If you sell any products through your website, even if you have good organic rankings, you need to properly set up product feeds to allow your products to appear in the shopping results (free) and in the PLA (paid) to gain as much real estate as possible on searches related to your products.

There is still a lot of opportunity with PLA, as many companies aren’t participating yet. Generally I only see large brands using PLA. This isn’t because PLA are more expensive or exclusive to these big sites (they aren’t).

I think it’s because people either haven’t taken the time to set up their feeds properly or because they are confused by the process. My goal is to persuade you to try PLA and to make the process more clear for you.

Even though I’m a PPC gal, part one of this series will just focus on setting up your product data feed to get your products listed in Google’s shopping results. Once you have that part done, setting up PLA only takes a few more steps. We’ll focus on that process in part two of the series.

Where Will My Products Be Displayed?

Google Product Search

If you click on a shopping result from a search results page or search directly from google.com/shopping, you will see results that are driven by product feeds submitted to Google by sellers. You do not have to pay to have your products shown here, but you do have to optimize your feed, get (real) positive reviews, and offer competitive pricing to rank.

These “free” shopping results are as free as the regular organic results — you have to put time and resources into properly optimizing to compete. This post will discuss how to properly set up and submit your product feed. For more information on optimization for Google Product organic ranking factors, see this post.

Google Product Listing Ads

Product Listing Ads (PLA) are to product search as regular AdWords ads are to organic search. PLA are also a great way to get pictures of your products on the search results page if you aren’t ranking well organically in Google Products.

If you have a unique product or something that is very eye-catching, Product Listing Ads may be much more effective than regular text ads — though I recommend running both ad types as PLA aren’t displayed for all searches. Part two of this series will focus on setting up PLA after you’ve submitted your product feed.

As I mentioned, there’s still a lot of opportunity here, even in markets where companies are using product feeds or PLA. For instance, to continue with the tea theme, while many retailers are featuring teapots, none are featuring loose leaf teas. This demonstrates a great example for Teavana.com which has ads in 1st position for both teapots and loose leaf tea searches. If they were to add PLA for their loose leaf teas, they may see a dramatic increase in CTR and (hopefully) sales.

Sounds Great. How Do I Get In?

The first step is to set up your Google Merchant Center if you don’t already have one. Google Merchant Center is simply the place where you will upload your product feeds and see data related to them. There are other features available in Merchant Center, such as e-commerce search for your site and Google Checkout, which you may choose to use after you are familiar with the service.

For now, simply sign in to your Google account (use the one you use for AdWords) from the Merchant Center page. You will be asked to fill in your account information. You don’t have to do that now, but you will want to before you upload your feeds. You will also need to verify ownership of your url by placing a snippet of code on your site before you can use Merchant Center, just like you have to do with some other Google products. Now you’re ready to create your product data feed.

What is a Data Feed & How Do I Create One?

A data feed is simply a file that contains pertinent information about your products. If you have a large number of products or if you are more technically inclined, you can use an xml file to submit your feed. If you don’t have many products or do not have the ability to create an xml file, you can create a data feed in Excel or with a Google Doc spreadsheet.

This template has the standard columns (fields) required and recommended for all data feeds. Additional fields are required if you are selling clothing/apparel or media. You can learn about the requirements for each field here.

Some fields have very specific requirements that you will want to pay close attention to. If you don’t fill out all of the fields properly, your feed may not validate. Even if your feed does validate, your products may not be shown in the Shopping results and your PLA may not display. Make sure to review all of the requirements, but pay special attention to these fields:

• id: This field must be unique for each product. Even if you submit more than one feed, you cannot use the same id for another product in another feed.
• title: This will be displayed to users, so it should be compelling and descriptive. But, it cannot include marketing copy such as “free shipping.”
• description: This field is displayed in the shopping search results, so it should be written with the buyer in mind. But, you must follow Google’s editorial guidelines closely.
• product_type: This field is used to classify and categorize your products. You will use Google’s category taxonomy to list all of the categories your product fits within.
• link: If you want to use utm parameters to track performance in Google Analytics, you will need to append the urls in this field with your desired parameters.
• image_link: This is the image that will be displayed with your listing, so you want to use clear, compelling images. Also, if you offer products in multiple colors or styles, use an image that reflects the correct product color or style for that listing to increase your click-through rate.
• expiration_date: If your products are only available for a limited time, the expiration date field can be used to automatically remove products from the search results when they are no longer available. By default, products expire after 30 days. You cannot use this field to extend that period. You will need to update your feed at least once a month to ensure consistent inclusion.

There are also some fields that are very helpful to retailers such as the sale_price and sale_price_effective_date fields. Using these two fields, you can schedule sales so your prices are automatically updated when sales begin and end.

The shipping and shipping_weight fields are only required if you do not have flat-fee shipping for all products. If you do, you can set this in your Google Merchant Center settings and do not have to include these fields. You can include this standard shipping information in your Merchant Center settings and override it with product-specific shipping information in your feed on a case-by-case basis.

The tax field is flexible and can accommodate very complex tax structures if needed. If your tax structure is simple, you can enter it in your Merchant Account settings. This field is only required in your feed if you want to override those Merchant Center settings. Make sure you include tax information in at least one of these two places. If you do not, your products will not display.

Once you have all of your product information in your spreadsheet, save it as a tab delimited .txt file. If you have multiple feeds, make sure to name the file something that will identify which feed it is.

Uploading Your Feed

Hop back over to your Merchant Center account and click on Data Feeds from the left navigation. Click the New Data Feed button. Here you are simply telling Google that you are going to submit a feed. Choose the country in which you want your products to display (you must submit a feed for each individual country because shipping and tax information will most likely be different).

Choose googlebase as the format and enter the name of your .txt file. Click on the manual upload link and upload your .txt feed file. Google will now process and test your feed. Depending on the size of your file, this can take a while. If you only have a few products, it happens very quickly.

Click back to your dashboard to check the status of your upload. Next to the file you just uploaded you will see a linked status. You can click on that link to get details about the feed validation. If you have any errors, fix them and re-upload your file. Once your feed is validated, it can take up to 24 hours for your products to start appearing in the search results.

Once they do, you’ll want to do some quality control to ensure all of your products are being included. You can see all of your products that are appearing in the search results by going to http://www.google.com/products?authorid=[your Account ID]. You can find your account ID along the top of any page within your Merchant Center account. If your products aren’t displaying, check these common reasons.

