Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a blogger was writing, or touching their mouse;

The keywords were listed on Google with care,
In hopes that e-commerce visitors would soon be there;

The children were sneaking Netflix in their beds;
While visions of iPhones danced in their heads;

And mamma with her Android, and I with my iPad
Had just settled our brains over a giant night-cap,

When notifications hit my mobile with all kinds of chatter,
I checked the web traffic volume for results from our banner.

Away to my laptop I flew like a flash,
Tore open the browser and ignored all the trash.

The content was driving new visitors in flow,
The referral spam counts are even real low,

When what to my wondering eyes did appear,
But new inbound leads to my inbox my dear,

Then WordPress went down and cut to the quick.
Our website was missing like a dog with a stick.

More rapid than Google with search results fame,
I tweeted customer service, and screamed out their name:

“Now WordPress! now, Dreamhost! now Hootsuite and LinkedIn!
On, Facebook! on, Twitter! on, Tumblr and Instagram!

To the top of search! to the top of them all!
Now rank away! rank away! rank away all!”

As blog content views that surpass them all by,
When they are picked up by syndication, hits mount to the sky,

So up to the page one of search results they grew,
With social accounts full of boys, and girls too-

And then, while tweeting, I saw hashtag proof
Our post is going viral and this wasn’t a spoof.

As I drew in my head and was clicking around,
Down the browser screen the site loaded in background.

It was new and terrific, like a 3.0 design,
This would surely leave all our competitors behind;

A bundle of words and meta tags to track,
There would be no keyword stuffing like an SEO hack.

The graphics-how they twinkled! and the alt tags all cheery!
The back links were still waiting and making me weary!

Our social media traction was not built on Klout,
We know what matters and what results are about,

The stump of metrics that are all just vanity,
Won’t buy you happiness and any eye candy,

So save face and lay off the selfie,
Or followers will shake their heads and think you’re a baby.

Be focused on income and revenue from self,
Not fake celebrity, speaking or like an elf on a shelf;

The blink of an eye can be a Twitter suspension instead
So stop spamming through email or social like dread;

Create great content and earn relationships from your work,
And drive ROI; but don’t be a jerk,

And laying political posts aside,
Let bygones be bygones and just say goodbye;

To internet trolls that draw you in with a whistle,
You’ll find their personality is quite like a thistle.

But support your strategy with data and insight-
“Or this Christmas will end, with your competitors delight!”