Search guru Danny Sullivan speaks to the AZIMA crowd of 210 on Oct. 12 at the Scottsdale Hilton.

It seems like Danny Sullivan has been writing about search engines and search marketing since before search was even created.

The editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land and blogger at Daggle.com, a former journalist with the Los Angeles Times and Orange County Register, has been watching the industry’s development since 1995.

He’s been especially busy over the last few years as Google as expanded its search offerings and Microsoft’s Bing has attempted to grab more market share. Search has moved well beyond keywords and one’s place in search results.

Sullivan addressed trends in search marketing as the featured speaker of the Oct. 12 meeting of the Arizona Interactive Marketing Association at the Scottsdale Hilton. His hour-long presentation was a primer on topics like real-time search, the possibilities ahead for Facebook and Google, and what’s happening in mobile.

Despite talk that Google may be losing market share, he noted that the volume of searches has exploded every year and Google still gets the majority of hits.

Microsoft’s Bing seems to be making some headway, but Sullivan cautioned that its surge may be the result of a massive TV campaign. Yahoo, Microsoft’s partner and the early search leader, seems to be scrambling to find its niche.

He is studying the new Google Instant, which is affecting how searches take place.

“Each keystroke could now be considered a search,” he said in disbelief. “So this will really screw up the metrics.”

On Real-Time Search:

Sullivan also told that crowd that the days of a uniform search – in which every user sees the same results – is “dead.” The search engines are using cookies and past searches and users’ demographics to hone searches for the individual, in an effort to make them more relevant and valuable.

On Personal Search:

Sullivan said social media is providing a different approach to search.

To get answers on a subject two decades ago, an individual might go to the library or consult with one or two friends or professionals.

Now, with Twitter and Facebook, people can ask questions and get answers at a speed never seen before.

“We’ve replaced all that,” he said. “It’s the revolution we don’t fully appreciate.”

On “Anybody Know?” Search:

A lot of people are talking about Facebook as a challenger to Google. Sullivan likes to clarify the premise.

“Facebook is not a search engine,” he said. “It won’t rival Google on the search front.”

He added that Facebook is very successful at keeping users on the site (and seeing advertising). Why would they want to steer users off the site?

Each has a niche and an audience, and users may not want them to do the same things, he said. People like choice.

On Google vs. Facebook:

The use of social media applications is also having an impact on local searches, he said.

On Mobile Search:

Sullivan shared some thoughts on where he sees search marketing going over the next three to five years.

On Giving Answers through Search Marketing:

On How Search Will Evolve:

AZIMA president Arnie Kuenn of Vertical Measures speaks to the crowd of 210 before Danny Sullivan’s presentation.

The AZIMA panel, from left: moderator Evan Wyloge of the Arizona Capitol Times, Democrat Kevin Spidel, and Republican Jeremy Vaught.

If you thought social media was all fun and games and engaging with friends, look out!

The political world is on to it and is looking for ways to manipulate – ahem, inform — you, just as they have with traditional media.

Two well-known political consultants in Arizona – Republican Jeremy Vaught, who is working on the McCain re-election campaign, and Kevin Spidel, a Democrat volunteering for the Goddard for Governor team – shared their perspectives during the Sept. 14 meeting of AZIMA at the Scottsdale Hilton. Evan Wyloge, new-media specialist for the Arizona Capitol Times, served as moderator of the hour-long chat.

Vaught and Spidel are rivals but friends, and the evening involved good-natured jabs. They both agree with the notion, articulated by Vaught, that social media teams “don’t create the message, we describe it.”

“The difference between working with companies and working with politicians is that, in business, opposing companies aren’t showing up at your events and filming you and actively bashing you,” Vaught said. “There’s a lot of messaging going on that may not be your messaging.”

Spidel pointed out that such actions are part of the process.

“We want to maximize exposure to blunders,” he said.

Spidel advocates “rocking the data”: looking at voter files, assessing trending data and identifying sentiments.

Political consultants are now accessing tons of marketing data, just as corporations do, he said. They are targeting segments of the population.

“We can identify ‘cat lovers’ and create a direct-mail campaign,” Spidel said. “There’s a tool – Aristotle 360 – that can provide a social footprint for each individual.”

Politicians are using all of this information to hone appeals for contributions.

They can match a $500 donor to a friend or neighbor and then use the donor’s name in a phone call soliciting a contribution, Spidel said.

Campaigns are also spending a lot of time “listening” – following what bloggers are saying about the candidate. They look to influence bloggers who are passionate about an issue.

Vaught shared that Sen. John McCain stops by his desk every day to hear what’s being said. He then gave a dead-on impression of the 74-year-old Arizona senator checking in on the social media team.

