it is the fault of the general.’

2. Turn up the professionalism

The 90’s are long since over.  Mini putt-putt, scooters, and flip-flops might have been good for morale, but they certainly didn’t help productivity.  Companies received millions in investment capital and many never released a real product.  This may be an extreme example, but the lesson is clear.  In general, business is not supposed to be fun (when was the last time you vacationed in the 2^nd floor conference room), it’s supposed to be rewarding.

Leaders and management must set the example.  It’s time to clean up the office, boost the wardrobe, and forget Facebook Friday.  Studies have shown that productivity is better when individuals separate the physical and emotional routines of work from home life.  Simply stated, work clothes and conference tables mean business; cargo shorts and foosball do not.

3. Have meetings and do them right

When did meetings get such a bad rap?  Somewhere, somehow, poor (or misguided) managers began using meetings as obnoxiously long sessions with no structure to communicate information that is redundant, irrelevant, and self serving.  Do your meetings have poor attendance?   Are they frequently rescheduled or cancelled?  Is your audience busy multitasking on their blackberry (or worse their laptop)?   If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, it’s time to evaluate your meeting strategy (or lack of).

Meetings should be viewed by your audience as a crucial activity to discuss, assign, and measure team tasks imperative for business improvement.  In your next meeting (schedule one if you’re not doing them now) keep it at 30 minutes or less, know beforehand what needs to be addressed, assign tasks, keep it on track, and take some minutes.  On your next go around, use the minutes to measure progress and assign new tasks.  Frequency is not as important as content.  In our organization, teams meet bi-weekly for usually 30 minutes, rarely do meetings exceed 1 hour.

4. Open the books

Knowing when and how to spend and save is critical to good decision making.  Hard numbers which represent company stability such as cash flow and forecasted earnings are far more valuable than the latest corporate finance memo emotionally tied to the scores of your last golf game or the last deal (good or bad).  Sharing information allows leaders to not only empower, but to demand management to make fundamentally sound decisions that ooze ROI.

In your next (maybe now improved) management meeting, bring the spreadsheets and challenge your management team to devise creative, high impact strategies based on the numbers.  Who knows, you might even learn a thing or two.

5. Small rewards for big gains

Fortune magazine recently presented a great article on this topic.  Although quarterly bonuses and annual raises are great, the most notable rewards come when they’re unexpected and have a personal touch.  A small token of your appreciation for a manager or employee for going above and beyond for that last big deal, all-nighter, or customer save can go a long way for morale and productivity.

I remember reading somewhere that good leaders try to catch people doing things right.  Emphasizing the positive is proven to have better results than seeking out the negative, so next time offer up those box seats for the big game, spring for a gift certificate at Chez Wonderful, or dole out some public praise.  No matter how big the annual bonus, next year, these small things will be what your people talk about.

This year, HSG will work with a number of organizations for a variety of reasons.  We will strive to push the envelope which create valuable solutions to propel our clients forward.  Our solutions will range from sales and marketing to technology and finance.  The key to our success and for that of our clients is found in historically proven methods that involve both innovation and solid business fundamentals.

“Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying the basic fundamentals.”  – Jim Rohn

About the author:

Andrew Hoffmann is the President  & CEO of HSG Global Services, Inc.

About HSG

HSG Global Services, Inc. provides management consulting and outsourced services to the international business community.   The organization offers specialized expertise to help clients grow revenues, reduce costs, and regain operational efficiency.   Core competencies include a wide range of advisory and augmentation services designed to improve business performance.

For more information or to contact HSG, please visit www.hsgglobal.com

Michael Stelzner, executive editor of Social Media Examiner, has just published his 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report online. This free download is a 33 page report filled with survey data from 1,900 social media marketing experts. Some of the insight you will gain from this report include:

• How many marketers are using social media in online campaigns
• What is the average time commitment for marketers using social media
• The number one benefit of using social media marketing

The report includes information useful to both the B2B and B2C marketer. The number one motivation for using social media marketing is to gain exposure and increase the number of impressions to a company’s brand. By participating in social media, a company increases its relations with current and future customers. There is also an element of reputation management involved. Finding out what people are saying about you and being able to respond in near real-time is critical to defusing negative comments before they spread.

Social media marketing is about networking and developing new relationships. Those relationships can be with current customers, prospective customers, potential partnerships or suppliers. Social media is an effective online platform for expanding and further developing relationships and contacts that were initiated offline as well.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs remain the most popular social media tools used by marketers. B2B marketers are much more focused on using LinkedIn and blogs vs. Facebook. Video sites like YouTube are used more frequently by those who have been performing social media marketing for several years.

