I’ve got some quick thoughts about tonight’s LeBron James announcement. From an Internet marketing consultant‘s perspective, here’s what I’ll be paying attention to during the telecast:

First, what’s going to happen to Twitter? Will it hold up? This will be the most watched press conference in the Twitter Era since Tiger’s fake presser a couple of months ago. LeBron has been a trending topic all day. It will be interesting to see if Twitter can avoid putting up the fail whale once his decision becomes official. Twitter has held up fairly well during the World Cup, so you’d think they should be fine. But once he makes it official, it will be like someone let the water run from the Hoover Dam – a giant burst all at once.

Second, every team that’s still in the race better be ready for an onslaught of traffic – especially if he changes teams. So I’ll be watching to see if that winning team’s site stays up or crashes. Put it this way…if I’m in the IT department or web team for the Knicks, Nets, or Heat, I’m not taking a lunch today. There’s too much to do and too much at stake.

For example, a contingency plan for bandwidth better be done or in the works. Once LeBron announces, I’m sure that team’s website will break it’s all-time traffic record for a single day. The website has to stay up. People will want to buy season tickets right away. And the demand for LeBron’s new game jersey will be insane. There’s a ton of money at stake.

To the IT guy’s defense, there hasn’t been a lot of time to plan. The press conference was announced less than 48 hours before the actual event. You could argue, however, that all potential teams should have been anticipating an event like this for the last week. The reality is that only superstar hosting companies can move fast to be ready for the demand. It will all come down to a teams’ relationship with their vendor. For some, it might already be too late. And the sad part is they know it. They know their site is going to crash.

The second reason to work all day today is a website update has to be in perfect alignment with the announcement. Whatever team wins should have LeBron up on their site within seconds. All of the possible outcomes should be working on new banners right now. Have the updates ready now and then just refresh the page.

The last thing I’ll be looking for: will any of the checkin apps geared towards TV viewing make a name for themselves tonight? Unless Americans gear up to watch a boring World Cup matchup on Sunday, this is probably going to be the biggest sporting event (and possibly TV event) of the Summer. Can a service like CrowdZone step it up and make a mark tonight? It’s a great opportunity to make some noise while this niche is still developing.

I don’t really care what team LeBron picks. The fact that he’s having a televised press conference is annoying. But the link to social media and the web is fascinating. Maybe nothing will happen and all will run smoothly. Maybe there will be major failures. I’ll be watching just to see how it all plays out.

We’re fortunate to get a lot of repeat and referral business. It’s because we take pride in the way we treat our clients. Since our company was founded in 2004, we have set out to treat everyone we work with as partners, not just people that pay us to do work for them (unlike a lot of our competitors out there).

Over the years I have learned a lot about how to work with our partners. And I have heard some horror stories from new business about the way they were treated by a previous vendor. I talk more about some of the most common and powerful ways to make sure clients will be…errr unhappy…in my latest blog post for the Outright community.

Enjoy.

In my most recent post for the Outright Community, I wrote about how it’s critical for web developers to make sure they put everything in writing before they start any project.

I want to expand on that thought just a bit. The exact same thing is true for all of you on the client side of the equation. The next time you hire a website development firm, make sure everything related to the project – the price, the timeline, the requirements – are all in writing before any money changes hands.

It sounds obvious but a lot of firms are small. And they won’t spend a lot of time on details like contracts and agreements. They just want to crank out projects and get paid. Most of them do a great job and the amount of money involved isn’t huge, but it’s still a smart idea to protect yourself in case something goes wrong with the project.

Don’t fear the contract. Most firms will have very basic agreements that won’t require you to hire a lawyer to interpret it for you. Just be sure to read it over and ask any question if there are parts that don’t make sense. Don’t be afraid to push back on anything that doesn’t seem fair. A good firm will be willing to budge on terms in order to make you happy and to keep the job.

Have you hired a web development firm recently? Did they ask you to sign a service agreement? Let’s discuss in the comment section below.

I got an email today that I wanted to share with you loyal readers. The title was 1st Page Results Guaranteed. Now I never ever read emails that are obvious spam. Even though I knew the contents of this one would be garbage, I couldn’t resist.

Here’s what it said:
“Do you wish you could increase your online leads? Getting a GUARANTEED 1ST PAGE GOOGLE RANKING is easier and more cost-effective than you might think. We have helped a lot of businesses thrive in this market and we can help you! Simply hit reply and I’ll share with you the cost and the benefits. See you at the top!”

