Online Marketing Blog

With the blogosphere churning out nearly 1 million posts every 24 hours, an unstoppable river of content flows over the web daily. It’s daunting, especially if you’re new to online publishing.  The good news is it’s still very possible to succeed, even if you’re just starting out today.

Developing affinity with a group of readers who will actually take the time to link, comment and share your material requires a commitment of both resources and creativity - this is common knowledge.

But all other things being equal, you can and should give yourself an extra advantage by developing a unique brand for your blog. This is beyond being organized and having a plan, this is about standing out in a world of infinite choice.

[Note from Lee:] What do you get when you mix two parts “practice what you preach” with a focus on clients and a passion for the digital marketing industry? New clients, renewals and expansion of many client online marketing programs. Working with a great mix of clients is complimented by a fantastic team at TopRank which we’re continuing to grow.

I’m happy to announce that Adam Singer has joined TopRank as an Account Manager.  At Adam’s previous position as a Digital Strategist with a PR firm in FL, he championed many social media, SEO and online PR programs providing client executives with strategic guidance on their digital strategy. Adam is a savvy blogger at FutureBuzz and we’re looking forward to his social media smarts as a welcome addition to the TopRank Online Marketing team. Please read Adam’s first post and welcome him. Watch for his regular contributions to Online Marketing Blog in the weeks and months ahead.

Thinking about social media? Or are you waist deep and need some help? A session today at SES NY highlights different approaches to social media, its purpose and how and why you should get involved.

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?

In the last session of the day, attendees were rewarded with 8 awesome tips to boost Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Results in a sponsored session  ”Wpromote Workshop: 8 Things You Aren’t Doing That Will Boost Your SEM Results”.  

Using real-life examples, this session promises to teach attendees the secrets top online marketers are using to beat the competition and squeeze the greatest results possible from their SEM efforts.   Topics include: PPC, SEO, landing page optimization and social media. 

Speakers are Michael Mothner, Founder & CEO and Michael Stone, Vice President, Sales & Strategy - both from Wpromote.  Some tips you may know and some you may not, but there is definitely something for everyone.

I love B2B, so a session on how to maximize lead generation within a B2B context is a must-attend.

New or old, a B2B marketer knows that a unique set of marketing challenges awaits them including:

• No single decision maker
• Increased risk for decision makers
• Offline conversions
• Long lead time
• Complex sale
• Ambiguous search terms
• Difficulty to pre-select B2B clickers

Whether you heart B2B or not, who doesn’t want to increase conversions? Find recommendations below to increasing conversion rates.

Scott Brinker, of ion interactive, shared how to increase conversions by segmenting, specifically as it relates to Keywords & Landing Pages.

Keywords & Ad Creative
Give your clickers a very specific, customized landing page about the topic for which they performed the search.

Day 2 at SES NY kicks off with a lesson in Social Media for the little guy.

The purpose of the session is to find out how small companies with small budgets can freely tap the world of social media to improve business and increase sales.

Here’s what we learned from Jennifer Evans Laycock:

Take the ‘marketing’ out of Social Media Marketing because it isn’t about marketing, but rather about conversations.

In addition, there is a reason social media is called the bleeding edge, because it can hurt especially if approached in the wrong way.

Remember, when you are developing marketing plans, that the goal is not to integrate the latest big thing but rather to integrate what works. As a small guy, the people on the leading edge are other marketers and not likely to be your prospect. There’s nothing wrong with leveraging pre-established social tools.

I am happy to say that this weekend, December 28th  marks 5 years of blogging at Online Marketing Blog. From the infamous “Florida Update” of December 2003 to current, practical advice on social media strategy December 2008, TopRank has been a trusted source of information for thousands of readers.

The entire TopRank Blogging team wishes a sincere Thank You to everyone that has commented, subscribed and linked to us over the years.  TopRank’s blogging efforts have been recognized in many ways including being one of the top 50 favorited blogs on Technorati, ranked a top marketing blog on Advertising Age and endorsed by fans from The DMA, PRSA, Microsoft, IBM, Yahoo and many others.

The thing about internet marketing is that there is no “one right way” to solve a single problem. So much of the advice and commentary about content optimization for search engines at conferences and on blogs is tactical. Five tips for this and 10 ways to do that. We do it too, because people that are new or just dipping their toe into the stream of internet marketing knowledge need information packaged in an easy to understand and actionable format.

Between the changes and improvements that happen on search engines, adoption of new web technologies/applications and changes in the way people use search, tactical advice can get outdated pretty quickly.  

Have you considered developing content specifically to drive traffic from social media sites? Have you also considered what you want from that social media traffic, and what to do with it once you have it?

In a session titled, “Earning Big Bucks with Social Media Traffic“, Social Media Marketing advocates including Rank Fishkin, Vanessa Fox, Michael Gray and Alexander Barbara gave some great tips to drive traffic via social media channels and how to monitize that traffic.

Michael Gray kicked off the session discussion how making a connection within the social media world is key to drive traffic to your website. Michael stated that monetizing social media traffic is harder than most other types of traffic and you should only try to make money from this type of traffic if you truly grasp the concept of social media and monetization.

You may or may not be using social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, or Digg in your business. The overarching theme from this panel at PubCon was… why not, what do you have to lose?

Social media gurus, including Warren Whitlock, Co-Author of The Twitter Revolution, Brian Carter, Director of Search Marketing for Fuel Interactive, Guillaume Bouchard, CEO of NVI, and Kent Schoen, Facebook Product Manager, joined forces at this session to discuss the Big sexy buzz around social media and provide some food for thought to convince skeptics that social media can be a successful marketing channel.

Warren Whitlock kicked off the session discussing twitter habits.

There are two stages of Twitter:
1.    Denial: Why would anyone care what I ate for breakfast?
2.    Reluctant Acceptance: I have a Twitter account but haven’t seen any traffic

Several of the TopRank Online Marketing team attended a Social Media Breakfast last Friday, along with about 150 local business leaders, code warriors, internet marketers, agency peeps and social media enthusiasts, to hear a presentation by David Meerman Scott, author of “The New Rules of Marketing & PR”. TopRank CEO Lee Odden posted a short write up and video interview with Scott as well.

David started his presentation with an impromptu survey, asking the audience to respond with a show of hands to questions like:

• How many of you have been to a tradeshow as a participant, not an exhibitor, in the last year? (very few people in the room raised their hands)
• How many of you have responded to a Direct Marketing piece in the last year? (very few people in the room raised their hands)

1. Geeking with Jonathan, no wait, “Greek-ing with Jonathan Mendez with the speaker, the listener and the argument in “Lessons in Ad Persuasion from Aristotle“.

2. Proactive Profile Linking. Social profiles and profiles of any kind can provide benefits as part of a Search Engine Reputation Management effort since they can rank well on brand and company names. Profiles can also provide a source of crawlable links. It may serve a company well to secure the profile names before the competition does. Two tools that will quickly check user names at multiple sites include: usernamecheck.com and the social media keyword check tool from Solo SEO.