Politicians are using the same social media tools to attract voters. Video endorsements from “average” citizens appear on YouTube, voters can “like” a candidate on Facebook and comment on issues, and supporters are encouraged to use Twitter to hype attendance at rallies.

The Democrats have created a page Organizing for America on Facebook to gain support for President Obama’s re-election. Individuals in each state can learn who’s canvassing for votes and in what areas, if they want to get involved.

Spidel believes mobile-phone apps that will provide depths of information on voting, voters and issues in real time.

“It will change the game dramatically,” he said.

He is also president of Arizona Interactive Marketing Association (AZIMA), which is holding an event at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 14, at the Scottsdale Hilton. The focus is “Social Media and Politics.”

But that doesn’t mean they should ignore the Web altogether.

The July 13 meeting of AZIMA – the Arizona Interactive Marketing Association – featured a second panel of Internet marketing consultants, who looked at the site of a Phoenix-based non-profit group. WingstoFly.info promotes building self-esteem in young women ages 12 to 17, primarily through one-week educational camp in the summer.

The panel analyzed the site based on usability, search engine optimization and social media links.

Panel 2: From left, David Wallace of SearchRank, Ward Andrews of Drawbackwards and design.org, and Matt O’Brien of Mint Social

Usability, by Ward Andrews of Drawbackwards and founder of design.org:

•           To dream, inspire and empower are all good parts of the story. Take that image area and also have a call to action there, to tell the story and also have the visitor take action toward a goal.

•           “Hover over” navigation no longer works. This has more importance as users adopt devices like touch interfaces like on the iPad.

•           Instead of photos of the girls at the camp, show a video of them having fun camp. Embed the video from your YouTube channel. This builds a social outpost off-site and upgrades the quality of storytelling on-site.

•           On the home page, instead of describing “quick links,” describe what the list is about. If the list is about sponsors and donors, who you are recruiting as well as highlighting, list them with their logos. “It’s a sales tool,” he said.

•           One of the site sections is for after-school programs, there is nothing listed. I recommend you not include links until the content is there, he said.

SEO, by David Wallace of SearchRank:

• Many non-profits haven’t done much with search engine optimization but it’s crucial, he said.
• First, use a keyword search to determine the words and phrases people are using when doing a search.
• Next, employ keyword mapping to assign specific words to specific pages, the ones best suited to match searches.
• Each page should have unique title tags, with keywords and the brand name.
• Don’t forget a meta tag, the description of the organization and its mission, with keywords, for the website.
• You need to use header tags, and footer tags.
• If you use cascading style sheets for design, you made need to adjust them to include keywords.
• Use of p tags will make pages load faster.
• Include a link in images in order to show up on Google’s Image search.
• The site has nice incoming links from KNIX and KNXV-Channel 15. The group may want to pursue more of these, as part of a strategy to build the site as an authority in this domain.
• .info is a bit out of the mainstream. “It would be great if you could get the .com or .org domain,” he said.

Social media, by Matt O’Brien of Mint Social:

• WingstoFly does have a Twitter account but it doesn’t seem to be your audience. You have the girls attending the camp and the parents who would like to send their daughters to camp.
• The group does have an interesting Facebook page. But there isn’t a prominent tie-in to the page from the website.
• What are your content strategies? If the girls are “cold turkey” on gadgets during the camp, could volunteers capture the cool things going on?
• The Wing Story is buried on the home page and difficult to find. This is your biggest asset, so find a way to tell it on video or using Flickr. “Your audience is out on social networks,” O’Brien said. “You need to go there to engage them.”
• The group’s blog is also hard to find. This needs to be a part of the website, with a domain of www.wingstofly.info/blog.
• Pare down the site to tell WingstoFly’s story. Celebrate your big fund-raisers and donors.
• Is there a contest that you can introduce, perhaps for scholarships?
• In the off-season, can the girls participate by talking about their experiences at camp?
• The kids will be viral so you need to make the parents aware of the camp.
• You may also want a listening strategy. Perhaps there are parents looking for answers to some problems with their daughters. If you find forums or follow tweets where these discussions are taking place, you can participate and bring up WingstoFly, the website and the camp.

The July 13 meeting of AZIMA – the Arizona Interactive Marketing Association – featured two panels of Internet marketing consultants offering their suggestions for a commercial site and a non-profit site.

Each panel featured three individuals, who looked at site usability, search-engine fundamentals and links to social media marketing.

Panel 1: From left, Jack Smith of Social Latte, Sheila Kloefkorn of KEO Marketing, and Chris Sietsema of Teach to Fish Digital

The first site was www.giftideas.com. The first panel actually looked at a prototype for the company’s next website.

Usability, by Chris Sietsema of Teach to Fish Digital:

• First, you need to ask what the site visitor is asking: What is this site about? What can I do here? How is this different from other sites? What does the website want me to do?
• With such a broad scope of “gift ideas,” it might easier to select a niche to emphasize.
• The site’s graphic only reaches halfway across the page; it looks broken so extend it across the entire header.
• Visitors take in information in different ways, so mix words with images.
• Test vertical and horizontal layouts to gauge effectiveness.
• Employ software that shows links under the cursor as the user “hovers” over it, so as to not require a click.
• Consider creating recommendations for users. “I searched garden hoses and there were no products,” he said. “That could be a spot for recommendations.”
• Use breadcrumb navigation to give users a way to keep track of the pages they visit.

Search engine optimization, by Sheila Kloefkorn, president of KEOMarketing.com:

• How do search engines see your site? she asked.
• Keywords are crucial. Instead of simply “gift ideas,” it’s important to “tag” each page – for example, women’s products or men’s products – so that there is unique content on each page. “Use file names to identify the best gift ideas in search,” she said. “Optimize ‘gift ideas’ – for women, for girls, for boys, etc.”
• When constructing the site, be sure to use complete terms for links. For example, for gift ideas, don’t just use a link for “men’s.” “Men’s gift ideas” will allow the page to come up in searches. (Such tag lines are used effectively by Red Envelope, another gift site. Gifts.com pitches its gifts selected by “experts.”)
• Meta descriptions need to be optimized. This involves a 150-word description for the site that includes a call to action.
• Meta descriptions need to be repeated on every page. “70 to 80 percent of your traffic will come in on an inside page, not the home page,” she said.
• Visit Google’s AdWords and use the Keyword tool to determine what words users are using in searches, then incorporate those words on your website. For example, searchers may use “gifts for men” most frequently.
• Your search results will improve if you can increase the number of incoming links to your site. “That’s 70 percent of the battle,” Kloefkorn said.
• Use analytics to determine what people want, based on what they click.
• WordPress sites are a challenge for e-commerce enterprises.
• Consider adding a blog, as that will get Google’s attention.
• Get in the Google Directory.
• Use press releases and announcements to get the site to show up in Google News searches.

Social media links, by Jack Smith, online marketing barista for The Social Latte:

• Identify what social media tools to use to market the business and put the logo links “above the fold” on the front page.
• Consider enhancing the look of the link with a bit of flair – a ribbon around the Facebook “F,” for example – to be unique.
• If you want people to “like” you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter, you need to give them a reason to.
• Create a blog to have conversations with customers.
• What makes you unique? For a gift site, look at ways to help or entertain customers. Offer unique wrapping ideas or creative ways to give gifts. Alert users to gift ideas, for holidays and bizarre events like “Blueberry Month.”
• Get users to share their stories, which will provide additional content to your site.
• Create customized landing pages on Facebook (not just the “wall”) for specific events or times of year.
• Introduce a newsletter.
• Consider including a Twitter feed on the site that follows specific hashtags, like #flowers.
• Can you hold contests, like stories behind gift-giving or video reactions to gifts?
• Have a “listening” strategy; engage people, hear what they are saying in social media about gifts, and what they are looking for.

AZIMA has a new meeting place: the Scottsdale Hilton. The group’s next events will be Aug. 10, Sept. 14 and Oct. 12.

NEXT: The second AZIMA panel assesses the effectiveness of a non-profit site.

Infusionsoft CEO Clate Mask explains the difference between Email Marketing 1.0 and 2.0 to about 100 members of the Arizona Internet Marketing Association April 13 at the Tempe Mission Palms hotel.

For some small businesses, email marketing is essentially a special-sale “blast” sent to all of its accumulated customers once a week or once a month.

The problem is, that type of marketing isn’t efficient, can annoy recipients and doesn’t take advantage of available technologies to “build” and cultivate relationships.

There is a better way, according to Clate Mask, CEO of Infusionsoft.

In an April 13 talk titled “Email Marketing 2.0″ to the Arizona Interactive Marketing Association, Mask described how his firm helps small businesses market themselves like larger corporations, even if they have only a handful of employees.

There are three key elements to remember:

1. Email and CRM: Feeding the right message at the right time to your customer. A small business can learn how to do this by tracking its customers’ behavior – what the customer clicks on at the website, what motivates the customer to click on a link, what purchases the customer makes. There is a lot of information that a small business can use to enhance its customer relationships.
2. It’s more than just email: Think of all of the other communication tools at a small business’s disposal — direct mail, text, voice messages, faxes, Twitter. You need to use an array and “vary the message,” Mask said.
3. Smart automation: Today’s technology allows even small businesses to personalize its contacts with a customer. Instead of using one “auto response” for all inquiries, for example, a company now can use specific responses based on the type of inquiry and the customer’s characteristics. A business can then develop a flow chart for follow-up contacts so that a customer never falls through the cracks.

Infusionsoft, based in Gilbert, was launched in 2001. It now has more than 5,000 customers and 135 employees. It has grown 800 percent over the last three years.

One success story is All About Spelling, a husband-and-wife business in Eagle River, Wisc. Mask said Infusionsoft worked with the new e-publisher to launch the business and manage its customer contacts. The automated system worked so well that the business didn’t miss a beat, even after the wife was hospitalized for three weeks.

Mask said small businesses can use a “segmentation” approach that in the past would have been too labor- and time-intensive.

He told a story of how the Toledo Mud Hens, a Triple-A baseball team, used such an approach with great effectiveness.

The team’s marketers realized that it had three available suites for an upcoming game. It also had a database of 25,000 emails.

Did they send out a blast advertising the special? No, Mask said.

“How do you sell higher-priced stuff, like suites?” he asked the audience. “By having target audience sets.”

The marketers used a grouping of 25 businesses that had purchased suites in the past. They sent out an email to those 25 with a special deal.

Within 15 minutes the suites were sold – and the Mud Hens had a waiting list for future suites.

“They received more revenue, they built relationships and, perhaps most importantly, they didn’t tick off 24,975 customers with a stupid email they wouldn’t respond to,” Mask said.

Just firing off an email blast doesn’t build relationships, he said.

Instead, consider asking your customers how often they would like to hear from you.

By customizing the choice of responses, a business can learn which customers want to be contacted every day, every week or once a month. Regardless of which field the customer clicks on in the query, the preference falls into a database – and the small business has three groups of customers to target with appropriate messages.

“Emails can be conversational,” Mask said. “People would rather hear from people, not companies.”

The panel (from left): Brandie Feuer, Becky Armendariz, Morgan Durant, Jay Baer and hostess Carey Pena of Channel 3.

It was a full house Tuesday night at the Mission Palms in Tempe to hear the Arizona Interactive Marketing Association panel on the impact of social media in business.

Some highlights:

Jay Baer, President, Convince and Convert, one of the nation’s top bloggers on the subject: He cited the example of Vitamin Water (http://vitaminwater.com/), which is now directing customers to a fan page at Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/vitaminwater). The company used it to invite “fans” to suggest a new flavor, running a contest as “crowd-sourcing.” Baer encourages his clients to think before they act – what do they want to accomplish? How will it be social? He also believes that companies need to wrap social media into their marketing and sales departments, instead of treating it like a unicorn in the corner. Study your customers and see how they use social media and look for ways to connect with them. A tortilla company is boosting sales by sharing a daily password on Facebook and Twitter that gives customers $1 off if they say the word to the cashier. The “oral coupon” is a way for businesses to assess its return on investment for social media.

Rebecca (Becky) Armendariz, public relations specialist at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center: Banner also uses Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/BannerHealth), although there are some limitations to its use because of privacy concerns. But the hospital did use the page to alert employees and visitors to the tragic death of an ER physician on New Year’s Eve. Armendariz said it became a memorial to him, with a lot of interaction. It allows for “virtual town halls” with employees. She also emphasized the need to include social meeting planning in the marketing calendar.

Brandie Feuer, director of interactive marketing for Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas: One of the hotel’s success stories with social media was a “flash mob” that performed a spontaneous dance in the middle of the casino. The dance to a unique song (“PHamous”) has totaled more than 1 million views on YouTube. Feuer added that the music is now a ringtone and high schools have asked to use it at their dances. She said PH has had some quirky hooks for attention, like an employee pumpkin-carving contest and some photos with red cups. The difficulty in promotion is realizing that most of the celebrities or high rollers aren’t too excited about publicity.

Morgan Durant, senior manager of corporate communications for US Airways: In an industry facing serious profit challenges, airlines have not had a lot of additional manpower to delve into social media, said Durant, who flew in from Philadelphia just before the blizzard hit. He said airlines know that customers are having conversations about travel, but the decision is how and when to participate. He does follow some online forums and jumps in with his full name and title to address complaints or misinformation about US Air. The company’s first foray into the field was with Twitter (http://twitter.com/usairwaysnews). It announced the return to flying in October of Capt. Sullenberger, the pilot of the plan that crash-landed in the Hudson River in January 2009, and then reported on it in “real time” by using TwitPics with its tweets. Durant is exploring how to use Twitter more to provide information like flight statuses to customers.

AZIMA meets on the second Tuesday of each month at the Mission Palms. The topic for the March 9 meeting is “Is Social Media a Waste of Money?” with William Leake, CEO and Founder,
Apogee Search.