Clearly social media marketing has gone mainstream and should be a part of every company’s online marketing strategy.

One of the biggest factors any web site owner can control regarding the success of their web site is the quantity of relevant, original content. I am a big proponent of content creation. Creating helpful content that your audience will devour and return to your site, looking for more, is one of the most beneficial strategies you can perform for increased search engine traffic.

Let me illustrate this point with an example. Last week I posted an article titled, “The Importance of Link Building for Your B2B Web Site”. This article was posted the morning of April 13^th. The page title is essentially identical to the article title as is the URL.

Page Title: The Importance of Link Building for Your B2B Web Site – HSG Global Services, Inc.
Page URL: http://www.hsgglobal.com/2010/04/the-importance-of-link-building-for-your-b2b-web-site/

In less than 12 hours, this new article was ranking in Google for the following keyword phrases:

“link building b2b” and “importance of link building for b2b”

About a week later, this post ranks in Google for the following keyword phrases:

“link building b2b” – 5^th out of 618,000
“b2b link building” – 8^th out of 584,000
“b2b link building importance” – 1^st out of 130,000
“link building importance” – 20^th out of 5,090,000
“importance of link building for b2b” – 1^st out of 43,800
“importance of link building” – 8^th out of 5,080,000

I am sure there are additional keyword phrase variations that this one page ranks for. I also realize that the odds of people typing in the longer phrases above are slim but think of it like fishing. This ONE article will be ‘bait’ that remains ‘in the water’ forever and should someone perform a search for one of these keyword phrases, this one page has a chance to be clicked on. Before last week, this site did not rank for any of these phrases. The point is that if you continue to create useful content with your keywords in the page title, url and body, then you stand a very good chance of increased search engine traffic.

Interesting article from HBR, by Peter Bregman, on the parallels between the natural world and business world…

“In business and in life we set all kinds of goals — build a company, meet sales objectives, be a supportive manager — and then we define a strategy for achieving that goal. The goal is the destination; the strategy is our trail to get there.”

This is a great article by Michael Schrage, a research fellow at MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business, is the author of Serious Play and the forthcoming Getting Beyond Ideas. He makes some great points which many of us know, but sometimes need to be reminded.

Themes to think about:

“There’s no “I” in “TEAM”.

“Helping others helps me.”

“Know you’re audience”

Making Your Boss Look Good (Without Becoming a Sycophant)

Sycophancy isn’t my style. I find suck-ups loathsome. But I can’t help admiring the manage-up business technique I’ve seen so skillfully deployed by ambitious intrapreneurs. No fawning or flattery, they use technology cleverly to make their boss look good.

For example, the boss’s boss at one marketing firm had given a keynote speech at a major industry event. A 20-something analyst easily found a couple of complimentary tweets referencing the talk. He emailed them to his 40-something boss, who barely knew what Twitter was but was more than pleased to bring them to his boss’ attention. Win. Win. Win. Everyone was happy. A simple 90-second investment made his boss look good.

At another firm, a project manager found that her boss’s boss had an offbeat sense of humor and liked politically correct ways of injecting levity into boring project reviews. She made it her mission to find the appropriate New Yorker or Dilbert cartoon to paste into a PowerPoint slide for presentations. Of course, she didn’t do this for her own presentations; she selected amusingly relevant options for her boss’s talk. He was grateful, and the boss’s boss liked them.

What I like about “MYBLG” (Make Your Boss Look Good) is that it is the mirror image of the marketing mantra about knowing the customer’s customer. Understanding the boss is vital. But researching, knowing, respecting and appreciating the boss’s boss ought to give valuable insight into what makes your boss effective — and frustrated. That shapes how to better position your boss in the mind of his boss.

In other words, if you saw your boss as a brand, how would you sell him to your boss’s boss — the customer? Indeed, if your organization is matrixed, how do you make your boss’s bosses look good? Answering these questions well requires market research. Accomplishing tasks in a manner that simultaneously enables the boss to look good to his boss and peers is an interesting design problem. Disciplined thinking about what tools and technologies help ensure that turns out to be a good investment.