You can also click on the Products link in the left-side navigation within Merchant Center to see the status of each product. If you have more than 10,000 products, this page will display 10,000 random products. You will need to search for specific products to see their status. The list of possible statuses and their definitions can be found here.

Updating Your Feed

If your products or prices change frequently, you’ll want to upload a new feed each time there are changes. You can schedule the feed upload within the data feeds section of Merchant Center by clicking the create schedule link. In order to schedule the feed update, your feed file will need to be hosted on a url that Google can access. It can be password protected so the file is private.

If your products or prices do not change frequently, you can simply schedule the feed to update monthly so your products don’t expire after the 30-day standard expiration. Or, you can manually upload the feed once a month. If you forget to update your feed, your products will expire after 30 days and you will stop receiving traffic.

Tracking Performance

We’ll get deeper into monitoring and optimizing later in the series, but you should begin properly tracking performance now. Within Merchant Center, you can click on the Performance link in the left navigation to view impressions and clicks for each product. To get more useful information, you will want to either use utm parameters in the links in your product data feed or set up a filter in Analytics for referrals that include google.com/products.

Stay tuned for part two of this series where we will discuss the steps required to set up Product Listing Ads now that you have a working product feed.

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Follow BlueGlass on Twitter here.

Richard Zwicky, a Strategic Advisor at SendtoNews Video Inc., and Melanie Mitchell, SVP/Search Marketing Strategy at Digitas, will present.

Richard Zwicky starts.

Some businesses manage to last longer because of team and brand building. It doesn’t matter if we’re trying to build our own company or trying to provide services and products for someone else; everyone has to be able to understand, absorb and convey their message appropriately.

You don’t win just by taking a lot of really great elements, people and tools and jumble it together for something better.  It takes time.

There’s certain fundamental truth to success, and that’s quality. If you don’t have it, you’ll never succeed.

Do you broadcast your company’s message and beliefs out to the world to help people buy-in? Do every one of you post something about your job community? Probably not, but you need to. Your customers need you to. You need to get everybody buying into the fundamental beliefs you commit to.

Customer perception isn’t just in search engines — it’s everywhere else. If you’re not getting buy-in, there’s something wrong. You’re not listening to your team well enough or not conveying your message properly.

The market changes, so respond to these alterations and take advantage of opportunities.

Don’t sell what you can’t do. Your customers will see through it, and your team won’t be able to connect with you and they’ll move on. It’s a great way to run a turnstile business.

You better make sure that whatever your vision is, it matches the marketplace. You can go off and spend millions of dollars in the wrong area if you don’t pay attention.

Define how different from your competition your customers will perceive you to be. The reality is you don’t just have to that in selling — you have to continue to engage and build up your organization, and brand engagement has to be consistent.

When you’re building and leading an organization and team and somebody messes up, it’s your fault. You either didn’t hire the right people, didn’t give them the right training, or didn’t put them in the right position, but it’s the leader’s responsibility to address the situation and solve the problem.

Brands can’t succeed with poor leadership because it’s seen and exposed by the teams working inside the company when they verbalize and show lack of respect. This destroys the transparency of the organization. Organizations only succeed through accountability.

When you’re building a world-class team, why is everybody not accountable? If no one is responsible, you won’t succeed.

If you’re building out and up, the CEO will look around and see that they need help in certain areas. They do two things: bring in advisers and/or seek the help of an independent board. If too many people are in every single area, you won’t get enough outside perspective.

“You can’t expect the team to operate as a cocoon unit and succeed,” he said.

Leadership has to be stable, unemotional and objective. “Problems arise. Shit happens. Deal with it.” Far too often we panic, and it shows to your organization and clients.

Get involved but don’t micromanage. Don’t hire rockstars and then control them. Trust your employees to succeed.

Accountability is not top-down. It’s across the board. Everyone in an organization works together and builds value.

Team building = engagement. It’s all about bringing every single success right to you.

Next up is Melanie Mitchell.

She starts by saying that building amazing teams is hard. We all get so caught up in the day-to-day work that we forget about the people there sometimes.

You really have to build an environment and team that feels fortunate to be at your company, and it’s not easy to do.

You don’t have to work for a super-large agency — you can take these tactics and strategies and apply them to any size team.

Without our people, we’re nothing, and it’s a mantra we should all live by. When you’re recruiting, it’s about selling them on you as well as attracting great talent.

People misstep on the on-boarding process, too. It goes beyond that first week. You really have to build that relationship and connection with people. Get them in with the right people so they can continue to grow and develop. Especially in Internet marketing, it changes so quickly, and it’s important to take that time to let people feel like they’re part of something larger.

To deepen relationships and retention, think about individual coaching. Share what you’re working on. People want to hear about what’s happening and find out what they’re a part of on the grand scale.

It’s great to have someone who’s your boss or manager who sets a direction, but they want to know more about you and your path; use this for “coachable” moments and give your employees advice. Get to know them.

Employees will stay if they really enjoy the people they work with and love the company culture. Take employees to lunch or for coffee because it’ll really make a huge difference. It’s the little things we all tend to forget because we get stuck in the work day after day.

Transparency is really important. People start to speculate when they don’t know what’s going on and they start to lose focus on their work. When these things happen, talk to your team and be very honest. They appreciate it.

As an agency, there are two important things to remember in regard to clients: client on-boarding and management and setting expectations and education.

When working with clients, the process comes in four phases:

• Discovery — understand the brand goals, the target and the competition
• Assessment — decide your measurement plan and how you’ll determine success
• Strategy — finalize strategies and forecast success metrics
• Implement and Measure — project management for on-time execution; keep measuring and adjusting

In order to not lose your client, let the data do the talking for you. If you can’t get them to realize that what they want is unrealistic, you’re going to have problems. Don’t mislead them because you’re worried about upsetting them; it’ll come back and bite you later.

Decide what success looks like and make sure that the education is there. For example, some clients don’t understand search and PPC at all. Try to educate them and train them to make your life easier.

Communication is key. Layout plans for daily contacts, middle management, executive management and the C-Suite. Quarterly business reviews are how you make them love you. It can be just a way to give them an understanding of the landscape and some insights about what you did for them and what it means.

Make sure to communicate your point of view and express why they should care.

