Online Marketing Blog

Our CEO at TopRank Online Marketing, Lee Odden (@leeodden), shared his War of Words: Myth-Busting Social, Content Marketing and SEO yesterday at NMX Las Vegas.

The premise of Lee’s presentation was actually crowdsourced; the title War of Words comes from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, which was turned into a radio program by Orson Wells and spawned a mass fear that Mars aliens were on their way to take over Earth. There is much misinformation in content marketing, social media and SEO that the hype spreads much like the alien myths of days gone by, says Lee.

We live in a world where shopping, dating, watching new films and networking can all be done online.  In fact, these actions (and many more) have become a part of our everyday life.  Many of us may experience buyers remorse for purchasing something online that wasn’t within budget, a desire to post a bad review after a terrible movie, or have a sense of regret after a bad date.

When it comes to networking for personal and more importantly business use, there are many benefits to be had and pitfalls to be avoided.  If you are able to effectively engage your online community you can experience many advantages including:

• An introduction to someone such as a thought leader you might not otherwise have access to.

The team at TopRank Online Marketing would like to wish our online community a very merry holiday season.  I for one get very nostalgic around the holidays and count down the days (starting in October) until I get to gather with family and friends to share a meal and make new memories.

For many families, part of the holiday tradition includes singing carols and watching Christmas movies from their childhood.  There is one song in particular that gets stuck in my head every holiday season is The Twelve Days of Christmas.  For a fun spin on a classic we bring you some of our favorite tips for the 12 Days of Social Media, Content Marketing & SEO.

On the __ day of Christmas my true love gave to me…

Marketing trends come and go, but what other “shiny object” topic has caused more debate than social media?

On the one hand, recent studies cited by eMarketer show that two thirds of the U.S. internet population will belong to a social network by 2013. On the other hand, a study by Harvard Business Review showed that 29% of the 2,100 organizations surveyed felt it was difficult to see the benefit of social media for their business purposes.

It’s true that with something as large, fast changing and ubiquitous as the social web there will be zealots and dissenters as well as the comfortably numb. The fact that opportunists make unsubstantiated claims as self-anointed social media experts doesn’t help matters when it comes to understanding social fact from fiction.

As consumers we make a few large priced purchases that we remember and many small cost items here and there.  For the larger items we expect personalized care and service, whereas the smaller purchases may be out of our mind just as quickly as we’ve purchased them.

There is another category and those are the purchases that we make each month, without even thinking about it.  Subscription based services are great, you get your service when you want it, your account is auto charged each month, it’s pretty awesome.  Until of course it stops working.

You may have had the same experience as I have where you call, furious that your cable or Internet stopped working and reach an automated system, or are put on hold for what feels like hours.  Fortunately, social media has provided an opportunity for these seemingly “unreachable” companies to help customers in need.

When you work in the digital world, there are insightful, smart and good people you “meet” online that you really look forward to meeting in real life.  Ekaterina Walter is one of those people who I finally met at a BlogWorld conference 4 years ago.

Since then “E” has really made her mark as a social innovator at Intel. When I presented at Intel’s first global social media conference a few years ago,  Ekaterina had everyone leaning forward and focused on her approach to enterprise social media. She’s a force to be reckoned with for sure. “E” has continued her advancement and sharing by becoming an author: “Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook’s Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Picture this: your company has exciting news to share with customers, shareholders, suppliers and your target market. You’re launching a new product this week and it will be debuted at a popular industry event, sure to be attended by media, influencers and people who will want to buy YOUR product, just as soon as they learn about it.

You craft the perfect press release and send it to 1,000 of your contacts. Twenty of these people think this is such great news, they each send it to 500 of their friends, relatives and business contacts. Five of those people pass the news on to 250 of their contacts. Of course, these people are all fascinated, as you’ve been able to include pictures, a video, and they all received the message within hours!

Implementing a successful social media advertising program is an art form.  There are many opportunities for success and failure, which is why it’s imperative that you follow a set of best practices to increase your chances for success.

Defining what you want to achieve with your Twitter advertising program is a key piece to the puzzle and should not be skipped.  Do you want to attract new customers to your company through education, engage current followers with exciting content, or convert fans into customers?  This post shares 4 basic tips for using Twitter advertising as part of your ongoing social strategy.

Tip 1: Pin To the Top of Your Timeline

The music business is tough. Everyone wants to be a star but only some put in the time, effort and bring the talent to really make a difference and become successful.

“Making it” in the social media world isn’t so different. Everyone seems to be a “social media guru” but few seem to deliver on the promise of making a difference and achieving a positive impact on business outcomes.  But like the music business, there are those few who bring varying degrees of talent, dedication and smarts to really leverage the social web to become rockstars in their respective industries and roles.

Thousands of new businesses are started in the U.S. every month. Budding entrepreneurs with minds full of ambition and great ideas turn their understanding of a consumer or business problem within a market into a new product or service solution.

But there’s more to starting a business or launching a new product than a great idea and a market in need of a solution.

Many new businesses score well with the solution they’ve created including the logistics of suppliers, manufacturing, and distribution to bring that product or service to market. However, one of the greatest challenges of starting a new business centers on marketing:

It’s day 2 of SES Chicago, and the online marketing education is flowing full force.  I saw an excellent presentation about building a killer B2B social media strategy with Adriel Sanchez (@Adriel_S) of SAP.  With the sea of platforms, tactics, and schools of thought around B2B social media, it can be difficult to put together an actionable strategy that gets real results.

Follow the steps below to get your B2B social media strategy working for your business.

1. Forget Social Media, Think Content Marketing

Social media works best as a component of an overall content strategy.  The key is to think like a publisher, not a marketer.  This means avoiding the common pitfalls of being overly self-promotional or too sales oriented.

When I make new connections on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn I get excited because 9 times out of 10 I have either made a new friend with a similar interest or have found someone that I can either learn from, or help guide.

All too often we forget that the connections we make online are very similar to those we make offline.  If you are introduced to “Tim CEO”  in a business meeting and you can recognize that he doesn’t offer information freely and needs to be drawn out, then you’lllikely optimize your approach in a way that makes him at ease and gets him talking. Similarly, social media users with different personalities and proficiencies will require that little extra optimization to interact.