Online Marketing Blog

We’ve made the case for integrating media relations, SEO and social media into a digital PR program as well as covering some of the basics. Now we can drill a bit deeper into blogger relations and social media monitoring.

Practical Examples of Involving SEO Expertise with Media & Blogger Relations, Social Media Monitoring

The advent of digital PR and the technology tools that serve as compliments means changes in the way agencies provide client consulting and practice management. In the case of TopRank, we’re running both a internet marketing agency and a public relations practice, so we’ve always counseled our clients on the use of targeted keywords during interviews and in communications with the media as well as with content published to the web. In a push and pull PR strategy, keywords are used to optimize content and digital assets to enable the media to pull themselves to a client’s news.

Yesterday we talked about the opportunity for combining search engine optimization, social media and digital public relations. Today’s entry will discuss how to start going about it.

Leveraging Low and High Tech for Social Media Relations

“Fuzzy”. That’s how I would describe most companies’ thinking on social media, SEO and PR. How can marketers and companies start incorporating the new rules of the social web into a digital PR effort?

The answer to that question starts with understanding the social web and the technology that connects audiences. Forrester often refers to this social connectivity as “social computing”. The socialized web provides media relations practitioners and search marketers with an array of tools to make it easier for journalists and the media to cover their clients’ news, promote content and attract links. They key is knowing which tools are most appropriate and effective and which are simply “shiny new objects”.

What exactly, does Web 2.0, social media and even SEO have to do with public relations? Everything!

You’d be hard pressed to find any modern public relations agency practice that isn’t researching or already implementing a digital PR strategy including search engine optimization, blogging/blogger relations and social media. The winds of change are here and many Public Relations practitioners are scrambling to adjust to the opportunities presented by shifts in both consumer and journalist behavior online.

Look no further than popular Public and Media Relations conferences like PRSA International or some of the Bulldog Reporter events to see exactly how the PR industry is making a concerted effort to educate itself on how to adjust to new opportunities with Web 2.0., SEO and social media.

Content is King and links are Queen. Together with a nice dose of marketing they make a nice little kingdom. But what if you have trouble generating new content on a regular basis? How can resource strapped bloggers and busy web site owners leverage what they’re already doing for the benefit of their online audiences and better search engine visibility?

The answer to those questions lies in an analysis of the content creation processes within the overall organization. Companies like TopRank call that process consulting but in the meantime, here are 5 tips for those active in an industry to re-purpose content for the web.

Welcome back to the BIGLIST Update of SEO, SEM and Social Media Marketing Blogs. This week’s blog reviews include ecommerce, social media and PR as well as agency insights on industry trends. Enjoy!

eCommerce Optimization Blog – This ecommerce blog by eCopt (aka Matt Franklin) advises you’ll sell more online if you read the many tutorials, how to’s and tips on search optimization, usability and marketing.

Liberate Media Blog – This UK based agency blog with Andy Merchant, Tim Greenhalgh and founders Lloyd Gofton and Wendy McAuliffe covers emerging trends, industry observations, social media and digital PR topics.

Honorable Mention:

evilgreenmonkey – Rob Kerry is a British SEO consultant and editor on Sphinn, two things which must keep him terribly busy because we haven’t seen a blog post since July, something we’d love to see rectified.

At marketing conferences readers of Online Marketing Blog mention to me frequently about the photo roundup posts we do as favorites. We certainly like to make those posts and since readers like to see them, here is a collection of favorite candids taken during SES San Jose.

