A typical situation for many marketers when it comes to social networks is this: Setup LinkedIn profile, check. Corporate LinkedIn page, check.  Facebook profile, check. Facebook Fan Page, check. Twitter account, check. Corporate blog, check. Check check check!

But where’s the buzz? Where are the fans, friends, followers, comments, links, traffic, search engine rankings? Where’s the customer engagement? And the most pressing question of all: What is all this social web participation doing for our company and our customers?

Showing up to the game doesn’t mean there will be an audience. This is as true with the social web as it is offline.  The problem that marketers have with attracting interested customers and growing their social networks often stems from approaching social participation tactically and without a plan.  Testing and experimentation is great, but if what you’re doing is something that has a cost and is to be accounted for, then you’d better have a plan and objectives.  How can you score without a goal?

Here are 5 tips to help business marketers energize and electrify social network development:

1. Decide to start

You must start by deciding what business objectives you intend on meeting as a result of social network involvement. Once you’ve clearly identified objectives, then you can create a strategy that outlines which tactics make the most sense to reach and engage your audience.

Common objectives for companies to develop online social networks include:

• Create connections with those interested in the type of solutions you offer so you can better meet customer needs
• Build out a channel of distribution for promoting content
• Connect with existing customers, create a place for them to connect with each other
• Initiate discussions around product for new ideas, enhancements, focus group
• Extend reach to influentials in your market for publicity
• Tap into active user base for content
• Facilitate conversations about your products & services to aid in new customer acquisition and/or upgrades
• Create a communication channel that reaches employees for internal PR
• Build up the personal networks of executives for thought leadership with journalists, analysts and key bloggers

2. Know your customer

If marketers spend their time on the social networks dujour without really knowing where their customers are spending time, then of course there will be a disconnect between experience and expectations. Picking friends, at least initially, on social networks should be very intentional, not random. Understanding customer preferences towards information discovery, consumption and sharing along with which web sites they prefer is essential if a marketer wants to connect in a meaningful way.

3. Be real, be useful

There are a lot of buzzwords like “transparency” and “openness” that describe the need for marketers to be “genuine”. Oops that’s another.  To be real is being honesty in your intentions.  I’ve seem highly respected marketers make absolutely idiotic statements about transparency, taking it to the extreme.  Ignorance is bliss I suppose, but there’s not much money in it.

The core principles of understanding the needs of your customers and then finding a way to meet those needs in such a way that is helpful and that at the same time leads to product sales, need not be elusive.  Approaching a social network blatantly announcing that you’re a marketer and that you will be marketing so buy some product dammit, isn’t being transparent. It’s being stupid.

Identifying yourself as a representative of a brand, product or service and communicating your intentions both in words and helpful actions is what I mean by “be real, be useful”.  Those good deeds create trust and relationships.  They create word of mouth and a certain gravity of popularity for your brand with your own identity as the proxy.  Fans, friends and followers “happen” because the word gets out that your brand promise is meaningful and being followed through on.

Developing relationships can be hard work. People already know this through the relationships they have in daily life. Yet  it’s very common for corporate marketers to initiate online social networking efforts only to become disillusioned at the lack of immediate sales results.  It’s important that social web participation for a company become a part of what the company is, long term. Not an “add on” marketing tactic.

4. Recognize and reward

When developing an active social network, participants will demonstrate certain behaviors that are more desirable than others.  For example, standing up for the brand when a troll appears or mashing up content in a creative way.  They say people will work for a living but die for recognition. This is a key concept for electrifying your social networking efforts.  First, understand what behaviors you want to reward. Participate and identify those behaviors that will influence the kinds of outcomes you’re looking for. Recognition can be active and passive. Active recognition is to reach out and recognize specific behaviors publicly and/or privately.  Passive recognition is built into the social CRM system you’re using or the platform within which customers participate. An example would be points based systems that provide rewards or more access based on accumulating points for completing certain behaviors such as comments, ratings, contributed content, etc.  The key to “Recognize and Reward” is for the recognition to be deserved, genuine, relevant and consistent.

5. Monitor, measure, feedback loop

All the good intentions in the world won’t result in relationship and business growth from social networks unless there’s management of content and curation of interactions with the outcomes from participation. It can be as simple as noticing “5 of this” or “10 of that” tips blog posts yield 200% greater engagement scores (comments, retweets, inlinks, etc) than posts that focus on a single, general topic.

Web analytics along with social media monitoring and a CRM component can facilitate the feedback loop to know whether customers are responding in the ways that you’d hoped.  Simply focusing on fans/followers, comments or sales can leave out some of the essential pieces of why some efforts fail and others succeed. Social media monitoring tools are essential for upfront research, ongoing monitoring and after-action results measurement.

In the end, the steps to take for growing a social network for business must be rooted in an understanding of the customers and their needs combined with whatever it is you decide you’ll provide to meet those needs. Being useful by itself doesn’t turn an active network into achieved business goals. Provide opportunities for interested members of your social network to opt-in to a more commercial relationship when they’re ready.  That could be as simple as moving from a Facebook Fan to a Webinar participant or Email Newsletter subscriber. In some cases it might mean becoming a buyer of products/services.

If your business has successfully developed it’s social network presence, what have been some of the roadblocks you’ve overcome? What insights can you share on best connecting with networks and growing your business as a result?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | 5 Ways to Electrify Your Social Network | 16 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

• More than 350 million users are active on Facebook
• 50% of active users log in on any given day
• The average user spends 55 minutes a day on Facebook
• More than 1.6 million active Facebook fan pages have been created

With numbers like these — plus the fact that Google is now using social content to help determine the ranking of web pages — it’s difficult to justify not creating a Facebook presence for your brand.

Take the guesswork of Facebook marketing, and follow these 5 tips for making the most of your fan page.

1. Keep Content Fresh.
Give fans a reason to come back to your page frequently by adding fresh content on a regular basis. Keep in mind that consistently updating the page doesn’t require a significant amount of additional effort.

As part of your online marketing strategy, integrate your Facebook fan page with other social media channels to maximize results little extra effort:

• Automatically feed new blog posts to your Facebook wall
• Use a service like Ping.fm to update all of your social networks at once, including Facebook and Twitter
• Set up widgets for your YouTube channel and Flickr feed to automatically add videos and images to your Facebook fan page

2. Engage New Visitors.
Facebook fan page walls can be an extremely valuable tool for communicating with customers and prospects. But for first-time visitors to fan pages, the wall can seem intimidating and exclusive. Imagine walking into a room where everyone knows one another by name and are talking about a subject you know next to nothing about.

Instead of sending new visitors directly to your fan page wall, send them to a more controlled, welcoming landing page where you can provide them with useful information about your brand, as well as a clear call to action to become a fan.

For example, TOMS Shoes – a shoe retailer than donates a pair of shoes to children in need for every pair purchased – sends first-time visitors to an inviting landing page that gives a clear idea of the company’s mission. The page features a quick video that shares the TOMS Shoes story, as well as links to product and other important pages (see the image below). The approach appears to be working: TOMS Shoes has more than 185,000 fans to date.

TOMS Shoes Facebook Fan Page

3. Promote a Contest Via Facebook.
A great way to add value to a Facebook fan page is to offer users an incentive to become fans. Contests can serve as an enticing incentive.

For example, last fall TopRank® Online Marketing leveraged the Facebook fan page of one of its B to C clients to supplement promotions for a Halloween contest to find the best homemade costume. The client was looking for a final surge in number of participants during the final two days of the contest. TopRank incorporated a fan page tab specifically for the contest, as well as posted information about the contest on the fan page wall. In just two days, the initiative helped the client added more than enough additional new fans.

Be aware, however, that new Facebook marketing guidelines announced in November require brands, marketers and advertisers to go through an approval process for all contests. The guidelines require contests to be handled through an embedded application rather than on the page’s wall, among other things.

4. Give Fans Something They Can’t Get Anywhere Else.
Contests aren’t the only incentives companies can offer to grow their fan base. Any item of value can entice Facebook users to become fans, including:

• Free shipping for Facebook fans
• An exclusive product coupon for fans
• A weekly special promoted on the fan page

Sears – with 160,000+ fans – has been very successful at this approach. First-time visitors are immediately directed to an exclusive offer landing page (illustrated in the image below). By becoming a fan, users are offered $10 in coupons.

Sears' exclusive promotion for Facebook fans

Another approach to incentivize becoming a fan is to provide inside company information and breaking news on the fan page. Fans are more likely to remain faithful to your brand – and tell their friends – when they feel like an insider who has a stake in the company.

5. Encourage Interaction.
The entire notion of social media is built upon interaction and two-way communication. Facebook fan pages have little to no chance of success if they aren’t interactive and engaging.

