Some statistics from Technorati’s 2009 state of the blogosphere back up the efficacy of content marketing:

• 15% of bloggers say they are paid to give speeches on the topics they blog about
• 71% of all respondents who maintain blogs for a business – their own or one they work for – report that they have increased their visibility within their industries through their blogs
• 56% say that their blog has helped their company establish a positioning as a thought leader within the industry
• 58% say that they are better-known in their industry because of their blog

And as powerful as blogs are – they are just one potential avenue for content marketing. Content marketing includes all marketing formats that involve the creation or sharing of content to engage potential prospects or current consumers. No matter how you’re engaged, continually sharpening your content creation skills is core to being an effective digital marketing or PR professional.

If you’re brand new to the idea of content marketing, the following points by Mike Masnick succinctly describe why it matters:

The captive audience is dead. There is no captive audience online. Everyone surfing the web has billions of choices on what they can be viewing, and they don’t want to be viewing intrusive and annoying ads. They’ll either ignore them, block them or go elsewhere.

Advertising is content. You can’t think of ads as separate things any more. Without a captive audience, there’s no such thing as “advertising” any more. It’s just content. And it needs to be good/interesting/relevant content if you want to get anyone to pay attention to it.

Content is advertising. Might sound like a repeat of the point above, and in some way it is — but it’s highlighting the flip side. Any content is advertising. It’s advertising something.

Hopefully we’ve got your buy-in to the idea of content marketing. TopRank Online Marketing as an agency embraces this for our clients and ourselves, as content marketing lives at the intersection of social media and SEO.

To help readers here, following are 10 tips to help make your content marketing efforts succeed:

1. Ensure all content passes the “So what?” test

A great quote from Chris Garrett sums this up nicely:

A much overlooked aspect though is “So what?”. What should the reader take away? Where is the benefit? Why should we listen to you?

Just churning out content for the sake of going through the process is setting yourself up for failure. Unless you’ve got a model like Demand Media and would benefit from being fast, cheap and profitable as hell, go the other route and refine all ideas to pass the “So what?” test. Especially if you’re in B2B – the goal of content marketing is usually to inspire trust, grow your reputation and influence your market. Throw-away content accomplishes none of these things.

2. Create remarkable content, take chances, stand out

With some 900,000 blog posts published every 24 hours, and more than 20 hours of video uploaded every minute to YouTube as just two examples, how do you expect to stand out with “vanilla” content? If you’re going to play it safe or regurgitate what is being done by others you’ve got almost no chance to succeed unless you already have a large community built you can tap. And even then, as we add layer upon layer of aggregation, sharing and filtering to the web it’s still possible to be ignored. You need to consistently break the mold, be an unmissable resource or in some way stand out to make your content heard.

3. Speed and agility are factors

If your content marketing efforts are agile enough to touch audiences in a timely manner, you’ll be top-of-mind for prospects vs. slow moving competitors who have complex approval processes. Again and again, the web rewards nimble companies far more than those who are restricted or micromanaged.

4. Personality is essential

We connect deepest with content that has a voice and personality behind it. No one enjoys reading the language on a corporate website. It’s cold and impersonal and in reality does not connect with audiences, it merely conveys information. Personality and emotion are lacking in most corporate and business communications, and this has carried over into the content marketing efforts of many. But, infusing these elements within your content marketing strategy can be a powerful way to not just speak to prospects but connect with them.

5. Content should forge connections

Your content marketing can also accomplish another valuable goal: building connections and relationships. This has both social and SEO returns. Connections can help build inbound links, increase shares in social channels and ultimately help your content gain visibility. Incorporation of these connections should be worked into the content artfully and naturally. Readers may not even realize what is happening, but those you are trying to forge connections with will.

6. Worry less about perfection, more about tone

Be less concerned with being perfect and more concerned with being earnest, thoughtful and genuine. Perfection is severely overrated and minor flaws are forgivable, while the wrong tone can be as detrimental as causing online reputation management issues.

7. Make content scan-able (and attractive)

Make no mistake, your prospects are busy. To treat them as if anything else were true is disrespecting their time. By making your content scan-able, you increase the propensity they will not just scan that content, but if the parts that catch their eye during the scan are worthwhile they will go back to read it. Use headlines, bold text, get creative with your formatting, get designers involved – do whatever it takes to make content attractive and scan-able.

8. Draft sticky headlines

Follow basic headline writing tips and work to create headlines that entice potential visitors to your content in the first place. Without strong headlines, your blog post will get skipped over in a cluttered RSS reader or inbox, your white paper or PDF won’t get passed along and you’ll never penetrate social news sites.

9. Consistency and quality

As we’ve noted here before, every company is now in essence a media company. The quality of your content is how prospects will imagine your service or product to be, and the consistency you produce that content is a signal to how dedicated you are.  Both are required.

10. Realize promotion can’t help bad content

It’s tempting to try to put a band-aid on bad content with things like advertising or push promotions. But if you have to advertise your content, in a sense you’ve already failed. Content marketing should be an organic process, and by advertising your content you’re admitting failure of creating something worth sharing. Push promotion on the social web is similar to this – you’re ultimately going to have to face the fact that your content isn’t working on its own to naturally connect with people. Now, that’s not to say you can’t help good content travel (this is one of the 16 rules of social media optimization) but by trying to force bad content to spread you’re wasting resources.

As many readers here are engaged in content marketing on a daily basis, we’d love to hear your thoughts. What content marketing tips have you found most helpful?

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
10 Tips For Content Marketing Success |
18 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

The irony here is that there’s been speculation as to whether the growing popularity of Twitter has reduced the effectiveness and popularity of blogging. The reality is that Twitter and blogging compliment each other exceptionally well. Here are 5 tips on how to use Twitter to do just that:

Polls – Ask And You Shall Receive

Active participants on Twitter that have developed a certain momentum of followers and conversations can offer their Twitter network the opportunity to interact and engage on topically relevant poll questions.  Polls are a great opportunity to ask for help and recognize participation.

Some guidelines on Twitter polls:

1. Announce that you will be asking a series of poll questions.
2. Use an intuitive #hashtag after each poll question to thread them together
3. Make sure you ask questions relevant to your Tweeting history
4. Thank particpants and let them know what you will do with the answers
5. Acknowledge participants in the blog post. If there are a nominal number of participants, cite them in the post itself. If there are many participants, you might consider creating a Twitter list just for the poll and link to the poll from the blog post.

Annotated poll results can be published alone or the answers can be incorporated as supporting points to a post on the topic being polled.

#TwitterChats – Make a Date to Tweet

The conversation aspect of Twitter is one of the most powerful. Hidden amongst what appears to be an ongoing dinner party conversation, one can find threaded discussions amongst some of the smartest people in their fields.  As mentioned above, the use of a #hashtag in tweets threads conversations together.  Interested parties agree upon a set time and topic then start the conversation.

A few examples relevant to Online Marketing Blog readers include: #blogchat on Sunday nights run by @MackCollier that discusses all things blogging (example archive).  Another example is #journchat on Monday nights run by @prsarahevens and it provides Public Relations professionals and journalists an opportunity to discuss issues and how they can work together more effectively (archive).

To source these threaded discussions into blog content, a search on the hashtag will present discussion as search results and can be copied into a post. There are also services you can use to automatically archive these kinds of scheduled Twitter chats. 140 characters keeps interaction succinct and often very tips focused.

Crowdsource – Wisdom of the Twitter Crowd

One of the major reasons people network is to interact and be helpful. When you have a good rapport with a Twitter network, blog topics and information can be crowdsourced.  Topics can be solicited as well as sources of facts, research and other information. Followers are often happy to provide suggestions or even links to facts that can be used in a blog post.  These solicitations can be public but can also be sent via direct message to specific individuals.

For example, you might post a question about which of 3 topics to post on your blog next.  You can ask this directly or frame it with the context of something currently being discussed in your industry. Asking provocative questions to see what the response is can provide great feedback as to what people are interested in and can develop discussions that will help inspire the writing of a blog post. It’s important with any kind of take that there is give as well. Recognition goes a long way as does being helpful back to other Tweeple.

Search.Twitter for ?’s – Seek and You Shall Find

Being helpful is a key piece of what makes the social web go round. Twitter provides a platform for easy questions and answers.  As a subject matter expert, you can use Twitter search to find out what people are asking in your area of expertise.

For example: “blog host” ? Then aggregate some of the best questions into a blog post, with answers of course.

Search.Twitter for Tips – Search for Twitter Smarties

On the flip side, you can use Twitter search to find useful tips being offered by other Twitter users. The best tips on relevant topics can be aggregated summarized in a blog post. With credit/attribution of course.  Also look for tweets that include links, since 140 characters is pretty limited for useful tips. For example, “iPhone apps camera OR photos“.  Pick out the best tips being offered and you have the beginning of a niche list, large list linkbait or simply a set of resources that can be cited throughout a regular post.

Also, there’s nothing wrong with following individuals that offer useful tips and ask them if it’s ok to repost on your blog.  Not only is this courteous but it develops goodwill and creates an introduction to discussion with that person.

So now you have 5 ways to source content using Twitter. Most people using Twitter have seen these tactics in practice, not as many have implemented them or found a way to do so effectively.  How have you used Twitter to source content? Have you used any of the tactics above? If so, how did they work for you?

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
How to Source Content on Twitter |
8 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

The topic of business blogging and search engine optimization as distinct and synergistic tactics have been explored here many times. A large number of companies are familiar with the process of starting a blog, but few have experienced the challenges of maintaining and growing a blog for more than a year.

Understanding long term benefits is key to sustainable business blogging.

Part of the goal was to tap into a variety of experience levels with this survey and capture insight into the SEO impact blogging.

Participants were solicited here, on social networks and vial email that blog. Here’s a simple breakdown of the 326 survey respondents:

• 28% Internal Corporate: Advertising, Marketing or PR
• 42% Agency: Advertising, PR, Search Marketing, Social Media, Marketing
• 30% Independent Consultant or Small Biz CEO

One of the biggest questions we were looking to get insight on was the degree to which marketers are using blogs as a SEO asset.

95% of survey respondents indicated that they do incorporate blogs as part of their search engine optimization efforts

While the majority of respondents  indicated SEO as a benefit to blogging, several comments indicated that there are resource issues:  ”We did but resources became an issue. Will be bringing it back in 2010.” And that the applicable use of blogging for SEO outcomes depends on the market:  ”Sometimes… depends on client and market and product/service”.

Blogs at the most basic level are straightforward or “easy” to start. But the real question is whether they deliver on the SEO promise so many blog marketers make. Our survey results show that 87.4% of respondents “successfully increased measurable SEO objectives as a direct result of blogging“. Savvy SEO practioners made comments like, “Absolutely. In fact, we make sure to create a small, quality cluster of blogs on different platforms and Class C IP’s to support their communications initiatives.”

Of the 12.6% that didn’t find measurable SEO results from blogging, comments like “starting to but since we don’t post comments from readers on our blog I think we stall any momentum that we are generating from our posts” and “Site owners are not able to follow through on keeping up with their blog.” provided insight as to possible reasons why.

How important are blogs as part of a SEO strategy? The majority of respondents (90%) cited blogging as important, significantly important or a primary SEO tactic. The remaining 10% rated blogs as somewhat important or irrelevant.

Many company marketers, public relations and communications professionals are not aware of what the SEO benefits of blogging are. We asked, “What SEO functions do blog(s) serve for you?”. While the responses were fairly evenly distributed, the most popular SEO benefit was that blogs provide an easy way to create new, optimized content. Content is the cornerstone for any search engine optimization or social media marketing effort, so it makes sense that content creation was so popular.

