So, the Friend Collage is a popular thing on Facebook. Whether or not you like them, there are still some pretty cool things you can learn from this nifty bit of content. For the 17 people not on Facebook or you've just been more productive with your day, a friend collage is a simple 3rd-party application that automatically sorts through your recent Facebook interaction history and creates a pretty image of your connection's avatars. The end result is a grid pattern that sizes the images according to how frequent your interact with your connections. Larger images indicate more interaction and vice-versa. Simple formula.

There are several friend collage tools, FriendMatrix seems to be the go-to choice. Give it a try if you haven't, only take a few seconds and it'll post it to your wall. (If you choose to do so) 

They're just pictures. What's so great about them? 

I honestly found them to be extremely annoying at first. Most of us have reached a point where content repetition has numbed our online social experiences; we're looking for something new, something jaw dropping and something memorable.

However, if you look beyond that there are some neat things we can all learn from these friend collages, what they mean and why we/re so attracted to them: 

• These are branding activities: Some are using it for that reason, others may not realize it. Imagine putting together a picture collage of your customers and celebrating them in the same manner. And it doesn't just need to be online, it could bridge the offline gap as well.
• These are relationship activities: We're strengthening our relationships with others. We're letting all of our friends know who we connect with and how we feel about those people; some may even be bragging about those relationships - which is a very good thing. Who doesn't love to name drop every now and then? Plus, who doesn't love to be included within a group, especially when your avatar is one of the larger images?
• These are building mental lists: The speed of community building is reaching exponential proportions. We're seeing who people are connected with, the frequency at which they interact and creating the desire for newer connections in some cases. I saw several people who I would like to connect with more frequently. A great addition to simply tagging your connections is to kick it up a notch and comment about these people. Imagine sharing your favorite moments with them, how you met them or what you admire about them. Build that list. 

Our social media activities and behaviors speeds up our concept of mental list building. That is, we're constantly thinking about things we like, things we want and even those things that we don't care for - and they're made up of all the people, places and things we experience online. And all via our mobile devices. The friend collage does this exceptionally well as a reminder of our connections. Imagine creating those reminders with your customer's dealership experiences. 

Embrace the creativity and uniqueness to make your content stand out - make it memorable. Remember there are two simple factors everyone loves: 

1. People love to be included.

2. People love to laugh. 

What are you doing to include the people in your community and make them smile?

P.S. Here's my take on the friend collage.

So, the Friend Collage is a popular thing on Facebook. Whether or not you like them, there are still some pretty cool things you can learn from this nifty bit of content. For the 17 people not on Facebook or you've just been more productive with your day, a friend collage is a simple 3rd-party application that automatically sorts through your recent Facebook interaction history and creates a pretty image of your connection's avatars. The end result is a grid pattern that sizes the images according to how frequent your interact with your connections. Larger images indicate more interaction and vice-versa. Simple formula.

There are several friend collage tools, FriendMatrix seems to be the go-to choice. Give it a try if you haven't, only take a few seconds and it'll post it to your wall. (If you choose to do so) 

They're just pictures. What's so great about them? 

I honestly found them to be extremely annoying at first. Most of us have reached a point where content repetition has numbed our online social experiences; we're looking for something new, something jaw dropping and something memorable.

However, if you look beyond that there are some neat things we can all learn from these friend collages, what they mean and why we/re so attracted to them: 

• These are branding activities: Some are using it for that reason, others may not realize it. Imagine putting together a picture collage of your customers and celebrating them in the same manner. And it doesn't just need to be online, it could bridge the offline gap as well.
• These are relationship activities: We're strengthening our relationships with others. We're letting all of our friends know who we connect with and how we feel about those people; some may even be bragging about those relationships - which is a very good thing. Who doesn't love to name drop every now and then? Plus, who doesn't love to be included within a group, especially when your avatar is one of the larger images?
• These are building mental lists: The speed of community building is reaching exponential proportions. We're seeing who people are connected with, the frequency at which they interact and creating the desire for newer connections in some cases. I saw several people who I would like to connect with more frequently. A great addition to simply tagging your connections is to kick it up a notch and comment about these people. Imagine sharing your favorite moments with them, how you met them or what you admire about them. Build that list. 

Our social media activities and behaviors speeds up our concept of mental list building. That is, we're constantly thinking about things we like, things we want and even those things that we don't care for - and they're made up of all the people, places and things we experience online. And all via our mobile devices. The friend collage does this exceptionally well as a reminder of our connections. Imagine creating those reminders with your customer's dealership experiences. 

Embrace the creativity and uniqueness to make your content stand out - make it memorable. Remember there are two simple factors everyone loves: 

1. People love to be included.

2. People love to laugh. 

What are you doing to include the people in your community and make them smile?

P.S. Here's my take on the friend collage.

Google announced another update to Penguin's algorithm that is clearly targeting website owners who have bought paid links. 

Simplest breakdown: If you have bought links that point back to your website, lose them. And they specifically said, "If your website rankings dropped after Google's Penguin update, you should try to get rid of the paid links."  

