Online Marketing Blog

[Editor's note: We're excited to share this next guest post from David Alston of Radian6. A fast emerging leader in the field of social media measurement, Radian6 (a TopRank client) provides social media monitoring tools to hundreds of leading PR firms, ad agencies and brand marketers.]

David is VP Marketing at Radian6 in New Brunswick, Canada with previous experience at several tech startups in the interactive advertising and the video over IP space. Most recently, he was partner and VP of Marketing at PR firm, Revolution Strategy. His blog is TweetPR.

Social media evangelist Brian Solis of Future Works, PR2.0 blog and bub.blicio.us during the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Brian took a few minutes to share his insights into what’s hot in Web 2.0 and the interplay of technology and communications.

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

The first session for me on day two of Web 2.0, “Creating a Coherent Social Strategy for Business” with Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li of Forrester, was one I’ve been looking forward to since I first read Groundswell. See my previous interview with Charlene Li on Groundswell.

In this session, both Li and Bernoff emphasize the importance of not jumping into social technologies and applications just because the competition does, but to have specific objectives and measurement. With defensible results, a social technology will be in a much better position to survive slimming budgets. The focus is on people, not technology with social technologies and applications.

My first post from the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco is the second half of “Free Traffic: SEO/SMO 101 (Search Engine & Social Media Optimization) with Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts and Muhammad Saleem of Advantage Consulting Services. Unfortunately, I missed the SEO portion and gauging by the crowd around Stephan, it went quite well.

Muhammad Saleem’s portion of the presentation focuses on Social Media Optimization and Marketing 101. I’ve not met Mahammaed in person before and he’s sporting a very cool goatee with a waxed moustache.

Saleem’s presentation focuses on 4 aspects of social media:

• Blogs

There are many reasons social media can be a productive marketing channel or platform. Rather than emplying it as a tactic du jour, the purpose should dictate strategy and the tactics used for reaching desired goals. A few common outcomes for social media marketing efforts include:

• Gain insight into a community of interest -You can run all the customer surveys you want, but some of the most interesting and progressive market research can be found within the social communities where your customers interact, share information and make recommendations. Tapping into the streams of dialog is a great start to engagement and social participation with your brand.

Social Media is an important, growing channel in the world of online marketing. Certainly indicated by the number of attendees crammed into this afternoon’s session at SES New York.

The panel for the session included moderation duties handled by Erik Qualman from EF Education and the following speakers: Jennifer Laycock, Liana Evans, Tamera Kremer and William Flaiz.

From the impromptu polling during the session, the majority of people are already leveraging social media as a marketing channel in some way.

Sitting in the SEO & Social Media session, Barbara Boser the Social Media Director for 3 Dog Media, shared some great tips on marketing with social media:

Be prepared & Commit to Social Media

• Know that it is time consuming
• Read and learn what is popular
• Look for tools you can use on the sites and on the web

Your Profile

• Research to be sure that your profile isn’t the same as any of the other top users on the site
• Be anonymous if you’re promoting your own site

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By 2010, 70% of all content online will be developed by individuals, so claims iCrossing’s Adam Lavelle, articulated during the session “Actionable Social Media” today at SES Chicago.

The session, moderated by Anne Kennedy, included on its panel:

• Lavelle
• Todd Parsons, cofounder of Buzz Logic
• Jennifer Laycock, Editor in Chief of Search Engine Guide
• Tamera Kremer, Wildfire Strategic Marketing
• Steven Marder, CEO Eurekster

The panel’s discussion reviewed the most popular social media methods, tying everything back to the main notion that we humans, truly, are social animals. The web has evolved naturally, but a breakneck pace to support this type of behavior.