Check out the new PPC ROI calculator at Fuel Interactive.

And I wrote an article about how to optimize the three components of PPC ROI over on Search Engine Journal. The three components are:

• Cost Per Click (CPC)
• Conversion Rate (CR)
• Average Sale

The article and calculator will help you make more money from existing campaigns and forecast what ROI you can expect from new pay per click campaigns.

Recommended PPC Reading

This is my short list of the most important books I've read in regard to Pay Per Click advertising. I've read a lot in copywriting and direct marketing, but these are the essentials, in order of importance.

ALL of these books can and should be read at least twice.

1. My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins
2. Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples
3. 2,239 Tested Secrets For Direct Marketing Success : The Pros Tell You Their Time-Proven Secrets by Denny Hatch
4. Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy

Oh, you're not a reader? But you're reading my blog. You must be one of the cool people.

Short, boring, to-the-point post :-)

Advanced Twittering: 5 Tips For More Effective Tweets

After about 3,500 tweets, I started to have ideas about how my twittering could be more effective.

These tips may help you get more attention, engagement, clicks, replies, and new followers.

1. Tweet Completely
Not everyone is reading all your tweets in a row. A single tweet can show via RSS, search.twitter.com, in a Google Alert, etc. If your tweet relies on a previous tweet for context, it won't make sense.



On the other hand, you could write several tweets lead from one to the other (like soap opera climaxes before commercials) to get people to read your whole flow... but remember that it's hard to find a series of tweets that's older than a few days. And I think something like this could come across sounding contrived- the opposite of the authenticity you need in social media.


2. Quick! Get to the Meat of Your Tweet!
Depending on where your tweet is viewed, readers might only see the first so many characters. When I use Twitterberry, I see 32 characters, and their content influences whether I click to see the rest of it.



If you're not one of my closest twitter friends, and the first 32 characters are not interesting, I might not read any further.


3. Try Links in the Middle of Your Tweets
Sometimes it makes sense to not run a link at the end of the tweet. More people may click on it if it's in the middle or at the beginning- partly because it looks different, so it draws the eye.



Comments after the link may draw the eye back to the link again- so it gets seen twice, and it's more likely to get clicked.


4. Separate @replyname From Links
If your link is right next to someone's @replyname, you've got two links too close together. The link you tweeted isn't as discrete, obvious, or actionable.



I realize I'm talking micropsychology here, but this is microblogging!

For links: Use a tiny link service like zi.ma or cli.gs that tracks clicks. Use analytics to see what works. Although split-tests aren't really possible, quantifying clicks has helped me see what topics are most interesting... although how you present a link also is important... ugh.

5. Don't ALWAYS Put An @replyname at the Beginning
If it's at the beginning and not a reply to me, I might ignore the tweet.

But if something interesting is said about the @replyperson before their name, or something else interesting comes before their name, more people will read it.


I'd love to see eyetracking studies of these!

1,000 Twitter Followers: Lessons I've Learned

Well, strike me dead for hubris, I'm pretty proud I got to 1,000 Twitter followers in just 6 months. See the graph of that journey on Twitterholic.

I'm sure others have done it faster, and not just famous people.

Some Twitterers have hit 1,000 with fewer updates; Jordan Kasteler hit it with about 33% fewer tweets than I, but he's way more active on Sphinn and Digg... maybe that's it. Or it could be his 50% more magnetic personality... no, it's probably just the Sphinn/Digg thing.