There are six steps you need to think about:

• Create core search team (tech lead, systems architect, SMEs, front-liners, program manager and project managers)
• Set priorities, goals and incentives
• Train, train, train
• Set internal standards
• Provide tools
• Measure and track (and adjust)

It’s incredibly important to emphasize why people should care about what you’re doing. People are doing amazing things but aren’t working to show others why it’s significant.

Send out a weekly email, create a dashboard, do something to show people what great work you’re doing.  Celebrate it! Make sure your teams are excited about what they’re doing.

Remember: Without our people, we’re nothing.

I can’t believe there’s only one more session left! Look out for the last segment of my live blogging.

The first 10 months of that company’s existence are still pretty fresh in my mind. We ran it out of the basement of a house I was renting in Utah. The basement flooded 3 times during our time there, so we were constantly having to air out computers and equipment. We bootstrapped everything and mostly collected desks that Jordan’s family was throwing away or that we found on KSL.com. We didn’t find our bookkeeper until our CPA let us know we would probably be screwed come tax time if we hit him with just a bunch of bank records and receipts.  Our exploits with Business Development professionals led to stories that Chris Winfield still makes me tell because they are so laughable.

We were a mess.

Since then I have been involved in two mergers and the creation of 11 companies, on top of the countless startups I have done consulting for. Needless to say I have learned a lot about what it takes to start, grow, and nurture a startup.

Last year we formed BlueGlass based on a concept dreamed up by Chris Winfield. Aside from being the most rewarding startup I have been involved in, the businesses evolution had some interesting by-products.

Everyone started approaching us with joint venture concepts.

Everywhere I traveled I was discussing JVs more than I was potential client or software-based relationships. BlueGlass wasn’t set up to handle these kinds of ventures, but eventually a few of them became too exciting to pass up.

Almost in parallel fashion one of our products, CopyPress, grew to a point in both direction and size that it had become an entity within an entity. Nothing is more dangerous to a bootstrapped startup than a lack of clear focus.

In January of 2011, I noticed my passion had significantly shifted from integrated marketing to the nurturing and growth of our projects. I became obsessed with how our companies and others worked. The entrepreneur bug had really taken hold of me, and my focus began drifting more toward the joint ventures and projects we had always passed on.

Due to these developments, in February of this year, I created an internal project we code-named BlueGlass Perform. The project was set up to allow BlueGlass to separate CopyPress and some high-quality joint ventures we were involved in into a division of the company that would only focus on their growth. This was essential because it not only fed these opportunities but also kept these new startups from derailing BlueGlass from its core mission to change the way companies market themselves online with extraordinary strategies, service & software powered by the best minds in Internet marketing.

Quietly, we set up a debt-funding vehicle for potential investors, found some key management pieces for the ventures, and began building what was in essence an accelerator.

Man, did we accelerate.

By June, we were working on four companies that were growing faster than we had planned and were outgrowing the support systems we had built. What had been set up to keep focus within BlueGlass was once again diverting resources.

That month we discussed what we were building with some of our joint-venture partners. They could see the issues we faced, the upside we were sitting on, and the passion we had for building these companies. At that point, they decided to make a large investment in our project, and we began creating a company to sit independently of BlueGlass to continue the mission BlueGlass Perform had started.

SteelCast was born.

SteelCast today is not an accelerator nor an incubator, because a few things became apparent from our work with the startups:

1)   Incubators usually help people build their ideas into working companies. We weren’t interested in outside ideas; we were interested in implementing ideas we developed internally.

2)   We are more focused on creating profitable companies than accelerating companies in growth and taking private equity without option.

3)   Our structure and process is far more hands-on than most incubators and accelerators because we are the sole ownership group in the ventures.

It has been a crazy 2011. I have essentially been working on projects no one knows about outside of our building. It has been interesting hearing the rumors circulate about where I am and what I am doing with BlueGlass. Today, I am a board member for BlueGlass and stay super active as an adviser to the BlueGlass management team. It’s been an amazing move to have someone one step removed from the day-to-day for brilliant guys like Greg Boser and Chris to bounce ideas off. It allows me to be a lot more objective than I have in the past. All I can say about where BlueGlass is going is WATCH OUT! Seriously, the software and service model BlueGlass is building goes well beyond even our initial vision.

When SteelCast was formed, we knew we would need to have a strong support system in place, and for this reason we decided to have Tony Wang and Jordan Kasteler join the new company. Tony Wang brings a deep experience in application and software development to our role of CTO, and Jordan was the perfect fit for CMO because his marketing background is so balanced across disciplines. Tony and Jordan are also active today with BlueGlass as board members.

So now I can finally show off my proud baby, SteelCast, and at the same time stay involved in growing BlueGlass into the monster integrated marketing company we all know it will become. I get to have my cake and eat it too: every fat man’s dream.

I will continue blogging about integrated marketing concepts on BlueGlass’s blog, but I will also now begin blogging regularly on startup concepts and also produce an ongoing video segment at SteelCast.com.

To say we have grown up in the last 12 months is an extreme understatement.

Despite what BlueGlass appears to be from the outside, internally we are a self-funded startup, with all of the trials of any other tech startup. Today we are still known for our consulting services, however that is because most of the work is happening under the hood.

We are attempting to do something unique and disruptive, even though it isn’t clear to everyone yet (and to be honest it wasn’t clear to us a year ago). When the companies that formed BlueGlass came together our current vision was only a seedling amongst a forest of existing concepts and business models.

It’s exciting to see where we stand today, but it’s also important to reflect on where we have come from.

BlueGlass has been able to make a lot of amazing things happen this year.  Sitting here and reflecting on it, it seems like it’s been more like a decade than a year.

Self-Funded – We have paid for our own party. This is the best decision we made early on. From the outside, our company looks to be a purely services entity, and our P&L reflects this perception. Taking funding would have been tedious, and dilution would have been painful. On top of this, when you already have a large group of opinionated shareholders, adding private equity into the mix, with the terms associated with it, we likely would have imploded in the first six months.

3 Dog Media Acquisition – Acquiring 3 Dog Media was the smartest thing we did. The acquisition came right before the large local update from Google, and a few months before Panda. There isn’t a single Internet marketer in the world that understands these changes to the level that Greg Boser does, and he was prepared for it even before the updates.

Along with Greg we got Dax Herrera, a brilliant software developer, and the leading force for our product development team today. The work his team is doing is going to be the basis for what BlueGlass will become in the next 24 months.

