Online Marketing Blog

[Note from Lee: While I fervently pursue the home stretch of writing my own book "Optimize", I've asked a few friends to share their thoughts on topics such as Content Marketing, SEO and Social Media. This post comes from Rebecca Lieb, who I've known since her days at ClickZ, then Econsultancy and now she is digital advertising and media analyst at the Altimeter Group. Her new book, Content Marketing: How to Think Like a Publisher to Market Online and in Social Media comes out this week.]

Content workflow is the point at which content marketing gets tactical. It’s nuts-and-bolts process: content calendars, creation, approvals, style guides, templates, and tools.

Get this part right and you’ll be ready to run a newsroom.

[Note from Lee: TopRank Marketing has been working with PRWeb for nearly 5 years and their Director of Public Relations, Frank Strong (Now serving in Egypt  - stay safe!), couldn't say enough good things when they hired a new Social Media Community Manager, Stacey Acevero: Smart, passionate about the industry, highly motivated, sense of humor and a true fan of the brand, Stacey has embraced her role as the social media voice of PRWeb in many ways, from blogging to running #PRWebChat.

Many businesses are investing in their social media expertise by adding Social Media Strategist and Community Manager positions. To get an idea of what skills companies should look for,  I asked Stacey to share her first-hand insights with our readers.]

The One Job Your Company Really Needs

Note from Lee: I’ve known Michael Brito for about 5 years (he hired my agency TopRank Marketing when he was at HP) and I’ve followed his moves around Silicon Valley from Yahoo to Intel to his current role as SVP, Social Business Planning, Edelman Digital. Michael’s new book on Social Business (Included in our list of Optimized Online Marketing Books) is something I’ve been looking forward to and I asked if he’d share some tactical insights with our community. This post focuses on content and social media for companies operating globally.

Creating a social media content plan is easy if you own the customer experience in one country (well, not that easy). It’s a whole different story if that level of responsibility included countries in Latin America, Europe or Asia. When expanding into global markets, strictly from a content perspective, there are 3 important things to consider — the establishment of governance policy, a content library and community management.

Note from Lee: When I heard from Aaron Strout that he and Mike Schneider were writing a book, Location-Based Marketing for Dummies, I knew it would be a great resource. We often do book reviews here on Online Marketing Blog but Aaron and I decided on this format instead, focusing on specific tips and tactics you can use today.

Writing a book takes a lot of work, but with the work is done, it’s satisfying to look back and read all the content that got created. One downside to writing a physical book, however, is trapping all that content between two covers, especially for anyone that decides not to read the book. Rather than let that happen, we are unlocking 17 of the best tips from Location-Based Marketing from Dummies.

As a long time and trusted marketing agency, TopRank Online Marketing gets to work with some amazing B2B technology and SaaS companies. One of those companies is StrongMail.  Today Kristin Hersant, VP of Corporate Marketing joins an esteemed group of marketers and thought leaders ranging from Guy Kawasaki to David Meerman Scott interviewed here at Online Marketing Blog.

Kristin is a firecracker of smarts and energy towards online marketing. Her company StrongMail is the leader in an array of email marketing and social media marketing services. Read on to learn more about the future of Email Marketing and its intersection with Social Media:

Please share a bit about your marketing background and StrongMail. What types of companies do you serve?

Our digital marketing agency, TopRank Marketing, works with some very smart client marketers who have invaluable insights and perspectives. I’m happy to share the following sage advice from Jon Miller, VP Marketing and co-founder of Marketo, and author of Modern B2B Marketing blog on something important to all marketers: keeping the CEO on track with your marketing budget for next year.

Now is the time when marketing executives everywhere are going through the annual dance of building and then cutting their marketing budgets for the year.  The process typically looks like this:

1. The CEO asks each department to come up with a proposed budget for the next year
2. The CMO pulls together a budget based on his or her best calculation of what is actually needed to achieve next year’s goals

Note from Lee: This guest post comes to us from Andy Beal, CEO of social media monitoring tool Trackur and coauthor of Radically Transparent: Monitoring & Managing Reputations Online. Andy and I have known each other for many years and in fact, Andy was the first “famous” SEO blogger I had the opportunity to meet in person. He was gracious, helpful and very smart then and continues those traits today. He literally wrote the book on Online Reputation Management and I appreciate his willingness to share practical insights into the world of social media monitoring.

Social media monitoring. Reputation monitoring. Buzz monitoring. Call it what you want, but it’s all the rage. All the cool kids are doing it! However, friends don’t let friends monitor social media without first teaching them the six critical steps that most companies overlook.

Note from Lee: This guest post comes to us from Frank Strong, the director of Public Relations at Vocus & PRWeb.

When The Karate Kid was released in 1984, social media had yet to be conceived.  Even so, we can still learn a great deal from the way a character like Mr. Miyagi simplified what might otherwise be considered complex challenges.   He was a master, a student, a mentor and a friend – all characteristics that might have made Miyagi successful in social media.  To that end, I offer seven Miyagi insights we can apply to social media:

We’re starting this Spring Break week off with a very rare guest post from TopRank Online Marketing client, Jiyan Wei. Jiyan is Director of Product Management at Vocus, Inc. where he drives product platform strategy and roadmap execution for PRWeb. I’ve presented on panels with Jiyan several times at search marketing conferences, talking about the virtues of search, social media and public relations, finding him to be a very strategic and smart marketer. We’ll be co-presenting at the upcoming MarketingProfs B2B Forum in May on Content Optimization and Marketing.

In this post, Jiyan discusses the progression and importance of news content in blended search:

Once upon a time, Page 1 had a special meaning for PR practitioners and business owners alike.

TopRank is fortunate to have an excellent team of consultants, many of whom contribute here at Online Marketing Blog.  It is therefore, a rare occasion that we invite guest posts. The globalization of search and to follow, search marketing, brings a tremendous need for quality information and best practices.  Search Engine Optimization for North American English can be a challenge on it’s own, but what about SEO for 5 languages and 12 countries? Or 30?

That’s why I’ve invited Andy Atkins-Krüger, CEO of UK based WebCertain, a specialist agency in multilingual search marketing to provide a list of the most common challenges companies face when embarking on international SEO efforts. Avoiding the big mistakes can save companies time, money and embarrassment.

[Editor's note: We're excited to share this next guest post from David Alston of Radian6. A fast emerging leader in the field of social media measurement Radian6 is a service TopRank uses to  provides social media monitoring to clients. Radian6 serves hundreds of leading PR firms, ad agencies and brand marketers.]

David is VP Marketing at Radian6 in New Brunswick, Canada with previous experience at several tech startups in the interactive advertising and the video over IP space. Most recently, he was partner and VP of Marketing at PR firm, Revolution Strategy. His blog is TweetPR.

Editor’s note: On occasion we reach out to people in the search marketing industry we’ve come to know and respect with a request to contribute. Today’s contribution comes from Microsoft’s adCenter Community Manager – Europe, Mel Carson. Mel’s job is to support, educate & evangelize through the adCenter Blog, industry forums, and to speak about adCenter at conferences such as SMX, SES, Pubcon and others. Mel writes his own blog at DigiTales & Other Stories.

This post tells a personal tale of getting involved with Microsoft at the beginning of adCenter’s deployment to the paid search marketing world along with some good examples of unique adCenter features and why Mel thinks it’s great working for Microsoft.