That’s the exponential design difference from a decade ago. The economic and technological “barriers of entry” to figuring out appropriate MYBLG approaches have collapsed. Most managers are but a LinkedIn connection or a blog comment away from insights into their boss’s boss that makes a win-win-win outcome a good bet. Should this occur daily? Only if you like having a brown nose. But there’s nothing wrong with having MYBLG be a part of your brand.

In my own advisory work, I’ve found myself more conscious and self-aware about the marketplace of internal perceptions at a client. It’s not enough to solve the client’s problem as quickly and as cost-effectively as possible. It’s important to solve the problem in a way that also helps the client look good to his colleagues and his bosses. I’ve seen technical consultants solve expensive and important problems in a manner that revealed how foolish the client really was. Similarly, I’ve seen subordinates make themselves look really good to their boss’s boss at their boss’s expense. That tends not to end well.

It’s undeniably true that you might have a boss who is almost impossible to make look good. Or that it would test the outer limits of your creativity and authenticity to do so.

But give it a try. Think of it as a marketing challenge: What are the two things you could do in the next three days that would make your boss look better to their boss? And, as you look around the organization, ask yourself: Which of your colleagues or subordinates are using techniques or technologies to make you look better to your boss.

By many measures, link building (the process by which third party web pages link TO the subject pages) accounts for around 45% of the ranking algorithm with search engines like Google. Each of those links is like a vote or an endorsement. The more quality votes a web page has, the more trusted it is by the search engines and the more likely it is to rank for certain keyword phrases.

Links to your web site offer two major benefits.

1. Increased rankings in search engine results
2. Direct traffic from the referring web pages

These two factors can make or break the success of your web site and greatly impact your site traffic. That is why link building is a critical process of any B2B online marketing campaign. Even if you have decided to hire an outside firm to manage your link building campaign, there are several tools and resources you can use to ensure they are doing the job correctly. Educating yourself about the process will also make your communications with your SEO firm more effective.

Baseline Assessment

The first step is usually to assess your current web site and compare to your competition. No doubt you already know who your online competitors. The quickest way to confirm this is to perform some Google searches for your primary keyword phrases and note what sites constantly appear in the top ten results. Make a list of those sites and then enter your URL and theirs at the following sites.

• Open Site Explorer – this free tool will show you what pages are linking to your site and your competitors and more importantly, which of these pages are the most authoritative and are sending the most value to the competitor’s web pages.
• Web Site Grader – this tool by HubSpot will rate your web site on a scale of 1 to 100 and compare it to your competitor’s sites at the same time. You can quickly scan the results and look for areas to improve your web site in order to make it more ‘linkable’.

How do I get web sites to link to our site?

This is a question that I get asked a lot at public speaking events. Once people grasp the importance of increased the number of quality links to their web site, they want to know how to do this. There isn’t a simple answer but here are some things to keep in mind.

1. High Quality Web Pages Attract Links Naturally – the best way to increase your links is to develop unique, valuable and useful content for your site visitors. This includes putting as much helpful content like how to videos, client testimonials, product data sheets, photos and anything of value you can think of on your web site. Other content suggestions are to create a forum or blog where your staff can be industry experts and answer questions regarding your products and services. Create a free ebook or whitepaper that includes useful insight that will encourage other web sites to link to. The higher the quality of your web site and it’s content, the more likely other web sites will link to your site on their own because they see the value in it.
2. Link Partners –You can seek our link opportunities from your existing relationships with industry partners, suppliers and clients. When appropriate, these companies may be willing to link to your web site from theirs.
3. Vertical Directories – there are industry-specific search engines and directories where you can look for paid or free links. Sites like Business.com which is the #1 B2B search engine offer several paid opportunities.
4. Research Competitor Backlinks – using the tools in the last section, you can see exactly what web pages are linking to your completion. Visit those pages and look for a place to add your link or contact the web site owner to see how your site might be included. (this is an easier sell if your web site offers more quality content, is professionally designed and looks ‘better’ than your competitor’s site)

Successful link building campaigns start with an organized plan and research. By keeping track of the sites you speak with, who you have requested links from and reviewing your competitor’s sites for additional link opportunities, then you will be able to maximize the time you spend on link building.

Maybe it’s one of those things that simply can not be explained, and the bold who invest their time in it, not knowing what exactly the reward will be, fortune may or may not favor. Does it really just change our focus to what we sometimes forget about from being caught up in the day-to-day operations of running our businesses? (i.e. Researching our competitors, engaging our customers, etc.)

One thing is clear: It’s about engaging. If we engage those around us, they become interested; personally and professionally.