Overall, links were the most often cited SEO benefit from blogging: Attracting inbound links from other web sites or cross-linking from blog posts to corporate site content. Community building for content/links promotion and Increase crawl rate/frequency were also indicated as important SEO benefits from blogging. Additional social and SEO benefits from blogging mentioned include:

• Social Media word of mouth
• Show a human side to a business and another side to the more “static” web site
• Communicate back with customers
• Can surprisingly create evergreen #1 search rankings for odd phrases we might not have necessarily thought about in planning.
• We’ll serve ads through a network that allows blogs to publish our ads
• Traffic from twitter and the increased exposure that goes with that
• Establish authority in the marketplace
• Promoting products, services, sales, expertise … I come at it from the UX side – credibility, authenticity
• Blog is ideal for long tail search terms
• More long tail ranking
• Blogs dovetail well with social media efforts like twitter
• Focused silos around specific markets and functions key to the client.

With any new marketing effort, setting expectations for time to see results is crucial for allocating resources and budgeting. We asked, “In what time frame do you typically start to see an increase in measurable SEO performance indicators (links, ranking, traffic) as a result of blogging?” The most common answer was somewhat shorter than expected, 0-3 months.  54% of respondents start to see SEO benefits from blogging very quickly. This short time frame should be very encouraging to those hoping to use blog published content to gain better search engine visibility.

Since many of our respondents were professional search marketers with the ability to properly optimize a blog and promote content to attract links, time frames for results would be very different than someone who does not know how to implement blog SEO tactics.

94% of bloggers reported seeing measurable SEO benefits from blogging within 12 months

Measuring impact is important and certainly, the definitions of success from blogging will vary according to the purpose of the blog. We asked, “What are the most important measures of success when using blogs as part of a SEO effort?”. The responses to this question were fairly evenly divided with increasing company site traffic at the top closely followed by a desire to increase company leads/sales. Other important metrics included inbound links, referrals or leads directly from the blog, web site rankings and blog traffic.

Additional success measures from blogging included many benefits besides search engine optimization, which is very important in our opinion. Starting a blog purely for SEO reasons will make content sustainability difficult in the long run. A blogging strategy must meet meet other goals as well, especially those that involve engaging customers or interactions with readers. Other success measures from blogging include:

Getting a blog implemented in a company is not always an easy task. Resources can be slim as well as expertise and confidence in the ability to achieve a return on effort within a given period of time. We asked, “What have been the most common objections from internal or external clients to implement blogs (with or without SEO benefit)?” This question received the most comments of all in the survey.

67.2% cited resource issues as the most common objection to implementing a blog

Other reasons cited included issues with content sourcing (42%) or simply not seeing the benefit (35%). Regulated industry or legal issues got in the way for 19.3% and lack of measurement round up the answers with 12.9%. Many of the comments about obstacles to blogging centered around time, resources, measurement and a lack of awareness.

On the surface, implementing a blog is straightforward, once you gain approval. The trick is sustainability and reaching measurable goals. Staying on top of what strategies and tactics are successful blogging also takes time and therefore it’s important what resources marketers depend on. We asked, “How do you stay current with blog SEO best practices?”. The overwhelming most popular answer was Other SEO blogs. The good news about that answer is that we publish a list of over 500 SEO and Internet Marketing related blogs on the TopRank BIGLIST.

Other popular resources for staying current with blogging and SEO include: Social Networks & Groups, Conferences, Observations from Testing, Newsletters, Forums and books. Interestingly, Paid Subscription Communities ranked lowest which is a niche community.

92% of respondents feel blogging will continue to be an important content optimization and marketing tactic for the next 3+ years

Interestingly, 8.3% feel blogging will only be important for the rest of 2010.

What is your opinion on the longevity of blogging as an online communications and marketing tool? Do you think the death of blogs is imminent in 2010?  What blogging benefits have you experienced and how have you overcome objections to implementing a blog in your company?

We hope this survey and results have been helpful to you and plan on conducting many other surveys in 2010 to provide additional insights into digital marketing and PR topics. Clearly, there is interest and a need for companies to better understand the strategic and practical applications of business blogging. Specifically, there is benefit in understanding how search and social channels can be combined with core blog content publishing to reach business goals.  We hope to continue providing such insight here at Online Marketing Blog as well as the conferences and corporate training events we’re engaged to speak at.

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Survey Results: Impact of Blogging on Search Engine Optimization |
31 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

• More than 350 million users are active on Facebook
• 50% of active users log in on any given day
• The average user spends 55 minutes a day on Facebook
• More than 1.6 million active Facebook fan pages have been created

With numbers like these — plus the fact that Google is now using social content to help determine the ranking of web pages — it’s difficult to justify not creating a Facebook presence for your brand.

Take the guesswork of Facebook marketing, and follow these 5 tips for making the most of your fan page.

1. Keep Content Fresh.
Give fans a reason to come back to your page frequently by adding fresh content on a regular basis. Keep in mind that consistently updating the page doesn’t require a significant amount of additional effort.

As part of your online marketing strategy, integrate your Facebook fan page with other social media channels to maximize results little extra effort:

• Automatically feed new blog posts to your Facebook wall
• Use a service like Ping.fm to update all of your social networks at once, including Facebook and Twitter
• Set up widgets for your YouTube channel and Flickr feed to automatically add videos and images to your Facebook fan page

2. Engage New Visitors.
Facebook fan page walls can be an extremely valuable tool for communicating with customers and prospects. But for first-time visitors to fan pages, the wall can seem intimidating and exclusive. Imagine walking into a room where everyone knows one another by name and are talking about a subject you know next to nothing about.

Instead of sending new visitors directly to your fan page wall, send them to a more controlled, welcoming landing page where you can provide them with useful information about your brand, as well as a clear call to action to become a fan.

For example, TOMS Shoes – a shoe retailer than donates a pair of shoes to children in need for every pair purchased – sends first-time visitors to an inviting landing page that gives a clear idea of the company’s mission. The page features a quick video that shares the TOMS Shoes story, as well as links to product and other important pages (see the image below). The approach appears to be working: TOMS Shoes has more than 185,000 fans to date.

TOMS Shoes Facebook Fan Page

3. Promote a Contest Via Facebook.
A great way to add value to a Facebook fan page is to offer users an incentive to become fans. Contests can serve as an enticing incentive.

For example, last fall TopRank® Online Marketing leveraged the Facebook fan page of one of its B to C clients to supplement promotions for a Halloween contest to find the best homemade costume. The client was looking for a final surge in number of participants during the final two days of the contest. TopRank incorporated a fan page tab specifically for the contest, as well as posted information about the contest on the fan page wall. In just two days, the initiative helped the client added more than enough additional new fans.

Be aware, however, that new Facebook marketing guidelines announced in November require brands, marketers and advertisers to go through an approval process for all contests. The guidelines require contests to be handled through an embedded application rather than on the page’s wall, among other things.

4. Give Fans Something They Can’t Get Anywhere Else.
Contests aren’t the only incentives companies can offer to grow their fan base. Any item of value can entice Facebook users to become fans, including:

• Free shipping for Facebook fans
• An exclusive product coupon for fans
• A weekly special promoted on the fan page

Sears – with 160,000+ fans – has been very successful at this approach. First-time visitors are immediately directed to an exclusive offer landing page (illustrated in the image below). By becoming a fan, users are offered $10 in coupons.

Sears' exclusive promotion for Facebook fans

Another approach to incentivize becoming a fan is to provide inside company information and breaking news on the fan page. Fans are more likely to remain faithful to your brand – and tell their friends – when they feel like an insider who has a stake in the company.

5. Encourage Interaction.
The entire notion of social media is built upon interaction and two-way communication. Facebook fan pages have little to no chance of success if they aren’t interactive and engaging.

But it’s not enough to sit back and wait to the interaction to begin. Get the ball rolling by:

• Posting a question to solicit fans’ opinions
• Offering a poll that’s extremely simple to respond to
• Integrating existing Facebook applications such as games and quizzes
• Reposting relevant, interesting information from other Facebook users

Simply creating a fan page for the sake of “Well, everyone else is doing it,” isn’t going to land you results. Like with any other online marketing strategy, Facebook marketing efforts must be well planned and constantly reinforced. By doing so, you can start to tap into the vast network of active Facebook users.

Be sure to connect with the Online Marketing Blog on our Fan page here.

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Facebook Marketing Tips: Make the Most of Your Fan Page |
22 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

One of the biggest issues with SEO is duplicate content. If search engines can’t tell which version of a document is the original or canonical version, then there can be consequences involving less than ideal search visibility. For example, the following URLs might all point to the same web page, creating the illusion that they are copies of the same thing. But in reality, it’s just one web page.

www.domainname.com
domainname.com
www.domainname.com/index.html
www.domainname.com/index.html?referid=somesitethatyouareadvertisingon

Content management systems, e-commerce stores, and dynamic sites in general, used to be big on adding variables to URLs as a way to construct search queries on content or to track visitors. Then along came advice from the search engines that said they see each URL as a unique if it has different variables. That little improvement caused a duplicate content mess.

So over the past few years, web site owners and marketers have been hard at work cleaning up their URLs, removing variables and trying to make duplicate content a thing of the past.

Then Google came out with a canonical meta tag that could be used to help fix duplicate content issues. The advice was to simply add a canonical meta tag to any page and every version of that page will be considered one. No longer will there be duplicate versions and no longer will variables be a problem in creating the illusion of different copies of the same page.

The good news here is that Yahoo, Bing, and Ask also jumped on board to support the canonical meta tag.

What we didn’t realize was Google had a hidden agenda. (In my opinion) For a few months after the canonical meta tag came out, Google FeedBurner started populating every feed that runs though their service with additional variables in the URL. These variables are then used to better track FeedBurner clicks in Google Analytics.

So now, Google is pushing out URLs with multiple variables creating duplicate content issues for anyone who isn’t using the canonical meta tag. Additionally, if you use TwitterFeed to auto post content from FeedBurner to Twitter, or even copy the URL from a feed and share it, you’re also spreading the problem.

Google then came out with a URL builder tool that allowed you to track custom campaigns in Google Analytics by customizing your URLs with additional tracking variables. This extends the potential duplicate content issue even further.

So what doess this all mean for web site owners and marketers? It means that if you’re not paying attention, duplicate content could be causing you problems with increasing frequency. Do you know if your site has canonical meta tags? It should. Do you know if your FeedBurner feed is going out with additional tracking variables? It probably is.

A Solution: What needs to happen is the canonical meta tag should become a standard meta tag in web development. It should be added to all web pages as a safety measure. It doesn’t harm anything, unless implemented improperly, so ask your developers to code it into all pages.

As for variables in the URL, they’re still not good when it comes to SEO and avoiding duplicate content issues. Short and sweet is the best way to create URLs, but on that off chance that you need to track affiliates, want to track visits to a page from a specific online or offline campaign, or for whatever reason can’t avoid variables in the URL, then they are OK as long as you use the canonical meta tag.

Like it or not, the canonical meta tag is the only way to ensure that your site doesn’t fall victim to duplicate content issues. If you stop and think about it, it is an easy solution to a big problem. And once a site has canonical meta tags on their site, using the URL builder or variables in general to track URLs can be pretty handy. Webmasters just need to remember that a variable or two may be ok for some campaigns, but we don’t want to go back to long and ugly URLs because the longer the URL, the more difficult they’ll be for search engines, and users, to interact with.

