Online Marketing Blog

Tomorrow the PRSA is conducting a teleseminar “PR and Social Media - What every practitioner needs to know“.

Take a first-hand look at the phenomena that are redefining the practice of public relations.  Hear from three digital PR pioneers about the array of new tools, strategies and channels available to today’s practitioner from Facebook and Second Life to blogger relations, digital video and search engine reputation management.

As has been the case with a number of public relations industry events, I am tasked with bringing a search marketing perspective to a PR and social media focused panel. A similar session was held at the PRSA International Conference last year, “Social Media for PR Practitioners“, so the seminar tomorrow will be a nice update.

Not too long ago I queried a number of online marketing and public relations peers ranging from Aaron Wall, Matt McGee and Neil Patel to Todd Defren, Triss Hussey and Peter Himler about sharing a few of their social media marketing tips. Out of that informal survey in combination with community specific solicitations came posts about marketing with MyBlogLog and Twitter.

However, there are many more social media communities and channels besides MBL and Twitter that I received tips on and from very reputable sources which you’ll find below. Enjoy!

[SEO and social media marketing TopRank team member Jeff Nolan has stepped up to the plate, or in this case, onto the green and submitted the following post about marketing within social media communities using golf as a metaphor. Enjoy!]

Many regular readers of Online Marketing Blog are well aware of our location amidst the cold and frozen land of Minnesota. This gets me thinking about many hobbies this time of year, most notably how I wish there were boats on the lake across from the office rather than ice houses, and that instead of building links daily, I was hitting the links daily.

A recent report from Hitwise cited Facebook as having grown by 51% yet MySpace is still King of the online social networking world with 76% of US social network traffic. According to Nielsen Online, MySpace attracted 60.1 million visitors in December 2007 compared to 22.6 million visitors for Facebook.

While that growth news is all fine a good, from a personal observation standpoint, I’ve noticed I’m not logging into Facebook much anymore. Many of the updates I get are irrelevant to my interests as more and more people try to boost their friend counts and I mistakenly (in hindsight) accept those requests.

In this month’s Target Marketing Magazine, a TopRank authored article on how small businesses can gain a competitive marketing advantage by leveraging content promotion, blogs, social media and universal search was featured. Recently there has been some dialog and commentary on certain SEM channels about upcoming harder economic times calling for SEO to be taken back to the basics: “Textbook SEO” as Mike Grehan would put it. I disagree with the premise that companies should stop experimenting with new tactics and stick with the fundamentals. Effective SEO in any economic environment means getting more creative, not mundane.

TopRank started using social bookmarking as an active/passive content promotion method several years ago. In fact, here is a podcast interview I did with Rok Hrastnik in March 2005 discussing SEO, tagging and bookmarking. We’ve also been fairly successful at promoting a social bookmarking tool for blogs over the past 18 months or so, gathering 50,000+ links.

Leveraging the social behaviors and technology of social news and bookmarking sites can be very effective as an active content promotion strategy.

[Note from Lee: Is that chicken wearing a garter belt?]

Beginning with a blog post on creative blogger pitches, Darren and Julie caught TopRank’s attention with Lee Odden’s name showcased on a flirty pink envelope. Watching Lee dig through the mail looking for his pink envelope only intrigued me more, and I knew I had to read this guide to social media – not only for review purposes, but to enjoy the romantic innuendos and maybe even pick up on a few dating tips for future reference.

“Of all our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.” Walt Disney

Jennifer Laycock Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Guide helped the audience understand the value of images and 3 benefits to submitting photos to image sharing sites, like Flickr.

She made an excellent point by demonstrating what impacts people the most:
Copy OR Images

Let’s try it. What impacts you more, the description of how I dressed my dog up for Halloween OR the picture of it?

Description: For Halloween, I dressed my pup up as an angel.

Known by many as either “Mr. Social Media” or by friends as “Princess”, Neil Patel’s reputation for experimenting and developing new and cutting edge internet marketing tactics is known throughout the industry. At WebmasterWorl’s Pubcon conference in Las Vegas, we caught up with Neil to ask about what his company ACS does for clients as well as his latest social media manipulation - oops, I mean marketing tactics and experimenting.

Be sure to check out the TopRank channel on YouTube for more SEO Interview Videos.

A slew of SES Chicago attendees sat in on the session - Igniting Viral Campaigns - to learn how they just might create the next Burger King Chicken Campaign, in which Burger King was able to increase chicken sandwich sales with a website and a subservient chicken.

Maybe we’re not all looking to sell more chicken sandwiches, but we are looking to take a message and make it viral.

Each panelist provided insight on what they believe to be the keys to making content buzzworthy.

Bill Hanekamp, CEO, The Well hammered home the importance of relevancy to session attendees.

Damn, it was a tough weekend for Facebook on the publicity/blogosphere front. With Beacon blatantly selling out Facebook users’ privacy whether they’re logged in or not has nowhere else to go but controversial.

A platform built on community now making more aggressive efforts to monetize that community and not being honest about it smacks of downward spiral. But that’s just me. Here are thoughts from others you might be interested in:

Blognation - I’m Ready to Bail on Facebook - the New Face of Evil

bub.blicio.us (Brian Solis) - Has Silicon Valley Pulled an About Face on Facebook?

About 2-3 times a day a pitch comes in via email, Facebook message or other means asking for a mention or a link. Some are cut and paste pitches from PR reps, some are from companies trying to promote their own message and some are from industry associates that feel they have something special to share.

Even when an announcement seems interesting, more often than not a post won’t be created for it since Online Marketing Blog doesn’t really cover industry news. Unless it’s a topic that’s spot on and can help fortify a post that’s already in the works, there’s little if any chance of getting covered. As much as I’d like to give a mention and a link, I normally don’t. However if it’s really good, I do something much better.