Lots of Talent – BlueGlass was really founded on the idea of merging together talent, but the talent I look at today has nothing to do with the founders. Sure having Chris Winfield, Loren Baker, and a slew of other brilliant marketers running the show is helpful, but our staff is full of unsung heroes.

Pamela Lund, Joanna Batten, Annie Cushing, Selena Narayanasamy, Stephanie Weingart and Ryan Sammy are just a few of our gems. The most amazing thing about our team is that they have almost entirely been developed internally, and are dedicated to excellence in Internet marketing. Many of them are also versatile in their approach of Internet marketing, something we pride ourselves on at BlueGlass.

The talent pool is deep. Very deep.

Lots of Projects – The positive side of being a well-known Internet marketing company is that you get asked to work on lots of cool projects outside of client services. We have been lucky enough to team up with some amazing partners on projects that have quite frankly taken us in directions we never expected and opened doors we never could have anticipated.

CopyPress – When we first began designing CopyPress we really weren’t shooting very high, we wanted to create a content development system and that was all. Once Panda hit, and “contentless content” became a useless commodity we saw a huge opening. We have now spun CopyPress off into its own company, having matured past an internal tool. It is the only system I know of that can create highly customized, shareable content in an easy to manage interface, and then handle customized distribution and management of that content.

What do I mean by the above? CopyPress can handle creating unique buyers guides for a 15,000 product catalog, allow for easy editorial changes, and then distribution of this content directly into your database. Marketers and IT teams alike love CopyPress.

We don’t want to be the next ‘content company’, we want to be the first scalable copy company, any writer can tell you the difference.  We want to fuel the Internet with the kind of copy people want to share via social media, and that search engines love. Our passion for quality copy is tangible.

Amazing Software – Greg, Dax, and our CTO Tony Wang have been busy at work for the last 12 months creating software that will change the way companies approach marketing online. Our development concept and approach to utilization of the software is something completely unique in the market.

While other companies are focused on simply creating good tools, and leaving users to figure out how to utilize them in their pursuit of Internet marketing success, our tools are setup to follow proven strategic concepts, and integrate data with high level strategic thought. This is not another simple crawler that tells you how many errors your pages have based on simplistic algorithmic concepts. This is a suite of tools designed specifically to empower the growing online marketing community.

From CMS management, to search marketing, and back to social media our team is looking at the entire scope of the Internet marketing lifecycle in our software.

Self-Funded – As good as it was, it hurt like hell. We didn’t really have a sound financial plan when we merged all of the parts of BlueGlass together, and that many moving pieces needed a financial navigator on board.

We made bad decision

s, and then we made worse decisions.

However, we continued to work as a team and have made it through the last 12 months unscathed.

Today we have what we didn’t have in place at the beginning, amazing forecasting, budgeting, and auditing processes. This was simply a growing pain in the development from 4 consulting companies into 1 startup.

Too Many Chiefs – When we merged we setup a system where everyone had an equal say in all affairs, and we ran the company as a committee.  We made it through but I don’t think any of us would say it was the most efficient way to create an organizational structure.

In Q2 we set out to change this model, putting key players at different level of organization, and separating the role of share holder from day to day employee. Some of us had to take a bruise to the ego, but overall we all came out stronger than before.

The Food Court Model – A byproduct of our “too many chiefs” issue above is what I am now calling the Food Court Model of servicing clients. Essentially if you were a client that came to us in July of last year and wanted integrated marketing you would be sent to Brent Csutoras for your social media needs, Loren Baker for your online PR needs, and me for your search needs. Not much integration was happening.

This was the core change we made during our reorganization in Q2. Clients were coming to BlueGlass to get an integrated approach to marketing, and that was something we had to deliver. Our timing couldn’t have been better. With the changes happening in the search and social media landscape an integrated approach is a must, and no longer a luxury.

Unchecked Growth – When we merged we opened the sales funnel, and simply exploded with growth.  We signed on some great clients, and grew out a great team. However when you look at the issues I have noted above you can see why growth without scalability in mind could quickly become a problem.

The other part of our Q2 reorganization saw us completely check growth. Furthermore our Q3 continuation of transition into BlueGlass V.3 has seen us slow growth even further. Our focus is today is on three fundamental elements:

1)   Unparalleled Strategy

2)   Unparalleled Service

3)   Unparalleled Software

Catering to Feelings over Creating Vision – Part of the reason we setup the organization chart we did in the beginning and the Food Court Model was so we could all play nice with each other. Anyone that has been in a room with Chris Winfield, Greg Boser and myself knows that’s a lot of personality.

Playing nice had severe consequences. Our vision suffered. We didn’t have a cohesive roadmap. We knew what our goals were in general, but the specificity wasn’t there.

This isn’t the case today. BlueGlass is 100% vision driven. The change from one extreme to the other has been nothing short of amazing to watch.

Resetting for the Vision – Once we began to change from our splintered model to a unified vision we had to make tough decisions. Staff and clients alike had to be examined to see if we could feasibly move forward with them and get to our unified goal. In this process, even extraordinarily talented staff and beloved clients were left off of our roadmap.

The end of Q1 was one of

the toughest times in all of our professional lives. Greg has likened it to making repairs to a car that is going 50 mph, and he is right. When you are a self-funded company, major overhauls are even more difficult because the machine must keep moving.

SIMS – Scalable Integrated Marketing Solutions. Put simply this is our unified vision at BlueGlass. Our goal is to create products and services that empower marketers to scale their marketing efforts efficiently. Tools are a piece of this puzzle; people are a piece of this, and education as well. Where we are going to take BlueGlass is going to empower the in-house marketing professional and the one man consulting shop alike. Our systems will allow marketers to create and execute campaigns across multiple channels, gauge ROI, and report this information to their clients or C Level with ease. We will empower agencies with ethical production methods to fuel their client strategies.

If you want to see what the future holds, buy a ticket to BlueGlass TPA (when they go on sale) because it will be on display there.

We also have exciting announcements coming over the next few months in regards to all of the projects we have become involved in, and our organization will continue to change and grow.

Today we are a few weeks into our second year as a company, and the next few years of our life are the clearest they have ever been. As a company we are closer than we have ever been. Ironically, the killing of the idea that feelings come before the company’s health actually helped us foster the family style culture we were looking to create from our outset.

Where are we as a company?

Healthier than we have ever been.

