Ellie's Blog

Do You Own the Search Results for Your Name?

I won't even attempt to deny I'm not a marketing geek. One of the things I loved about Kyle James' blog post "Jokes: 36 Reasons You Might be Addicted to Social Media" was "#6: You own the Google search results for your name." That definitely held true for me.

Here are all the top results for my name - x right in a row.

1. My blog
2. My blog "about me" page
3. Twitter
4. Facebook
5. FriendFeed
6. MITX
7. LinkedIn
8. Twitterholic
9. SEMPO Meetup
10. AMA Boston
11. Amazon.com
12. RSSmeme
13. one of my recent tweets
14. BoardReader
15. one of my flickr photos
16. my comment on a blog post
17. Digg
18. FriendFeed (again!)
19. Tweetree
20. another flickr photo
21. Twitter mobile
22. a mention on another blog
23. BackType
24. Insightory presentation I did on Twitter
25. HubSpot blog article I posted
26. my comment on a blog post
27. a reposting of one of my articles from the HubSpot blog
28. my comment on a blog post
29. SlideShare presentation I did on Inbound Marketing
30. my comment on a blog post
31. my listing as a speaker for Geek Girl Camp

OK, I'll stop there. The results actually go on and on - and rightfully all about me. I actually made it 12 results pages deep before giving up on finding that first non-me-related result! Of course, I understand that there aren't a lot of Ellie Mirmans out there (if any!), and that even my first or my last name separately are not very common. But, damn, that was a lot of content!

Some things I realized:

• It's easy to create a lot of bits of content. I don't consider myself to be such a prolific writer / content producer (at least for the public web). Most of the results were either profiles on different social media sites, blog comments, presentations I had posted on sharing sites, or blog posts themselves.
• I've got a lot of social media profiles. Set up, not necessarily in use. Funny enough, they're almost ranked in the order in which I use them the most. First Twitter, then Facebook, then LinkedIn... In any case, social media profiles rank very well because of the reputation and optimization of the sites, and this actually serves as a good way for helping people connect with you online even via a Google search.
• What do your search results say about you? At first I was going to say, no one searches for your name (most likely) anyway, so who cares. But really, there may be a few who do, and they are probably either (1) trying to find/connect with you or (2) trying to learn more about you. Getting found in these top search results ensures that you're enabling connections. And producing more content ensures that you have good results (instead of potentially damaging results) at the top. What do my search results say about me? Well, that I work at HubSpot, and I'm pretty active in social media.

Of course, for those folks out there with less content or more competition for their name on the web, the Google profile gives everyone a good opportunity to get prime real estate on the first page of search results for their name.

Photo by silvery

How To Find A Job In A Recession - Use Blogs, Social Media

Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe came by our offices to talk to Brian Halligan, HubSpot CEO, to talk about how people can find a job (in or out of a recession, really).

In short: use blogs and social media to build your personal brand and expertise online so that companies find you and know who you are before you even send in a resume.

Watch the video:

Some Pre-Social Media Soul-Searching

I love Twitter for a lot of reasons. One is that I get great links to articles and stories and all sorts of interesting things to read and think about. That's exactly what happened to me today, when I was checking out some of my new followers.

I was directed to this article about using social media for personal branding. This is a classic topic, but this article, though short, had some nice tidbits.

Do some pre-social media soul-searching before starting 

Most articles about using social media for personal branding jump right into the listening, participating, and publishing aspects. Few actually make the point to step back, figure out who you are and what value you provide, before jumping into the rest.

Some time ago I tried to figure out what I was going to do with this blog. So far, it's been a crazy mix of posts on anything from rants about facebook to funny YouTube videos to updates on what I happen to be cooking in the kitchen that week. Yep, not focused at all. Part of the reason is I haven't figured out who I'm writing for. Is it my friends and family who want to know what I've been up to? Or is it my marketing community where I live and interact all day every day on a professional level. This is where I really start to understand the whole business vs. personal social media dilemma.

So it's time for me to take a step back. Figure out who I'm writing for, and why. This is a hugely important step when you're going to use social media for personal branding.

My Lonely Home Office

HubSpot is in the process of yet another office move (same building, different floor), so today all of us are working from home. It's my first real taste of what it would be like to work from home full-time.

Sadly, it's been somewhat lonely working from home today. No turning around to chat with my fellow marketing folks, or going out to lunch together in Kendall Square.

As you may be able to tell, I've been blogging more than usual today, and I've also been chatting (on twitter, gchat, and even our corporate IM service spark) quite a bit. Now I totally understand how twitter was dubbed "the virtual water cooler" that was especially appealing for consultants and startup folks who worked from their homes. You just can't go so long without chatting with people! Especially as a (supposedly) social marketing person.

Still, there are benefits of working from home. It's quiet and it's easier to focus. Well, sometimes it's easier to focus. I brought my computer out to the dining room in an effort to create a real home office workspace. Above is an actual photo. You can see I've got all the necessities - computer, notebook, HubSpot pen, glass of water, lunch dishes, nailpolish, and my mac not too far away... ha.

I'm looking forward to getting into our new space on Monday morning. We're moving into a bigger space that actually fits the entire team on the same floor. It's been a while since we've all fit on the same floor. It'll be nice to see my sales friends who have, for so long, been separated from us. In the new space, we'll be dangerously close to each other. For today, I'll be chugging away at my work from my home office, and maybe stopping into the office for HubSpot TV this afternoon, which will be on location in a conference room. Woot!

Title First

In school, I think you're taught to write the body of a paper first and then go back and write the introduction and title. I could never do that. I needed to write the title first, and then the introduction, to frame my thoughts and prepare myself for writing the rest of the paper.

I just finished another chapter of my new favorite business book, Made to Stick. This chapter, focused on making your ideas concrete, sparked so many exciting thoughts that I just can't squeeze them into one blog post. So this will be one of a few posts on the topic of concreteness.

Jumping to another story. (Don't worry, they all tie together in the end.) In college, I took an educational psychology class on creativity (side note: how awesome is it that?). One thing that really intrigued me was the concept of fostering creativity through the use of constraints. My hypothesis was that, by imposing constraints in a creative situation, the result would actually be more creative.

The authors of Made to Stick conduct an experiment that, although it's meant to illustrate the concept of concreteness, it more specifically addresses the power of constraints.

Here's the experiment:

Step 1: Grab a pen and paper and spend 15 seconds doing the following: Write down as many things that are white in color as you can think of.

OK got it?

Step 2: Now, spend 15 seconds doing the following: Write down as many white things in your refrigerator as you can think of.

Remarkably, most people are able to list as many white things from their refrigerator as they can white "anythings". Which is pretty odd, right? Because the contents of our refrigerators are much fewer than the contents of the whole universe. The authors say that "concreteness is a way of mobilizing and focusing your brain." I'd say that here concreteness is imposing constraints on your brain, and, yes, it helps you focus, and you're more able to think more creatively about something more focused.

So that's why I always start with the title first. This blog post is an example of just that. Coming up with the title first helps focus my thoughts and helps me write something more coherent (and hopefully interesting). Otherwise, with my attention span and tendency to get excited about lots of different things, I'm sure my blog posts would be absolutely all over the place (which in a lot of cases, especially "in the old days", they certainly are). Why is it that teachers teach us to write the title and introduction last, anyway?

Photo credit: churl

How Blogs Go Viral In My Family

My Mom: "Why aren't you reading my child's blog?"

My 'Aunt': "Why didn't you tell me she had a blog? What kind of friend are you?"

My 'Grandmother': "I want to be in your blog!"

 

Um, welcome new readers.

My First - Correction: Sixth - Photo Meme

I've officially been tagged in my first (correction: sixth - see below) photo meme by Mike Volpe.

The meme concept is kind of an interesting one (though probably gets annoying to those who are tagged all the time) because, although I sit across from Mike all day every work day, I was pleasantly surprised to get an alert about being tagged in his recent blog post.

As Mike explains in his post, "bloggers and social media folks like to play funny Internet games" (so true) and these memes (this particular meme is one of many chains) are one incarnation. What happens is a blogger will "tag" a fellow blogger by naming and linking to them in a blog post, and, because most bloggers track mentions and inbound links, they'll notice the post and continue the meme.

So this meme is the "Sixth Photo Meme" in which you look at the sixth photo on the sixth page of your Flickr stream and share it with the crowd, then tag six more bloggers to do the same. The only issue for me, of course, is that I'm a new user of Flickr and don't have more than one page of photos! So instead I'll share what is essentially the sixth photo on the sixth page of photos on my Facebook profile.

This is a photo from my trip to Europe last summer - I went to Prague, Vienna, and Berlin. Absolutely amazing trip. In any case, this is a photo of the Maisel Synagogue in Prague. There are six synagogues in Prague and each of them are completely different and absolutely historically and architecturally amazing. I should revisit my notes from my trip and blog about it at some point. In the meantime, there's more info about the synagogues and other places of interest in Prague here. Or, if you want to see more photos from my trip, you can check them out in my Europe Trip Highlights photo album.

Now, to keep the meme going, here are six of my blogger friends:

• Chelpixie - Because she's an awesome social mediaphile who, unfortunately, I haven't gotten to see in a while!
• Karen Rubin - Because she's a fellow HubSpotter who wishes she was on the Marketing Team. She's also one of the brilliant co-stars of our weekly HubSpot TV show and has her own delicious-looking food blog.
  
• Kyle James - One of our most recent (official) additions to the HubSpot team, and will soon be moving to the cold north to help us have even more fun.
• Rachel Levy - Another local marketer who is embracing social media and is really excited about learning about new marketing techniques and applying it to business.
• Tamara Garvey - As of today, I am a big Tamara Garvey fan - check out her etsy page for some cool ink drawings.
• Hannah White - A non-twitterer (yet) but happy blogger and close, close friend. She also takes some pretty awesome photos, regardless of the camera :)

 

Too Wimpy for the Blogosphere?

The blogosphere / social mediasphere has a lot of angry and irritable people. Well, the world has a lot of angry and irritable people. And the Internet makes it that much easier for them to crap all over the rest of us.

This blog post may be in the form of a rant. I apologize. I guess I'm one of those angry and irritable people? No. I don't think so. I think I'm one of the wimps who gets upset when someone unnecessarily freaks out at me online. And then go write about it on my own blog apparently. Hah.

I love how the blogosphere / social mediasphere is very informal - it feels like a real, regular conversation (and it is). But I guess when you take it too far, you end up with someone flaming another person, and someone else flaming the flamer. Does a simple comment actually need to turn into an argument (or a rant of a blog post)?

I'm still getting the hang of commenting on blogs and forums.  Knowing myself, I'll give myself a bit of time to get over my wimpiness and then I'll try again.  It would just be nice for peple to recognize that there are real, live people on the other side of the computer screen.

Why Not to Post to My Blog Late at Night

1. I can become incoherent late at night.  I make typos, spelling and grammar erros, and generally make a lot less sense.  (Case in point.)

2. I am more likely to post something I regret in the morning.  Something embarrassing.  Not work appropriate (and this blog is rather visible at work, so better watch out about that).

3. I become somewhat thoughtful late at night, thinking through my day, thinking through my life... this leads to more incoherent babbling that probably only makes sense to me, and even when it makes sense to others, they don't care.  (Case in point, yet again.)

4. A supposedly real reason not to post blog articles late at night is that they may get less visibility.  Somewhat less of an issue for me right now.  I'm pretty sure I know 90% of my readers, and the other 10% just come by to read one or two articles and then move along.

5. I become repetitive and post pointless articles, such as this one.  Also, I am a lot less likely to read over my posts to avoid errors such as these.

I break my own rules I guess. 

Surviving the Blogosphere: Bullets, Bold, Links, and Pictures

Both what I have heard about writing blog articles that become popular and what I have experienced in terms of the blog articles that I actually read and enjoy involve four things that boil down to the same point: make it easy to scan your article and still get what it's saying. People who really follow blogs (even me, who only follows a couple dozen) have a ton of posts to read every day, and in reality, they're not going to sit down and read every single one in detail. Make it short, sweet, and easy to read, with these key points:

 

• Bullets - Bullets clearly delineate the key points of your article. They're easy to scan because they separate out your points with white space and people recognize the start, and hopefully most important part, of your statement.
• Bold - Bolding a few terms also helps. Even bolding phrases, because when people scan or skim your article, they'll pick up on these bolded sections.
• Links - Links, too, are good scannable material. They're separated out with their (often) blue text and underline, which makes them easy to pick out and direct your readers to more information. This is a good way, too, to keep your posts short, and be able to offer more information to your readers if they want it.
• Pictures - Who doesn't love pictures? They're fun to look at and they're easy to scan. A picture's worth a thousand words, right? So how about inserting a picture instead of a thousand words I don't want to read through anyway.

These are all ridiculously basic things but I thought I'd share, in part in an effort to share with those who don't know these things, as well, in part, as a request to bloggers out there to make it easier to follow their blogs. I know you've got good stuff to say, but I just don't have time to weed through all your content. Make it easy to cut across the fluff to the real content. That's what the Internet's all about. Consumer is in control, and just wants to get straight to the good stuff.