All about the intersection of search engine & social media marketing, optimization and online public relations.
This session at Media Relations Summit includes Tac Anderson from HP, Jennifer Cisney from Kodak and Robert Scoble from Fast Company.
First up is Tac Anderson from HP, who shares a specific example of a tactical execution of a blog. HP has had bloggers for 3 years. 60+ blogs.
Example of using a business blog as a competitive response. Xerox announced a change in pricing. Charging more for the printer and less for the consumables - ink and paper.
The Wonder Twins Track at SMX West: SEO and Blogging, provided the audience with information on how to best launch and promote a blog.
Here are 8 tips, from Aaron Wall of SEOBook, on how to gain traction for your blog.
Own a Niche
Make Formatting a Priority
Earlier this week we started a poll on what online marketing tactics our readers would use most in 2008. The polling plug-in allows for only one choice and over 100 people have responded so far. We’ll keep the poll running for another week or so, but here are the top ten tactics rankings so far out of 35 listed and the percentage of votes for each.
With the vote count at over 150, I’ve updated the top ten as of 02/13/08:
When talking with TopRank or M&O Account Teams about new clients, it is inevitable that I will ask if there is a blog involved. There are simply too many advantages to enabling a web site with fresh, themed content that is well structured for SEO benefits and that also offers a great platform for creative promotion, not to consider it in the online marketing mix. However, the mis-perceptions about what a blog is and is not abound, even with self-described “blogging experts”.
This morning, and I mean really early morning, I went about my weekly perusal of about 50 or so SEO and SEM blogs. For the most part this is a very informative and satisfying experience. However, there are a few barriers to blog reader experience that I feel especially obligated to point out. These observations are relevant for any business blog:
If you’re a regular reader of Online Marketing Blog, you’ll know we like to tweak things on a pretty regular basis. I send such refinement requests to Thomas, my blogmaster, just about every day. “Make this bigger, make that smaller, add xyz plug-in or check on something with our host VISI”. I’m sure it’s annoying but it’s what he gets paid for. 
As part of a blog optimization panel I participated in during a recent conference in Australia, I decided to forgo the bulleted list of blog plugins and recommendations that you typically see on such sessions in favor of something more personal.
The presentation focused on 3 of the biggest mistakes we’ve made with Online Marketing Blog in the past 3 years, why we made them (and why others do too), what we learned, what you can do to avoid them and the expected outcomes.
This format was well received, so I thought I’d share them here.
Blogs are useful for many marketing and communication purposes. They’re also useful simply as software that manages content. Businesses can use blogs to communicate a corporate vision, to build thought leadership corporate-wide or for subject matter experts. Blogs can be very useful in support of public and media relations efforts and they are certainly excellent tools for making a site more search friendly with fresh content that attracts incoming links.
Blogs are great marketing tools, but if you’re running or working in a successful business it can be tough to find the time. Hence, this week’s reader poll:
What do you do when you can’t think of something or you’re not motivated to blog?
Some of our regular readers may have noticed that Online Marketing Blog was not available for about 26 hours this week. We were informed after calling our hosting company, that the site was under attack by hundreds locations sending unresolvable requests or a denial of service attack. The host shut the site down without telling us as it was on a shared server and the increased traffic was affecting other web sites.
Yesterday one of our account managers emailed me about a very nice hit (mention in an article) for a media relations client (way to go Bill!) in a prominent technology publication. This pub has an online version and the topic was pretty provocative.
I did a quick search on Google blog search and noticed a significant number of blogs buzzing about this topic. It would be a great opportunity for the client to participate in those threads of dialogue and present their unique perspective. Doing so with a blog post to link back to offering more details would be a great way to connect with a community that cares deeply about the topic. Except one thing. The client doesn’t have a blog.
When the first iteration of this blog went live, there was no intention of doing anything but documenting resources and sharing information. For a short time, we ran some Google AdSense ads and then participated in the beta of the Yahoo Publisher Network for a while. We even had a few image ads.
But ads just didn’t seem right so with the exception of very small sponsor text ads for the RSS feed, there is no advertising on this blog. I suppose one could argue the whole thing is an ad, but not in an explicit way.
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