We have had to stop actively taking clients for the next few months in order to focus on providing our current client base with the best service, while scaling our future staff to handle new clients in our SIMS system.  (If you would like to start with us in September, please feel free to contact us to see how we can help.  But we won’t be taking on anything new during July or August.)

While this means we have had to turn away some very attractive client projects, it also means we will be able take our current client engagements to a new level of service in terms of performance and customer relations. We are actively looking for our next crop of young up and coming marketers to join us and be trained by some of the best minds in Internet marketing. (Want to work at BlueGlass?  Email us -> careers[at]blueglass.com)

Have we achieved perfection? Not yet. But being conscious of you weaknesses is vital. So much of what has made this amazing year possible (and is fueling our growth into year two) is our unique ability to be as critical of ourselves as possible.  And to become better because of it….

This last year has been nothing short of the best learning experience of my life. I wouldn’t trade what I have personally learned for a Harvard MBA. My personal growth has coincided with BlueGlass’ growth and any pain was well worth the end result.

Some people build companies to get rich. Very often these people fail.

We are building BlueGlass to create something extraordinary for ourselves, our staff and our clients. Our goal is to change our market in a way few companies have before, and if we follow the plan we have laid out, we will succeed.

I hope everyone has as much fun watching what we do, as we will doing it.

It got me thinking about the nature of social media in real life, or IRL, if you will. I’m talking about physical structures – brick and mortar establishments – and the social presence they display offline. A lot of people I know won’t even go to a dentist if the dentist in question doesn’t at least have a Facebook page. How could one ever truly battle gum disease without the opportunity to “like” flossing?

I live in a pretty lively part of Tampa called Ybor City. In 2008, the American Planning Association named Ybor City’s 7th Avenue was named one of the “10 Great Streets in America”.  As one would imagine, this street is filled with shops, bars, dance clubs and restaurants, and is never short on activity. But that’s IRL. What I was curious about was how socially present these places make themselves so patrons and passers-by can connect with them online.

Google Favorite Places and QR Codes

Google Favorite Places has been around for a little while now. It’s a program where Google mails window decals containing QR codes to different businesses depending on how often they’re searched for online or in Google Maps. People scan the QR codes with the smartphone of their choosing, and are brought to the mobile Place page for that particular business. It’s an easy way for businesses to share all of their vital information, and allow users to read ratings and reviews.

In my journey down 7th Avenue, only two businesses displayed signs of being rated among Google’s Favorite Places. This, however, may be based more on the taste and personality of the user than on the social presence of the business. Then again, the results were compiled in 2009, so some places (especially those that have upped their social game) may not be receiving the respect they deserve. Those that didn’t “make the cut” were allowed to create and print their own Google (Not Favorite) Places QR Codes up until a couple months ago.

QR Codes, in General

QR Codes are becoming the new standard for sharing information. So much so that they’re not just vessels for information, they’re artistic statements. QR Codes can be linked to a variety of platforms, and serve a variety of purposes. While walking down 7th Avenue, I noticed only one business that utilized QR Codes to link to its social profiles and website, and one that linked to a discount card that the business accepted.

The other QR Codes I noticed were utilized for “art’s sake.”

Foursquare

I’m an avid supporter of this social platform, as I believe it’s much more interactive and rewarding than other geolocation platforms. A lot of people utilize Foursquare to gain street cred by becoming mayor of their favorite locations, but I think the beauty of the program lies within the Tips section. I’ve learned a lot of interesting tricks and tidbits about the places I frequent by checking out the Tips of others who have come before me. It’s word-of-mouth 2.0. It’s always great when you receive a Special too. I don’t think enough places take advantage of the power of the Special. Although many places on 7th Avenue have check-in venues, only two places actively display that they’re hip to the ‘Square.

Facebook

One would think that Facebook would be like Mecca for a “social” environment like Ybor City. And although I know for a fact that many businesses in Ybor have active and well-executed pages on the social network, there are only a few that display their Facebook URLs proudly.

Twitter

Much like Facebook, Twitter offers a platform where the dissemination of information has the potential to be cohesive and complete, but people are just not taking advantage of it. I know that many of the businesses on 7th are active on Twitter; but there are only two that let it be known.

Multiple Platforms

Depending on the business’ brand personality, a business may not find it necessary to be involved with multiple platforms. Others consider it standard practice to be heavily socially involved. I can’t say that I disagree (obviously), but I think it’s important that businesses choose their platforms wisely. I found that the majority of the businesses on 7th who actually display physical indicators of online social presence do so via a variety of platforms. (Even if the URLs aren’t necessarily “correct.” Whoopsie.)

I only walked eight blocks down one popular street in one popular part of town, so there’s obviously a lot that I missed during my little experiment. I’m not insinuating that this particular street is even an accurate representation of the social media efforts made by businesses that make up any distinctive neighborhood. It was merely an observation about how these businesses use their online presence as the face – literally stuck to the windowfront – of their brand.

And in a world where the technical and the palpable are quickly becoming one, maybe it’s not such a bad thing that some places still want to conduct business IRL-style.

Either that, or they’re still using MySpace*.

*No offense to The Ritz. I’m a huge fan. You’re so great on other platforms and I just want you to lead with that. Love, Courtney

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Even though Google Places recently stopped allowing businesses access or the ability to print QR codes there’s still a big opportunity for these to become a staple in getting any marketing information over to your audience quickly, efficiently and creatively. And they aren’t going anywhere, in my opinion.

For those not familiar, a QR code is a 2D image (usually something like the above) that can hold information both vertically and horizontally; allowing for more data to be stored and ultimately accessed by their targets. Businesses have been getting creative with these.

For one, you need to have a QR code reader – I won’t go to far into these but here are a few nice apps for reading these when you come across them:

• MobileTag – I believe works across Android, iPhone and Blackberry.
• ATT Scanner – note, this has been giving me issues lately so I’m a little weary about recommending it
• QR Reader for iPhone
• QR Code Reader and Scanner
• QRreader – A desktop app utilizing your i-sight camera (on a mac if you don’t have a smart phone to download the previous readers.) NOTE: I haven’t tried this out but it’s one of the only ones I’ve seen

Why QR Codes?

The ultimate focus in marketing is getting your message across quickly, and efficiently; leaving an impression on your target strong enough where they could possibly turn into a lead and later a conversion on whatever product or service you’re offering. QR codes have the ability to be short and sweet, and aren’t limited to any one way of sharing.