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Search Engines Bringing Back Variables In URLs – At Your Expense |
17 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

The photo to the left is my flexible business partner, Susan Misukanis, who “Rocks” as President of TopRank Marketing.

Many in the list below are from the PR industry that I know so it’s biased in that way. Suggestions of other accomplished & influential women in social media (consultants and corporate) are welcome. Now on to the list:

Katie Paine @kdpaine – Katie is a world traveler, author, consultant and PR measurement guru that has been publishing, presenting and educating us about PR and social metrics long before social media, social web, social this and social that became fashionable amongst communicators, marketers and certainly, mainstream media.

A. Jo. Martin @digitalRoyalty – Amy Martin’s Twitter bio (and follower count of 1 million plus) is one hell of a resume: “Work w/ Shaquille O’Neal, UFC, White Sox and other sports, athletes, entertainment and corporate brands to develop measurable digital & social media strategies”. That’s not all: There’s YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, UStream and others. Walk the talk

Charlene Li @charleneli – A true pioneer in the field of social computing, Charlene’s accomplishments with Forrester and as co-author of “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies” propelled her into starting Altimeter Group providing thought leadership, research and consulting on new technologies. She shares insights on her blog.

Tamar Weinberg @tamar – A techie at heart, Tamar has been an active power user and social media marketing practitioner for several years. She’s also an author of an excellent book on Social Media Marketing called, The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web.

Valeria Maltoni @ConversationAge – I like to think of Valeria as an Italian secret social media agent that helps others learn the value of conversations and connecting people on the social web. Among her many other accomplishments, she’s authored an eBook, “Marketing in 2010 – Social Media Becomes Operational” (pdf).

Jessica Smith @JessicaKnows – Once a Wal-Mart mommy blogger and now VP & digital integrator at Fleishman-Hillard, Jessica and I met on a panel (Looking Ahead: The Nexus of Social Media & Public Relations) at PRSA International in San Diego. Her practical insight made a big impression. So very smart.

Shonali Burke @shonali – A true social butterly, Shonali can be found speaking at conferences or Waxing Unlyrical on media & communications topics. More likely, you’ll find her working with clients on strategic communications, PR and social media as an independent consultant – a career she moved into after working with the ASPCA.

Beth Kanter @Kanter – Beth Kanter is a social media force of nature in the non profit space. She has the longest running blog for non profits, is the CEO of Zoetica and co-author of the upcoming book, “The Networked Nonprofit”.  In 2009 Beth was named by Fast Company Magazine as one of the most influential women in technology and one of Business Week’s “Voices of Innovation for Social Media. Be social, do good. Walk the talk.

Maggie Fox @maggiefox – Maggie is CEO of Social Media Group, which is a very large social media consulting agency that has worked with the likes of Ford Motor Company, SAP Global Marketing, Yamaha Motor, Corbis and Harlequin Publishing. She’s also a frequent conference speaker and contributes to the SMG blog.

Mari Smith @MariSmith – With enthusiastic Mari, 8,688 Facebook fans and nearly 60,000 followers on Twitter, there’s no question she a power social media practitioner. That “walk the talk” perspective helps her provide social media training and share her insights as a speaker and consultant.

Jennifer Cisney @kodakCB – I think Jennifer is the first blogger with a “Chief” designation, given for her role as Chief Blogger and Social Media Manager at Eastman Kodak. She’s active both in her professional role and personally on sites like Twitter, Facebook and blogging. More walk the talk.

Kami Huyse @kamichat – Not content with simply running her own PR and social media consulting practice, running workshops and publishing her insights on effective social communications, Kami decided to co-found another agency, Zoetica, serving the non-profit sector.

Deirdre Breakenridge @dbreakenridge – Author and c0-author of several important books on PR and social media including, “Putting the Public Back in Public Relations“, Deirdre runs a successful agency, PFS Marketwyse, and is an adjunct professor teaching courses on Public Relations and Interactive Marketing.

Beth Harte @BethHarte – Community Manager for MarketingProfs is a position Beth takes to heart (ba dum bump). It’s a great intersection of social media and marketing plus PR position that allows this long time marketing professional to show her stuff, besides blogging, teaching and speaking at conferences.

Shannon Paul @ShannonPaul – The “very official” Shannon Paul was helping the Detroit Red Wings with their social media before she landed a spot at PEAK6 where she excels even more as a social media manager.

Amber Naslund @AmberCadabra – In my opinion, Amber as Director of Community is exactly what Radian6 needed. Her mix of marketing and social media expertise is shared on Altitude Branding as well as through several eBooks and speaking at conferences.

Liz Strauss @lizstrauss – Don’t be alarmed if Liz calls you a SOB. That’s a good thing. Her SOBCon event is a think tank for social media and attracts the brightest and the curious-est. Liz is another “walk the talk” and highly networked social web enthusiast that blogs, consults and speaks at industry conferences.

Debbie Weil @debbieweil – Debbie “wrote the book” on corporate blogging (The Corporate Blogging Book) when most online marketing and communications professionals were still trying to figure out what a blog was. She runs a successful corporate blogging and social media consulting practice, works as a strategic advisor for Compendium software and continues to share her insights via blog and public speaking.

Laura Fitton @Pistachio – Laura was an early star on Twitter and with a mutual embrace, she’s turned that knowledge and network into a new business, oneforty along with consulting, speaking and co-authoring a book, “Twitter for Dummies”.

Sarah Evans @PRsarahevans – Sarah Evans showed up on Twitter like a firecracker (on my radar at least) and hasn’t looked back since with #journchat, blogging, Facebook, Twitter and plenty of real-world social networking at conferences. She’s also launched sevans Strategy and works as a Community Manager at PitchEngine.

Toby Bloomberg @TobyDiva – Toby is the original social media diva in my book and a long time business blogging evangelist for companies since 2004. She consults with companies on strategic marketing plans that incorporate social and traditional media.

Li Evans @storyspinner – As Director of Social Media for Serengeti Communications, Li is one of the few SEO savvy social media people I know that also has a public relations background. She’s a very active conference speaker, blogger, social network participant and publishes “how to” videos on internet marketing and social media.

Julia Roy @juliaroy – Julia is a Senior Manager of New Media at Coach and is yet another “walk the talk” social media participant with an active blog and participation on social sites ranging from Facebook to Vimeo.

Sally Falkow @sallyfalkow – Sally and I have been on many panels together at Search and Public Relations conferences talking about blogging, SEO and social media. She’s an active social media marketing and PR practitioner that blogs and runs an agency as well as a software services company called Press feed.

B.L. Ochman @whatsnext – B.L. “tells it like it is” as you would expect from one of the few people actually born in NYC, which makes her blog, AdAge DigitalNext articles and tweets both snarky and interesting. B.L. works with Proof Digital Media (part of Burson-Marsteller) as Managing Director of Emerging Media. She’s led some of the earliest social media consulting projects and has been blogging since 2004 (at least).

Check out the Twitter list of social media divas for a much larger group including Serena Ehrlich, Connie Bensen, Jane Quiqley, Rebecca Kelley, Lisa Stone, Lisa Barone and many others. By all means, make suggestions in the comments too.

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
25 Women That Rock Social Media |
92 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

(CC) Randy Stewart, blog.stewtopia.com

Vanessa Fox works as Entrepreneur-in-residence with Ignition Partners but is especially well known in the Search Marketing world because of her past work as Google’s search engine strategy spokesperson and creator of Google Webmaster Central. I’ve interviewed Vanessa several times on video in the past here, here, here and podcast here but nothing as substantial as what you’re about to read.

Vanessa has a new book coming out called “Marketing in the Age of Google“, which I’ve had the opportunity to preview and it reminds me of how important it is to draw attention to her exceptional insight. My kudos for the book:

“Finally! A C-level book about smarter search engine marketing.  Marketing in the Age of Google by Vanessa Fox is undoubtedly, the search marketing bible for senior executives looking to maximize business growth through search engine marketing. This is a must read and if you don’t, your competition certainly will.”

In this interview you’ll discover the importance of SEO strategy, dealing with CEOs and social media, search personas, operationalizing Social Media and SEO, thoughts on upcoming search innovations and her favorite search engine (not what you think).

Let’s start off with an elevator bio: 50 words or less? (Not to be confused with the escalator bio, which is much shorter)

I’ve been involved in user experience, product development, and web development since the mid-90s. I was able to draw on all that background when I worked at Google and built Webmaster Central. We realized that we could provide a lot of key information to site owners (in ways such as diagnostic tools and education) to help them see better results from organic search acquisition. Now post-Google, I’m focused on that same goal.

Many companies are approaching social media tactically and making big mistakes. There’s a lot of encouragement for corporate social efforts to start with a strategy first. Do you think the same is true with SEO? Are companies approaching SEO tactically with little consideration of a search strategy?

Oh absolutely. True search strategy is integrated into overall product and business strategy, and too often whoever is responsible for SEO isn’t involved those parts of a company’s planning process. Unfortunately, that means that in some cases, those doing SEO focus on what they can accomplish tactically. Certainly, many tactical elements of SEO decoupled from strategy can improve search acquisition (particularly regarding architecture), but without a strategy, you can only go so far.

For instance, if you’re looking at search acquisition strategically, a large part of your assessment is around what your potential customer base is really looking for and how you can best meet their needs. Where that meeting first happens is often in the search results, but in order to have the potential to show up there, your site needs to provide what it takes to meet those needs, and that often lies beyond the SEO department.

Even with highly technical components, having a strategy can help ensure that you’re tackling the more impactful issues first and that you’re laying groundwork to ensure that any new infrastructure elements are search-friendly from the start. That prevents you from spending all of your time fixing issues that just pop right up again.

How can we get the C-Suite to overcome their fear of change when it comes to the importance search and social media within a marketing strategy?

I think the situation is already starting to change. Many marketing departments already realize that search and social media are important aspects of a comprehensive marketing strategy in today’s online world. The question becomes what to do with that knowledge. Traditionally, marketing has been able to operate well in silos. As long as everyone was working towards the same marketing message and vision, they could build their campaigns separately. But that’s no longer true. Truly effective search and social media strategies are integrated into larger marketing strategies and often that bridge needs to span beyond marketing and into web development as well.

In terms of implementation, it can significantly easier for a marketing department to have an agency build a microsite to support a campaign than to engage directly with the development team, but in terms of effectiveness, it’s more difficult to truly integrate search and social media.

“SEO isn’t voodoo or magic or spam.”

Some key things to consider are:

• The consumer experience – can the consumer easily engage with your brand if each social media site you are active on leads back to a different domain and has different goals? If the consumer is engaging on microsites named for particular campaigns, are they getting positive brand reinforcement or just a positive experience with that particular campaign? Do they have a clear path back to the brand or are you just adding confusion? What happens when the campaign ends? In some cases, building social media engagement via a particular campaign and building a microsite to support these efforts can absolutely be effective. But it’s important to make these decisions as part of a broader, more long-term plan and to understand the complexities.
• How search works – SEO isn’t voodoo or magic or spam. But it does require a firm understanding of both how search engines technically crawl and index pages and how searchers behave.  The company needs a search advocate who either understands it and can help ensure it’s taken into account during every step of the process, or needs to gain that expertise, whether it’s through hiring a consultant or firm an hiring someone in-house.
• Key metrics – Search in particular is very measurable, key is knowing what to measure and what the metrics mean. With web analytics and search data, you are overwhelmed with hundreds of data points. It’s easy to either dismiss them all or to fixate on certain ones that don’t seem to show progress. While some key pieces of data are important for any business, many of the important metrics tend to depend on your business goals and your customer base. Building an effective framework for measurement can alleviate the hesitation some may feel at expanding into these types of marketing efforts.  I still see a lot of powerpoint slides prepared for board meetings that showcase visits to the website as the key metric and that’s almost never the right primary measure.

A lot has changed in search technology and how search results are displayed over the past year or so. Since we’re in the new year, any predications on major changes in the nest 6-12 months?

This is difficult to answer, as we’ve seen a lot of experimentation in the last year and many of the changes will likely be based on the searcher data that results. We’re still watching to see what’s going to happen with Microsoft and Yahoo. If that deal indeed goes through, it’s not clear exactly how that will change things, so a lot is in flux.

For instance, will Yahoo still offer BOSS, which currently powers a number of smaller search engines? I’m not sure that they can without a crawling infrastructure and index of their own.

But certainly we’ll see continued evolution beyond text-based search results. The major search engines have to balance richness against complexity. I find the ability to view search results just from the last week or just from forums, for instance, really helpful, but if those options were front and center, they’d likely confuse many searchers who just want to type into the box and get back an answer.

Of course, the solution Google is skewing towards is personalization. Google will ask for less interaction, but will show you more variety in results based on your online behavior. Microsoft seems to be taking a different tack – they’re also providing more variety (for instance, with categorized search) but are also providing more ways to interact directly within the search results (such as with the Farecast integration).

Please explain the notion of search personas and why they’re important.

Searcher personas and search acquisition workflows are integral to the way I approach search strategy. Before you can start attracting visitors to your web site, you need to know who you are attracting and why.  I always start with asking what the goals of the business and the goals of the web site are. From there, we can work backwards to who the company wants to attract to help them meet those goals, and then dive into the goals of that audience.

With that information, we can build searcher personas, which are similar to typical personas, except that they start with understanding what the audience wants to accomplish and what they are searching for. This leads to a user workflow that starts at least two steps before the user accesses the website. And of course, with search and social media, every page of the site is the home page, so the user workflow assessment evaluates each page to determine if it meets the searcher goal and if it draws the visitor deeper into the site to meet the business goal.

Without this framework, it’s difficult to fully realize the potential of search.

“If a company is serious about building search and social media into their organizations, they need to make a real commitment to building that expertise”

Advice given in some Social Media/SEO sessions at conferences can be quite varied from recommendations to automate duplicate content on bookmarking sites to the importance of listening and engagement. What is it that marketers should be paying attention to when it comes to Social Media and SEO?

That’s a broad topic but one thing marketers should think about is how search and social media can work together. When you’re working on a viral campaign, make sure links are designed in a way to provide SEO benefit (via their structure and anchor text). Realize that with search, social media efforts can have long lasting impact beyond the engagement. If you help someone solve a problem, that discussion may later surface in search results for someone else looking to solve that same issue. I’ve seen companies build pages that expire after 90 days.

Any tips on operationalizing SEO or Social Media in organizations? How can companies move from where they are to making SEO part of processes?

This happens as search and social media become a regular part of the business (product development, marketing, customer support, etc.) and not a separate silo. But if a company is serious about building search and social media into their organizations, they need to make a real commitment to building that expertise (through hiring a consultant, training, hiring someone in-house, or some other way of gaining expertise). I’ve seen so many organizations who felt search was important but implemented it ad hoc based on random advice different people would read online (like this interview! ) So, while it was great that everyone in the company was empowered to drive SEO, one programmer who decide to add nofollow tags on all the footers, and someone in marketing would change all the title tags to be a certain number of characters, and without a comprehensive strategy, and without any barometer of what was a valuable use of time, the company can feel like SEO was a failure for them.

Let’s say someone reads your new book, Marketing in the Age of Google, and they “get it”. What should they do next to take that appreciation for a strategic perspective and start improving their marketing?

In the book, I provide a number of suggestions for getting started. If the company already has an in-house SEO or consultant, then involve them in high-level strategy discussions. How can search data help influence product strategy? How can the technical team build search best practices into their development process? How can marketing better integrate search acquisition?

If search is new to the organization, it’s probably worthwhile to hire someone to help build a strategy that works for the organization: benchmark where things are, flag any big issues, help build in search best practices at the key points of the organization, develop searcher personas and workflows that can be used as templates for future development.

Once search is built into existing processes, ongoing search strategy is much easier and companies can see much better results.

If you were a search engine, which would you be?

It would be the Urban Spoon iPhone app: always traveling and surrounded by delicious food.

Thank you Vanessa!

Find more about Vanessa’s work online at:

• ninebyblue.com – Online marketing strategy
• janeandrobot.com – Search friendly design patterns for web development
• SearchEngineLand.com – Contributing Editor
• Office Hours – Weekly podcast
• @vanessafox – Twitter

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Marketing in the Age of Google: Vanessa Fox Interview |
7 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

The proof is in the numbers: 34% of consumers use social media to search for health information, according to research data from How America Searches: Health and Wellness.

While it’s easy to identify demand, many healthcare marketers are not exactly sure how they might tap into the social web to reach business goals. To help understand the possible applications, consider these five examples of how the social web can work for hospitals and others in the healthcare industry:

1. Tweet Live Procedures
In the past year, social media channels have helped open up an area of healthcare previously only available to a select few: the operating room.

Last February, Henry Ford Hospital became one of the first hospitals to Tweet a live procedure from an operating room. Doctors, medical students and curious non-medical personnel followed along as surgeons tweeted short updates on the kidney surgery to remove a cancerous tumor.

This healthcare marketing tactic can effectively create excitement and raise public awareness for a healthcare organization. In the case of the Henry Ford procedure, Twitter was abuzz that February day with users both re-tweeting the messages from Henry Ford and adding their own thoughts on the event. That buzz can help healthcare organizations both attract new patients and recruit medical personnel.

2. Train Medical Personnel
Some healthcare organizations are beginning to recognize the potential impact of leveraging social media channels to complement training efforts. Mayo Clinic Social Media Manager Lee Aase, for example, incorporated social media into a recent training presentation for local chapters of the American Heart Association. (Check out Lee Odden’s social media interview with Aase for Online Marketing Blog.) During the presentation, Aase leveraged Twitter to encourage participants to contribute to the discussion using the #AHAchat hashtag.

Weaving social media into healthcare training initiatives can provide multiple benefits, including:

• Giving trainees a forum to ask questions and quickly receive answers
• Providing presenters with immediate feedback from trainees (i.e., if trainees have mastered a concept of if more guidance is needed)
• Enabling organizations to complement healthcare marketing efforts by sharing slideshows, video or pictures from training sessions on social sites like YouTube or Flickr

3. Reach Mainstream Media
70% of journalists now use social networks to assist reporting, compared to 41% the year before, according to a  Middleberg Communications survey reported by PRWeek. With numbers that high, it only makes sense for healthcare marketers to leverage social media channels in order to achieve coverage by both mainstream media and industry publications.

As part of healthcare marketing efforts, organizations can use social media channels – including blogs, forums and microblogs – to share success stories from out-of-the-ordinary operations or treatments, medical research or other significant achievements. For example, when Aurora Health Care tweeted a knee operation in April, it received significant media attention, both from mainstream media and industry publications including Good Morning America, the local Milwaukee public radio network and Hospital Management Magazine.

4. Communicate in Times of Crisis
When disaster strikes – whether it be a flood, an earthquake or a terrorist attack – hospitals and healthcare providers are at the center of it all. Healthcare providers can leverage social media networks to provide real-time updates both for those directly affected by the crisis and those watching from afar.

During the November Fort Hood shooting attack, Steven Widman of Scott & White Healthcare – one of the hospitals that treated Fort Hood victims, used Twitter to provide up-to-the-minute news. Through Twitter, Widman provided updates on emergency room access and hospital operation status, re-tweeted news from Red Cross and communicated with reporters.

Widman shared with Found In Cache Blog the results of the social media crisis communication efforts:

• Twitter followers increased 78% in just three days
• Scott & White Healthcare was listed on the front page of Twitter as a “trending topic”
• The hospital’s YouTube channel was ranked the 79th most viewed non-profit channel during the entire week surrounding the crisis

5. Provide Accurate Information to Patients
73% of patients search for medical information online before or after doctors visits, according to this video from the HealthCare New Media Conference. With the magnitude of health information available on the web – both accurate and inaccurate – it’s likely that these patients can easily be misinformed.

By integrating social media into the healthcare marketing mix, organizations can share accurate, timely information regarding symptoms, diseases, medications, treatments and more. Social sites like Inspire are providing a forum for patients to share their health problems and questions about treatments with other patients, as well as qualified medical personnel. Inspire, for instance, partners with trusted health nonprofit organizations to ensure information is accurate and its community is safe.

The benefits of integrating social media into healthcare marketing efforts are priceless – from improving patient care to gaining media coverage to attracting new patients and staff. If your healthcare organization hasn’t already taken advantage of social networking channels, now is the time. If you’re having challenges getting approval, check out “Social Media in Healthcare Marketing: Making the Case“.

How else can healthcare marketers leverage social media to complement their efforts?

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
5 Examples of Social Media in Healthcare Marketing |
11 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

For the most part, updates and new content on many web sites are limited to news, an occasional press release or product announcement. Site owners are happy with the design and employees are happy they don’t need to come up with new content. IT staff do whatever they can to minimize site maintenance (which often means shortcuts or templatization that makes page level editing difficult). Essentially, this kind of web site with static content is a tombstone when it comes to being a search marketing asset.

When suggesting the need for new content, many web site owners either cringe at the idea, imagining resource issues, or they pay lip service and make a commitment that turns out to be a fraction of what the web marketing agency has in mind.   The importance of shifting from a dead end web site to becoming a content publisher (and promoter) is critical for any company that has customers and competitors active online.

When a company marketer says this, “We don’t have anything new to publish.” it’s pretty much a death sentence for the web site.  Businesses that are actually involved with meeting the needs of their customers, that take the time to learn pain points and solutions, that innovate, that participate in their industry or community, have plenty of reasons and content to publish.

It’s an important mind shift, which is why I used the stark title, Content or Die.  If the people responsible for the success of a company web site don’t have the resources or skills to make the shift from tombstone web site to active content marketing, the options are: hire people (internal or outside consultant) that can champion, implement and manage the change or get existing staff educated on to do so. Or things could remain as they are. Traffic dwindling, inquiries drying up and desperation.

When presented with a reasonable argument, most business web site owners will agree that content creation and promotion makes sense.  The more useful web pages that are published, the more there is for others to link to them and to show up in relevant search results. This can easily be demonstrated by showing how the competition is dominating the search results. Additionally, more search traffic means more data to analyze in terms of conversion optimization and the creation of new content to meet customer needs as they move through the site and into the sales pipeline.

These benefits are not realized over night. It takes a commitment, a plan, education and a bit of faith. The question is, “How bad does it have to get for a company to change?”.

I challenge companies that are seeing declines in their organic search based traffic to re-evaluate their web marketing strategy. Where does content creation AND promotion fit?  Are you SURE the content you’re creating is achieving the maximum possible effect?  How much content is enough? How will you manage content? How will you promote it? How will you plan the editorial of  content to be as efficient and productive as possible?   Are you measuring customer interactions with your content ON and OFF the site? What feedback mechanisms are in place for your content creators to know what’s working and what’s not? How can multiple departments responsible for creating content work together?  How can you make the corporate approval process more productive and less like a stranglehold on your content publishing plans?  How are you measuring up to competitor content strategies? What content strategy is reasonable given current resources but IMPACTFUL enough to give you a competitive edge?

I also challenge companies that are starting new web sites to take a fresh look at the content component of their web marketing strategy. Don’t make your fancy, flashy web site a tombstone for search marketing. Assess the landscape in your topical category and identify what kind of content structures, topics and audiences make the most sense for your own editorial plans. What will distinguish you from the competition? What are the most cost effective, yet high impact investments you can make to reach content marketing goals? What technologies will help your content creation, management and promotion yield the best possible results?

How has your company and web site have addressed these challenges? Is your company a tombstone web site? What objections are keeping you from making these changes?

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
A Challenge: Content or Die |
29 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

There are really two things to consider;  web site design and how customers are going to find the web site through mobile search.

How do you design for the mobile platform? The good news is that in most cases, you don’t need a separate site, you just need a cascading style sheet (CSS) attached to your website that feeds up specific instructions to a mobile browser. For the most part, mobile browsers are a lot like the web used to be; mainly text and links. Granted, as the iPhone, Google/Android Phones and other more advanced devices come along, the browsing features also advance. Most smart phones like the iPhone view the web as it should be without anything stripped out. But, since everyone doesn’t own a smart phone just yet, it’s worth focusing on the what the mass mobile market has, basic handheld web browsers.

When designing your CSS for handheld web browsers, here are a few things to consider:

1. You have very limited screen real estate. About 2×3 inches or so.
2. All fonts should be in their most basic format. Forget about color and typography.
3. All images should be striped out, unless they are absolutely necessary.
4. Remove all advertising as you already have limited screen space.
5. If you don’t need it, hide it. Remove any Google Friend Connect, Facebook Fan Box or other third party services. Focus on your content.
6. Remove all background colors. Basic black text on a white background is good.
7. Create basic forms, if you choose to keep them. My advice would be to remove them and just showcase the phone number. They are on their cell phone after all.
8. Remove Flash, Java and any plug-in content unless absolutely necessary.
9. All in all, simplify.

If you run a WordPress blog, you can use a WPtouch iPhone Theme plug-in to automatically create a small-screen friendly version of your blog.

If you want to view your site as if you were on a mobile browser, here are a few choices:

• Web Developer extension for Firefox. It allows you to overwrite the web style sheet with the handheld one if a site has one. If not, it’ll just show the site without any CSS styles.
• iPhone simulator called iPhoney. It looks cool, but since the iPhone really doesn’t render a striped down version of a site, it’s more of a toy.
• Opera Mini browser. There is an online version and it’s free. Simply put in a URL and it’ll render a website as if it was on a mobile phone.

From my testing, the Opera Mini browser was a great experience. It has a small screen, shows handheld versions of style sheets and all in all, it does a great job at giving you what a real phone will show. Here is my before having a handheld CSS and after experiences on the Opera Mini browser.

So where does SEO fall into all of this? Is there a separate ranking algorithm for mobile devices? No, not from what I can see.  While smart phone users can type or speak their search queries, the sort order rankings are fairly consistent between a search on a phone and a search on a computer.

Here’s an example with Google search on an iPhone and at Google.com.

The best way to ensure you are found on mobile devices is to make sure your site is in all the local search directories with full and accurate profiles. Places like Google Local and Yahoo local probably receive more traffic from users who want to find business in a certain area. When I’ve used my phone to search the web, I was searching for specific businesses to visit.  Social networking through mobile is also popular and through links, can drive web site traffic. A combination of search and social is the direction where I see the bulk of mobile traffic going.

Mobile search is an area of the Internet that is finally heating up which is supported by predictions made by eMarketer. Some marketers are putting a lot of stock into mobile marketing as cell phones and smart phones become more widespread and offer more capabilities. However, site owners are not always taking those platforms into account. To ensure your site is mobile ready, get listed in local directories and add a handheld CSS file to your site. These two easy items are a great start for optimizing your site for handheld web browsers.

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Is Your Website Ready for the Mobile Web? |
36 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

As someone who has been successful with creating content that goes hot across social channels I’ve come to appreciate the art and challenge of crafting sticky headlines. In fact, crafting headlines is equally if not more challenging than leads and even content itself.

Something many bloggers have down, but communications professionals aren’t always fluent in, is the art of crafting headlines specifically for social news sites/users. While there is no one formula for success, I’m going to share 5 things I’ve learned from experience as a blogger, social news user, PR pro and marketer.

1. Work backwards - content first, then headline

If you’ve got an idea for a piece of content you think will be popular or if you’v done your homework and researched the types of content that resonate on social channels, great – the hardest part is done. Now jot down a title as a work in progress and create your content. After completion, bearing you know you’ve knocked out a winner, challenge yourself to re-create the headline specifically to resonate with your key audience. You’d be surprised at how much easier this is than working on the perfect headline up front. Having great content in front of you, then selling it through a sticky headline is always easier than writing it staring at a blank screen.

2. Leverage archetypes/formulas which work for others (especially outside your niche)

Smashing Magazine has made page one of Digg more than 200 times, frequently using the same headline formula (number + adjective + design-related item + sticky message – i.e. 83 Beautiful Wordpress Themes You (Probably) Haven’t Seen). Why would they change something which is causing users to instinctively share posts like crazy? Also, don’t be afraid to use archetypes that work in categories external of yours – especially if no one in your niche is using them.

3. Headlines should be outrageous, engaging, emotional, useful, counter-intuitive or remarkable – not to the world, but to your community

Your headline doesn’t have to make sense to everyone. There isn’t enough space to do that and still fit within something like a Tweet (only 140 characters + 20 character tiny URL) or Digg headline (60 characters). What it should do is conjure one or more of the adjectives listed above to the influencers – or 1%’ers as Jackie Huba calls them – of your community. To achieve this you must first understand your community – ideally by being a member yourself and able to empathize with them.

4. Don’t just create content, actually use social news sites

You can’t understand social communities at the level necessary to permeate them consistently with your content/headlines without being a member of those communities. This is not optional, and if you’re a blogger or marketer who merely creates content but doesn’t participate you’re missing half the picture. Learn the hot buttons of the popular, macro communities and you’ll get a general sense of how to craft headlines for social news. Then, drill down and become a member of more targeted communities relevant to your niche to learn what resonates with specific groups.

5. SEO intersection – frequently forgotten, always vital

A by-product of news stories which go popular on the social web is links. Content created goes popular, gets a ton of links up front and as a by-product the engine juice delivered helps create authority for that page. If the content is really good, it will continue to receive organic links months or years after it’s been posted due to visibility from search engines (and create a ranking that’s self-reinforcing). In other words, social news success can be long term: a story that’s successful has the potential to be a high visibility entry point to your site for years to come even after the initial wave of buzz.  Craft two headlines for your stories to help achieve this: 1 for search engines (title tag) and one for users (page title).

Conclusion

As social Diva Liz Strauss has pointed out, it’s not just about the headlines – you also need equally remarkable content to back it up in order to achieve any kind of worthwhile goal such as attracting subscribers or sales leads. But the importance of using clever headlines to help your content stand out in the first place is vital.

As the firehose of real-time social content speeds up, the value of well-crafted headlines will increase. And the truth is, tips can only help so much. Writing headlines is more art than science. The best path is to consider it an iterative process, experiment with different structures, study your analytics and find what works for you.

What are your tips for writing effective social news headlines?

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
How to Write Compelling Social News Headlines |
16 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Resolve to give your online marketing efforts a boost this year by recognizing areas for improvement and putting in place a plan to make positive changes.

To help you get started, TopRank Online Marketing has come up with New Year’s resolutions for 5 different online marketing channels: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, Email Marketing, Pay-Per-Click and Mobile Marketing.

1. SEO:

I resolve to focus more on maximizing visits and conversions from organic searches.
With SEO efforts, it’s easy to get caught up in one goal: getting found via the search engines. But ranking in the search results is only half the story. If potential customers aren’t clicking through to your web page – or other piece of digital content – the ranking doesn’t mean much. Plus, due to variances in what each of us sees in the search results for the same query, rankings as metric are no longer as useful. Personalized search results according to location and web history means your site might rank high for one person, but not another.

Maximize the success of your online marketing efforts by analyzing your metrics report to determine which pieces of digital content are highly visible but producing less than ideal traffic results. Then take some time to ask yourself these questions:

• What competitive search results are your potential customers seeing? Assess the title tags and meta descriptions of competitive search results. Are competitors offering customers a free case study or a complimentary product sample? Then consider ways to make your own title tags and meta descriptions out-entice the competition.
• Does your content live up to the promise put forth in your title tags and meta descriptions? Put yourself in your customers’ shoes: When you first visit your web page or other digital content from an organic search, is the content you find relevant? Potential customers don’t want surprises; they want a solution to the problem that caused them to search in the first place. And they want it as promised.

Not only will searchers respond more favorably to customer optimized titles and meta descriptions, but the increase in clickthroughs will, no doubt, be noticed by search engines and may influence subsequent rankings.

2. Social Media:

I resolve to set goals and track the results of my social media efforts.
There’s no denying that social media is more difficult to justify in terms of ROI compared to other online marketing strategies.  But that’s not to say it’s impossible – or that tracking results should be placed on the back burner. And without goals, it’s pretty difficult to measure success. In 2010, put forth even more effort to set goals for social media participation and tie results back to specific tactics.

There are a host of free or near-free tools available to gauge brand mentions and traffic from social media channels. In December, we highlighted 5 of these social media monitoring tools.

Tracking results via social media monitoring tools is just a start. Those results must be tied back to business goals. Potential goals might be:

• Develop better customer relationships
• Reputation management
• Identify and energize brand evangelists
• Increase brand awareness
• Increase relevant visitor traffic
• Improve standard and social search engine visibility
• Build up a list for email marketing
• Increase leads or sales

Without setting specific goals upfront, social media efforts can’t be definitively quantified so be sure to implement a Social Media Roadmap and all or social bases will be covered.

3. Email Marketing:

I resolve to integrate my email marketing with other online marketing channels.
Regardless of what the naysayers may say, email marketing isn’t going to disappear as a result of social media in 2010. In fact, email will continue to play a significant role in most online marketing mixes this year. A study from Silverpop found nearly half of marketers surveyed plan to increase email marketing budgets in 2010.

That’s not to say email marketing efforts shouldn’t evolve with the times. Integrating email with social media is on par to be a popular resolution for 2010: A recent eMarketer report found 40% of executives surveyed will make integrating the two tactics their top marketing initiative this year. Another 25% of respondents have already implemented an integrated strategy.

Pledge to take email marketing to the next level by encouraging email subscribers to not only forward content via email, but also to get social with email and share it via Facebook, Twitter, Digg and other sites. Conversely, conduct a poll on Twitter or your blog, and encourage followers and readers to subscribe to your e-newsletter for the results.

4. PPC:

I resolve to maximize conversion rates by testing different versions of my ads and landing pages.
Most companies using self-serve pay per click programs fall victim to “set it and forget it” habits. They’re busy with numerous other marketing activities or don’t have the time to really get to know the native bid management platforms and test/refine campaigns. Even if PPC efforts are reaching set goals in terms of conversion rates, there’s always room for improvement. You’ll never know until you try.

Consider these three ideas for testing different elements of your PPC campaigns:

• Test multiple ad versions that highlight different benefits of your product, service or company. For example, one could tout cost-savings benefits, while another emphasizes a convenience aspect.
• Use A/B testing to try out two different headlines on your landing page. Again, each could speak to a different benefit (i.e., cost savings vs. convenience). Google Optimizer is a great tool for this.
• If you’re targeting a competitive search term with many competing ads, consider launching two different campaigns simultaneously. Each could offer a distinct piece of fulfillment – a free case study and a product coupon, for example.

A few tools for testing include:

• A/B Testing resources: (Google Website Optimizer, 7 Free Resources)
• Multivariate Testing service: (Omniture)
• Heatmap & User Testing tools: (CrazyEgg, Clickdensity, Clicktale, userfly andEyetools)

5. Mobile:

I resolve to rethink my website design for mobile users.
If your site isn’t already optimized for handheld devices such as cell phones, now is the perfect time to re-assess your site design and how users find your site through mobile search – particularly for B2C companies.

In October, ABI Research forecast that mobile sales of physical goods in North America would reach $750 million by the end of 2009, a 117% annual growth rate. Consumers are doing a lot more than purchasing downloadable cell phone ringtones and games from their mobile devices. These days, clothing, electronics, books and a host of other items are being purchased through mobile commerce. Additionally, social network participation through services like foursquare, Facebook and Twitter are growing dramatically, creating additional opportunities for promotion and traffic to the mobile version of your company web site.

When optimizing web pages for the mobile web, consider a few tips:

• Keep fonts in their most basic format
• Eliminate advertising to conserve screen space
• Take out images unless they are absolutely necessary
• Remove Flash, Java or any plug-in content unless absolutely necessary

Online Marketing Efforts in 2010
As you make your own personal New Year’s resolutions to drop a few pounds, start a savings account or join a gym, don’t forget your online marketing efforts. Each year provides a fresh start and endless possibilities, so take advantage.

What resolutions do you plan to make in 2010 to improve your online marketing efforts?

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
5 Online Marketing Resolutions for 2010 |
23 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Welcome to the first BIGLIST review of SEM and SEO blogs for 2010!  What a year it will be. We reviewed hundreds of marketing blogs in 2009 and well over a thousand since we started the original list. Today’s BIGLIST update focuses on a few local search marketing blogs we’ve recently discovered.

Expand2Web Blog – The design winner for this BIGLIST Update Local SEM Blog Edition goes to Expand3Web by Don Campbell. This blog offers a rich mix of WordPress and Local search marketing advice as well as how to screencasts & videos as well as a podcast.

And now on to the other Local Search Marketing additions to TopRank’s BIGLIST this week:

• GEO Local SEO - Steve Hatcher aka Stever recently branched out from his main blog to this new local SEO focused blog that offers specific, firsthand and actionable tips for local search marketing. The first posts focus on Google Local & Maps and promises to cover “just about anything pertaining to local web marketing”.

• Optimized! – Mary Bowling  is an experienced online marketer who writes for a Local Search Marketing column for ClickZ. She’s also blogged her observations and insights about a range of SEO topics and of course, local SEM since December 2007.

• Mihmorandum – David Mihm is a well known local search marketer and designer out of Portland that blogs about his involvement in the search marketing industry and offers opinions and observations of what small businesses should know about local SEO. This blog is well worth adding to your RSS reader.

• Local Search Simplified – Shagun Vatsa is a consultant in Toronto and with her blog, she focuses on adding value to tried and tested online marketing strategies and offering quality advice on how small businesses can leverage local search, Google maps, SEO and SEM.

• Local Search Optimization – Netherlands based Martijn Beijk blogs about local search optimization, Universal search, mobile, Google’s Local Business Center and location-based services.  He also reviews tools, which is handy and a definitive guide to KML and sitemaps for SEO.

• Search Marketing Insights – Dev Basu is another Toronto based search marketer and he promises “no BS marketing strategies for small and big biz alike”. He writes about local search, small business marketing, online yellow pages and social media. He also writes about industry involvement such as speaking at conferences like Search Engine Strategies.

For reference, here are a few Local Search Marketing Blogs already included in TopRank’s BIGLIST:

• Small Business SEM by Matt McGee
• Screenwerk – Greg Sterling
• Local SEO Guide by Andrew Shotland
• Kelsey Group Blog
• Understanding Google Maps & Local Search by Mike Blumenthal
• Local MN Blog by Paul Jahn

If you’ve been included in the BIGLIST of SEM Blogs, then be sure to add some BIGLIST Badge flair to your blog.

What Local search engine marketing or online marketing blogs would you add to BIGLIST?

BIGLIST Development Note: We’ve been working to develop a more effective and interesting way to organize and manage the BIGLIST of marketing blogs, which will offer categorization, sorting and ranking as well as many other pieces of information about each blog. The all new BIGLIST will launch in February 2010.

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
BIGLIST Update: Local Search Marketing Blogs 010710 |
13 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

The Best Pint of Abbot Ale, Ever

Blogs have been touted as effective tools for companies to publish content and demonstrate the conversational side of their corporate personality. Blogs have also long been promoted as a SEO tool. Despite plenty of optimism about blogging, there’s still a lot of mis-information, mis-perceptions and lack of awareness about effective, productive blogging for business.

Take This Blog SEO Survey: If you or your company publishes a blog, please take this quick poll looking into the perceived SEO benefits of blogging. Results will be published on Online Marketing Blog in the next week.  Like a fine pint of Abbot, this survey is smooth, to the point and might just put a smile on your face.

While researching questions for the above poll, I ran an informal #blogseo poll on Twitter yesterday which had 190+ responses within 45 minutes. Here’s a list of everyone that participated. There was an overwhelming interest in direct or indirect SEO benefits from blogging.

And why not? Search engines thrive on and reward web sites that publish content. Blogs are content management systems that make it easy for companies (or anyone) to publish that content. Publishing blog posts creates new web pages that can be linked to and therefore, discovered and ranked by search engines. The more blog posts and links from other sites, the greater the presence in the search results.

Whether blogs were started specifically for SEO or some other purpose, our #blogseo poll showed significant interest in SEO benefits.  Poll participants rated the importance of blogs as part of a SEO strategy between 1=low & 5=high. The average rating was a 4, but some rated blogs as SEO assets as low as 1.5. Here are a few (not all) of the comments Tweeted:

• @seowolf – It really depends on the campaign, the content availability etc. But, as a generalization, I’d say 3.
• @sjachille - 3 to 5 depends on the quality of content
• @SEOAware - it offers much more than seo benefits, so 4-5
• @mjdigital 3 – blogs are good because they are easy and quick to setup and use – but are only as good as their content
• @nathaneide - Depends upon your baseline. If you’re starting from scratch, it’s a 1.5. if you have your ducks in a row, it’s higher.
• @janetdmiller - if you can get one up and running AND keep it current. If not, don’t go down the blog path just for SEO. #blogseo

So it seems that blogs as SEO assets are only as good as their content and if you know what you’re doing. Personally, I agree with that and think that those that do not rate them higher in value for SEO may not be as familiar with the benefits they bring.

That leads to the next question: What SEO functions do blog(s) serve? Some of the most common blog SEO benefits include: Content creation, External and cross links, RSS syndication, Social bookmarking, Community building and Promotion.  Here ’s what our poll respondents had to say about how blogs help search engine rankings:

• @dericloh – community insights (content topics), content research / testing, conversation monitoring (voice of customer keywords)
• @Psychobel – relationship building from which SEO benefits accrue
• @seowolf – support for offline campaigns
• @mhillaert – drive people back to site with information sharing
• @janetdmiller – Crosslinking, new content for SEO, Twitter fodder, increase bot visits
• @mjdigital – quick turnover of content, community, auto sitemap/pings etc, quick indexing into Google Blogsearch

Obviously, the tactics used with a blog marketing effort should be based on some kind of goal. Some blogs are established to communicate with customers, some for prospective customers, some for the media and industry analysts and some for new hire candidates. No matter what the objective for a public, commercial blog, there’s almost always a need to “get the word out”.

Here are some of the blog SEO tactics and tips that were shared:

• @jachille - use custom fields to create custom META TAGS for optimal remote blogging with desktop apps http://bit.ly/8LwTW8
• @mjdigital - make your titles catchy so they stand out on SM sites, Twitter and bookmark lists
• @LexiConn_Inc - Using 301 redirects for SEO and Ecommerce http://bit.ly/SnG4L
• @goodseo - Urls should reflect the post’s title
• @seowolf - Keep in mind that your blogs are meant to be read by actual people, not the Search Engines, first and foremost
• @silvioporcellan - write periodically about other sites/tools in your industry and let the authors know about it
• @adamsherk - don’t let category and tag pages and the duplication that can come with them get out of control
• @SEOAware - (for beginner) crossmarket services pages with blog posts, optimizing for service location and location service
• @beebow - don’t shoot yourself in the foot by writing a kick ass post with a clever but totally irrelevant title
• @dericloh - Define goal > Insights > Learn > Test > Measure > Repeat
• @janetdmiller - Use SEO plugins in Wordpress. They help streamline content editing for SEO, ex: title tag, metas, etc
• @lisabuyer - Frequency and be first to report
• @aimclear - MAKE A BIG ASS LIST~!

Despite clear goals, there are often objectives to adding blogs as part of a digital marketing or PR strategy. Time and resources are the most common issues described by our #blogseo poll respondents. In fact, of all the questions asked, this was the most popular and received the most responses. Here are a few of the obstacles to implementing blogs:

• @mhillaert - Taking the time to write an article, not knowing how to write good content, not knowing what to write about.
• @mjdigital - effort required to maintain valuable content + time and cost of creating custom themes – need to be different
• @TheKenJones - Setting the “right tone” to give promotional marketing benefits (my side) without coming across as bigheaded (theirs)
• @adamsherk - large publishers are sometimes concerned with using various helpful WP plugins for fear of security, reliablility
• @dericloh - Legal issues, regulation, commitment, spam filter / moderation, ownership
• @PRBristolblog - Time & resource are a big barrier to implementing blogs. Need to show the benefits regarding online PR / customer service etc.
• @ericfransen - Client doesn’t have time to provide proper content. I can write all day… but I want client to give me a good start
• @mikemyatt - clients seem to struggle most with content development. Everyone wants a blog – nobody wants to own content creation
• @matt_mcgowan - editorial control
• @beebow - when a client’s industry is either way too niche or way too broad to consistently publish relevant blog posts
• @jfernandez - Fear that blogs are not “professional” and “appropriate for business”
• @seowolf - Waste of time and effort, “we’re a serious company, not some bloggers”, “our customers don’t read blogs”

As an experienced blogger of 6+ years, time management is an issue for everyone, so I don’t think it’s a unique problem to blogging. It’s more a matter of value and expertise. Without a focus and plan, it’s easy for “writer’s block”, a lack of confidence or impatience to kill a blog. On the flip side, developing a process for content creation, feedback to motivate contributors, editorial guidelines, promotion off the blog and measurement can make a blog become and stay successful with a very reasonable amount of effort.

Like any other organized marketing effort, once you identify objectives and develop a content strategy, the task of measuring success keeps the investment in time and resources accountable. A blog started as part of an online public relations effort might focus on how many citations of the blog there are by other blogs and mainstream media web sites. A blog for customers might emphasize comment counts, RSS subscribers and product inquiries. Measurement should tied to goals and you can’t “score” a goal if you don’t know how or what to measure.

