I'll use a example from a website that I manage. I was tasked with the creation of a new section of the website for a new medical service. I've done this sort of task many times in the past but this project was unique because this service was available to both men and women but in very different forms. With this in mind, this new section of the website had to appeal to both men and women and encourage them both to engage and click through to other pages to learn more.

I decided that the best way to appeal to the different audiences was to split them up from the beginning. I created a landing page for the new section that immediately made it clear that women should follow one path and men should follow another. My idea was that both groups would really only be interested in what specifically applied to them.

In the interest of ensuring that I was creating the most useful pages possible, I decided to run some A/B tests against a page that took a different approach. On the second page I started off with more generic information about the service. There was an overview and a few paragraphs discussing the key benefits of this new service with the opportunity to dive in to specifics based on gender following up toward the end of the page.

After setting up the testing I sat back and waited for Google to tell me that I was right. :) As it turns out I was completely wrong. The visitors that came to the second page were much more engaged and went on to spend more time on the site and visit more pages than those that landed on the first version. It appeared that the general interest in the technology drew more interest than specific information for the particular user. In the end, being wrong wasn't a bad thing since I was able to correct my mistakes and develop the most successful page possible.

I went on to test video content and headlines and further optimize this particular section of the website. The end result is content that is more engaging and relevant to the user. This in turn drives more leads and a better return. If I hadn't done that testing then I never would have known what I was missing.

I would encourage you to not just think about A/B testing when you launch a new campaign. Look for opportunities on your site to improve the user experience and see what you can learn about your customer and how they engage with your site.

It has become very fashionable to write blog posts that are critiques of the way some company has mis-managed a social media crisis. The general premise of these posts is that the social media manager/team has mismanaged things and that if they only had the insight of this particular social media "guru" then things would have worked out perfectly. I'm a little tired of it, and here's why.

There's something missing from these critiques. Reality. 

Most of the time I read these posts I have to think that the person writing has never actually been involved in social media in the real world. If they had then they would know that reality isn't the perfect world they've constructed in their review. Things get in the way of even the most perfect plans. Things like budgets, time constraints, overzealous legal teams and more. Yet to make a "good" review none of these things are considered and it's often assumed that the community manager (or social media director or whoever manages social for the company) has made mistakes in their handling of the situation.

The problem is that even if the social media manager has a perfect plan in place and is ideally situated to respond to whatever crisis may arise, there are always other factors. Perhaps there are posts on your Facebook wall that really should be responded to immediately. But what if the situation is still developing and the CEO has ordered that nothing goes out to the public without her approval? Maybe there's 25 new blog posts about the crisis. Obviously the manager should be monitoring and responding as appropriate. But what if the social media manager is also responsible for talking to the media and is completely occupied with that?

In an ideal world each company would have a huge team of social media and community managers with an unlimited budget and an executive team that totally gets "it." Unfortunately, that's not the case. Yet how often do we see someone pointing out each little flaw in a response as if the person running things was a complete idiot?

Here's what I propose. Stop assuming that everyone is an idiot. Start giving people the benefit of the doubt. In the real world you don't always have time to plan things a week in advance. In the real world there's not always the budget the social media manager would like. In the real world the person (yup, often just one person) tasked with monitoring may be stuck in meetings for a couple of hours while tweets are flying about them.

Even huge companies with entire social media teams have their limitations. The point is the person writing the critique has no idea what's going on behind the scenes.

Yes, I understand that we can learn things from evaluating what others have done. I don't think we have to stop learning and critiquing. Let's just do the community a favor and give people the benefit of the doubt sometimes while we're looking at their response. No, it may not generate the same link bait headlines we're used to but it might lead to a more valuable discussion in the end.

(No, I've never had one of these critiques written about me that I know of. However, I have been involved in crisis management response for an incident that made international headlines and I know first-hand that the text book response isn't always possible.)

What do you think? Am I off base? Do these people deserve to get slammed for their crisis handling? 

Wil Reynolds spoke on the difference between what Google tells us will work for search and what actually works. Unfortunately, white hat SEO tactics don't always work the best and there are a lot of black hat SEO folks that are doing quite well with their rankings.

For me the most valuable tips that Wil shared were surrounding asset building. Working in-house as the only web person I don't have nearly as much time to spend on SEO as I would like. Typically the only way I am able to spend any time on SEO is if I can fit it into my existing workflow. This makes building on existing assets very important. Following are some thoughts on Wil's presentation, combined with my own input.

Written Content

For content this typically means optimizing for keywords. Keyword research (which can be as simple as looking at search terms that are bringing traffic to your site) and organizational goals can help identify where your focus should be. Typically you won't need to rewrite all of your content, just make sure that you're using keywords appropriately in the content and within the <h> tags as appropriate.

A great additional resource can be your offline content. Do you send out printed newsletters or do you have brochures content that could be added to your site? Since the content is already written it will require a lot less effort than creating new content from scratch.

Images

• Hopefully we've all got photos and other images on our site. Make sure that your alt text is appropriate to the image and uses your target keywords whenever possible.
• Use the same principles as above in the file names of your images.
• Use the Save for Web and Devices option in Photoshop when saving your web images. Google is placing increased emphasis on site load time in their rankings so optimizing images is more important than ever.

Video

Videos can be optimized in much the same way as images. Keywords should be used in the video titles, descriptions and tags. You can also add additional search value by placing a transcript of the video on the page. This can be helpful for people who may not watch the video but it's also a great way of making the content of the video indexable by the search engines.

You're probably already uploading your videos to YouTube so the optimization discussed above will be helpful for those searching on YouTube (the second most trafficked search engine).

It would be great if we could all hire SEO consultants or spend the time to optimize ourselves but that's not a reality for many people. By capitalizing on existing opportunities and working small amounts of SEO into our workflow those with limited resources can start to see a difference in search rankings.

Wil Reynolds of Seer Interactive in Philadelphia spoke on the difference between what Google tells us will work for search and what actually works. His final point, and the one that really stuck with me was to make a point of helping someone out every single day.

He was speaking specifically about those in your online community but this of course could apply offline as well. He gave examples of help he's received from others and benefits that come back to him when he does something to help those in his community.

There are great benefits to helping people out online. It can help strengthen your position as a community manager, it can encourage others to return the favor and it can make it clear to others that you're a good resource for the community. 

However, I don't think that any of those things were the main point to Wil's presentation. I think the main point was that we should be doing this because it's good for the overall health of the community. When we answer someone's questions or give them advice on a problem it can come back to help that individual but it echos throughout the community. Others may be looking for the same information later and it will serve to aid them as well. Other community members will also be encouraged to pitch in when they see that it's needed. Eventually the group as a whole will be stronger, more vibrant and a better experience for all involved.

This is true if it's a community of SEO professionals as Wil was talking about or if it's on your favorite local forum. I've seen it many times on forums where I've been active. Those that put the most into the discussion boards and helping others out are the ones that reap the most benefits. Those benefits can be visitors to their businesses or in connecting with like-minded people offline. 

But again, the main point isn't about the individual benefits. The best reason to help those around you is to strengthen the overall community. That will come back to help you and everyone else involved.

I'll post a follow-up about a few ways to find people that need help in the next few days.