Online Marketing Blog

Google Webmaster Tools is a free service that provides a wealth of information directly from Google. Once you have verified a site with Google, they’ll give you access to all sorts of information.

Here are just a few features of Google Webmaster Tools:

1. Errors
Google Webmaster Tools will show all sorts of errors with a site. Not only does it show broken links on the site, but also links that are driving traffic to the site for which there is no valid page. Google even tells you pages it knows about but has been restricted from crawling. That’s good to know incase someone accidently blocks to much.

Google Webmaster Tools Error Report

Review of the 2009 Social Media Marketing & PR Benchmark Guide from Marketingsherpa

A new report on social media has been released from Marketingsherpa with Senior Analyst, Sergio Balegno, as lead author.  Over 1,800 marketing and PR professionals responded to the survey resulting in one of the most complete, data supported guides on social media published to date.

There are numerous books, seminars and “experts” touting social media advice for marketing and PR professionals. Much of that advice is based on experience and even more is based on wishful thinking. This report takes a structured approach to data collection and analysis offering readers the advantage of understanding what works and what doesn’t when it comes to social media marketing and PR.

For years, the only way to get a good understanding of how many people are reading and interacting with your blog feed was to run your feed though FeedBurner.  Now, FeedBlitz has a service to compete.

FeedBlitz RSS claims to offer better branding, more social media integration by integrating Twitter and other social networks, a mobile optimized version of your feed, better SEO, filtering, and additional feed stats.  I was hoping for some screenshots on FeedBlitz’s site, but they don’t currently offer any.

Unlike FeedBurner that is free, FeedBlitz RSS is paid.  The price minimum is $1.49 per month and goes up from there based on the number unique active email subscribers in your account.  This is where it gets a little confusing.

Katie Delahaye Paine is a renowned expert on public relations and social media measurement.   She runs an award winning PR Measurement consultancy KDPaine & Partners, blogs, Tweets, speaks at numerous conferences and writes both a newsletter and contributes a column to PR News and other PR industry publications. 

Measurement is inherently core to many forms of digital marketing but has been a bit more challenging in the PR and social media space. Katie is a measurement pioneer who has demystified and provided much needed innovation to the world of measuring public relations and the social web.

 This interview with Katie covers quality vs quantity measurement, building a business case for measurement investment in a down economy and she also answers a few questions posed by @leeodden followers on Twitter.

Anyone actively involved (in a productive way) with social media as a marketing, PR or customer service communications channel started somewhere. Since it’s a social activity, that means a high degree of influence from others already mastering the channel. It’s no mystery that one way to quickly gain knowledge about and adapt to something new is to find, listen to and engage those that are already there – or at least further along than you are.

It’s not always a linear thing though. There are plenty of directions to go in the social media space and learning from others via participation and collaboration is where the real productivity in acquiring knowledge comes from. Different people focus their attentions, efforts and expertise in different areas and therefore, offer a different set of influences. A herd mentality towards social media expertise does not inspire innovation.