Have you seen an email like this one before? What about a claim on an SEO’s website similar to this? Or maybe you’ve been told something like this when you’ve met with a search engine optimization firm. If you have, hopefully you deleted it before picking up the phone. If you haven’t, you are lucky because guarantees like these seem to be everywhere.

If you have not seen or heard anything like this before, then I am going to give you a visual to keep in mind for when you do. I want you to associate the SEO guarantee with this picture:

Yes, the SEO guarantee is a pile of garbage. Here’s the super-simplified version of why:

1. Chances are the company that sent this to me did so via an automated script. It’s a mass emailing to a ton of people. That company has no idea what industry I am involved in. A huge part of SEO has to do with the competitive landscape in your industry. For example, there’s a tremendous difference in the amount of work required when it comes to getting on the first page for “baseball tickets” (254M results) versus “san diego software developer” (3.45M results). And that’s just one metric. A good SEO can’t just look at your website for a minute and tell you exactly what it will take to help you. They need to do their homework on your website’s SEO history and the competition that’s getting better results than you.

2. Things can change in an instant. For example, we have clients who are listed on the first page for results of valuable keywords but their slot on that first page changes literally every day. For example, some days Google will add news results. Some days they’ll add maps. Both of those drastically affect results. Trust me, search engines constantly tweak their algorithms. There’s no way anyone in their right mind should ever stake a guarantee on something as volatile as search.

3.  Lack of transparency. At the end of the day, no one outside of search engine company employees know the secret sauce. The beauty of SEO is that it’s open to interpretation. There are a number of different thories about what’s effective and what’s not. That being said, there are a ton of things that really good SEOs know how to do. And those things work for more often than not. But it’s not because they have been given secret access to the Google magic. They are successful because they are experienced. And any experienced SEO will never flaunt a gaurantee in front of your face becuase they know that’s crazy.

So, look out for the SEO gurantee. If you hear it or see it, move on to the next company. Hopefully they will know what they are talking about.

Have you ever been given the SEO guarantee? I’d love to hear your story in the comments section below.

I’ve said it before – an overwhelming majority of the business owners I meet these days want to talk about search engine optimization and Internet marketing. That’s fine by me. I love talking about it.

Last night I was at a networking event and was reminded of a very common theme that I have experienced lately: business owners are generally aware of the importance of inbound links (links from other websites to their website), but a lot of them (anecdotally, I’d estimate as many as 8 out of 10) don’t know any of the following:

• How many links are pointing to their website
• What links are pointing to their website
• Exactly what pages on their website are the recipients of links

As a result, they also don’t know other really crucial things such as:

• How many broken links (links coming from other websites that are now dead because the page has been moved or deleted) are out floating around on other websites

There’s an easy and FREE way to check all of these things through Google Webmaster Tools (WMT). (I’ve said this before as well – a WMT account is mandatory for website owners, whether or not they actually manage their website.)

BRIEF TANGENT:  I don’t necessarily blame business owners that don’t know about basic tools like this. Many don’t actually manage their website. They have plenty of things to do like grow their company. To me, the really troubling thing is that their webmasters don’t know either. And if they do know, they are not sharing this valuable and easily-available data with their clients. Trust me on this: if your webmaster isn’t checking this regularly, then they aren’t doing their job.

So the first step is to get a WMT account.

The next step is to verify that you have the necessary access to that website. That’s done by either uploading an HTML file (that Google will provide) to your website’s root folder or some meta data (again, Google will provide it) to your website.

Once that’s done, let the good times roll! Within a few weeks, you’ll start seeing data trickle in. For the sake of this post, you’ll want to pay attention to the “Your Site on the Web” link on the left of your screen. Click that and you’ll have access to a link called “Links to Your Site”. That’s the one that will tell you all of the data we’ve listed above.

What’s really cool is that you can click any of the pages on your site that have inbound links and find out exactly where those links come from. And if your curious, you can click any of those inbound links and see the actual page that’s linking to your website.

Note: this tool is not real-time. So if you publish a great new blog post today that you know a lot of people are going to link to, allow WMT some time (up to a few weeks) to find those links.

To sum it all up, links to your website are gold when it comes to SEO. As the very least, you should know what your link portfolio looks like. Google’s Webmaster Tools is a great way for you to get a handle on who is linking to your website and where exactly they are linking.

Good luck and let me know if you have any questions or comments.

I’m always amazed at business owners who doubt leveraging the awesome the power of video for their website. Although I experience it less these days, I still talk to enough doubting business owners to make me believe the world is not yet as convinced as it should be. Video is the future, if not the present, people!

In fact, I’m sort of embarrassed this blog is in text, not video, but bear with me. I’ll get there eventually.

When someone gets to your website, you have only a few precious seconds to convince them that A) your service is worth buying and B) more importantly, they should buy from you. If your website is loaded with novels of text that someone has to read in order to understand what your business is all about, forget it. No one will read it. You need to shorten your pitch by doing things like showing people via video the value of your product or service.

Today I came across  another great example of  a business leveraging the power of video. Surprisingly, it was done by a bank! Banks aren’t usually known for using social media effectively.

Here’s why this video is so great:

1.  Within 2-3 minutes, you know exactly how the product works AND that it’s ridiculously simple.

2.  USAA took something that might make some people apprehensive (mobile deposits) and used actual customers to ease any potential fears or hesitations about complexity or security. This is brilliant. What’s more powerful than seeing real people make those deposits in only a few seconds?

3. Existing USAA customers will undoubtedly see this app as a value-add while people that aren’t customers might reconsider.

You can’t watch that video and not think that the service is very cool and a complete no-brainer.  Want proof? According to USAA’s Twitter account, $1.5 million has already been deposited using this new app in just three days.

If your website is not using video to help sell your products or services, start thinking about it right away. And if you need help coming up with a video content plan, let us know.

If you have other good examples of videos being used on websites you use, include a link in the comment section.

We launched a Facebook Page (membership required) for our client, Matt Hasselbeck. Hasselbeck is the All-Pro quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks.

What’s exciting is that this is the very first page to be created for an NFL player and possibly the first for any US professional athlete from the four major sports (we are still trying to confirm that last fact).

What exactly is a FacebookPage? Here’s how Facebook describes it,

“Every Facebook Page is a unique experience where users can become more deeply connected with your business or brand. Users can express their support by adding themselves as a fan, writing on your Wall, uploading photos, and joining other fans in discussion groups. You can send updates to your fans regularly — or just with special news or offers.”

We are proud to be on the cutting edge with this. Facebook is the hottest thing going right now. It is truly the ‘killer app’ of 2007. With nearly 60 million members and growing, it makes total sense for every brand to get in front of Facebook users. Facebook, moreso than any other social networking website out there right now, facilitates connections amongst its users with similar interests (in this case the popular leader of the Seahawks).

Facebook is incredibly viral. Without any marketing or fanfare whatsoever, nearly 60 users have become a fan of Matt’s page already.

There are a lot of “can and can’t-do’s” out there when it comes to athletes and their websites. We here at Brand5 know. We manage websites for two professional athletes (Matt Hasselbeck and Julie Wells).

Athletes are brands. Their names are no different than the name of a company. No one else can use them without the athlete’s permission. Seems like a simple rule, but that doesn’t stop every greedy hanger-on who wants a piece of the pie.

Things are seemingly much more complicated when it comes to college athletes. A recent story involving Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow recently caught our eye. Tebow’s school, the University of Florida, has stepped forward to say that no one can represent Tebow with out Florida’s permission. While it’s not surprising since the NCAA has infinite power, what would happen if Tebow stepped to the forefront and said that he owns his name, not the NCAA and not Florida?

Instances like this are happening more and more. Look for it to bubble over in the coming years as amateur athletes get more and more web savvy, entering college with their own established web presences.

If there was ever a person who needed a blog, it’s Curt Schilling. Schilling is a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. He is most known for delivering Red Sox Nation a World Series with his unforgettable 2004 postseason performance. In the future, however, he may also be known for being a trendsetter in blogging.

Schilling recently started his own blog, and it is everything an athlete’s blog can be. In his entries, Schilling is very detailed about his performances in Spring Training, taking readers batter-by-batter through his outings. He writes about how he felt on the mound, which pitches were working and which ones were not. Schilling thoughtfully waxes about the inspiration he gets from seeing his teammate John Lester come back from cancer. Schilling even interacts with his fans by answering questions by the bunch.

Through his blog, Schilling is creating content that only he can provide. And you know what? People LOVE it. His fans are flocking to his site to read his take on everything going on with the Red Sox. And they are taking the time to leave comments by the hundreds.

Think of how incredibly powerful that is. A player sharing information that devout followers like a sports team’s fan base cannot get anywhere else. Even if they are not a fan of Schilling, they can get an exlcusive look at what’s going on with their favorite team.

The best part is that Schilling seems to have caught on that his blog is now an official source of news for the Red Sox. Today, he actually broke a news story about the decision the Red Sox front office made to move pitcher Jon Papelbon to the bullpen. Think of how significant this is! A baseball player is becoming the go-to source for content about his team. Other leading news sources in Boston are having to site Schilling’s blog as a source.

Curt Schilling’s blog is the perfect example of how an athlete can take out the middle man and speak directly to the consumer. What he is doing is brilliant, and we here at Brand5 applaud him for that.

Have you ever noticed how much guys talk about numbers?

A lot of us often talk about on-base percentage, seeding in the NCAA tournament, games out of first place, scores in relation to par, the over/under, ROI, stock quotes, market cap and on and on. Our obsession with sports and finances has made a lot of us predisposed to a love of stats. Don’t believe me? Just check out how much fantasy sports content is out there.

I am as bad as the next guy. I love stats. That’s why I truly enjoy website analytics. For those of you who don’t know about website analytics, it’s how user behavior on websites is measured.

For example, analytics will help you determine the following about your website:

• number of visitors, borken down by hour, day, month, year
• number of pages those visitors are viewing
• where traffic is coming from
• what pages users are visiting on a site
• how much time users spend on a site
• how frequently they visit
• and so much more.

Get the point?

Analytics is all numbers, charts, graphs-updating all day long. In other words, it’s a dream for a lot of guys who already enjoy stats.

I was reminded of man’s natural affinity for analytics when one of our clients called the other day. This client is great (as are all of the companies and people Brand5 is lucky enough to work with). He is a huge sports fan and a baseball junkie in particular.

At the end of last year, we installed an analytics program for his website. Since then he has been obsessed with logging in to check out the latest numbers on his site’s traffic. He really enjoys picking apart the different categories and interpreting user bahavior.

Beyond the numbers, this client understands the true value of analytics and how it makes his business better.

He told me a story about how just last week he closed a huge deal thanks to his Brand5 analytics program. He was tracking which potential clients-out of all the ones he had recently pitched-had been on his website (something easily trackable through analytics).

My client saw that one company in particular had recently spent a lot of time on his site. He interpreted this as interest in his services. He correctly followed-up with them and won the business.

Instead of sitting in his office wondering if his sales pitch had had any effect, analytics had given our client clear evidence that this company had taken his call-to-action to heart and visited his site. Instead, the company is swithcing more and more of their bsuiness to my client.

That’s just another example of the power of analytics. It’s a must for all companies, and all guys who love stats.

One of the sites we developed during our busy 2006 was juliewellsgolf.com. You golf diehards may remember her from her stint on ‘Big Break V‘ – The Golf Channel’s highly successful and entertaining reality show. We had a blast developing it and Julie is a lot of fun to work with. She totally breaks the stereotype of spoiled professional athletes.

Last week Julie kicked off her 2007 season on the Duramed FUTURES Tour. Unfortunately for the Brand5 team, we have not been able to see her play in-person yet this season (but we really want to be there Julie!). So like the rest of her fans, we have been forced to follow along online. Fortunately the FUTURES site does a decent job of updating scores.

One of the things I have noticed while tracking Julie and her peers is that she is in the minority when it comes to athletes and websites. Julie, unlike almost everyone else on the FUTURES Tour, actually has a website. The overwhelming majority of players on this tour do not have any sort of web presence whatsoever.

I did a quick (and unscientific) audit of the league’s player list, and these were the sites I was able to find:

perryswenson.com
heatherangell.com
jennygleason.com

Believe it or not, this small sample size is typical of pro sports as a whole. Athletes with sites are few and far between. Those that do have sites are rarely addressing them from a brand perspective. Most athletes with sites are happy to have any sort of web presence and have not taken full advantage of the power of the medium.

For that reason we are proud of what we have created with Julie. Number one, she has an official place she can point her fans to if they want to know more about her. Second, they can hear directly from her in her blog. She does an awesome job of sharing with her fans all things related to her career. It’s extremely powerful and she deserves a lot of credit.

Good luck to Julie this season. In the meantime, we need to get back to work. There are a lot of athletes who need websites.