Well quite a lot really. First of all, your name is likely unique.  Yes, there are lots of John Smith’s out there, John Doe comes to mind etc. but even in extreme cases like that, how many people in your industry, in your niche, in your area, have the same name as you? I’m willing to bet next to none.

If you’re in business for yourself, are in sales or marketing, investing or for that matter anything to do with business, you need to own your own domain name. Simply stated, a domain name is your website address. In the case of this blog, adamkillam.com is my domain name and also my personal name - see the connection?

Part of the power of owning your own domain comes from the fact that in business today, one of the first things people do after meeting you is Google your name. If you haven’t tried this on yourself, you should - it’s your job, no one elses, to know how you are showing up online. Better yet, you should control the top 5-10 results. While the scope of how to do that is outside of my goal for this article, ideally you want to control as much as you can about what people are finding out about you online - mainly by having your website or sites and profiles you control being ranked highly in the major search engines.

The phone book is dead. People Google you now, or they facebook you or both. If your a business person/professional/investor etc, you should also show up on linkedin.com. Again, I won’t provide a detailed explanation of these services in this article but suffice to say if you don’t have a presence on any of these, you’re missing out. Due to my web presence I get speaking engagements, new business leads, potential partners find me, and gain a level of credibility much more quickly with people than the average joe all because of my site and domain.

If I’ve convinced you and you’re ready for the next step, head over to Godaddy.com and buy yourname.com or yourname.ca today. Then get in touch for help with the next step.

While I’m not an expert on usability I know who to look to for the answers. If you want to increase your conversions, help visitors find things easier, and improve your traffic, then check out:

1. Useit.com - Jakub Nielson’s site. JN is the usability expert world wide.
2. Steve Krug’s book: Don’t make me think - the now legendary title, available from Amazon.

Tomorrow morning five of us will be jumping out of a perfectly good airplane at the urging of one of my buddies who will soon turn the big 3.0.

Wish me a safe return!

Expect an update next month - enjoy the summer!

 FYI: I’m taking a break from posting for the remainder of the summer.

It’s time for a mental break!

If you haven’t checked out Twitter yet, I’d suggest you do so now. I first started hearing about Twitter about 6-8 months ago and decided to keep an eye on the service even though I didn’t take it too seriously at the time.

Twitter is a social networking tool by definition that enables its users to make small, 140 character posts called “tweets”. Tweets are collected on a user’s blog, commonly referred to as micro blogs due to the short length of each post. The social aspect comes from the ability to follow or subscribe to other user’s conversations and to monitor the general conversation and posts via Twitter.com, where you can see an up to date snapshot of all recent posts by users.

If any of this sounds confusing at this point, I’d suggest you sign up for the service and test it out to get a better idea of how it all works. Much has been written already about Twitter and the idea is not to write a comprehensive, all encompasing post here today.

With the basics out of the way, I wanted to point out a service that enables you to more closely monitor what people are saying about you and your brand on Twitter and other places around the web called Summize.

Using summize, you can search for a term such as your company name, and get a list of the most recent conversations taking place that match your keyword.

Where’s the value in that you ask? Well, for one thing, you can tell if the current sentiment is positive or negative and take action immediately to either leverage the good or quell the bad while it’s happening. How you ask? By getting involved in the conversation of course.

Like any new technology, (i.e blogging 4+ years ago) you need to spend some time learning the conventions, lingo and netiquette. Once you’re up to speed you need to get involved and submit your thoughts, monitor the conversation and contribute.

The cool thing about Twitter is that once you get into the conversation and become a member of the community, you’re likely to find out about things faster than others in your industry. Twitter caters to people who like to be in the know and enjoy spreading ideas with others on the cutting edge.

Happy tweeting!

A couple of quotes I found particularly interesting were:

• Based on this data, if you are ranking 8, 9, or 10 you may be able to increase your traffic for that keyword 1,400% by ranking #1. Even jumping from #8 to #3 can triple your traffic.
• In early 2008 Google’s Avinash Kaushik stated that 14% of Google clicks are on paid search ad and 86% of clicks are on organic search results.
• 2008 Penn State research titled Determining the informational, navigational and transactional intent of Web queries [PDF] found that roughly 80% of search queries were informational, while approximately 10% were each navigational and transactional. With so many searches being informational and navigational, it is unsurprising that people click the organic search results more often than the associated PPC ads.

View the full article on SEO Book here.

On a related note, tt’s also important to note that relying on Google as your only source of traffic can be a fatal mistake. As their ranking algorithms change on an ongoing basis it’s quite possible that your site could loose its position in Google without proper monitoring and updates. For many business loosing their 1st page placement would be fatal.

If a significant chunk of your leads and revenue come from the web, specifically Google, it would be wise to consider alternate sources of traffic including:

• Social networking sites such as Linkedin and Facebook
• Consider an offline PR campaign
• The blogosphere (interacting with bloggers)
• Relevant forms and niche sites in your industry
• Email marketing

If you have additional tips for my readers, post your thoughts to the comments section.

I was asked this week to be a technical editor on a new book that will most likely be released in early 2009. I had to turn down the opportunity due to a new project I am working on (tough decision!) but have asked to interview the author on Salesforcetimes.com when the book is closer to being published.

Once I hear back from the publisher on whether the details are confidential or not, I will post an update.