Online Marketing Blog

Google+ Optimization or Community Building?

Initially I looked at Google+ the same as other Google social projects like Wave and Orkut. But the more I use Google+ the more I like it. Maybe it’s the network effect because others are using it more too. I often find content and insights shared on G+ that I don’t find elsewhere.

While the addition of Google Search Plus Your World (SPYW) has made a big splash in the digital community, I actually think G+ is far more useful (from a personal perspective) as a social network than it is as an augmentation of search on Google.com. When I put my Marketer’s hat on, of course it doesn’t matter what I think of G+ – the task is to figure out how to optimize opportunities to gain an advantage.

Despite starting conservatively with my personal Google+ use, I’ve had quite a few people ask me what I thought of G+ and when we’d write a post about it here on TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog.  With all the hype and past track record with Google’s social media tests, I decided to wait.  I’ve been a bit more active on Google+ as of late and strangely enough, nearly 6,000 people have decided this was worth a Circle inclusion. You can find me here: Lee Odden G+.

Rather than focus on yet another “Top Tips for G+ Power Users” post, I thought I’d write about what Google Plus doesn’t do. Or rather, what is it that I’d like a social application like Google+ to do. Maybe you’ll relate to some of these “wishes” and an interesting discussion will follow. I’m pretty reasonable on some of these, but certainly more “pie in the sky” on others. It’s Google after all, and the bar is/and should be high.

From Facebook to Twitter to You Tube, there’s no limit to the number of social networking sites that can be leveraged to interact with customers and prospects, and build positive brand awareness.

LinkedIn, however, stands apart from the crowd. The roots of popular sites like YouTube and Facebook are founded on the entertainment side of things. But since its creation, LinkedIn has been geared toward the professional business crowd.

If you haven’t already incorporated LinkedIn into your online marketing mix, consider the latest statistics:

• LinkedIn has more than 60 million members
• A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second
• Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members

Get started with a LinkedIn marketing strategy today with these five tips:

A blog should be considered the central hub of your social networking universe. Everything you do should drive traffic back to your blog, or website, as a way of combining all your efforts to give your brand maximum exposure.

Once thing you can do to help populate your social networks would be to update your status with your blog posts when new content is published.

By no means is auto-populating a service like Twitter going to get good results on its own, but as one piece of a social networking strategy, it can help a network grow.

Here are just a few of the many ways you can automatically syndicate a blog post to social networks.

Take a moment to think about, and count, the number of B2C social media success stories that pop into your head.

I’ll venture to guess that you could immediately name five to 10, if not many more. From Ford to Dell to Zappos to Best Buy, B2C social media winners – those organizations that caught on early and created a cult following of brand cheerleaders via the social web – are hard to miss.

But how about the B2B social media winners? I’m guessing these weren’t as easy to name.

And yet, there are just as many B2B organizations successfully conquering social media. While their stories might not be as well-known, we think these 5 B2B social media winners are doing a pretty doggone good job. Tell us if you agree.

As blogs grow, and new content gets created, old blog posts can quickly get lost in the archives. As much as bloggers try to keep everything organized, it’s hard to ensure that all posts get the exposure they deserve. However, there are ways to help ensure that older posts get additional exposure.

1. Related Posts

On individual post pages, add links to other related posts. This shows visitors that there is more content on your blog that might be of interest to the reader. I’d suggest showing 5 posts as it gives a little variety without giving to many options.

Tip: Try out the Yet Another Related Posts Plug-in to integrate related posts into a WordPress blog.

Twitter seems to be taking over the web.  Everyone seems to have a Twitter account, or two, even President Obama.

With all the fanfare surrounding Twitter, there are many ways to integrate Twitter even more into your blog.  Here are a few tools get you started.

Tweet This – Tweet This is simply a link integrated into your blog posts that make it easy for users to click on and post your post to Twitter.  Think of it like a social bookmark icon, only for updating Twitter instead.  You may already even have this integration via a ShareThis or AddThis button.  It’s quick and simple and every blog should have this.

The TopRank team works really well together, bringing to each team meeting various areas of expertise and interest, which makes for a well-rounded environment here in our Lake Minnetonka office. We know how to play off of everyone’s strengths and ensure our clients are fully serviced based on their needs and objectives by those who can best take on that role.

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.

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.

About 2-3 times a day a pitch comes in via email, Facebook message or other means asking for a mention or a link. Some are cut and paste pitches from PR reps, some are from companies trying to promote their own message and some are from industry associates that feel they have something special to share.

Even when an announcement seems interesting, more often than not a post won’t be created for it since Online Marketing Blog doesn’t really cover industry news. Unless it’s a topic that’s spot on and can help fortify a post that’s already in the works, there’s little if any chance of getting covered. As much as I’d like to give a mention and a link, I normally don’t. However if it’s really good, I do something much better.

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.

A distinguishing feature of OpenSocial is that applications will be created with normal HTML and JavaScript. Facebook requires development using it’s own markup language making the apps unusable elsewhere. With the recent $240 million Microsoft investment in Facebook and a $15 billion valuation, the stakes are very high. Some say OpenSocial isn’t really opening any doors or isn’t a threat to Facebook. What say you?

Do you have an interest in crochet? Extreme ironing? Wearing only green shoes? There is probably a social networking community out there for you so you can connect with like-minded people who share your interests. At SMX Social Media this afternoon Rand Fishkin and Liana Evans both spoke on how to find, use and leverage these smaller social networking communities.

To find these micro communities in your vertical, you can check out the web 2.0 lists of social media lists, search for topic relevance and coverage in a search engine and read the social media discovery blogs. The long tail of social networking sites and micro communities is very, very long. You will be able to find a targeted micro community focused on what your interest is.