Here are some of the most important blog metrics cited in the #blogseo poll:

• @seowolf - The metrics really depend on the campaign. Generally, awareness indicators, the main site’s TrustRank.
• @silvioporcellan - on-site blog: position of articles for good keywords / off-site: links counted in WMT
• @dericloh - It depends on the business goal & objective for utilizing the blog (i.e. reduce customer support cost, voc, etc)
• @beebow - conversions, unique views, rank in SERPs #blogseo
• @mhillaert - number and quality of comments, statistics, ranking as leader in industry, retweets #blogseo
• @matt_mcgowan - conversions/engagement (time on site, subscriptions, comments, purchases, repeat visits), referrals, new visitors
• @ty_walker - When what you tell people to do actually works for them. Readers won’t be readers long if your material isn’t practical.
• @adamsherk - search referral traffic, inbound links, comments, engagement, social media sharing, RSS subscriptions
• @Mel66 - Subscribers, visits, comments, rankings, engagement (quality of comments)
• @ericfransen - Conversions, Engagements, Becoming your Industries Authoritative website #blogseo
• @mjdigital - community – subscriptions, comments, uptake, retweets etc A blog is nothing if no-one reads it + shares/acts on it
• @admrebak - obviously traffic to web page, bottom line, awareness, community growth, company image #blogseo

Companies that have started a blog often fall into comfortable schedules, since that’s the easiest way to manage tasks. Make checklists and processes and get people into predictable routines. However, staying competitive means staying current.

One way to stay current with blog SEO and blogging is to check out TopRank’s BIGLIST of search marketing blogs. What you read on other blogs should certainly be confirmed through your own testing and observations of social and web analytics.

That said, the bloggers from or poll shared a few of their favorite methods of staying current with blog SEO best practices:

• @mjdigital - reading seo blogs, following key SEO’s, analysing Google Analytics, seomoz
• @seowolf - RSS reader, using StumbleUpon topically, newsletters, Twitter and, occasionally, Facebook.
• @matt_mcgowan - events and keeping up on my reading #blogseo
• @michelleberdeal - Constantly listening to webinars & podcasts on this topic, reading blogs, researching, testing, measuring results
• @SEOAware - TONS of reading daily, research, experimenting, monitoring results, watching google, constant education
• @lisabuyer - Constant online reading and conferences
• @JDEbberly - I stay current with SEO practices by reading your (Online Marketing Blog) authoritative blog
• @beebow - read www.toprankblog.com attend conferences, regularly read posts by respected SEO/SEM/SMO bloggers. #sblogseo
• @aimclear - we do rigorous Daily Reading & Training to keep current, big http://bit.ly/6EOWmI
• @mhillaert -  authoritative blogs, networking, etc. Mostly blogs. #blogseo
• @janetdmiller - 1) Read blogs, 2) Attend conferences, 3) Discuss with others (twitter, etc.), 4) Test

Thank you to all the Tweet Poll #blogseo participants who you can easily find and follow on the #BlogSEO chat Twitter list.

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
The Best Blog SEO Survey Ever |
22 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

If you’re “on Twitter”, no doubt you’ve noticed different Tweeple running polls from time to time. We ran our first poll on Twitter over 3 years ago which resulted in the post, “Guide to Twitter as a Tool for Marketing and PR“, offering insights from other marketing and PR professionals experienced with the Twitter web site.

Polls have been popular interactive tools on web sites as far back as Angelfire and Geocities. Polls have been popular widgets on blogs too. Polls on Twitter are effective for a variety of reasons including the real time feedback and mass, yet relevant, reach that can be achieved.

To understand how running polls on Twitter may or may not be right for you, read on for 10 benefits to running Tweet Polls:

1. Find new, smart people to follow. Connections are essential for a productive Twitter experience and that means connecting with the right people. Twitter polls should use a common hash tag (ex: #mypoll) that will tie the Questions and Answers together. In doing so, the followers of your poll participants will be exposed to the Q & A and potentially participate.  Others’ use of the common hashtag will reveal their replies and you may find new and interesting people to follow.

2. Collect great insights and tips from your followers. This is an obvious benefit for any poll. Asking the right questions can evoke some very useful tips and perspectives from your Twitter network that can be useful to you as well as the community at large.  You can get tough questions answered that many others are searching for.

3. Create an opportunity to engage with your Twitter network.  Connections are the Yin and Engagement is the Yang of social participation. They feed on each other. Polls can create an engagement opportunity that allows your network to “show their stuff” on topics of interest, teaching you more about who you’re connected to and vice versa.

4. Create an opportunity for your Twitter network to engage with each other. If you’ve successfully built a network or two or three on the social web, you know it’s not “all about you”.  Helping social network participants meet their needs is a cornerstone of effective social networking. Poll respondents and observers using the common Tweet poll hashtag will benefit from the same exposure to interesting insights and people as you will. Successful polls with this objective quickly spawn discussions on various threads related to the original poll questions.

5. Crowdsource blog, article or conference presentation content that rewards participants. Asking questions on Twitter and then using the answers in a PowerPoint or blog post is an easy way to generate content. Doing so in a way that recognizes those who contributed ideas via Twitter is even more powerful. Let you network know you’ve used their feedback and list them as contributors in the PPT deck or article. Often times, they’ll tweet or re-tweet links back to the content driving even more traffic and attention. People will work for a living, but they’ll die for recognition.

6. Identify potential candidates or consultants for hire or marketing partners based on their answers and interaction. It’s common to have casual connections with others on Twitter. I don’t follow everyone myself, but do follow about 2,000 people. I know just over a third of those people in real life. Poll responses show insight from followers that helps me get to know them better. Some of which, might be people that would be a great addition to our Social SEO Agency or whom we can hire for certain projects.

7. Build goodwill. Recognize certain Twitter contacts by dropping questions just for them to answer, then acknowledge their answers. This tactic isn’t for everyone of course and it’s effectiveness is based on real questions and real answers. Manufactured interactions are most often weak and of little value. If there is a person you’d like to hire, get hired by, or connect with in some other way, building goodwill can reduce barriers and provide an opportunity for dialog.

8. Attract new followers to yourself that notice the sudden use of a certain hashtag and the Q/A. The polls on Twitter that I’ve run have not been particularly effective for growing a quantity of followers, but the quality (as in relevance of connection) has been very good. The hash tag takes the “conversation” outside of the threaded discussion within your own Twitter network. It is essential though, that the text used in the hash tag make sense towards the topic being discussed. Ex: #blogseo or #veganrecipes or #crmsoftware

9. Attract new followers to your Twitter network through the smarts of their participation. As mentioned in benefit #4, you can help your Twitter network gain benefit from interacting with each other through participation on Twitter polls. When one of your connections answers a poll question, their response can catch the attention of other Twitter users following the hash tag. This extension can lead to more followers for the members of your network that participate.

10. Flush out survey questions on Twitter to see which questions to use, or what syntax to use in a more formal survey. If you are in the business of conducting research on a larger scale, sharing informal survey questions on Twitter can be a very useful litmus test for certain questions. Content, syntax, relevance and timeliness can all be tested so that the questions used in the formal survey are better suited for response.

Bonus: Build your own credibility. Show you’re a thinker with succinct, smart and timely questions on a topic your followers care about. If you can consistently show the ability to bring people together in a valuable way, it builds trust, shows leadership and boosts credibility with your network.

What benefits have you realized from running polls on Twitter?

Photo credit, olivepress.

Speaking of polls, please take and share this TopRankBlog Poll that studies the SEO effect of blogs.

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Benefits of Running Polls on Twitter |
17 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

To ring in the New Year, we’ve compiled 5 email marketing tactics that are likely to gain even more ground this year.

1. Integrating Email With Social Media.
This email marketing tactic – which picked up steam throughout 2009 as a way to boost customer reach – is likely to spread like wildfire throughout 2010. Consider the results of an early 2009 study by Exact Target, Ball State University and the Email Marketer’s club: 46% of marketers planned to incorporate the two marketing strategies in ‘09, compared to 13% in ‘08—a whopping 253% increase.

Both BtoB and Consumer Marketers are moving beyond simply including links to social profiles, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, in email messages.  Some additional tactical ideas for integrating the two strategies include:

• Using a blog to highlight content from an e-newsletter once or twice a month, and inviting readers to download the full content via a landing page
• Conducting a timely poll on Twitter, and creating a visual representation of the results, in an e-newsletter
• Leveraging social media channels to offer email subscribers customized options (i.e., receiving a combination of a monthly newsletter, a Twitter feed with promotions and an RSS feed with daily news instead of receiving a generic bi-weekly e-newsletter)

2. Focusing on Engaging Subscribers.
In a December article from Direct magazine, writer Ken Magill reports that ISPs are now looking into using engagement as a factor to determine if emails get to inboxes. That would mean if subscribers aren’t interacting with email messages, the ISP may stop delivering the messages.

Of course, it’s not yet determined what exactly will constitute an “engaged” email subscriber. But potential measures of engagement we would recommend focusing on improving include:

Open Rates: Try increasing open rates by personalizing subject lines and including clear information in the “from” line indicating who is sending the email.

Click Rates: To improve CTR, analyze if the design of the email is guiding subscribers to the CTA. Web heat maps, for example, can be used to distinguish areas of a Web page most frequently scanned by visitors. Also, give subscribers a reason to click, whether for additional content, a product coupon or a complimentary gift.

Number of Forwards: To increase the number of subscribers forwarding an email, make it as easy as possible to do so. Include the ability to forward the message via email, as well as the option to share on social networks.

3. Re-engaging Inactive Subscribers.
Building an email subscriber is one thing; building an active email subscriber base is another. Virtually every email marketing list contains a group of inactive subscribers, those who aren’t opening emails but haven’t yet unsubscribed.

To re-engage these sleepy subscribers, consider these email marketing tactics:

• Offer the inactive group a complimentary white paper or free trial of a product
• Create a sense of urgency with notifications that their subscription will end soon
• Segment the inactive subscribers and cut back on the frequency of email communications
• Send a series of opt-in engagement messages to the inactive group reminding them of the value of the emails

4. Creating Viral Campaigns.
Viral marketing isn’t a new concept. But today, with sites like Twitter, Digg, Flickr and Facebook, email messages have the potential to be shared like never before. Try out these email marketing tactics in 2010 to help extend your message to a maximum number of customers:

Tailor forward links to specific campaigns: In lieu of the typical “forward to a friend” link, customize the link for the individual campaign, content and audience. For instance, if an email message provides tips to help small business owners build credit, create a forward link with the text: “Forward these tips for building credit to a colleague.”

Don’t restrict access to content: In order for a message to spread to a maximum number of prospective customers, make content free and accessible to anyone. Plus, make all login processes as quick and painless as possible.

Experiment with placement of forward links: Avoid subscribers developing a “blindness” to forward links because the links are placed in the same location for every campaign. Instead, try varying placement, size and color of links.

5. A/B Testing and Optimizing Landing Pages.
Thanks to quickly advancing marketing automation technology, email marketers can more easily perfect landing pages to create a relevant experience and maximize conversions. Many email marketing tools now offer built-in A/B page-testing capabilities, enabling marketers to test multiple page variations and measure the performance of each.

In a recent post on Email Marketing Strategy Blog from Silverpop, CEO Bill Nussey suggests that advanced A/B testing and optimization can easily yield a 5% to 10% lift in conversion rates. Plus, because email solutions are automating what used to be a manual process, marketers can spend more time interpreting numbers and focusing on the creative.

