So I guess we shouldn’t have been that surprised (although we were) when he announced he would be out of the office for a while and when asked where the answer was, “Haiti.”

Events unfolding in Haiti are controversial. It’s a corrupt, lawless country made worse by a most tragic natural disaster. Recent days have raised questions about what can be done, who can help, how that assistance can be doled out to those who truly need it, and the dangers inherent in that process.

McInnis is in a unique position to help because he owns a powerful airplane that can land and take off on a short runway while carrying cargo. When he got a call asking for help shuttling supplies from Florida into a rural area of Haiti, he promptly said he would.

Some of us thought he was certifiable. Really? Haiti? What about fuel, accommodations, sanitation, or the occasional flying bullet. But David stopped us all with one quiet answer, “It’s an opportunity to serve.”

And with that he was out the door. Since it’s a cross-country flight just to get to the jump-off point in Florida, they stopped in Seattle to pick up a full load of rescuers also anxious to get there to help.

To David and his faithful pilot, we send loads of good thoughts and admiration.

We look forward to hearing their stories and seeing pictures when they return. Meanwhile, David is sending the occasional dispatch via Twitter at http://twitter.com/giantcranberry.

PeoplePond

The best use of CompanyPond is to leverage the many PeoplePond profiles of the company’s staff, board members and evangelists. From the press release announcing the launch:

“The incredible SEO benefit of leveraging CompanyPond with PeoplePond to make use of the brand advocates found in employees, partners, stakeholders and evangelists is undeniable,” said David McInnis, the innovative mind who conceptualized both PeoplePond and CompanyPond.

Read the full press release here.

• Does my participation in this social media or social networking site add value to my online marketing efforts?
• Am I able to generate content within this space that is relevant to the audience?
• How can I use this tool to extend my brand?
• Am I committed to using this service to advance my brand (specifically am I willing to expend time and creative muscle)?
• Does this service allow me to create outbound links (regardless of their follow/no-follow state)?

With the above questions in mind, I started PeoplePond around a concept I call, Elastic SEO.  By using an elastic approach, I have seen my PeoplePond profile jump to the #2 spot in Google while my social media and networking content has seen a related boost.

This is basically a 4 step process:

1. Develop a single brand profile page.  Being partial to PeoplePond mine can be found at http://www.peoplepond.com/davidmcinnis.  The important thing here is to build a single online home for your brand profile to reside.  Notice my personal brand, my name, is in the URL. That’s important for your profile page to provide.
2. Create outbound links from all your social media profiles that will point to this central brand profile.  Twitter is probably the obvious example.  Log into your Twitter account and paste the link to your profile in the More Info URL box.  You cannot see the entire URL in the screencap below, but trust me, it is http://www.peoplepond.com/davidmcinnis.  Most social media sites have a place for you to include a link to your primary online location.  Make it count by linking each to your centralized brand profile.
   
   Take a look at http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmcinnis. Notice again that the link goes to my single brand profile page, in my case PeoplePond.

   LinkedIn is uniquely powerful for this since they offer the ability to add hypertext links to your profile.  Once you are logged in, add or edit your website links by clicking “Edit My Profile” and then “Additional Information [edit].”  Select a link type of “Other” and a space will appear for you to enter a link label (aka anchor text).  I choose the label, David McInnis Profile, when I have this option as a way to tell search engines this link points to what I consider to be my profile.  The result is now on my publicly visible and search engine crawl-able LinkedIn profile page.Do this over and over again with each social application that offers you the ability to link out from your public profile page within their system.

3. Finally, link out to all of the above services from your single profile.  Make sure that, if possible, you use the XFN tag “me” in the hyperlink so the search engines know the destination URL is part of your online brand.  This is as simple as including the rel=”me” tag in your hyperlink.  More information on XFN tags is available here: http://gmpg.org/xfn/
4. Now that you have created an elastic relationship between your social media content and your brand profile, concentrate most of your SEO efforts on your brand profile page.

As your brand profile rises in the search engine results your social media profiles and the deep content you create in those spaces will begin to experience a similar and very beneficial organic SEO lift as well.  Give it a try.  It’s fun to watch.