QR codes give you the ability to:

• Share your business URL to take users directly to your site
• Share your address for instant directions
• Share assets – images, videos, other media
• Link to social media accounts – Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Namesake, Foursquare etc.
• Accept Paypal payments
• Send out v-cards

I’d be here all day if I listed the uses. There’s so many creative ways to use these it’s ridiculous other than the cut and dry ones I mentioned above. That will probably be another post though.

By having all this information accessible through a QR code, not only are you simplifying steps for users, but you’re  extending your link into real life. As you’re walking into a storefront, you may take notice of a URL (actually, it’s decently rare in some areas to see a URL on a storefront still) but will you write it down? Will you check it out immediately on your phone?

Probably not.

But chances are, if you have a QR code scanner and you’re anything like me, you want to scan everything and anything you come across just to see if there’s something fun or interesting there.

Ease of Editing:

Websites change, job titles change, phone numbers change, email addresses change… the only constant is change and if you’re carrying around a business card, you know how frustrating it is to have outdated information, and if you’re a small business or individual, you’re likely not looking forward to spending more money on business cards just because one detail changes.

By integrating a QR code onto your business card, you can actually edit the QR code without needing to reprint your card or code; so if your email address changes, just update the QR code and you’re good to go- this is something you would have to create an account to do depending on the service, if you want rewritable QR codes but it’s totally worth it.

You won’t worry about losing possible leads, falling out of touch with potential clients or even losing out on the ability to get to know someone you met at a conference.

Multiple Campaigns & Analytics:

Don’t think that QR codes are just floating around out there without being tracked or analyzed. If you’re taking these codes a step further and actually running multiple campaigns, you can test different creative or marketing strategies and track the QR codes assigned to each to see what creative/strategy was more effective and pulling in more interest.

Consider it the A/B split testing like you would experiment with Facebook ads or Adsense.

Getting Creative:

You may think your only option with a QR code is to stick it in your storefront window or on marketing material, but there’s tons of other ways to get these in front of the eyes of potential consumers. You may also think that QR codes are only for large businesses or a certain kind of “elite” marketer. This couldn’t be more false.

For one, there’s plenty of QR code creators, QRStuff for example where you can create and print them out, and you can even use Google’s chart API to design your own or the built in one in the ATT scanner app – so don’t feel like you need to be running a big business to really integrate these into your strategy.

For two, there’s already some great (and some random) uses of QR codes out there.

Stephen Colbert

For anyone who has been haunted by Rebecca Black’s horribly catchy “Friday” song, I’m sure you’ve come across the lovely Stephen Colbert’s (<3) version with Jimmy Fallon.

Anybody notice the guy in the background (next to the man in the bee harvesting costume and the big white abominable snowman looking guy) waving his QR code up in the air like an idiot? Yes he drew attention to himself although he didn’t consider the fact that flash doesn’t work on the iPhone and probably alienated half the population. This link apparently led you to a video of Stephen Colbert discussing a charity that was featured on that episode.

Even though many wouldn’t know what this QR code was, or what the crazy guy was doing holding it up, I’m sure the majority of people were interested and either tried to capture it with their reader or at least looked online for it.

Curiosity is an integral part of marketing because curiosity can draw your audience into checking out something they haven’t seen before.

Daytona Speedway Social Squad

International Speedway Corp. unleashed a great “Social Squad” during the Daytona 500- taking check-ins to the next level by having their squad utilize not only Galaxy Tablets, but QR codes on their shirt sleeves as well. With Galaxy tablet users were able to both become a fan on Facebook as well as automatically check in.

The QR codes on the sleeve allowed users to scan the social squad shirts with their smartphone and check in as well- giving participants multiple ways to experience new tech and be social at the same time. The nice thing about this strategy is for those who weren’t sure what QR codes were, they were definitely curious and willing to go the extra step to check it out. Over the weekend there were around 1,000 Facebook check-ins using these methods- I’d say that’s success given the wide range of demographics and different types of social users that were frequenting the audience.

Lisa Miano from ISC was kind enough to speak with me so I may be following up with more insight into how effective this was instead of using traditional check in methods with no social aspect (setting up booths, etc). While the QR code method may limit itself to those with QR readers on their smartphones, the benefits definitely outweigh that as they exposed those who were interested to their social presence which will allow them to hopefully continue interaction with the brand after SpeedWeeks.

SET Japan

This QR code, from SET Japan, allowed users to donate directly to Japan Red Cross for tsunami relief- a creative and charitable use. You’ll notice some of the little designs in the QR codes if you look closely. We’ve see the use of tech to solicit donations via text message (for Haiti Relief) so I was happy to see that people are getting creative while helping others. Who says donating can’t be fun?

CNN also ran this QR code. I didn’t catch it myself but I did hear about it. Oh CNN. I love you because you’re always working on being social AND you have those great huge touch screen displays. It’s not surprise that they decided to hop on board and use these QR codes to make it easy for viewers to donate to aid Japan as well.

YAY QR CODES!

I’m pretty enthusiastic about these QR codes and I’d like to continue to see creative uses for them. If you’re a business (or even an individual) I suggest you take a look at various ways to integrate QR codes into your marketing plans or just utilize QR codes to make your life cooler (and more creative). Wouldn’t you like to check in to a beach house that you’re renting, have the ability to scan a QR code there and be taken to a site where other guests have written about their experience? I think that would make life way more interesting than simply finding a notebook. But that’s just me.

What are some creative uses of QR codes that you’ve seen? Have you taken the steps to integrate this into your marketing strategy if appropriate?

If you’re interested in reading more posts from the BlueGlass team, follow us on Twitter. Or, if you’re looking to like us on Facebook, simply scan that QR code up top. I made it just for you… I know you were curious about what it was anyway

In my role as Director of Client Development here at BlueGlass, I work to educate prospective and current clients in order to manage their expectations from the beginning of the sales process all the way to after-sale support. It seems simple, but it is important to remember that before setting goals and diving into a new SEO relationship, there needs to be a significant amount of communication between agency and client.

The objective of these initial conversations is to ensure there is unified understanding of the initiative and expectations. Having open discussions from the beginning can prove extremely helpful when educating clients as to why and how we develop appropriate strategies to reach their goals.