But it’s not enough to sit back and wait to the interaction to begin. Get the ball rolling by:

• Posting a question to solicit fans’ opinions
• Offering a poll that’s extremely simple to respond to
• Integrating existing Facebook applications such as games and quizzes
• Reposting relevant, interesting information from other Facebook users

Simply creating a fan page for the sake of “Well, everyone else is doing it,” isn’t going to land you results. Like with any other online marketing strategy, Facebook marketing efforts must be well planned and constantly reinforced. By doing so, you can start to tap into the vast network of active Facebook users.

Be sure to connect with the Online Marketing Blog on our Fan page here.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Facebook Marketing Tips: Make the Most of Your Fan Page | 32 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

But in healthcare marketing, it’s an understatement to say that gaining buy-in for social media isn’t easy.

Consider for a moment just what healthcare marketers are up against:

• A multitude of privacy regulations
• Nursing and support staff shortages
• Increasing demand for services thanks to the quickly aging Baby Boomer generation

It’s not difficult to understand why some healthcare decision makers may be slow to adopt social media. But instead of throwing in the towel, consider these 5 tips for making the case for social media in healthcare marketing:

1. The movement has started. Healthcare may not be as quick to adopt social media as some other industries. But there are many hospitals and healthcare organizations that are quietly innovating on the social web, as Digital Influence blogger Rohit Bhargava suggests.

In a recent post, he points out that there are 367 US hospitals using social media. They are responsible for 10,000 Tweets from 267 Twitter accounts. When making your individual case for social media in healthcare marketing, leverage some of the great examples out there:

• Patients Like Me is an online community site created in 2004 by MIT engineers to allow patients to share information and their personal experiences. The goal is to connect patients with the same or similar diseases so they can rely on one another for support.
• The Center for Connected Health community website is designed for healthcare providers and policymakers. Community members can discuss controversial topics, and share best practices, new ideas, upcoming events and research.
• Individual hospitals are involved in social media efforts as well, Bhargava points out.  The Sarasota Memorial Hospital uses Twitter to answer patient questions and provide immediate customers service. In March, the Henry Ford Hospital used Twitter to connect with 1,900 people and answer questions during an actual brain surgery.

2. Patients—and potential future patients—are involved in social networks. A March 2009 report (pdf) from Nielson Online found that 67% of the global online population takes part in online communities. Plus, time spent on social media sites now accounts for almost 10% of all time online.

Clear and simple, patients use social media. Hospitals can utilize social channels to answer healthcare- or illness-related questions or simply provide medical information—just as the Sarasota Memorial and Henry Ford hospitals have done. If the numbers aren’t convincing enough, consider this: Patients are comparison shopping for hospitals, CNN reports.

With the increasing cost of healthcare and a growing number of available hospitals, it’s only natural. Social media is just one tool for hospitals and healthcare organizations to stay top of mind and relevant for patients.

3. Patients are online, and so are physicians. Consider a few statistics from Manhattan Research:

• As much as 89% of US physicians rely on the Internet as an essential part of their professional practice
• Approximately 64% of physicians now use smartphones
• 41% of physicians’ research takes place online The bottom line is physicians and other healthcare personnel are already spending time online.

Additionally, Doctors have their own social network, Sermo, which has over 110,000 practicing MD’s participating.

By embracing social media, hospitals and healthcare organizations can provide their current staff with a mechanism to share information and best practices. Plus, organizations can use their social efforts as an incentive when recruiting new employees.

4. Healthcare is top of mind, in the news and constantly changing. Particularly since the last presidential election, healthcare has been thrust into the public spotlight. From universal healthcare to electronic health records to patient privacy, there’s a new healthcare news item in the headlines every day. Social media can provide an effective mechanism for hospitals and healthcare organizations to stay involved in healthcare legislation discussion.

Take the lead from Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The hospital CEO is using his blog to discuss and comment on potential health insurance legislation – among other topics.

5. Social media efforts don’t have to involve a lot of costs. Budget cuts have become a common business practice across nearly all industries—hospitals and healthcare organizations are no exception. But social media campaigns don’t have to include a significant financial investment.

Consider the healthcare marketing success story from the Mayo Clinic. The Mayo Clinic in 2005 began utilizing social media channels to promote and increase downloads of its podcasts. The clinic posts the podcasts, along with video and text, on its blogs. It also leverages a Facebook fan page, a Twitter account and a YouTube channel. Downloads of the podcasts have increased by more than 8,000%, thanks to using three free social channels.

Be sure to read this recent interview with Lee Aase, the manager of syndication and social media for Mayo Clinic, where he offers specific advice for other companies on his “MacGyver-style” testing , developing a social media strategy, winning management approval and measuring social media ROI.

Post Script:  Here’s a newly launched blog in the B2B Healthcare category of Medical Imaging from McKesson (a TopRank client). It integrates with a Picture Archiving and Communication System web site.

These tips, of course, are just a starting point to help healthcare marketers make the case for social media in healthcare marketing and creating better connections with the healthcare community, hospitals and patients. What examples of social media in healthcare have you found worth pointing out?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Social Media in Healthcare Marketing: Making the Case | 11 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

How can we track social media?
Unfortunately, there is no one “most effective” social media tracking system. Marketers across the web are still working to figure out how to measure social media, how to attach ROI, and how to sell the benefits of participation on the social web  to those that don’t “get it”.

Social media marketing isn’t like an email campaign where you can track the number of emails sent out, the number that were opened, the number of clicks, visits, leads and conversions all in one process. Much of what happens in the social media world happens behind a login and the old ways of tracking web visitor analytics just doesn’t work in that scenario.

Just like any kind of marketing, each company has their own set of objectives and reasons for reaching them via social media channels. That means different methods and approaches to the listening, monitoring and measuring of both social web and web marketing activities at large. The field of social media analytics is still very new.  Here are 7 considerations as you evaluate what will work best in your social media tracking.

Quality over Quantity
This has been said again and again and lots of people still feel that the more followers/friends/subscribers/connections they have, the better. The reality is, quantity is not and end goal for lead or sales generation outcomes. What good is it to have 13,000 followers if 1/3 of them are spam accounts and 1/3 are auto followers who will never engage with you? Sure 13,000 looks good to those who can only focus on numbers, but what is the quality of those 13,000?  Seth Godin mentioned at the MIMA Summit that all you need is an audience of about 1,000. But it needs to be the right 1,000 people.

Hearing vs. Listening
Have you stopped to think about who is actually paying attention in social networks? A person or a brand may have X number of followers or friends, but how many of them are actively listening at any given time? How many people do you ACTUALLY reach when you post a tweet, make a status update or blog post?  Subscriber counts and reach are two different things. Think of it like a college professor talking to students: How many of them are paying attention during a lecture? With social media participation it’s the same thing; you need to realize that not everyone is always hearing what you have to say and factor in the difference between connections and actual reach.

Engage & Participate
Effective social media marketing is about is engaging and participating. If  a marketer joins a social network and focuses on promoting themselves, product or company, they’ll get an entirely different set of outcomes than those they have goals for.  Think about it. Social means to be conversational, friendly, helpful. When participating in social channels, talk to other members of the community, participate in the conversations and give people a reason to interact with you. Add a little romance before you ask to get engaged

Social Media is About Being Where the Conversation Is.
Marketers need to stop and think about where their audiences are online and where relevant conversations are happening. That could be niche social networks, forums and blogs. Those niche areas may have fewer people, but will more than likely have more engagement value for relevant products or services being shared.  To find those niche communities and conversations, use social media monitoring software. Free tools include Google Alerts or Social Mention. Low cost tools include Trackur and PostRank Analytics.

Assign Value to Get Value.
Whether it’s a tweet, retweet, a status update, comment, photo upload or story submission, if you want to find out how valuable it is you have to assign a value. It doesn’t matter how or what that value is, but setting up some sort of system will help determine what’s working and what’s not.

Define an Objective.
Before jumping into social networking, it’s essential to set an objective. Going in and participating with social network and media sharing sites just to participate may not bring the kind of results you’d like. A clear objective as part of a social media strategy should be set so you know what you are working towards. It will guide your messaging, behaviors, networking activity as well as the kind of content you seek and share.

Social Media is An Investment.
Social media success takes time. The seeds of relationships need to grow and you’ll need to invest what’s needed to make it work for whatever end goals that are set. Expecting results in a month or two isn’t realistic; it may take a year or more. It really depends on the Roadmap that guides your: Audience > Objectives > Strategy > Tactics > Tools > Measurement.  Effective social media participation is about building a network and building trust. That doesn’t happen overnight. Be patient, do it right, and you’ll be rewarded in the long run.

What other considerations should be in this list? If you’ve undertaken new social media programs with your company, what were some of the measurement and analytics hurdles that you overcame?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 7 Considerations for Tracking Social Media Success | 32 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

You’ve heard it before: Content is king. But there won’t be much of a kingdom unless that content is optimized. But who is going to create it? Useful, relevant content doesn’t come cheap, especially when your goals are to publish on a consistent basis. As an internet marketer, if you haven’t tapped into the power of user generated content, you may be giving up a goldmine of SEO assets to your competition.