Think of Google as a bloodhound. They'll sniff these links out eventually. I'm going to keep pound the table on this topic - Google is turning into an "Answer Engine" and morphing away from simply being an index engine. they're going to make this transition by finding the old-school methods of trying to rank content and rewarding sites who are doing things the right way: Creating content that actually helps the user. 

Google's exact response has always been a very top-level approach:

We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can't divulge specific signals because we don't want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.

So, what can you do to act upon this? 

Stop thinking like a traditional SEO by relying solely on your ability to use a keyword suggestion tool and place those keywords within your website solely for the purpose of trying to rank for a keyword phrase. Sure, this will continue to work some sites based on the competition and the keywords chosen, but it won't be a successful long term strategy. This is what will separate the real marketers from the hacks.

Google is now in the entity optimization business. 

Think of the entities involved with your business - three simple factors need to be highlighted now more than ever: 

1. People

2. Places

3. Things

How will these be all tied together to provide better results? Elements such a Gogle+ profiles, stronger social content, Q&A content & leveraging the Structured Data Markup tool within Google Webmaster Tools will all contribute to the new wave of search marketing.

Google wants to find these entities and tie them together to create deeper meaning behind them using structured data (the semantic web) so they will have better methods of understanding user intent by drawing on larger databases of marketing information. 

See, SEO isn't dead. It's just being born. 

Google announced another update to Penguin's algorithm that is clearly targeting website owners who have bought paid links. 

Simplest breakdown: If you have bought links that point back to your website, lose them. And they specifically said, "If your website rankings dropped after Google's Penguin update, you should try to get rid of the paid links."  

Think of Google as a bloodhound. They'll sniff these links out eventually. I'm going to keep pound the table on this topic - Google is turning into an "Answer Engine" and morphing away from simply being an index engine. they're going to make this transition by finding the old-school methods of trying to rank content and rewarding sites who are doing things the right way: Creating content that actually helps the user. 

Google's exact response has always been a very top-level approach:

We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can't divulge specific signals because we don't want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.

So, what can you do to act upon this? 

Stop thinking like a traditional SEO by relying solely on your ability to use a keyword suggestion tool and place those keywords within your website solely for the purpose of trying to rank for a keyword phrase. Sure, this will continue to work some sites based on the competition and the keywords chosen, but it won't be a successful long term strategy. This is what will separate the real marketers from the hacks.

Google is now in the entity optimization business. 

Think of the entities involved with your business - three simple factors need to be highlighted now more than ever: 

1. People

2. Places

3. Things

How will these be all tied together to provide better results? Elements such a Gogle+ profiles, stronger social content, Q&A content & leveraging the Structured Data Markup tool within Google Webmaster Tools will all contribute to the new wave of search marketing.

Google wants to find these entities and tie them together to create deeper meaning behind them using structured data (the semantic web) so they will have better methods of understanding user intent by drawing on larger databases of marketing information. 

See, SEO isn't dead. It's just being born. 

Huge news day for Google and the search marketing world. Google announced their new algorithm called Hummingbird. The name obviously conjures up images of the small, swift bird that is impossible to catch. It's also a distant departure from the classic "black & white" themes of Panda and Penguin. 

Also interesting to note, these are not merely updates like Panda and Penguin were, rather it's an entirely new computing engine. A massive overhaul to the inner workings of Google's search technology.

This is historic in that now all the talk about creating exceptional content and unique experiences will finally be put to the test. This is no longer about pure keyword suggestions and inserting them in the right places. While on-page and off-page optimization techniques will still continue to be included in the calculations to determine rank, there are newer, other high importance factors included as well.

Hummingbird will help usher in a new lexicon within the search segment with terms such as conversational search, rich data, schema.org, The Internet of Things and the widely popular (yet misunderstood) semantic web. This is where things will get interesting for website vendors, dealerships and marketing agencies. 

Typical keyword insertion techniques on your webpages and link building activities outside of your website help Internet users find things based on the phrases used in the content. Nothing special needs to happen in your content - just keyword placement. Your organic ranking is the end result of the efforts made on your site, your competitors trying to rank for the same terms, the number of results indexed and other factors. 

Hummingbird's algorithm will now help apply the core principal of the semantic web to the text on your pages: Meaning. This algorithm is going to look for the meaning, or the context, of the words on the page and their relationship to each other. (And even their relation to other factors such as people - think Google Author attribute) 

For example, instead of just searching for Chicago used cars a shopper can use more natural, conversational search phrases such as, "Where can I buy a Dodge Viper for the best price? or "Which dealership can I finance a new car at the lowest rate? Google will now be able to apply meanings - or connections - between the words within the search query. Associating words such as buy, purchase and finance with words such as car, dealer and dealership it can determine what we mean, what our intent is and plus, they already know our location. Being able to do this enables Google to deliver us even more accurate content. Content that matches our specific desire and intent. That's the start of the semantic web. (Now do you see why it has been so important to get your website organized and optimized?) ​

This is where the challenge comes into the play. Say goodbye to the default, stale page copy your website comes filled with from the website vendors. It's needs to be so much better than that!

