Last year in my hurry to get everything prepared, cooked and ready for our glorious Thanksgiving spread, I forgot to change the setting on my oven after roasting veggies from “broil” to “bake” and my turkey only cooked half way. The top of the turkey was juicy and a gorgeous golden brown, but the bottom was severely undercooked and I had 14 hungry turkey bird eaters ready to feast. And well, my turkey mishap got me thinking about similarities between SEO and Social Media.

Turkey Mishap teaches SEO

1. Due to appropriate preparation and continuous basting, the turkey browned nicely. It looked good from the outside but this was merely on the surface. Similar to optimizing your web site for search engines, optimizing your titles and metadata isn’t enough. Make sure all elements of your site are optimized, from site architecture to content and multimedia to alt tags. Some of these elements are proving to be more influential and are often overlooked by many so-called SEO practitioners.

2. Once the turkey was in, it was on the “set it and forget it” method. Like cooking a turkey, SEO is not a “set it and forget it” initiative. Just as I should have been monitoring the progress of the turkey, your SEO efforts need to be monitored continuously for progress and adjusted accordingly to achieve desired results.

Turkey Mishap teaches Social Media

1. Although I was mortified by my mistake, I assembled the appropriate team to help me deal with the situation and I didn’t hide from my mistake (although I wanted to). In your Social Media communication it is important to remember that your customers know you will make mistakes, but it is how you handle them that they will be watching. Remember, be human. People make mistakes and don’t be afraid to get others involved to help you solve the issue.

2. There was no mistaking that the turkey was undercooked when we cut into it. Same for your Social Media communication, people will see through the golden brown coating if you don’t have a well planned and executed social media strategy. A good product and great customer service are only two of the ingredients in a recipe for social media success.

3. If at first you don’t succeed, fail fast, and then re-evaluate how to resolve and respond to the situation. Then, move forward quickly, the side dishes are getting cold and people will start to leave if you are unable to respond to the situation or provide an adequate solution.

4. Don’t try to do too many things at once, but if you do, have a plan. Most importantly surround yourself with people who can help you implement and execute your plan seamlessly.

Gobble Gobble Lessons for SEO and Social Media

1. Track and monitor progress; adjust along the way. Don’t get to the end to find out only half the plan worked or yielded you half the results you were expecting.

2. Check to see if the oven is on. Review all elements and components of your Social Media Plan and on-site and off-site SEO. Sometimes it can be the most simple and obvious things that can foil your plan.

3. Share your experience. Mistakes create an opportunity…for content! Case studies, articles, contests, etc. How can you share your experience to benefit your customers or provide added value to others?

Happy to say this year the turkey was juicy and delicious…and cooked all the way through. Picture above. Happy Holidays.

I’m excited to be on a panel with some of the brightest marketing entrepreneurs in the Valley at the AZEC09 conference.

Catch up with me at 10:15a on November 12, 2009 for a panel on Shoestring Marketing, where we’ll be discussing ideas on how to market effectively on a small budget, marketing processes and approaches for startups, and upcoming online trends.

My fellow panelists are:

Chris Johnson, CEO for Terralever (Moderator)
Eva Voorhees, Owner, Tiny Advertising,
Ed Tankersley, Owner, Eight Trails

We hope to see you there.

Wow, what a great day at the Social Media World Forum in Santa Clara, CA. The list of speakers and panels was insane. I’ve compiled lessons learned from today from Brian Solis, Chris Heuer, Michael Donnelly, Chris Chambers, Ben Parr and many others. I’ve highlighted some of my favorites, but they all are valuable.

Social Media: 27 Lessons Learned / Advice You Should Take

1. Answer your own questions and seek your own ways to communicate with your audiences – Brian Solis
2. Social Media is about sociology not technology – Brian Solis
3. Content is spread by people not portals therefore is not reliant upon the social graph – Angela Courtin, MySpace
4. Understand what your brand stands for then how to communicate in the associated spaces your audience gives you permission to be in
5. When you give your brand to the consumer (it’s scary) because the consumer will mold it and shape it
6. Everyone in your company is accessible, create Social Media Guidelines for employees to suggest how to talk about your company, outline things they can talk about about the company, etc. – Chris Heuer
7. Know what your goals are then build metrics into everything to measure against those goals
8. Be careful if you use your traditional agency to get into this space – Randy Sprenger, Harley-Davidson (Amen, Randy!)
9. Be intentional. – Jeremy Holley, Warner Bros.
10. Objectives make you money. – Billy Sanez, American Airlines
11. Facebook is not the only game in town. – Ziv Navoth, Bebo
12. Take the bad with the good – social will correct itself. – Billy Sanez (I love this.)
13. Build small success stories to build internal buy-in and morale.
14. There are many ways to skin a cat, don’t rely on case studies. Listen and learn from other companies, then find what’s right for your company.
15. Social Media Marketing is a tactic in support of your objectives.
16. Everything in moderation.
17. Figure out how to build sustainable relationships vs. traditional campaign relationships where you start from zero, build base, then abandon).
18. Empower your employees – train them to be conversationalists and not marketers. – Chris Barger, GM
19. Be there before a crisis happens to have earned credibility.
20. Live up to the follow up.
21. Think through the logistics ahead of time – if you have something that is really fabulous be prepared for it to take you to a new level and be as prepared as possible and ready for the unexpected.
22. Listen! Don’t be afraid to stop or change course if your audience doesn’t like something. It’s okay to reverse tactics.
23. Integrate and embed social media early on. Social is Word of Mouth so it should be entwined in everything and not looked at as a channel.
24. When you are right, don’t be afraid to fight for it.
25. Don’t be afraid to say no, your community will back you up if it is what they want and agree with.
26. Give yourself time and permission to think big. At the same time, the idea is not enough, it must be well executed – be prepared for a great campaign to take you place you weren’t prepared for. – Chris Chambers
27. Digital and Social are not add-ons, they are starting points.

Add your sage advice below or share this article with others.