There’s no better time than the New Year to set resolutions and make improvements. As we head into 2010, take some time to assess your email marketing tactics. Could any of these 5 ideas be incorporated into your marketing mix to improve results?

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
5 Top Email Marketing Tactics for 2010 |
14 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Out of the 300 or so posts published in 2009, I’ve picked the best of the year based on a mix of my own opinion and metrics such as comments, inbound links, pageviews and social engagement off the blog through social news, bookmarking, Twitter and similar services using PostRank.

Here are TopRank’s Top 10 Social SEO Posts of 2009. Enjoy!

#1. 25 Must Read Social Media Marketing Tips – After interviewing some of the top social media and marketing experts in the industry (Charlene Li, Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, Scott Monty and many others) I decided to take the best questions and answers from each interview and aggregate them into one post. The result is a 360 degree view of how to plan, approach and measure social media.
(40 Comments, 1,617 Tweets, 896 Links, 38,528 Pageviews, PostRank 8.3)

#2. Best and Worst Practices Social Media Marketing – Knowing that social media is increasingly intertwined with search engine optimization, this post compares the dramatic increase in interest in the social side of marketing and offers a mix of best practices and worst practices for readers in need of some social media demystification.
(Comments: 54, Tweets: 379,  Links: 2,624, Pageviews: 20,810, PostRank: 5.0)

#3. 16 Rules For Social Media Optimization Revisited – Three years ago, Rohit Bhargava coined the phrase, “social media optimization” and wrote a post with 5 rules for SMO. I joined 3 other bloggers to expand that list to 16. Fast forward to 2009 and Adam Singer from TopRank revisted those original 16 rules to see which were valid and which were outdated. You may be surprised at the result.
(Comments: 16, Tweets: 486, Links: 249, Pageviews: 8,059, PostRank: 8.8)

#4. Social Media Marketing Tops Digital Marketing Tactics for 2009 – One of the useful applications of growing a blog community is the opportunity to tap into their opinions and provide insight into industry trends. This poll revealed that 6 of the top digital marketing tactics readers would emphasize were social media. SEO ranked number 3.
(Comments: 32, Tweets: 227, Links: 310, Pageviews: 10,867, PostRank: 5.0)

#5. Social Media and SEO: 5 Essential Steps to Success (Published on Mashable) – The intersection of search engine optimization and social media is often one sided. Social media practitioners see the relationship and community building benefits while many SEOs focus on promotion and link building benefits. This guest post on Mashable offers specific tips and examples of how to incorporate the best of both worlds: Social SEO.
(Comments: 56, Tweets: 784, Links: 1,094, Pageviews: , PostRank: 6.2)

#6. 50 Ways to FAIL On Twitter – This is pure and simple, linkbait. We fall more on the optimistic side of our editorial and content strategy, but I crowdsourced what NOT to do on Twitter via @leeodden and received some very strong opinions. Read this post as an optimist and reverse the tips and you have 50 things your SHOULD do to be more successful using Twitter.
(Comments: 53, Tweets: 698, Links: 381, Pageviews: 9,233, PostRank: 10.0)

#7. 10 Proven Applications For Social Media – With millions of self professed “social media experts” regurgitating a handful of original ideas, a vacuum exists for practical examples of what social media can mean to advance business goals. TopRank’s Adam Singer delivers in this post that includes end benefits ranging from PR to SEO to, well, I’ll let you read the post to find out.
(Comments: 22, Tweets: 839, Links: 214, Pageviews: 11,664, PostRank: 8.2)

#8. 5 Near Free Social Media Monitoring Tools – Effective social media and social SEO efforts begin and end (actually there is no “end” in social but you get the idea) with social media monitoring. Such tools can be difficult for marketing dollars strapped organizations to justify, so TopRank’ Michelle Bowles delivered with this review of 5 free and low cost tools. The stats on this post are amazing considering it ranks top ten for the year and was just published 2 weeks ago!
(Comments: 37, Tweets: 633, Links: 431, Pageviews: 4,246, PostRank: 9.1)

#9. 6 Social Search Engines to Start 2009 - What better way to start 2009 than to compare the top social search engines? At the time, there was no “real time search” or deals between Google and Bing with Twitter or Facebook. Several of the social media search engines reviewed in this post have expanded a great deal and some have withered away into notgoingtohappen land.
(Comments: 38, Tweets: 27, Links: 677, Pageviews: 14,563, PostRank: 8.9)

#10. Social Media Marketing Basics: Facebook & Blog Promotion – “Build it and they will come” doesn’t work with SEO and it certainly isn’t effective with marketing on the social web. Research, planning strategy and building a social presence is important. But without content distribution channels and promotion, it can take a very long time to build a community or reach an effective level of momentum. This post gives specific advice for two of the most popular social applications in use.
(Comments 33, Tweets: 199, Links: 137, Pageviews: 4,680, PostRank: 8.5)

What were your favorite Social SEO blog posts in 2009? What social web and search engine optimization topics would you like to see more of in 2010?

View all our posts about SEO or Social Media here.

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. |
Top 10 Social SEO Posts of 2009 |
23 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Art of SEO (Theory in Practice) by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin and Jessie C. Stricchiola.

.

Published by O’Reilly, this phone book sized bundle of SEO wisdom is chock-full of advice for marketers that want to leverage search engine optimization as a marketing channel. Congratulations on winning our Reader Poll!

Here are several reviews of Art of SEO to consider or you can take up O’Reilly’s offer to write one yourself.

Runners up for Best SEO book of 2009 were:

• Search Engine Optimization: Your Visual Blueprint for Effective Internet Marketing – Kristopher B. Jones (Published by Wiley)
• Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day – Jennifer Grappone & Gradiva Couzin (Published by Wiley)

You can see all 14 books about SEO along with the voting distribution and non-affiliate links (in case that matters) to their pages on Amazon.com on the Best SEO Books Reader Poll.

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. |
Art of SEO: Best Search Engine Optimization Book in 2009 |
11 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

After a much deserved blogging vacation last week, I thought I’d start this final week of 2009 with wishes of appreciation for the readers of TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog and the fantastic team of writers we have. It was 6 years ago today, that TopRank started an agency blog as a way to publicly save and comment on industry news.

We’ve been through and observed many, many changes in the internet marketing industry over the past 6 years. Of course, Online Marketing Blog isn’t the only internet and SEO focused blog celebrating a 6 year birthday this year. There are several others listed here including a few that are still very active: Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Journal and SEO Book.

The most popular content in 2009 (by page views and unique visitors) continued to be resources such as the BIGLIST of Search Marketing Blogs (watch for a HUGE upgrade in 2010) as well as the managed list of Blog and RSS Directories, the RSS Button and Social Bookmarking tools created by Thomas McMahon, tips articles “25 Must Read Social Media Marketing Tips” and “25 Tips For Marketing Your Blog“.

One of the biggest changes for Online Marketing Blog in 2009 has been the addition of Adam Singer and Michelle Bowles as regular contributors. Adam and Michelle’s posts earn hundreds of ReTweets on average as well as numerous comments, links and off site citations by influential industry blogs and online publications.

Many companies have shifted attention towards other social media channels and some have postulated the death of blogging due to the increasing popularity of Twitter and Facebook. The reality is, blogs are a tool like any other digital asset and will remain as effective as ever according to their usefulness and ability to meet the needs of customers.

As the owner and editor, I admit a great degree of bias, but I’d wager that TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog is one of the most successful agency blogs published.  According to MajesticSEO we’ve attracted over 1,000,000 links from other web sites.  We’re mentioned on top industry web sites and major news web sites on a regular basis.

From a PR perspective, Online Marketing Blog generates 20+ unsolicited citations each month from influential industry blogs and publications. We’ve estimated those placements and industry coverage to be equal to about a $10,000 per month PR agency retainer. Plus, there’s no additional content creation or interviews necessary outside of what we’re already doing.  OMB also generates daily or weekly advertising requests, new consulting project requests, candidate inquiries and speaking opportunities.

The great work by TopRank’s blogging team has been recognized through inclusion in numerous “top” lists including:

• #1 Content Marketing Blog Junta42
• Top 10 marketing blog by Advertising Age
• #1 Small Business Blog by Technorati

An effective agency blog does not work in a vacuum though. By serving as a destination for our participation in other social channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Forums and other niche social sites, this blog provides a useful resource for the TopRank community of readers, fans, prospects and clients.

I sincerely appreciate the comments that our readers leave, the links that other blogs post to our articles and the opportunity to be a media sponsor for major Search Marketing Conferences like Search Engine Strategies and WebmasterWorld Pubcon. The pre-show posts, interviews and promotions as well as the live blogging during those conferences has produced a tremendous amount of mutually beneficial content and exposure.

Our liveblogging efforts wouldn’t be as successful without TopRank team members like Jolina Pettice attending conferences and writing, taking photos and networking with other attendees.  Even though we’re not a news blog, there have been over 2,500 posts published. Here’s a breakdown of posts by contributor over the past 4 years we’ve been running WordPress (out of the 6 we’ve been publishing):

• Julie Brue – 3
• Michelle Bowles- 17
• Adam Singer- 27
• Mike Yanke- 31
• Jolina Pettice- 61
• Thomas McMahon- 115
• Lee Odden- 1916

The blog itself wouldn’t run as smoothly without the efforts of Thomas McMahon, who keeps the front end and the back end of Online Marketing Blog running smoothly.  Our dedicated server hosting is provided by VISI, a first rate internet services and web hosting company based in Minneapolis. We’ve had flawless hosting service from them for over 3 years and highly recommend them for high demand and availability blogs and web sites.

Online Marketing Blog in 2010:

For the upcoming year we have a number of improvements planned to make Online Marketing Blog even more useful for readers and our partners. Some we cannot discuss just yet, but a few upcoming changes include:

• All new BIGLIST – We’ve been developing a categorized, ranked list of the BIGLIST that will also offer additional information on each blog as well as regular content updates, sorting features and several new aggregation options.
• More active participation off the blog – We’ve recently added a Online Marketing Blog Facebook Fan page that was originally started in 2007 but will now provide Online Marketing Blog readers a venue for continuing conversations from the blog as well as an opportunity for updates. The TopRank Twitter account has over 3,000 followers and will continue to aggregate TopRank’s content publishing and bookmarking of useful resources on the web. LinkedIn is another area we’ll grow along with niche forum and social network participation.
• All new Online Marketing Blog design – We’ve been closely monitoring what our readers like on AND off the blog and will be updating both design and front end functionality to make it easier to find and interact with the content that interests you most.
• Limited Advertising Opportunities - In 2010 TopRank will be offering selective advertising and co-promotion opportunities that will be content based both on the site and in the RSS feed.  In the 6 years we’ve been blogging, TopRank has never taken on advertisers and the only ad displays we’ve ever had have been for media partners or for speaking events.  As one of the most popular marketing blogs on the internet, TopRankBlog provides a very high standard for quality exposure to an audience of client side and agency internet marketers. More details to come with the launch of the new design.

We have an editorial calendar of topics and content objectives as part of our own content strategy and would also like to know what enhancements our readers would like to see? What kinds of posts do you find most useful? Liveblogging, articles, interviews, tips, how to’s? What topics are of most interest? SEO, Social Media, Online PR, PPC, Email, Mobile, Local, Industry Specific?

Thank you again to our readers and to the TopRank blogging team for rounding out a fantastic year!

            Subscribe to this Feed

© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. |
Happy Holidays & Happy 6th Birthday TopRankBlog |
17 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com