Some examples of conversation starters might be “What are your key goals for determining success of your SEO program?” or “What are your expectations for this project and working with BlueGlass?”

Sometimes the biggest obstacle is selling the need to undergo a full review of our clients who have either been running SEO campaigns with other agencies and don’t want to believe that an overhaul is needed to move forward or those that are new to SEO and require a baseline understanding of their marketplace and opportunities.

This can be a sensitive discussion, especially if the client has invested a lot of their own time working with a previous agency in developing their SEO program.

The easiest way to sell this is by giving clients clear examples of issues they may be facing and what we need to do in order to identify and resolve them. If you stick to your guns and prioritize the foundation first, your clients will thank you in the end. Below you will find some tactics to help ensure a successful relationship:

• Prioritize and Plan as Partners: Partner with your clients to identify 3, 6 & 12 month initiatives and work to prioritize goals against their business priorities and your SEO priorities.
  .
• Sell Your Wins: When you start seeing gains in performance merchandise your successes to your direct contacts and give them reports and information that they can share internally with their bosses. Once clients understand these wins, they will trust your expertise and recommendations.
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• Encourage Transparency: The more open you are with your clients about the status of the current account, issues on your team, etc. the more they are willing to trust you to make the decisions that they don’t have time or don’t really want to make.

The bottom line is that you can only develop a proper strategy and achieve mutual goals when agencies and clients take the time to communicate and solidify a common goal. Communication is the key to understanding and part of the ongoing education process. The more our clients understand about SEO and the tactics we employ, the better the long term relationship.

Become a fan of BlueGlass on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe to our RSS feed.

It has been one of the founding visions of BlueGlass to take our holistic marketing services and the product set  we are building and expand it across the globe. “For us, making Australia the first step in our global expansion was a relatively easy decision,” said Greg Boser, President of Services and Products for BlueGlass Interactive. “It was fueled by a growing need for marketing services on the Australian continent, a strong, stable economy and an amazing partner on the continent that shared our vision for where online marketing services are going.”

BlueGlass Australia will serve as the model we use to continue our global growth in the online marketing industry. Becoming a global firm is a must in today’s environment where companies find their customer base being citizens of the world and not one geographical region. The move also allows us to bring competitive marketing tools to regional markets that are completely under serviced.

Within the first five minutes of meeting Darryl King, and the Ireckon team many years ago, we knew that there was a great business relationship in our future. Their incredible passion for all things web related, years of experience in web development and the cutting edge work they’ve been doing in the area of developing highly scalable Cloud-based hosting infrastructures made them the obvious first choice when we sat down to develop our international expansion plans for 2011.

Ireckon builds highly scalable, high volume dynamic web sites, web/mobile and social media applications. It also runs its own hosting and has local and overseas data locations and currently delivers more than one billion pages per month for its enterprise business clients.  Their proprietary  content management system is used in Australia by News Ltd. to run  a number of its regional and smaller city  daily publications and Ireckon’s expertise across open source platforms such as WordPress and Drupal enable it to best fit and custom develop the right tools for enterprise clients who need reliable professional expertise.  Working with many brands and clients both in Australia and the UK, Ireckon’s clients include News Ltd., News Digital Media and The Australian Red Cross Blood Service.

With the completion of this deal, we are now in a position to bring a level of end-to-end service to the Australian market that is simply unprecedented. And I firmly believe that the products and services that will ultimately come out of this new venture will not only lay the foundation for all of our future international expansion efforts, they will also fundamentally change the game when it comes to the way large companies do business with Internet marketing agencies. And for me personally, that is the most exciting thing of all.

Oh yeah, this is just the beginning….

If you’re an Australian company and want to find out how BlueGlass Australia can help you, please visit: http://www.blueglassinteractive.com.au

To read the full press release, please click here.

Ever think that you are entitled to something ‘just because’?

Ever look at another person or company and think they have it so easy?

Of course you have.  Well stop thinking like that right now. It’s not doing you any good.  It’s holding you back in business and ultimately: in life.

I see this type of thinking everyday.  Our communities are littered with ‘it’s not fairisms’.   And they are slowly killing us….

Let’s think about Internet marketing & ecommerce for a minute.  People look at Amazon and think:  ”It’s not fair.  They rank so well for everything.  They sell EVERYTHING.  How can I compete?  Boo-hoo.”  They forget the fact that Amazon.com started and was run out of a garage in Bellevue.  They don’t want to know that Jeff Bezos hustled his ass off to raise money and continue to grow Amazon with the vision of what it would become.  They forget that it was nearly was slaughtered in the Dot Com Bust.  They don’t want to think about those parts.  They just want to think about the ‘injustice’ and ‘unfairness’ of it all.

Now let’s take it a step further.  Forget not acknowleding simple facts.  What if the same people that were complaining actually did something about it?  They channeled that energy into something productive.  They said “I’m going to take out Amazon.”  Yeah it would be tough but not out of the question.  Like Jay-Z once rapped:

“Difficult takes a day.  Impossible takes a week.”

There are very few instances in this world where something just gets handed to you.  Aside from being born a billionaire (and that’s not even a guarantee) it’s not going to be served to you on a silver platter.  You are going to have to work for it everyday.   When my wife and I started 10e20 (one of the companies merged into BlueGlass Interactive) we were dead broke.  And we stayed that way for quite awhile.  We didn’t know what a holiday was for a long time.  Vacation was a four-letter word.  We made a bunch of mistakes along the way.  There were times when things seemed really hard and that things weren’t fair.    Did that mean that we sat back and just felt sorry for ourselves?  Not a chance.  We worked harder and kept learning to work smarter and it paid off.  And we never, ever quit.

A lot of it comes down to people.  Surround yourself with the right people and they will help to make you better.  I can look back at different points in my life and see when I wasn’t surrounded by the right people.  It took its toll.  I can look at points in 10e20′s life and see where I put my faith in the wrong people and how it backfired.  Eventually I learned from it and it has helped me so much.  Knowing who you can count on and who to trust is essential.  It’s what guided me into BlueGlass.

When we formed BlueGlass, it was almost like starting from the beginning again.  Sure we had more recognition but the stakes were now higher.  But one of the common bonds that we shared was a “We shall overcome” attitude.  None of us had ever been handed anything.  Dave was homeless.  Greg has been hustling in the SEO field since before it was even called SEO.  Tony is a Chinese immigrant who came here with nothing. And on & on for all of the partners.  And everyday we still have to hustle.  We never took VC funding but are still developing out a full suite of software, launching new ventures, employing an army of super-talented people and making sure that our clients are getting the best possible Internet marketing services each day.  That doesn’t come by complaining or thinking “What if”.  That comes by working hard and working smart.  That is the culture that permeates throughout BlueGlass.  It’s not always easy but it’s always worth it.  If someone makes a mistake, we want to learn from it.

And don’t forget – there’s always another level.  This was never put better than Jay Z describing the first time he met Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov at the Four Seasons in Manhattan:

“I’d been staying there for 10 years, and I always thought I was at the top level,” Jay-Z said. “But when I met Prokhorov, they took me up to this extra, extra room that I had never even heard of before.

“Now there’s something else to shoot for. There’s always an extra level you don’t know about.”

Let’s take it to the next level together.  We can change things.  Don’t ever let someone else tell you to give up.  And especially don’t ever tell yourself to quit.

What do you want to change?

• An interview helps your blog get credibility and trust: by getting someone influential answer your questions you (in some way) receive his approval of your resource;
• An interview is a great way to get more social media visibility: the influencer you are interviewing is most likely to share the interview using his social media channels which means more traffic and new followers;
• An interview is a powerful community building tool. Nothing builds a community better than the opportunity to easily self-promote your brand while helping promote others.

Sadly though, interviewing has been pretty much abused – and unless you take some time and effort to make the most of the opportunity, you are likely to fail. So let’s see how to take the full advantage of the blog interviewing opportunities:

Get the Maximum SEO Benefit: Think of a Proper Title

First things first: take a real effort to brainstorm a great title for your interview post. We’ve had quite a few posts on creating great titles by now and we are very-well aware of that almost impossible success formula:

make it short AND make it descriptive AND make it attention grabbing AND include your keywords AND create expectation AND avoid sounding forced and unnatural

Yes, having your title to comply with all the rules is too hard. Let’s make an easier formula for an interview post keeping in mind that we do want it to rank for the person’s (brand) name as well as for some other specific words:

• (Include the name of the person you were interviewing); and/or
• Include the person’s online moniker (this is very important. Make sure to chase the person throughout the most popular social media networks and find his/her username people know the person by);
• Include the person’s brand name (the name of the blog, site or product people know him/her by)
• Add some catchy introduction to let readers (even those who don’t know the person you were interviewing) want to read the post.

A good example?

Sure! Gina’s interview of Melanie Notkin (Savvy Auntie) makes a very good illustration of what I was talking about:

Make it into the Insanely Popular Link Bait

The social media web made us closer to people you’d never thought you could contact easily before. Look around. If you are active in the community, chances are, you (or one of your close social media contacts) is connected to a Twitter or Facebook superstar. Getting the interview from the really popular person is hard but it is almost always possible:

• People love being interviewed because no one can reject free publicity;
• People like to share their interviews with their contacts which will sky-rocket your stats.

A good example?

Even I was pretty much excited when I saw one of my social media friends Hillel Fuld’s interview with Alyssa Milano, his mutual Twitter friend. I think most people reading that interview (including me) felt the way Hillel described it in one of the opening paragraphs:

That was the first of many direct messages I sent and received from Alyssa, but somehow the fact that I can send Alyssa a direct message never gets old.

Important note: this is only ONE point in the post which is not intended to state that it only makes sense interviewing celebrities. Yes, getting a huge influencer to agree to an exclusive interview specifically for your blog is powerful but it is not the only way to do blog interviews. Interviewing less popular niche experts is a great way to source unique and valuable information and enhance your blog credibility. Get creative in your objectives and be unique about who you interview – and you are very likely to achieve interesting results.

Re-craft Your Blog Interview into the Unique Post

Question and answer format is fine but very often it is too boring to read and almost impossible to scan through main points. Re-crafting your interview into some more popular format can be a great way-out.

Ryan Malone over at Social Media Examiner shared some inspiring tips on how to ask good questions and then make the most of your interview. Here are some ideas shared:

• Turn (part of) your interview into a list and prioritize on it;
• Turn your interview into a case study or unique and popular product review;
• Turn your interview into the expert guide (and let the person you are interviewing think outside the box; for example, “What tips can you recommend that you’d only share with a close friend“);
• Capitalize on trendy topics. For example, as for the New Year season, the most obvious topics to capitalize on are “year in review”, “best of 2010″ and “2011 predictions”. See this post by Jason Lancaster to get inspired with Formulaic New Years Content;

A good example?

Even a few of them:

• What Paris Hilton Can Teach You About Branding (an interview as a link bait) – Fast Company publishes a lot of interviews regularly, so it’s definitely a good resource to learn interviewing from.
• Badgeville: Bringing Fun & Games to TNW – an interview re-crafted into a new exciting product review
• When do you throw a CEO’s privacy under the bus? – an interview that absolutely doesn’t look like one – asking two absolutely unrelated questions (which, in this case, prompts an even more active discussion)
• The Future Of Digg – the interview addressing first-hand information on a hot topic:

Re-purpose Your Interview Using Alternative Content Types

Re-purposing your posts using some different content type is the best way to further expand its reach. That’s no different with interviews. If you asked good questions and managed to pull out some great info, go ahead and visualize it using an infographic, structure using (downloadable) cheatsheets and prettify using video or powerpoint formats.

This way you’ll make sure people will bookmark your interview, share it along, download it to refer to it later, take it to an air-plane trip, etc.

A good example?

• CNBC often promotes its interviews from their official account at Scribd creating pretty branded embed documents (here’s one example) thus expanding their rich to active Scribd community.
• Check out slideshare-empowered podcast by Enquiro which actually makes a great format when put together: slideshare.net embed player lets you easily click through the parts of the interview:

Turn Interviewing into the Constant Stream of Great Content

Turning Q&A sessions into a tradition is a great way to fuel your resource with great free content and stand out in the community. Unite people by topic and profession and let them be heard – and you will win their hearts.

A good example?

InterviewByDesign is the blog / directory that focuses specifically on interviews. The process is pretty much automated (while still moderated). designers from all over the world fill out the online form that asks the same 5 questions to every designer, along with some questions on basic info (name, website, etc). It’s a simple concept that makes for interesting reading and comparisons, and is easy to maintain from a developer perspective.

Do you have any advanced blog interviewing tips? Share them in the comments!

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