A study conducted by eMarketer in early 2009 found that the number of Internet users who consume user generated content and who create it will shoot up significantly in the next four years:

• By 2013, nearly 155 million US Internet users will consume some type of content created by users, up almost 34% from 2008
• The number of content creators will grow to 114.5 million by 2013, an almost 39% increase from 2008
• By 2013, 51.8% of all US Internet users will be content creators, up from 42.8% in 2008

Most companies are not in the business of publishing content. But in order to compete on an internet that is increasingly participatory and social, both now and in the future, companies will need to work hard and smart when it comes to publishing useful content that both search engines and customers will love.

But just what works best–forums, reviews, blogs or social media? The answer is, there is no silver bullet. Like with all tactics that compliment search marketing objectives, what is successful for one organization may not be as effective for another. The way in which consumer generated content works within a particular company’s search marketing mix depends on a variety of factors including: content contribution and sharing needs of the audience, ability to create or update content management systems that support user content creation and moderation, a sound strategic plan for developing the software, building community and inspiring community promotion of keyword inspired content.

Keep in mind these 5 points as you explore how to integrate content created by users into your search engine marketing mix:

1. Give it time. Not all consumers will participate immediately—and some may never participate. Consumer generated content efforts, if easy to use and rewarding to users, can have a snowball effect.  The more content that is created by users, the more opportunities for non-participants to be motivated to join in.

2. If you think user generated content is just for the Millennial generation, think again. It’s true that Millennials are most likely to participate—56%, according to an eMarketer study. But 46% of Generation X and 31% of Baby Boomers are dipping their toes into creating their own content.  The key is to structure the ability to create content according to the needs of your audience. Research other web sites that offer customers the ability to create, mashup or share content and identify what appears to work and what doesn’t with audiences that are congruent to your own.

3. Broaden your definition of user generated content. Don’t simply think of content as text – blog posts, articles, reviews or comments. Instead, provide multiple media format options (that make sense) for your community including audio, images and video. Digital Asset Optimization of multiple media formats increases channels of distribution via specialty search engines as well as the density of a brand’s visibility in search results on a single query.

4. Go with what you’re comfortable with. There are many forms of content that you can take advantage of, from consumer generated article submissions to customer product reviews. So begin with what you think is right for your site and your organization. Start small by incorporating a voting feature on your website, or go big by launching a contest to promote user generated videos or photos.  Think of both your own goals for content to rank well in search engines, but especially think of your customers’ unmet needs for interaction and content sharing. Then provide options for them to meet those needs in a way that allows your target keyword phrases to be used in the content that is created and shared.

5. User generated content can have the same effect as search engine optimized content on your site. First, content can be focused toward targeted keywords by providing pre-populated categories, tags and content options that have keywords already embedded. Second, it’s the nature of a vibrant community to add new content frequently, which will attract search engine spiders on a regular basis. And third, intriguing and useful content can attract incoming links.

Adding user generated content options to a web site can help meet several business and marketing objectives ranging from allowing active and passionate customers the ability to “have a say” about their favorite topics and brands as well as employing the efforts of many, many others to create content that can do well in search results to drive traffic to your web site.

The next step is to decide what your customers will respond to, what are their content creation and sharing needs and what will it take to create a plan and to test social/content sharing features.

If you’ve added social content sharing to your web site, what was your experience? What advice can you share with other web site owners for a successful consumer generated content program?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Basics of User Generated Content for Search Engine Optimization | 14 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Check out these 5 Twitter tips for staying authentic and transparent:

1. Reveal who’s behind the Tweets. It doesn’t necessarily matter who it is—the CEO, the social media manager or a marketing intern. It just matters that the person is in fact a person. Putting a face and name behind your Tweets through a photo and brief bio can help followers relate to and connect with your brand.

Kodak is an excellent example of a company that’s put a face to the brand on Twitter. The company’s official Tweeter, chief blogger and social media manager Jennifer Cisney (@kodakcb), leaves no guesses as to who she is and what she does. Her Tweets strike a healthy balance between letting her personality shine through and offering too much irrelevant information (i.e., “Sitting on my couch watching Desperate Housewives and eating popcorn.”)

2. Show some personality. It doesn’t have to be all business all the time. Have some fun with your Tweets by telling humorous stories or poking a little fun at yourself every now and then.

Part of what makes Ford Motor Co. head of social media and Tweeterati Scott Monty (@scottmonty) so successful and popular is his ability to make followers feel like he’s an old college buddy or family friend. His bio tells his followers he’s “a generally nice guy.” But his genuine Tweets—a combination of marketing insight, Ford and auto news, and his own personal anecdotes—lets them know that’s the case. (Scott Monty video interview here)

3. Admit when you’re wrong. With the explosion of social networks over the past few years, bad decisions and unfortunate snafus are exposed sooner rather than later. So it’s important for brands to fess up first and show their willingness to rectify the situation. With that said, why not turn a negative situation into a positive one?

After you’ve admitted to a mistake, strike up some friendly competition by asking your followers to submit their own “biggest oops moment.” Choose—or better yet allow followers to vote on—the best story. Offer some sort of an incentive to the winner, whether it’s a coupon, a free product or a gift certificate.

4. Get to know your followers. Let’s face it: Your followers—and potential customers—have more on their minds than just your brand. Ask your followers questions about themselves, gain a sense of who they are and customize your responses to them based on their personal details.

In the end, not only will you be viewed as an authentic and trusted brand on Twitter, you’ll also obtain valuable information on customer demographics.

5. Don’t get carried away by your accomplishments. With trial-and-error, know-how and a little luck, you’re likely to find much success in your social media and Twitter efforts. But don’t let it go to your head. Keep in mind that it’s your followers who gave you that success.

You’d be hard pressed to find a Twitterati that’s been more successful at using Twitter for customer service than Frank Eliason (@comcastcares) from Comcast. But what keeps them relevant and useful for followers over the long term is their ability to remain genuine and humble amidst widespread popularity. (Frank Eliason interview here)

While there are any number of ways to fail while trying to effectively market on Twitter, social media usage by companies has matured enough for a growing number of good examples to emerge. Being aware of what’s working for others can be priceless insight for how to develop your own genuine communications and brand experience with customers on the social web.

What are some brands that have done a good job at staying authentic and transparent on Twitter? What other Twitter tips do you have for remaining authentic and transparent?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 5 Twitter Tips for Staying Authentic and Transparent | 20 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

He dives right in and shares a story about HSBC, which  launched a program to acquire new accounts from college students. In doing so,  some less-than-great details about the program like extra fees started to enraged those who had signed up.

Instead of students being upset, but having no way to congregate, an upset student decided to rally other students via Facebook starting a group called ‘Stop the Great HSBC Graduate Rip-off!!!’.

Before the offline rally could happen, HSBC stepped in and tried to right the wrong specifically because – as Shirky says  – “Their customers had become organized. Facebook has become not only a social network, but a site of organization.”

The fusing of delivering information and the coordination of people makes Facebook different than traditional media. Aside from the value of the URL itself, there is additional value in allowing those who view the URL to connect.

According to Shirky, we are in the largest information transition in human history since the printing press, which industry pundits have been saying for years. But Shirky goes on to explain that the printing press, telephone and video didn’t allow the creation of content AND the creation of groups who could share the content. The many to many has been missing, until now (or really a couple years ago).

The Internet is the first medium that is inherently good at supporting groups. What this provides is organization without organizations. Groups of people can come together and coordinate themselves without a manager telling them what to do and when to do it.

The next big change is symmetry. Media has been very asymmetrical. A television station is very large and expensive to run, while a TV is relatively inexpensive to purchase so the communication is one-way.

Cell phones for example, are different. Shirky illustrates the point like this: “When you buy a cell phone, no one asks you if you just want to talk or listen. You get to do both.” A phone has made the average user the new Clear Channel allowing for multiple feedback loops.

While technology is setting the stage for the communication, it doesn’t cause it. Tools only change society when they are accompanied by motivations.

Shirky now transitions to talking about Josh Groban and how his audience of young teenage girls and their grandmothers have gathered online because there is no radio station that addresses that age range.

The audience, better known as the ‘Grobanites’, decided to come together pre-show to raise money for charity. From each show, they typically raised a few hundred dollars. Then the group transitioned the auction to Groban’s website and in the first run raised over 16,000 dollars. So, what’s going on? What is making the fans come together and work toward a cause?

They came together because they wanted to and they had the tools to do so.

The 3 intrinsic motivations of humans are often squashed by paying that same human for executing the same tasks they would have done for the ‘love of it’.

We are in a time of mass-amateurization. Amateurs are not just sloppy professionals, but rather they do things in different ways and for different reasons. Why are we surprised that users join together and connect online?

It’s because we have two widely held disbeliefs.

The first disbelief is that paying someone to do something creates better results. The second  is that because we observed couch potato consumption at the end of the last century, we thought assumed that’s what everyone wanted.

Not necessarily true. People didn’t have formats with which to share. Now they do and we share all that is important to them. This is different than past media formats where folks are told what SHOULD be important by gatekeepers.

Next Shirky talks about the importance of user reviews and how said user reviews caused a black tshirt with 3 wolves howling at a moon to become the most purchased garment on Amazon (all while taking off his button-up to reveal a black tshirt with 3 howling wolves and shiny moon – awesome!!).

The point of the wolves is not the sold tshirts (although that’s a big bonus) but that when people are allowed to share they will, especially when they are convinced that the wolf tshirt caused women to come up and talk to them. The convincing user review – true or not – was compelling enough to motivate others to share and even buy.

At the end of the day, the motives are the same (old and young), the difference is that there are tools to empower sharing that didn’t exist before. We shouldn’t be surprised by the output, it’s what humans do.

In summary, if you get user motivation right, then you’ve got something. It’s not about behavior, but channeling existing behaviors and letting people do what they want to do, but before didn’t have the tools to make it happen.

Look for more on TopRankBlog.com as Adam Singer and myself cover SES San Jose 2009 this week.

Learn more search and social media marketing strategies from 2009 SES SJ coverage by TopRank Online Marketing

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | SES SJ: Clay Shirky Keynote | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Are companies engaging in social media? Are they monitoring their brand? What’s a social media press release? These were a few of the topics covered in Marketingsherpa’s recent “Engaging Bloggers, Journalists and Customers” webinar featuring Todd Defren from SHIFT Communications and Marketingsherpa’s Sergio Balegno discussing new ways journalists are using social media.

MarketingSherpa surveyed 1800 people from both small and large, B2B and B2C companies. In their findings, three out of four companies surveyed feel that social media is changing the way companies communicate. Details of this research can be found in the new Social Media Marketing and PR: Benchmarks and Best Practices report.

The most common social media tactics being used include press releases, social network profiles, blogging and interacting with forums.

In their research, Marketingsherpa found that the most effective tactics were blogs, forums, press releases and company blogs. The most effective tactic implemented is engaging in user review sites. While commenting on user review sites was the most effective tactic in terms of cost and time, it is the tactic least implemented. Companies do not seem to be matching up their tactics with what is effective.

Commentary and reputation management is a hot topic that goes hand-in-hand with social media. When companies were asked if they monitor or respond for negative feedback, 25 percent of companies polled said they don’t monitor social media commentary at all. 31 percent monitor, but don’t respond.

While larger companies are more likely to monitor brand reputation, smaller companies admit that they should also be responding to negative commentary. Google Alerts is a simple way to monitor your brand commentary. With this free service, alerts are sent to you via email when your name or brand is being written about.

So what are the barriers? Why aren’t companies engaging more with social media or tackling criticism? Most said that it was because of a lack of knowledgeable staff. Other reasons included inability to measure ROI, lack of budget funding, management resistance, technical obstacles or they just didn’t feel social media was relevant for their company.

The second part of the webinar covered the social media press release.

Did you know that the first press release went out in 1906 by Ivy Lee, a 102 years ago?!  The basic press release format hasn’t changed too much since then. However, with the changing face of communication, the familiar press release structure needed a boost. That’s where the social media press release came in.

Nearly 50% of B2B and B2C companies surveyed by Marketingsherpa didn’t know what a social media press release was. Out of those who did know about the social media release, only 20 percent actually distribute them.

In this new era of social media marketing and PR, saying things like “we are a leader in”, “we are very excited to announce” and slapping a boilerplate on the bottom of your release doesn’t cut it. People want pictures, videos, links to additional external resources, and all around, more information. 

The originator of the social media press release, Todd Defren, encourages these five principles:.

1. Democratize Access
2. Ensure Accuracy
3. Embrace Context
4. Build Community
5. Be Findable

If you’re a beginner trying to encourage social media marketing and PR within your organization, social media news releases can be a useful tactic to deploy because showing a return on investment is as easy as consulting your analytics report.

An added bonus of including a social media release component to your news distribution is the ability for readers to comment at the source. This will allow an upper hand with brand monitoring and tracking because readers can share their opinion ofyour news, with you watching of course.

No matter how you look at it, the internet is evolving into a social community where people connecting, sharing, publishing and collaborating. Customers are talking about companies, complaining about products, making recommendations and looking for advice. If a company is not engaging with their audience and monitoring what’s being said about them, then they are out of touch with their customers.

Start engaging with your customers and kick start your social media marketing and PR efforts with a social media roadmap.  For even more sage advice on social media marketing, check out ‘Get Social Media Smart with 26  Tips on the Social Web‘ and read what other internet marketing practitioners are recommending.

Speaking of social media and public relations, check out this upcoming conference in New York April 30 – May 1 from the PRSA “Digital Impact“.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Adding Social Media to Marketing & PR | 3 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Li Evans, of Key Relevance, hammers home the need for social media strategy within her presentation.

Social Media – done for the sole purpose of traffic or links – probably isn’t social media you should be doing. Social media is not about your marketing message, it’s about what the customer has to say good or bad. It’s about them talking about you.

Whatever you do socially, remember that the end user has control of your message and sometimes your brand. Li goes on to explain that these conversations are happening any way, online and offline, so would you rather be part of it or continue to ignore it?

Imagine if a group of your customers invited you to a party they were having to talk about your product? Would you attend? Of course you would. Or you would be stupid not to.

So when those ‘parties’ are happening online every day it’s interesting how many companies don’t rsvp.

Li reminds the audience, that there are multiple tools to help you engage in Social Media. It’s not just Digg or Facebook or Twitter.

But before thinking about the tools, think about your overall approach.
1. Start with a plan
2. Know where your audience is online
3. Integrate with SEO and PPC
4. Define Goals & Measure, Measure, Measure
5. Take What Works & Improve it

Next, is Beth Harte, of Harte Marketing &  Communications.
She starts by explaining that attention to social media by the PR industry is lacking. Specifically, the industry tends to still focus only on media, dodging crisis and ignoring customers.

It’s no longer just about the journalist. There are many conversations on blogs, forums, social media and PR needs to move toward putting the customer first.

Once you have a plan that rolls up to objectives and strategy, here are a couple ways to dive in:
1. Online newsroom, make it more than a repository for press releases
2. Social Media News Release which is searchable, includes keywords and tells a story

The next step for the PR Person is to connect the dots between offline and online to reach customers in a more effective way.

Rob Key, of Converseon, is here to represent the agency side of Social Media.

The marketing funnel has gone from a very linear approach to a Dr. Seuss type of funnel which includes conversations in multiple destinations and specifically destinations that aren’t always controlled by the brand.

While social media may not be hard to execute, culturally it can be very difficult. Since social media transcends marketing disciplines, it makes it even more difficult.

When developing social media:

• Utilize and engage different groups (comm, marketing, media, search)
• Pilot with low-profile business unit
• Encourage your clients to start listening first, then engage

Social media can be successful when you:
1. Listen
Free tools like Google Alerts can get you started. Conversation monitoring is documenting conversations. Conversation mining is taking the information, creating insights based on sentiment and letting that information drive what you do next.
2. Organize
Social media is an engine of organization transformation. Within client organizations, help them decide who ‘owns’ social media to make sure you have an internal champion and educator.
3. Policy/Ethics
Understand the cultural nuances of the different communities and educate the client on what is appropriate in what channel.
Work with your client to create a code of ethics and guidelines in an effort to increase confidence and cut down on the review process.
4. Infrastructure
Identify what conversation assets you have and what ones you need. How will you make this happen and within what timeframe?
5. Identify opportunities to listen and connect
Every social network is not right for every brand. Select based on where your target market is.
6. Engage with the Right Philosophy
Participate and learn. Identify the elders and come bearing something of value.
7. Measurement
Measure changes in conversation, increase in positive sentiment, share of conversation.
Then identify what a 10% increase in sentiment means to the overall business.

There are many ways to dive into social media, doing so with a plan is the first step to being successful and providing something of value.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | SES NY: 3 Approaches to Social Media | 5 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

In Understanding the Complex Social Media Marketing Playing Field, moderator Joe Laratro led a panel of social media marketing architects who shared their social media design tips.

Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, gave an overview of some of the various materials an online marketer can use when constructing a social media plan. Michael Gray, president of Atlas Web Service, created a strategic design plan for building successful social promotions. Cameron Olthuis, CEO of Factive Media, outlined best practices for interacting with social communities in ten steps. Neil Patel, CTO of Advantage Consulting Services, Inc., ended the session with a controversial look at “the dark side” of social media marketing.

Building Blocks

The strongest social media plan involves a mix of the below materials.

• Democratized Social News sites These tools allow online marketers to interact with a community by voting on content and submitting their own content to be voted on by others. Examples include Digg, Reddit, Mixx, and Newsline.
• Editor-Controlled News Sites Sites like Yahoo! Buzz accept and display user-submitted content that fits in with their editorial guidelines. These sites generally have a high profile and can generate huge results.
• Social Sites These sites are a great opportunity to build and interact with a network as well as publish original content in a variety of forms including links, news, photos, videos, and more. Examples include Facebook, Myspace, and LinkedIn.
• Micro-Blogging Sites On Twitter, Plurk, and Friendfeed, you can submit interesting content in 140 characters or less. This can act as an instant megaphone, allowing you to broadcast strong points of interest to a large audience.
• Social Bookmarking Sites Marketers can submit interesting URLs to sites like StumbleUpon, Delicious and Blinklist to drive traffic to specific pages. These sites are also good for research in terms of finding out what type of content interests your audience.
• Social Content Sharing Sites Youtube, Flickr, Yelp and DeviantArt all allow you to post specific types of content, from video to photos to reviews. These sites can help marketers build brand messaging and reach new, relevant audiences, and can also show up in universal search results.
• Wiki Sites Wikis are another good way to dominate the search results, as they often rank highly. Use wikis to post original content and edit existing content while reaching a new audience. Wikipedia is the penultimate example of a wiki site.
• Social Question & Answer Sites Marketers can both post questions to other users and answer existing questions on sites such as Yahoo! Answers and Wiki Answers. This can grow brand reputation and authority and is also a good way to conduct audience research.
• Niche Sites Social sites that target a very specific niche, such as Corked for wine enthusiasts, allow marketers to reach a highly relevant audience.

Blueprints

Creating a successful social media campaign requires a well-thought out and detailed plan. Take the proper steps to ensure your social promotions are sturdy and effective.

• Background Research Find out where your audience is online. Look at the content they themselves are submitting on these sites for ideas of what interests them. Also, identify thought leaders to target in order to spread your message to a broad audience.
• Brainstorming Generate as many ideas for promotions as possible. Look at what has worked previously and build upon that without copycatting. Filter your ideas wisely in order to find something that will feasibly work for you.
• Idea Research Follow up on your ideas to see if they will work based upon what is already happening in the social media you are targeting. Be flexible and adapt your ideas if something won’t work. Don’t force a bad idea.
• Story Production and Formatting Ensure you’re writing in a viral writing style. Avoid marketing speak and obvious sales-oriented messaging. Use videos and photos to enrich your stories.
• Schedule and Launch Know the times in the day, week, etc. your audience interacts on social sites. Tie promotions in to holidays and major events to generate timely interest.

Building a Foundation

Interacting with a social community is the key to building a strong foundation for your social media marketing campaign. “It’s called social for a reason,” Cameron Olthuis points out. Be sure you are socializing within a community and following its guidelines.

• Network & Be Social Make new friends, join groups and generally participate in the community. This should be a continual process.
• Be Genuine, Authentic and On Target Stick with what your audience wants.
• Provide Value Give users something they can use, in the form of advice, expert tips, inside information or something entertaining.
• Let People Act Naturally Allow users to play with your content and have fun. Don’t force a specific interaction.
• Listen and Respond Look for both positive and negative reactions by monitoring content once it’s live. Respond to users and improve content accordingly.

The Fake Façade
Neil Patel outlined what he calls “The Dark Side” of social media marketing with some less-than-wholesome tips and tricks marketers can use to generate social media results

• Screwing People Impacting a competitors reputation by submitting useless content from a competitor’s site to social news or bookmarking.
• Social Media Rings Creating a ring of people to vote up your content. This quickly becomes a “dark” practice when abused through overuse.
• Social Media Applications Tube Increaser and Twitter Friend Adder allow marketers to automate adding large quantities of friends to their accounts.
• Forced Actions Patel mentioned iframes code, which is useful for ‘forcing’ people to automatically subscribe to content such as your YouTube channel just by visiting.
• Blog Links Certain blog formats, such as WordPress, can be hacked, allowing marketers to insert their links.

Patel also advised visiting several “light” reading resources, including SEOmoz.org, Techipedia.com and our very own TopRank Online Marketing Blog.

Create a holistic social media campaign by ensuring you’ve put time and effort into the three major stages outlined in this session: the proper building blocks, a strategic blueprint and a solid foundation. Continue routine maintenance by building your profile and interacting regularly within social communities. Conduct regular inspections of your progress by searching for your content on Technorati, Google Blogsearch, search.twitter.com and other monitoring resources. And while going to “The Dark Side” may have its appeal, following social media marketing best practices should generate solid results.

Check back with the TopRank Marketing Blog for more on Pubcon, and don’t miss photos from the conference at TopRank on Flickr.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | PubCon: Understanding the Complex Social Media Marketing Playing Field | 2 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Entering the realm of social media can be a bit like trying to enter an exclusive club. There are barriers to entry, codes of conduct, and unwelcome outsiders are quickly identified and ostracized. Yet, like an exclusive club, the benefits of membership can be great. Marketers looking to benefit from social media would do well to heed the advice of the three presenters in this SES session, moderated by Pauline Ore of IBM Corporation.

As Kendall Allen, digital marketing and convergence media consultant, pointed out, social media has come a long way since the advent of the Internet. Listservs, user groups and chat rooms have given way to the networking giants of Facebook and Myspace.

These highly organized, more defined social networks have made it possible for marketers to establish a brand presence among their consumers. Kendall stated that social media optimization should be integrated into any comprehensive, cross-platform marketing plan.

Kendall also pointed out a few new ways in which marketers can enter the social sphere. Services like Ning.com allow users to create their own unique social network. Many social networks allow brands to create applications, in the form of surveys, content sharing and more. Companies can enter the blogosphere with the help of Socialspark.com, which connects companies with bloggers who will right about their goods and services for a fee.

Li Evans, director of Internet Marketing at KeyRelevance, highlighted the varied benefits of using social media. Many people mention linkbuilding, but “Links are by products of social media,” Li said. While good social media practices will result in links, Li and the other panelists highlighted several important uses and benefits:

• Talk to your audience Use social media to interact with your consumers in a more ‘natural’ setting outside of focus groups and surveys.
• Gather information Find out what the public thinks of your brand. This can be especially useful to gather feedback when a company has recently implemented changes.
• Create brand ambassadors By directly engaging consumers with your brand, you can create a legion of devoted brand followers who will spread the word to others. This can also result in increased links.
• Give consumers a voice Allow consumers to collaborate with your brand in order to strengthen your products.
• Manage your reputation Directly address any negative brand noise on the web, and monopolize your search engine results pages (SERPs) with the additional content you’ve created. Many social media profiles will rank in SERPs for your brand, and images and video can show up in universal search.

However, before you enter the social world, do your homework. Li highlighted variety of different online users, from creators of content like bloggers, to joiners of social media, to spectators who merely read and absorb online content. She pointed out the importance of knowing where your audience lies in this spectrum, and planning your social media activities accordingly.

Once you’ve identified where and how your audience is using social media, you can begin to enter these networks and interact with them. David Snyder, Search Specialist at JRDunn.com, gave several useful tips for engaging consumers ‘socially.’

• Create optimized profiles Your username should relate to your company or product and be phrased in a way that is familiar to your consumers.
• Create original content Your social profiles should contain creative, thoughtful copy that provides value to your consumers.
• Use keywords In your tags and descriptions for photos, videos or other content, use keywords to ensure these items can show up in universal search.
• Be authentic All three panelists underscored authenticity as a cornerstone of good social media practices. Consumers can recognize a fake instantly, which can have dire consequences for your brand.

As the three speakers in this session indicated, social media can offer many benefits to the marketer savvy enough to use it correctly. Its potential uses move beyond mere linkbuilding to consumer research, reputation management and more. By following the rules, marketers can not only gain entry, but flourish in these social spaces.

Stay current with the SES San Jose conference by checking in regularly with the TopRank Online Marketing Blog, and view more photos from the TopRank Team at TopRank on Flickr.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | SES San Jose: Successful Tactics for Social Media Optimization | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Social media marketing is fast emerging as a must-have in search strategies. In this session, industry experts Vanina Delobelle, Global Product Director for Monster, Erik Qualman from Search Engine Watch and Global VP of EF Education, along with Brnet Csutoras, Online Marketing Consultant offered some tips to successfully integrate social media into your search marketing mix.

Vanina kicked off the session this morning discussing what social media is and how, when used correctly, it can benefit your business.

So, what is social media?
- Social networks like MySpace, Facebook and Xing
- Forums such as Phorum and phpBB
- Microblogging with twitter or pounce
- Multimedia sharing sites like YouTube, Flicker and Slideshare
- Diggs with Wikio and digg
- Blogs and live casts
- Virtual Universes like Second Life

Social media is a user centric approach to online marketing and each of these sites are built with the user and community in mind.

Use social media to:
- Connect with people
- Maintain brand positioning
- Generate more traffic
- Enlarge the targeted segment
- Increase the user experience

And also…leverage current marketing results to get better brand awareness, get better brand management, get better user stickiness, get better quality products, and get more sales.

Requirement for social media include:
- Global means local. Because we deal with communities we need to be close to them
- Resources. Community managers need to get more focus
- Consistency. The effort should start and last
- Content. Content should get more focus

Because social content is updated more often and users link to the content, social media sites rank within the search engine results page, providing businesses another opportunity to increase visibility online.

Erik addressed the users specifically within the social media communities and lessons learned to launch a successful social media campaign.

Lessons learned:
1. Don’t treat social media like every other channel you use. Community members don’t want to be added to your database, they want to have a conversation.

2. Figure out what users want and what you offer, don’t provide irrelevant information, or applications if your customers don’t want it. Identify what it is that only your company can provider the user base.

Erik addressed some of the common questions businesses have regarding social media:

Where should I start?
Look at where your audience is, where you think you have the most chance for success and test one social site to see what works.

When should I start?
Today! Get out there, interact and figure out what people like and don’t like. Don’t push marketing right away, provide value to the community through conversation.

Can search engines crawl social media / networks?
Yes – absolutely! Social sites have a lot of inbound links and rank highly in the search engine results page

Does Facebook PPC work?
Test it out for your business, but don’t treat it like direct response ad. It’s better to build a community on Facebook first, send them to your Facebook page and include a link to your site.

What’s the easiest way for my company to use Twitter?
Start up an account, be transparent, and start to figure out what people are talking about. Start following people that are talking in a relevant context and respond to posts as you become integrated.

What else is new and exciting?
Search. The future of social media will include a search function, allowing you to search for ratings and reviews from your network base.

Brent Csutoras talked to the panel about how to use search in conjunction with your search marketing campaigns.

One of the most viable aspects of social media is to increase visibility, rankings and links by pushing content and services through your communities.

The biggest benefit social media adds to your marketing campaigns is organic links. Social media is a natural method to spread your content to others and gain natural links.

There are two main types of links coming from social media:
- Community links from the social media / networking sites
- Inbound links from other sites that ‘pick-up’ or share your content within in their networks

Social media tips
- Have a site that is social media friendly
- Pick communities you relate to
- Check what worked before
- Create high quality, link worthy content
- Understand how to submit and push social campaigns
- Understand what to do with success
- Be social!

How are you incorporating social media into your search marketing campaigns?

For more photos from SES San Jose, be sure to visit TopRank on Flickr.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | SES San Jose: Social Media Marketing | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

Networking has been a core tactic for building and marketing businesses long before the internet came of age and certainly even more so with the explosion of services such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Ning. Web technology and the mass appeal of making connections online makes social networking an attractive channel for businesses that want to extend their word of mouth reach, credibility and influence.

While there’s plenty of buzz about social networks (socnets), most companies aren’t quite “wired” for enganging social communities just yet. Amidst all the shiny new objects of Web 2.0 web applications, it’s important to understand which networks are influential and relevant. Hence, our Reader Poll:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

For these options, I am including Twitter and FriendFeed as social networks, even though most would characterize them as having social features, but not necessarily pure socnets in the sense that LinkedIn and Facebook are.

Many people use multiple social networks. For example, the three I use most often are: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. YouTube and Flickr offer social networking features, but I suspect the majority of users are personal, not business.  For this poll, just pick one and share others in the comments including an anchor text link to your profile if you like.

Please also share other business social networks, especially any that are niche or vertically specific.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Reader Poll: Influence Marketing with Social Networks | 51 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

In the end, Twitter on it’s own and with it’s uptime issues isn’t anywhere near as productive as it is in combination with third party tools like Twhirl, Summize and Twitturly. Return on effort from using Twitter really depends on how you use it. The mileage will vary based on your goals, how much you give and to what extent you use Twitter in combination with other socnets like Facebook, LinkedIn and offline networking.

Here’s my presentation hosted on Slideshare:

| View | Upload your own

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | SES Toronto: Deep Dive into Twitter | 5 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Below is a list of our favorite online marketing tips , which – as a team – makes us stronger than each individual.

• Build Out Social Relationships Gradually – Social media and social networking are not “dump and run” tactics. Relationships need to be built over a long period of time in a venue that enhances the product or service you are promoting, which is when the promoted piece gets the most positive attention.

• Spell Check – Nothing ruins online credibility faster than misspellings or incorrect grammar. Check your spelling yourself and have someone else review your work. Don’t depend only on spellcheckers, as they may not catch the appropriate word usage or necessary punctuation.

• Understand How Your KPI’s Tie Back to Your Objectives – Will ranking #1 in Google for “wedding favors” automatically equate to meeting your sales objectives? Or, will an increased ranking be a trigger to focus your work on how best to nurture these new potential prospects to customer status?

• Incorporate Keyword Phrases into Promotions – whether it be press releases, online advertising or social media promotions, using a keyword phrase along with yours or your client’s name can enhance how searchers search for the website in the future.

• Use a Clear CTA – When using a Call to Action, ensure that what you are asking is clear and to the point. Also ensure that you are indeed asking a person to do something.

• Identify Yourself – Come up with a good handle and avatar so that no matter what channel you are engaged in, you are easily recognizable.

• Identify How Visitors Use Your Website – When customers and prospects visit your site, what type of content are they looking for and where do they click on the page to find it? By knowing what your visitors are looking for, you can provide the content they need and a user experience to keep them coming back for more.

• Understand your End Goals – Online marketing is similar to traditional direct marketing when trying to reach certain inquiry levels. Understand the desired inquiry level, and follow that back through your amount of projected traffic, touchpoints and the whole universe you need to target.

• Plan & Understand – Be sure to plan ahead when it comes to Online Marketing. There is no shortage of promotion opportunities, however the promotions you select should deliver the desired results. As an online marketer, be sure to first understand what promotion channels deliver the results desired.

• Look to the Future – The online marketing landscape is constantly changing, whether in the form of updated search engine algorithms, new social media outlets or any of the other aspects of marketing that fluctuate. Devote time to keeping yourself educated on what’s new and upcoming in the online world by reading blogs and other industry publications so that you are prepared to meet the new challenges these changes will bring.

• Be Patient – online marketing typically doesn’t work overnight. Once your online marketing program is deployed, be patient and continuously monitor, analyze and refine.

That wraps up some of TopRank’s favorite online marketing tips. Do you have any you’d like to share?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Online Marketing Tips from TopRank | 14 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

The results of our poll on how Online Marketing Blog readers use Twitter are in. We had over 220 responses, which isn’t a bad sample considering this blog is fairly niche with a modest sized (and very smart) audience. Below I’ve listed the poll results and a few comments on each.

Follow Lee Odden on Twitter here.

• (39%, 87 Votes) Sharing links to items of interest to your network – Not surprising since the speed of reach on Twitter is so fast. As soon as you find something interesting that’s linkable, you can drop it on Twitter and your network knows immediately. With the URL monitoring tools like the Techmeme-like Twitt(url)y and twitbuzz you can track items of interest before they ever hit the blogosphere and long before they hit mainstream media.

• (28%, 63 Votes) Networking for new contacts – I don’t explicitly use Twitter for this reason, but it happens. Twitter is like a first stepping stone to Facebook then to LinkedIn and then to something offline. Well, not really, but with the search features of Summize you can find others with similar interests to follow and connect with. You can also use TwitterLocal to find Tweeple in your geo. While Twitter is hot amongst early adopters, it’s still new enough that finding people in your area can be reason enough to connect. There’s also whoshouldIfollow which looks at who your Twitter friends follow and makes suggestions.

• (21%, 47 Votes) Reinforcing current network contacts – Definitely a good use of Twitter as a touchpoint between connecting in person or virtually. Social media savvy people I meet in person at events almost always connect (or are already connected) on Twitter before other networks. Direct messaging with contacts replaces IM in many cases and makes it easy to build relationships (assuming each has something to offer).

• (10%, 22 Votes) Promoting specific content – I consider promotion and sharing very similar. ie, I wouldn’t promote something I wouldn’t want to share in the first place. In some cases this might be asking for votes or it might be promoting a specific event. Nothing wrong with that. Retweeting is a common goal for promoting content. Those 140 (and likely less than that) characters need to be very carefully crafted and the topic needs to be very unique in order to motivate others to pass along the Tweet to their followers with a “retweet”.

• (9%, 21 Votes) Re-distribution of content from blog, web site – When this is done manually and in a customized way with some consideration towards what your Twitter network is interested in, it works well. When it’s done automatically using a blog plugin it can get old because many times, people following you on Twitter also read your blog. Although I wonder if there is a shift away from blog reading towards Twitter.

• (8%, 17 Votes) Twitter cat posts: flight delays, eating habits, who knows what and why – These are the kinds of Tweets I saw when I first signed up for Twitter and really didn’t get what the attraction was. Individually, these Tweets seem pretty meaningless, but cumulatively, they paint a picture of the personality and character of your network. That can mean a lot when recruiting candidates, looking for prospective clients, vendors and marketing partners.

• (5%, 11 Votes) Replacement for Facebook updates – A lot of search marketers are not using Facebook as much as they used to and I think the simplicity of Twitter is refreshing compared to the sheep throwing, zombie biting, “who’s sexy” environment on Facebook. Since this poll was launched Facebook added chat which is pretty useful but I’m not sure it will lure away from Twitter.