We use conversational search in our daily dialogue when we ask friends questions. We're also using it on social media. And Google wants our search activities to be just as natural and they want these type of questions to be answered with better content - creating an even better search experience regardless of the device we use or if it happens to be a voice search.

I believe this will be one of the hottest topics for the rest of the year and throughout 2014 as Hummingbird continues to improve and mature. Watch these developments closely - I plan on staying very close to this topic and intend to be a major advocate of this change. It's a safe bet we'll hear Danny Sullivan cover this topic at DSES next month as well. 

Stay tuned. SEO, social and content marketing - or as I like to refer to it - Integrated Search Marketing is going to become really fun again. 

Huge news day for Google and the search marketing world. Google announced their new algorithm called Hummingbird. The name obviously conjures up images of the small, swift bird that is impossible to catch. It's also a distant departure from the classic "black & white" themes of Panda and Penguin. 

Also interesting to note, these are not merely updates like Panda and Penguin were, rather it's an entirely new computing engine. A massive overhaul to the inner workings of Google's search technology.

This is historic in that now all the talk about creating exceptional content and unique experiences will finally be put to the test. This is no longer about pure keyword suggestions and inserting them in the right places. While on-page and off-page optimization techniques will still continue to be included in the calculations to determine rank, there are newer, other high importance factors included as well.

Hummingbird will help usher in a new lexicon within the search segment with terms such as conversational search, rich data, schema.org, The Internet of Things and the widely popular (yet misunderstood) semantic web. This is where things will get interesting for website vendors, dealerships and marketing agencies. 

Typical keyword insertion techniques on your webpages and link building activities outside of your website help Internet users find things based on the phrases used in the content. Nothing special needs to happen in your content - just keyword placement. Your organic ranking is the end result of the efforts made on your site, your competitors trying to rank for the same terms, the number of results indexed and other factors. 

Hummingbird's algorithm will now help apply the core principal of the semantic web to the text on your pages: Meaning. This algorithm is going to look for the meaning, or the context, of the words on the page and their relationship to each other. (And even their relation to other factors such as people - think Google Author attribute) 

For example, instead of just searching for Chicago used cars a shopper can use more natural, conversational search phrases such as, "Where can I buy a Dodge Viper for the best price? or "Which dealership can I finance a new car at the lowest rate? Google will now be able to apply meanings - or connections - between the words within the search query. Associating words such as buy, purchase and finance with words such as car, dealer and dealership it can determine what we mean, what our intent is and plus, they already know our location. Being able to do this enables Google to deliver us even more accurate content. Content that matches our specific desire and intent. That's the start of the semantic web. (Now do you see why it has been so important to get your website organized and optimized?) ​

This is where the challenge comes into the play. Say goodbye to the default, stale page copy your website comes filled with from the website vendors. It's needs to be so much better than that!

We use conversational search in our daily dialogue when we ask friends questions. We're also using it on social media. And Google wants our search activities to be just as natural and they want these type of questions to be answered with better content - creating an even better search experience regardless of the device we use or if it happens to be a voice search.

I believe this will be one of the hottest topics for the rest of the year and throughout 2014 as Hummingbird continues to improve and mature. Watch these developments closely - I plan on staying very close to this topic and intend to be a major advocate of this change. It's a safe bet we'll hear Danny Sullivan cover this topic at DSES next month as well. 

Stay tuned. SEO, social and content marketing - or as I like to refer to it - Integrated Search Marketing is going to become really fun again. 

This is so simple.

Step 1. Post from your mobile device.

That's it. 

Facebook likes mobile. In fact, they love it. They're all about mobile usage, mobile interaction and most important - for shareholders - mobile revenue. So, their EdgeRank formula is even giving some extra preference to a brand's post made from mobile devices. Posting from your phones can provide up to 39% more interaction. (Another thought could be that most mobile posts contain more images & videos, which help create more engagement.) 

Facebook also notes that mobile posts doesn't mean grreater reach. 

I would get into the habit of posting to your dealership pages from your phones all the time to take advantage of this opportunity. Plus, there's a better chance you'll capture something that's more engaging, personal and spontaneous when you're posting from your phone. (Besides being more efficient) 

Read more about mobile vs. non-mobile post results here.

This is so simple.

Step 1. Post from your mobile device.

That's it. 

Facebook likes mobile. In fact, they love it. They're all about mobile usage, mobile interaction and most important - for shareholders - mobile revenue. So, their EdgeRank formula is even giving some extra preference to a brand's post made from mobile devices. Posting from your phones can provide up to 39% more interaction. (Another thought could be that most mobile posts contain more images & videos, which help create more engagement.) 

Facebook also notes that mobile posts doesn't mean grreater reach. 

I would get into the habit of posting to your dealership pages from your phones all the time to take advantage of this opportunity. Plus, there's a better chance you'll capture something that's more engaging, personal and spontaneous when you're posting from your phone. (Besides being more efficient) 

Read more about mobile vs. non-mobile post results here.