It was a fair amount of work to get to 1,000 followers:

• 3,650 tweets
• Scores of direct messages
• 69 blog posts, at least half of them about twitter
  
• 18 blog posts on the AdWords Consultant/Social Media blog
  
• 35 blog posts on the Fuel Interactive blog
• 12 blog posts on the Humor 2.0 blog
• 4 blog posts on the Schmearch blog
  
• Participating in several major memes, including Martin Bowling & Zima
• Interviewing several industry people for blog posts
  
• At least 4 front-page sphinns (not sphubmitted by me)
• (No front page diggs, LOL)
• Speaker at three past search industry gigs
• Attending two others, in-person networking at all five, lined up gigs speaking at three more search and social media conferences before Christmas

Ok, so enough about my workatwittaholicity. The next video is how to pronounce that word:


Here's what I've learned coming up that I don't want to forget:
(Hit me on the head with an iron skillet if I ever do)

• It's nice to follow back. You don't have to, but it's nice. That deserves a whole post by itself, but my view is: Twitter is a party, not a podium. I'm not a snob. Cliques suck. There are people I won't follow because they act like snobs. Don't want to be one.
  
• It's courteous to reply back. I listen to everyone, even those I'm not following, and I reply back to them. It's rare that I don't, and usually unintentional, or I'm totally flummoxed and "have no response to that." (Meg Ryan, Joe vs. Volcano)
  
• Risk being unique. As I get into speaking professionally, I'm tempted to change my image to more professional. I'm afraid if I do that, you won't see the personality anymore. I'm pretty sure personality is essential to social media success.
  
• Expand your network. Search for relevant new contacts and follow them.

I'm not going to do a full following-growing tip list here- I actually have an article about that coming out on another website soon... and I have a separate list of tips for how to get speaking gigs...

It's enough for now- I don't know how big time I am now, but I wanted to make sure I made a reminder list of how not to change when I do hit the big time, whatever that is.

Optimization/Maximization Knol

Wrote my first knol- it's about optimization and maximization in general.

I wrote it because I was trying to extract the principles of what I do with SEO and PPC and see how you can optimize anything.

This also came out of reading the Now Discover Your Strengths books, finding out I was a competitive maximizer (among other things), and then over time realizing I try to optimize everything in my life!

Meantime, I've nicknamed myself the AWESOMIZER. Because that sounds cooler than optimizer, which sounds a bit nerdy. Yes I'm a nerd but I like to pretend I'm cool.

SEOmoz Expert Seminar 2008 Recap

I'm going to recap the 2008 SEOmoz Expert Seminar without giving the info away, because it was my understanding that Rand wanted to keep this information proprietary. I assume that means he'll be selling the DVDs (that we attendees get for showing up) to other people in the future. They had two cameras going at all times, and I'm sure they're already editing.

Here are some highlights of what you missed, WITHOUT giving away the details...

SEOmoz knows how to throw a party.

You may already know this... :-)

The party at the Burke Museum of Natural History featured some incredible Greek appetizers, weird dead animals in glass cases, and, as @seoinseattle Tom put it, it's home to the largest collection of bird carcasses in the world (in the basement, of course). That's something to be proud of, and was really a propos for a bunch of SEO's. (???)

The kayaking got rained out, but the under-the-tarp party at Agua Verde had a lot of mexican food that I ate way too much of. I got to talk to Danny Sullivan for the first time, found out his Dad is from the state I work in (South Carolina), and meet Will Critchlow (who I defamed earlier on twitter) and Duncan Morris.

Check out pictures on Flickr from Dana Lookadoo and Brian Carter.

The Networking was Awesome

One of the mozzers mentioned that the networking was the primary thing at the seminars... the seminars were great, too! In a fairly young and always changing industry, the comprehensive and detailed look we got at many aspects of SEO really helps you see what you know and what you don't know... I mainly went because I wasn't sure if there was anything important I DIDN'T know. That goal was fulfilled, I learned enough to make it worth the trip, and the networking/hanging out was superb.

I could write more about how weird it is to talk to or try to meet people you only know from Twitter and Sphinn and SEOmoz... (I feel so intimate with Jane on Twitter, LOL j/k, but in person a weird hi was all there was- I blame myself) but I made some good connections, may have gotten some very big business for my company, and with Dr Pete, Dana Lookadoo, Josh Sciarrino, Martin Bowling, John Santangelo and others I concocted some crazy viral ideas. Martin Bowling, by the way, is a complete nut. And Rusty Felty talks to his girlfriend on the phone WAY TOO MUCH.

There was a big meme going on about Martin Bowling loving Zima, and we got several people including Danny Sullivan, Rand Fishkin, and Curtis R. Curtis (shown left) to demonstrate their love for Zima too... the pic of Danny and Rand fighting over the Zima is coming soon...

Got to hang out with Scott Willoughby and Carlos del Rio at the Blue Moon Tavern on 45th, which features "Ray the Dog" who howls along with his owner's harmonica playing. Here I discovered that this guy Dr Pete I'd been hanging out is a really big deal on SEOmoz... I had no idea. I'm not a good mozzer, as you can tell from my 1 moz point. Oh, and David Mihm is a really funky dancer. You'll have to ask him to show you his mad dancing skillz at the next conference.

And I met SEO's in the "adult industry" as well as comedy... neato keen.

Exceptional Speakers!

• Rand is so likeable that it doesn't seem to matter what he's talking about- but he gave away some cool secrets.
  
  
• Stephan Spencer is an ubergeek. The level of detail and expertise in his presentations was amazing.
  
  
• Will Critchlow and Duncan Morris are smart, and, as British guys with cool accents, are of course charming, even if Will does have a secret love child.
  
  
• Nick Gerner is an endearing non-SEO geek who gave a fascinating look at the concepts of web spam detection, PageRank, TrustRank, and more- awesome.



• Jane Copland also has a cool accent, gave a great presentation on social media, and handled epic microphone failure with epic poise.
  
  
• Rebecca Kelley is clearly a bad*** and went through the SEOmoz site review process in incredible detail.
  
  
• Sarah Bird, super-lawyer, spoke on legal matters of great import to all SEO's. I'm waiting for her to write up and sell some sample contracts for clients... ;-)



• Jeff Pollard looks like Rusty Felty and geeked out on crawlability.



• Seth Besmertnik went into the gory details about good and bad link buying and how to evaluate potential links for purchase. What was funny during that presentation was that the camera guys continued to film audience members asking questions, but I'm not sure the audience members realized their admission of link buying was getting recorded and that Matt Cutts might see that film some day...



• Danny Sullivan is more ADHD and tangential than I am speaking- he's a great combo of educational and entertaining. I call him Master of the Tangential. He speaks like he's doing LSI. ;-)

And they all did an enlightening all-star Q&A session at the end before we all went and stuffed our faces with guacamole.

Summary

All in all they were great presentations, it was really good info, and I'm looking forward to watching the DVD's. And SEO's are lots of fun to hang out with... you should try it some time.

Guest-Tweeting: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?

Everybody knows about guest posting on someone else's blog- great for an establish blog's audience to hear new views from a new face (can you hear from a face? hmmm)... and a good way for a newbie to get some exposure.


But no one has done guest-tweeting yet. I just got the idea from Ryne Nelson at @SLAMonline.

(could also call it guest-twittering, I guess)

Talked it over a bit with @chrisbrogan ...

And simultaneously @CaitlinJewell
mentioned her co was developing an app for group twittering.

Can you imagine a twitter app that allows you to let other people have access to your twitter account for 5-10 tweets? If you trust them...

If they violated that trust, it would be a huge problem for them and their rep in the Twitterverse and Blogosphere, wouldn't it?

But I think this is an idea whose time has come and there are probably lots of ways it could be used- have any ideas how? Comment below!

And my proposed guidelines:

1. Set expectations and number of tweets for guest tweeting
2. Use a short hashtag to denote your name as guest tweeter, e.g. your initials
3. Tweet on topic, the other twitterer's main topics, e.g. on mine it would be SEO, PPC, or social media
   
4. Exchange pws
5. Guest tweet on each others' accounts
6. Change your pw's for safety