• (5%, 11 Votes) Influencing your network to do and think what you want – This falls in line with promoting content and ideas. Anyone that knows me knows I’m a promoter. When I see something interesting, I have no problem promoting it and influencing my network to attend a specific event, contribute to a charity or check out a new Twitter tool seems perfectly natural. Your network expects you to be opinionated, that’s why they follow you.

• (2%, 4 Votes) Group and project communications – As for group communications, several events I’ve been to such as a session at the Web 2.0 Expo that created Twitter accounts (@micromedia2) attendees can follow and use to interact with the panel. I’ve also seen some organizations create accounts that can be used at more than one event or as a distribution tool like blog updates via RSS – only limited to 140 characters. I’d love to hear of some project communication examples with Twitter in the comments.

• (1%, 3 Votes) Microblogging conferences – Made famous by Twitter’s launch at SXSW last year and also this year, I think live tweeting events will become more and more popular as services like LiveTwitting gain traction. That’s what makes Twitter great, 3rd party tools.

• (1%, 3 Votes) Shilling for Digg and other social news votes – Explicitly and frequently asking for social media votes (publicly) isn’t going to win friends. Plus the mods for the bookmarking, networking or news site may be following you so it’s not worth it to abuse. What does seem to work well is to make it humorous or just ask people to check out something you’re trying to draw attention to. The social voting widgets on-site will give visitors the opportunity to act if they like the content.

• (0%, 1 Votes) Pitching journalists and bloggers – With Stowe Boyd’s recent promotion of Twitpitching and other echoes, you’d think there’d be more activity of this type. At least a direct message of a news/story idea to a journalist that is following you would be pretty easy and acceptable to do. If there are any journalists or bloggers on Twitter reading this that have seen an increase in Twitter pitches, please share.

One Twitter use that is definitely missing from this poll is, “Crowdsourcing your network” much like Stephen Baker did in this story on Twitter from yesterday’s BusinessWeek. Outside of sharing links to interesting things and networking, polling your network for answers to hard questions is probably the most productive thing about Twitter. In fact, I’m sure if we ran this poll again it would be the top answer.

The other use is one that’s more commercial, like how H&R Block, Comcast and Zappos have been using Twitter for customer service and customer outreach.

Wired’s Wiki has a list of some useful Twitter applications here.

What kinds of interesting or difficult problems have you been able to solve by crowdsourcing your Twitter network? What commercial examples have you been most impressed with and what companies/brands were behind them? Are you using Twitter as a marketing tool?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Top 10 Uses of Twitter | 41 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

After the keynote frenzy this morning, the session that stood out for me was “Facebook Marketing: Best Practices” with Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester Research as moderator, Evan Mager from AKQA, Holly Liu from Watercooler, Brett Keintz of 750 Industries and Stanford GSB and Kevin Barenblat of Context Optional.

Some of the key takeaways from this session were:

• Be clear with your objectives
• Test spending money on Facebook marketing even if you aren’t sure about the return. Hey, 1,000,000 visits can’t be wrong!
• Understanding the ROI of Facebook requires a new kind of mindset
• Don’t take away the social features of Facebook from users
• Facebook marketing is not about driving traffic to your web site. Keep Facebook users on Facebook

Hopefully Jeremiah doesn’t think I’m stalking him as this is the second session in two days of his that I’ve blogged. Unfortunately, I don’t know the panelists and there are no name tents, so each panelist response or comment below is labeled simply as “panel”.

He started with a series of polls: How many people use the internet? Facebook? Bloggers? Twitter? With each poll the number of hands raised changes.

Owyang cites stats from the Facebook site:

• 70 million active users
• Facebook is the 6th most-trafficked website in the world (comScore)
• Facebook is the 2nd most-trafficked social media site in the world (comScore)
• Over 55,000 regional, work-related, collegiate, and high school networks
• More than half of Facebook users are outside of college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 25 years old and older

The neat thing about Facebook is that they have a platform that allows 3rd parties to develop widgets and other applications. There are over 20,000 applications, mostly junk. 140 new apps are added per day.

Forrester data: Researched to find out how people use social networks. Primarily, they use Facebook to self express and also to communicate with peers. Nowhere does it say they look for products or look at advertisements.

Facebook offers many methods and channels for marketing – many of which you can find in this article: The Facebook Marketing Bible: 24 Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook

Panel: You approach Facebook like any other media. Think about your objectives and audience and go from there.

Panel: It depends on what your goals and budget are. If your looking at branding and community, create a Facebook page and consider engaging an app developer.

Owyang: What are you seeing as objectives from clients?

Panel: If you’re looking to attract users, applications are useful.

Owyang: Any companies looking to increase sales and revenue?

Panel: This space is so new, no one has really developed a ROI formula that works. The value is the ability to create virality around your brand. It’s a different way of thinking about achieving your objectives.

Owyang: What are some best practices?

Panel: Keep your content dynamic and fresh. Keep people coming back. There are basically two types of content on Facebook: The assets themselves, photos, text, etc. Also the social digital actions around that content like comments on photos.

Ways to keep assets fresh: 1. Do it youeself. 2. License it 3. User generated content – allows a lot of engagement. Users feel ownership of community. However, with UGC you will definitely need moderators.

Create applications that are metaphors for what people already know. For example, the Dodgeball mobile application. People are familiar with the concept and can jump in and start using it right away without a lot of confusion.

Owyang: Some of the audience will hate the brands being marketed on Facebook. What do you do about that?

Panel: You’re going to hear the good and the bad. That provides you an opportunity to listen to customers, audience.

Owyang: What about trolls?

Panel: With some people there’s not a lot you can do. Brand fans will come to your aid in many cases.

Owyang: Does driving traffic to your site work in Facebook?

Panel: Not really. If you have great content or incentive, they’ll go. With our viral marketing clients, you can take that same content and wrap it into Facebook itself so the experience for the consumer is seamless. We look at Facebook like TV, it’s an immersive experience. They generally don’t respond well to going offsite.

If you do send them offsite, make the landing page or microsite look similar to the page they came from within FB. Otherwise, we recommend trying to keep people on Facebook.

Panel: The clickthroug rate to outside sites is low. This is a distribution channel and you’ll get more page views if you keep them within Facebook.

Owyang: What are some measures of success?Panel: We track everything that happens with the application. We a/b test everything about the app. We also track effectiveness of the campaign, impressions and where they’re coming from. In the app world, it’s important to understand the viral factor. How many are passing the app along and how successful that is.

Panel: There can be challenges in getting data/metrics from Facebook to match up with traditional media formats. Sometimes you just have to go for it.

Owyang: When I look at Facebook apps, I see a lot of crap. Where’s the buisiness utility in this?

Panel: It’s like TV – it’s an opportunity to put your message in front of someone. If you have a million users engage in an app over amonth, that’s something interesting to them. That’s also time they’re not spending with other media.

Panel: If you can tie in your Facebook campaign with other marketing efforts or as part of a larger effort, it can be more effective.

Owyang: What is Beacon? What is a fan page?

Panel: A fan page is an official page for a brand on Facebook. A Facebook page is created and other users can become fans of the page. Marketers can buy ads on those fans and their networks.

Owyang: Beacon is what happens on 3rd party sites. Is Beacon a good way to do marketing?

Panel: For most Facebook users, it’s about the feed. What we’re driving toward is distribution through the feed. Giving your fans a place to rally enables you to up the experience for fans. It can supercharge excitement for the brand.

Panel: Apps are important but fan pages are also very valuable.

Panel: Brands that want to present an “official” representation, can use Facebook pages. For unoffical engagement, they can provide applications.

Owyang: What about ads?

Panel: If all you’re doing is banners and ads on Facebook and nothing else, you’re missing tremendous opportunity.

Panel: If you can slip an ad into the feed without being obtrusive, you can get very good clickthrough rates.

Owyang: What about demographic and targeting based on self volunteered personal info? Cites an example of being able to reduce the number of potential job candidates from millions to 200 people by this kind of segmentation and targeting. However, when the ad campaign to work for Forrester was executed, it didn’t generate results.

Panel: You’ve got to have a soft touch or it can alienate.

Audience: How do you define success?

Panel: It depends on the campaign. For video, it’s views, traffic back to the fan page.

Owyang: Tell me about a company that’s done it wrong.

Panel: Walmart created a back to college Facebook page. To Walmart’s credit, they “keep trying” with social media. A problem with the Walmart Facebook page was that it was a shallow experience. They disabled the peer to peer experiences – forums, comments, etc. That generated a bad vibe from Facebook community because they couldn’t interact. Also, the Walmart Facebook page was designed to send people to the Walmart web site. When people are on Facebook, they don’t want to leave.

Owyang: Best practices broken down: Let people communicate with each other, and don’t focus on sending people off Facebook.

Owyang: Biggest problem I see in this space when talking to brands is that they come into Facebook without goals/objectives.

Audience: Looking at using Facebook from a recruitment branding perspective. Anyone have experience with apps?

Owyang: Gives the Ernst and Young Facebook recruiting example.

Audience: What are best practices to research a target market on Facebook?

Panel: Facebook has official tools to identify psychographic information. your best bet is to poll Facebook users.

Audience: Is Facebook enough? Or should I advice to our developers to pour everything into OpenSocial?

Panel: It depends on your audience. We make that decision based on who we’re trying to reach. ie, other sites that support OpenSocial that have audiences of interest. Facebook is certainly large, but it does make sense to make apps available to other sites.

Audience: Any examples of lawfirms using Facebook for recruiting?

Owyang: Nothing specific, but I would start with LinkedIn actually. Do a search via Facebook ads for law students.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Web 2.0 Expo – Facebook Marketing Best Practices | 11 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

UPDATE: Survey Results on Top 10 Uses of Twitter are here.

Without question, the microblogging platform Twitter (follow me here) is a phenomenon many of our readers are exploring or trying to figure out. Whether you’re in search marketing, advertising, interactive marketing, journalism or public relations, there are many ways to use Twitter as a communications, networking and even a socializing tool.

Some people post the most benign information such as the mass fixation on Twittering while in airports. Others produce steady streams of thoughtful goodness, insights and links to content you simply won’t find anywhere else. Twitter can even be a productive marketing tool and if you look, you’ll find an amazing number of resources on it.

Twitter and other microblogging platforms like it (Jaiku, Pownce) can be a distraction and they can also be productive. How do you use Twitter? Is it productive? Here’s our TopRank Reader Poll Question on Twitter:

I’ve limited the responses to just 11 to encourage our well above average readers to share in the comments. What are your most productive uses of microblogging formats like Twitter? Are you a super Twitter user or are you wondering what it is and what to do with it?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Reader Poll: How do you use Twitter? | 57 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

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!

Todd Defren from SHIFT Communications shared two of his own posts from a series on social media: Tips on using Twitter for finding and developing relationships and another post on using Del.icio.us for PR “edgework” or direct interactions with consumers.

Dan Perry from Cars.com offers a tip on using Flickr. “Since you have the ability to change your Screen Name, and it’s independent of your username OR your Flickr web addresses, use your domain [name]. For example, my Flickr Screen Name is danperry.com. When someone finds a picture of mine, they see my domain.”

Peter Himler, who runs Flatiron Communications and writes “The Flack” blog provides a few quick tips on Twitter: “Fun to follow thought-leaders and journalists who often tweet their forthcoming thoughts on the site” and LinkedIn: “Been on it for nealry two years. Still wish it had the functionality as FaceBook. Good for keeping tabs on former colleagues and college friends.”.

Bill Hartzer, who is my opinion one of the most talented SEO/Social Media marketers out there, offers a few insights on LinkedIn and Twitter as well:

LinkedIn: With LinkedIn, it’s important to put your email address in your profile name. That way you identify yourself as a “linked in open networker” and you’re open to having others add you to their network.

Twitter: Like a lot of other services, it’s important to add or follow other people first and then most likely they will reciprocate. Find your favorite Twitter profile and view who they’re following … and follow them. Follow people and they’ll (hopefully) follow you. Also, when editing your profile on Twitter, you can add more than one link in your profile. Turns out that http: link URLs are treated as links.

Aaron Wall famously writes SEOBook and is involved with many other business ventures and online marketing channels, offers tips on YouTube and Yahoo Answers:

If you have a well read blog and want to use YouTube make a number of videos all at once and then beg readers to subscribe to your channel. Also, make sure to syndicate the videos on your own site AND add background information to the videos there to keep your site as the destination rather than turning YouTube into the destination.

With Yahoo Answers make sure you partner with a few friends to ask and answer each other’s questions. Put enough context to what you do to make it look good, but use aggressive keyword rich titles, and point some external links at the pages you want to rank well.

Erica Forrette from Adapt SEM and who writes the Adapt SEM Blog offers her inside scoop into LinkedIn:

LinkedIn Questions & Answers can be useful in figuring out new angles to take in messaging or tactics that you can use for your product/service. Since my company has a product that’s relatively new to the market, we’re always trying different tactics for customer acquisition and/or exposure to our brand in general.

On a few occasions, I’ve wondered about whether or not I should do “tactic X” as a marketing effort, so I put a question out there on the LinkedIn Q&A to gauge opinion or get insights on what other people think of, or have learned from doing, “tactic X.” Peoples’ feedback and commentary has often been incredibly helpful on making the go/no-go decision. I’ve even asked questions that are related to product features we’re considering adding.

The LinkedIn Q&A is like quick and dirty informal market research! Granted, totally unscientific research but I usually respect peoples’ opinions and get good perspective from these Q&As. (p.s. watch out for those blatant shills who answer a question and shoehorn a plug for their own product or service into their response. Blech!)

Matt McGee from Marchex and writer of the Small Business SEM Blog plus the originator of the SEMMYs (vote for OMB!), gives us the goods on Flickr and Yahoo Answers:

Join active groups (activity is more important than size) and share your quality photos with the group. Comment on other people’s photos and join discussions. Tag your photos wisely; I’ve seen Flickr photos rank for phrases that only appeared in the tags. Link from your blog or web site to your Flickr photos to spread some link juice over there.

Don’t waste time trying to navigate to all the categories and sub-categories that interest you; sign up for RSS feeds, instead. Yahoo Answers offers RSS feeds for every category and sub-category on the site, and for any search you do on the site, too. Sign your name and URL on all answers you provide; spammers only leave a URL, so you stand out more with your name included.

Debra Mastaler, aka “Link Diva” or “The Link Spiel” sheds some light on Technorati:

If you’re looking for a list of highly relevant and authorative blogs to approach/use for link building, set the search options to “a lot of authority” and search on your keyword. Add the RSS feed from the results page to your reader to monitor each time new results show. Look for additional tags (keyword phrases) by clicking the Technorati logo on the results page and start the process over again.

Tris Hussey who is now with b5media and is a long time blogger at “A View From the Aisle” offers up tips on Twitter and StumbleUpon:

Twitter – Twitter is a great way to announced time-sensitive events like radio shows, etc. Combine with Twitterbar for Firefox and you can post right from your address bar.

StumbleUpon – SU is one of the best sustained traffic generators I’ve found. Make sure you Stumble your friends’ and your posts to add them into the mix of SU users. Great compliment to Digg!

Neil Patel from Advantage Consulting Services and who writes the QuickSprout blog, gives us the lowdown on Facebook:

If you want to be successful on Facebook you either need a viral application and/or you will have to spend thousands on advertising. An easy way to think of a viral application is what features does Facebook lack or how can you improve on their current set of features. If you want to go the advertising route, you can pay companies like RockYou 50 cents for every installation they drive.

Steven Bradley aka “vangoh” from YellowHouseHosting and The Van Blog offers general social media marketing tips for just about any platform or channel as well as specifics for Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon:

General Social Media Marketing Tips:
With all social media sites I think it’s important to spend some time getting to know the community and learning the unwritten laws of the land. It’s also always in your best interest to see a social media site as something you contribute to and not something you take from. The more valuable you are to the community the more you’ll get back from the community. It’s also important to pick and choose the sites you participate in based on your interests and their connection with your site. You don’t need to join every site. Choose the communities you most enjoy and the ones most aligned with your site.

Del.icio.us:
One feature of del.icio.us I’ve only begun to experiment with is the ’subscriptions’ feature. You might use it to set a subscription on your name or site name. Not everyone will use your name or the name of your site as a tag, but some might and it can be a way to keep track of who is bookmarking your content.

A better use is to track a topic you’re interested in, much the same way you would use Google Alerts.You can set up subscriptions around a keyword theme and see what is getting bookmarked. You can use those bookmarks as research for something you want to write or as a way to better understand what specific content on the topic is getting bookmarked and adjust your own content to make it more bookmarkable.

StumbleUpon:
One area of StumbleUpon that I don’t think gets used to its potential are the Groups. You can join groups on subjects that interest you and ask and answer questions as you would on any forum. Most of the groups I’ve joined don’t seem to be particularly active, which is why I think they aren’t being used to their potential. Of course I might have simply joined some inactive groups.

Involving yourself in the question and answer should allow you to build relationships with other stumblers and allow you to build your network.

These are some great recommendations from tried and true marketers, public relations and blogging professionals. What “Social Media Smarts” can you share?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Social Media Marketing Tips | 23 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

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.

I posted a question to Twitter about not using Facebook lately and several others acknowledged the same trend which leads us to a Reader Poll question:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

From a marketing standpoint, our marketing agency is continuing testing and refinement of Facebook marketing as much as we ever have. But I’m curious if readers of this blog have noticed changes in their personal use of Facebook?

If you can share context or reasons for your answer in the comments, I’m sure other readers would appreciate it as would I.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Reader Poll: Is Facebook Losing it’s Luster? | 42 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com