Kevin Ryan, Misty Locke, Kevin Newcomb

Danny Sullivan, Matt Cutts, Kirsten Mangers

Shoe (SEO sucks) money, Brent Csutoras

Jill Whalen, Patricia Hursh, Christine Churchill

Matt Cutts, Michael Gray

John Diorio, Bryan Eisenberg

Dave Temple, Greg Jarboe, Andy Beal

Jessica Cameron-Ruud, Ashley Bruce
Thomas McMahon, Dana Larson

Todd Friesen, Brett Crosby

Chris Boggs, Rebecca Lieb

Roger Akers, Mike McDonald

Patrick Sexton, Lisa Barone

What a great conference for SES at San Jose and the many new people to the event in attendance. Below are the TopRank team blog posts for the final day. Another big thank you goes to (L to R) Jessica, Ashley, Thomas and Dana for a great job covering sessions. If you saw these happy faces at the conference, be sure to comment and say hello.  Thanks to SES too, for having us.

• Google Dance 2008 Photos – TopRank Team
• Blog SEO Tips from SES San Jose – Lee
• Internet Marketing Conference Tips: Michael Brito Intel – Lee
• Social Media Analysis and Tracking – Jessica
• Internet Marketing Conference Tips: Heather Lloyd-Martin DMA SEMC – Lee
• Black Hat vs White Hat Playing Dirty with SEO – Ashley

There were so many good photos taken at this year’s Google Dance that we decided to show a collage here with a link to the full set on TopRank’s SES San Jose Google Dance photos on Flickr.

A big thank you goes to the hard working TopRank blogging team at SES putting out an amazing number of posts and photos each day.

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Blogs have been abuzz for at least 4 years in the tech space and in the past 2-3 years in the business marketing world. Like many new marketing/communication channels, there continues to be a need to demystify shiny new objects and what they mean for businesses. Blogs and search engine optimization are no different.

One point I would make is that companies are wasting their long term time when setting up blogs purely for SEO purposes. It’s short term thinking and over time, results in difficulties with keeping momentum, new ideas and content. How do I know? Been there and done that, many times.

It’s far more realistic to implement blogs for specific purposes such as product communications, online newsroom, thought leader/strategy, customer support/communications, news, branding, advice/tips, aggregation of content in specific topics and many more. Regardless of the purpose, each blog implementation and ongoing management should have an intentional SEO effort.

Wow, what a conference! Search Engine Strategies is near it’s end and what better way to wrap up our series on internet marketing conference tips than with the following super-tips from super smart Michael Brito, Social Media Program Manager at Intel.

Michael worked with HP then moved on to Yahoo and is now with Intel practicing his adept social media stylings. Be sure to check out Britopian and the social media practitioner blog, Conversations Matter, for more of his insights.

Not all marketing conferences are created equal and from a content perspective, some are much better than others. Last month I attended SMX Social in Long Beach, California; and the content seemed to be more aligned with SEO than Social Media. Nonetheless, there were plenty of really good takeaways from the conference, but the true value for me was networking and meeting others who work in the same space as I do. Here are some other things to consider to prepare for conferences:

Social Search can be used to drive traffic, conversions, and increase ROI by monitoring conversations happening online. This panel is a first for SES with Marshall Sponder, Senior Web Analyst for Monster.com as the Moderator.

Industry leaders Todd Parsons, Co-founder and CPO of Buzz Logic, Rob Key, CEO of Converseon, Edmund Won, Vice President of Strategy for iCrossing along with Breanna Wigle, CRM manager for Military Advantage share insight into monitoring the conversation and best practices to track success.

Marshall kicked off the session making the case for Google to start measuring and reporting user trends in social media.

Categorizing referring traffic from social media is the first step in attributing success. Is your traffic coming from blogs, social network sites, message forums, bookmarking sites, micro media sites and photo sharing sites?

SES San Jose week is nearly over one might say we’ve saved some of the best internet marketing conference tips for last with the ever enthusiastic and insightful Heather Lloyd-Martin.

Heather is Chair, DMA’s Search Engine Marketing Council and President of SuccessWorks. She also blogs about copywriting at SEO Copywriting.

Attend all the “search marketing site labs” or “search marketing clinics” you can find. During a site lab, a panel of experts review Web sites on the fly and discuss how to improve them for search positioning and conversions.

Here’s why they are so cool: