Online Marketing Blog

In a previous post on MyBlogLog tips, I had mentioned a series of social media marketing posts Online Marketing Blog will be publishing where many of the tips will actually come from the community they’re about. Our next post in that series is about micro blogging phenomenon, Twitter.

At first I balked at the idea of Twittering like many others but eventually signed up (leeodden) and have been tuned in ever since. Like blogging, there are many mis perceptions about the productivity potential for Twitter. Those unfamiliar will often say, What’s up with: “My flight is leaving”. “We landed”. “Getting in cab. Etc?”. Trust me, there is a method to the MicroMedia madness as both an individual and a commercial communications tool.

The hot potato in social media this week is the OpenSocial web standards initiative (see screenshots here) promoted by Google involving numerous social applications, platforms and partners including: Ning, LinkedIn, Friendster, Oracle, Plaxo, Orkut, Salesforce, iLike, and Slide. Reported first on TechCrunch, “OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks”. That information includes: profiles, friends and activities.

On the heels of the PRSA conference last week, the topic of how search plays a part in online PR effectiveness has continued to enter into the increasing numbers of discussions we’ve been having with companies working on figuring out where to best leverage their 2008 marketing/PR dollars. It’s that time of year again.

Now more than ever, PR and media relations efforts can benefit from attention to how search engine visibility influences consumer perceptions and the way both consumers and the media find information online. With an increasing variety of search types to choose from including standard search like Google, Yahoo, Live and Ask as well as platform or content type specific search such as news, blog, image, video and options within social media web sites, brings new opportunities to optimize content.

MyBlogLog Glamour Shots

As both an active participant (first and foremost) and a consultant in the ways of social media, it occurred to me that we should engage the communities of interest we’re involved with for tips. Who better to get tips on social media from than people who are actually USING social media?

Online Marketing Blog, which has a top 50 MyBlogLog community, is fairly active and even interviewed MyBlogLog CEO Scott Rafer. Today I pinged the members of our MBL community and within a very short period of time received about 20 responses. Here are 17 that made the cut and one of our own.

I just returned from the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) International conference being held in Philadelphia where I participated on a panel, “Social Media, What Every PR Practitioner Needs to Know” with Rob Key of Converseon, Nicco Mele of echoditto and Peter Himler of Flatiron Communications who handled moderation duties.

Fifteen minutes before the session, the room was packed with people eventually standing against the back wall and it was clear that both the room and the topic of social media were going to be hot.

Fellow DMA and Search Engine Marketing Council member and friend Mike Moran recently asked if I’d be interested in doing a podcast series on Internet marketing and of course I jumped at the chance. Mike has previously shared an article here on “Why Search Marketing is So Hard“.

There are 8 podcasts in the series and they cover a range of internet marketing and new media marketing topics applicable to any business that’s trying to understand online marketing. For most of the podcasts, we use Mike’s books, “Search Engine Marketing Inc” written with Bill Hunt and Mike’s new book, “Do It Wrong Quickly” as starting points for discussing a range of topics related to how internet marketing is changing and what organizations can do to take advantage.

At the close of Day 1 of SMX Social Media, I reviewed the absolute basics of what I’ve learned over the day: Social Media users love Digg, del.icio.us and StumbleUpon.

Throughout the day, many speakers from different companies and backgrounds gathered to talk about their love of Digg, how to best use del.icio.us and what tips we needed to know to best utilize StumbleUpon as a marketing tool. We also learned about the importance of tags in social media, and Guillaume Bouchard noted that Technorati, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube were some of the best and most popular social media sites for tags. And since linkbait can drive a significant amount of traffic to your site, retain that traffic by continuing to post interesting content in the days and weeks following your initial linkbait. Don’t tease your visitors. Give them a reason to keep coming back.

Read an interesting blog post lately? Save it. Want to share it with others? Tag it and make it publicly accessible online. Or maybe you just want a safe place to save an article you will get around to reading on your weekly dive into your del.icio.us account. No problem. Social Bookmarking and Tagging both have this covered for you.

Social bookmarking and tagging aren’t just about saving items for you anymore. Revert back to your preschool rules, and you will find social bookmarking is just “sharing” on a global level. How else can you research and trade information with thousands and thousands of people all around the world in an up-to-the-minute fashion?

Drop a viral video into a sea of young and old, democrats and republicans, men and women and voters of all ages (with access to the internet, of course) and you have one of my favorite linkbait videos of the year.

So what is linkbait anyway? Cameron Olthius, CEO of Factive Media, defined it for the audience as content or a feature on a website that compels others to link to it from their website.

Linkbait can very quickly increase brand awareness and can drive a huge amount of traffic to your website. In order to do this, however, you need to make sure the content you are about to promote is link-able.

Next week starts one heck of a week starting with DMA07 in Chicago, the largest marketing conference in the world.  On Tuesday afternoon I am speaking on a panel called “Desperately Seeking Links Baiting, Buying and Socializing for Links” with Stephan Spencer, Seth, Besmertnik and Eric Ward.

Then on Thursday, I will be presenting as part of a post conference workshop on new media, specifically social media, with Joseph Jaffee of Crayon. Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning Joseph is covering blogs, podcasting, video casting and Second Life/virtual worlds. Thursday afternoon I will be presenting on social bookmarking and SEO as well as a grab bag session on Yahoo! Answers, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr. I might have picked a slightly different mix of applications to talk about but then again the topic selection wasn’t my call.

Spotlight on Search Interview with Danny Sullivan of Third Door Media and Neil Patel of Advantage Consulting Services

Next week the next of the Search Marketing Expo (SMX) conference series kicks off in New York: SMX Social Media. Developed by search engine industry legend Danny Sullivan and social media guru Neil Patel, the agenda for this event mixes strategic direction with plenty of practical advice sessions ranging from social news to social bookmarking to social networking with a double dose of Wikipedia on day two.

UK based e-consultancy holds periodic round tables meetings with agency and client side search marketers to discuss issues in the industry with a report published afterwards. The most recent September report, which highlights a number of search engine industry developments, SEO challenges and tactics motivated me to write this post. Many of the issues in the report are on the minds of in-house and agency marketers world wide.

Here are a few of the issues discussed and my own thoughts as they relate to each with a nice little rant at the end: