Online Marketing Blog

If you flip through your TV channel guide, it’s hard not to notice the number of contest-based shows. Whether people are competing to be the next music icon, lose weight or play games using household products the common theme is competition and a chance to win big.

TV producers are smart and continue to find success from audiences who like to compete and love to win.

This same idea can be leveraged in online marketing to get a community excited, find new audiences and keep your brand top of mind.

At the PRSA Digital Impact Conference Sandra Fathi, president and founder of Affect and Ben Pickering, CEO of Strutta guided the audience through the process to create a winning online contest.

This week at the PRSA Digital Impact Conference Vanessa DiMauro, CEO of Leader Networks talked to attendees about the benefits of online communities as part of a B2B social media strategy.

According to DiMauro, nearly 2/3 of organizations surveyed are engaged in private, online communities hosted by companies that sell them computer hardware, software or services.

The average visit in an online B2B community is 10 minutes, with 1 visit every 5-7 days.

What B2B organization wouldn’t want roughly 40 minutes of time per month with members to help solve problems, learn how they are using tools and what topics they are most interested in?

Building an online community gives organizations an opportunity to strategically connect with its audience in meaningful and sometimes deeper ways through private interactions.

Can BFF’s lead to more effective marketing?

That’s the topic of discussion for the PRSA Digital Impact Conference opening keynote featuring Caryn Marooney, vice president of technology communications for Facebook.

Before going to Facebook, Caryn explained that she ran an agency, however  she talks about having felt like a mechanical bunny always chasing something and not catching it.

Why? Everything is constantly changing. And we as PR and Marketing Pros have to be ok with that. What’s remains constant is what remains important.

3 important things we need to remember:

1. What audiences are we trying to reach
2. What are our goals
3. What tools can we use to reach our goals

As we think about audience, that of Facebook is expansive and exponential which is why it can be so effective in terms of online marketing.

Photo Credit: @azeckman via Instagram

The word “optimize” has been a staple concept for SEO professionals and online marketers for many years. While SEO is one of the most effective online marketing tactics for customer acquisition, there’s a lot of misinformation and outdated opinions about the role of optimization with internet marketing.

Our CEO at TopRank Online Marketing, Lee Odden, is helping to change the way marketers think about and implement optimization as a holistic approach to content marketing online.

At a Minnesota American Marketing Association (MNAMA) event in Minneapolis last night, he shared that the premise of optimization – and sometimes SEO in general - can be overly keyword-driven and not entirely focused on customer experiences or business outcomes.

The growing Global Economy has significantly increased the number of companies seeking search marketing strategies to connect with target audiences all over the world. Many clients we work with at TopRank Online Marketing are either already global organizations or aspiring to deliver products and services in different countries. As a result, we routinely field questions as clients begin their journey into International Search.

Many companies don’t know where to start with International SEO, so here are 5 basic and tactical SEO considerations for companies looking at expanding into International Search:

1. Domain Name
3 common domain setups include Country-specific, Subdomain and Subfolder.

Whenever possible, a country-specific domain name is preferred. i.e. companyname.co.uk

Pros
The country-specific domain is a strong signal to the search engine and may provide better visibility for country-specific searches.

On a sunny, warm day in Minneapolis, marketers gathered near one of the city’s best attractions – LakeCalhoun – to learn about “Search and the Connected Consumer”, a view of how people retrieve information online and what that means for the future online and search engine marketing.

Hosted by MIMA, the event featured Mike Grehan, Global VP Content, Search Engine Watch, ClickZ & Search Engine Strategies.

Mike started by educating the audience on the history of the World Wide Web and the Internet (note: they are not one in the same).

The SES New York 2011 conference wrapped up last week on the heels of one of the biggest Google updates in recent years.

And although there was enough Panda talk to make a passerby think we might all be zookeepers, there were other themes running through the conference as well including content, paid strategies and tools, tools, tools.

Here’s a quick recap:

Panda: The Aftermath, as it was called essentially recapped what TopRank and other content advocates have been saying along.

Create unique, quality content that is written first for the target audience and second for the search engines. It’s those who have been living dangerously – or maybe just naively – creating what’s now referred to as shallow content who likely got hit the worst.

Content, Content, Content.

After attending search conferences for a few years now, it seems only right that content is getting some time in the spotlight. This week at Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York, I had the great pleasure of presenting on the topic of content marketing.

For so long talk has been about how to optimize and then how to promote – but we’re circling back around to meat and potatoes of online marketing which is the content.

Without it, what are we optimizing and promoting? Oh no, please don’t say it’s your static product pages… Well, if it is (and we’ve all been there), it is most definitely time to look at content marketing and what it can do to take your brand to new levels of customer engagement and acquisition.

This post is one of a series of liveblogs from the 2010 MIMA Summit.

Web Analytics is an excellent way to ensure your marketing efforts are not in vain. However, looking at Analytics without understanding user behavior may leave you treading water instead of creating a wake your competitors will fear.

One way to take your methods of measurement to the next level is to combine Analytics with User Experience (UX) information. What you stand to gain can be great whether you dip a toe or cannon ball into blended analytic waters.

To make sure you don’t sink, first understand that Analytics will tell you what’s happening on the site. User Experience Research then helps you understand why it’s happening by gaining insight into the behaviors and motivation of visitors.

If you have ever wanted to be a fly on the wall listening to experts talk about the convergence of PR and Social Media, here’s your chance.  PRSA brought together the following people to lend their thoughts about the PR (R)evolution:

Moderator: Kami Watson from My PR Pro and Panelists: Deirdre Breakenridge from PFS Marketwyse, Ariel Hyatt of Ariel Publicity & CyberPR, Joseph Jaffe from Crayon and Brian Solis from FutureWorks PR. Here is the conversation as it unfolded, marked with Twitter handles.

What’s next in the realm of online and how will it impact PR?

@dbreakenridge – Google Wave is next for launching information and collaborating. As discussed in a panel yesterday 2008/2009 was the year of checking off a list of social media tools. Facebook – check. YouTube- check. Next, we need to evolve, connect the networks, improve the experience and understand real-time metrics. In addition, the consumer experience will be upgraded to reflect real-time pricing, etc.

Today at the PRSA 09 conference, it was a packed room for TopRank CEO (and author of Online Marketing Blog) Lee Odden who gave a presentation on SEO for Public Relations.

He started by explaining why SEO is/should be important to PR Professionals.

In a 2008 Journalists Use of Search Survey by TopRank, we discovered that 91% of journalists use standard search to fulfill a component of their job whether researching a story or locating a subject matter expert.

With journalists writing for more channels and with less resources making your content visible within search is critical.

Here are Odden’s 10 SEO Tips:

The first day of the 2009 PRSA International Conference in San Diego kicked off general sessions today.

One session I’ve really been looking forward to was the one on social media measurement featuring Katie Paine of KDPaine & Partners. She started the audience off with some numbers, that we all might find useful:

• 48% of respondents to a PRWeek study said that they were moving money from advertising to social media – only 18% said they were taking money from PR
• 78% of people trust peer recommendations, 14% trust advertising
• 91% of Inc 500 companies are using social media
• 38% aren’t monitoring their brand, product or reputation in social media

Next, the audience had to grapple with the idea (read truth) that it’s the end of measurement as we know it. Here are ten supporting facts: