SEO Rants and Resources

Strategies for Quickly Building an Audience with Social Media

The social media revolution is happening. Are people finding your website?

As a business, how do you make your business website stand out amongst 435 million other websites and more than 1 million blogs competing for your audience's attention? It's not as hard as you might think. Internet readers want information from the Internet. They don't want advertising, marketing, or a "pitch". The solution is to become a social media "Maven". A Maven is a trusted authority. One who becomes like a friend on the social media websites. I like to equate it to being a "hub" in the offline world of word of mouth networking. As you gain your audience's trust, they will return to you over and over again wanting to invest in your advice. There are five steps to becoming a social media maven:

1. Get in the Game. Begin blogging immediately.
2. Share your passion. Build your website, blog and online presence around your passions.
3. Be controversial. Don't just follow the leader and rehash the same old thing that everyone else is writing about. Challenge the status quo.
4. Create world class content. You will drive repeat traffic to your website by offering top notch "how to" information. In thins new world of information delivery this can be written, audio or even video.
5. Engage in the conversation. Encourage your audience to ask questions.

How to Get People Commenting On Your Blog

1. Collect Email Addresses - Do you have enough people reading your blog? Use VerticalResponse's free opt-in form, it's just a few clicks if you use Their integration with TypePad. Then as soon as you publish your post send an email marketing campaign to your list with a snippet of your new posts. Sometimes simply publishing your post won't drive traffic if your readers don't know about it or aren't subscribed via RSS.

2. Ask for The Comment! - At the end of each blog post ask your readers to comment on something you wrote about. Make it simple, maybe have a comment box right there and ready.

3. Ask Your Friends to Comment - Sometimes people are shy but if they see others commenting they might add a comment also.

4. Write Some Good Content - Not everything you write is going to be Pulitzer worthy, however there are easy ways to see what people are excited about reading. Install Google Analytics on your blog to see what people are most interested in, then write more of that particular topic or in that particular fashion. For example, it was pretty clear that many readers like things formatted so that it's easy to read but also a quick one. For example, "5 Quick Things..." or "10 Ways to a Better...".

5. Write Often - Get your readers used to you publishing on a regular basis so that there is enough for them to read when they haven't been to your blog in a while. They may find something in the past few weeks that inspire them to comment.

6. Get Your Readers Riled Up! - From time to time be crazy and take a different stance. Write about something controversial to get them commenting or point to another blog and tell your readers how you feel about it. Then ask them how they feel. When writing a controversial article make sure you never condescend the view point you are not choosing to write about.

Social Book Marking Madness

Everywhere you turn online you will find articles, news reports etc. about the benefits of social media and the impact it can have on your site and your SEO campaign. And it can. As part of an overall strategy, social bookmarking is used to help make others aware of resources such as web pages, lenses, blogs, articles and other social media campaign related elements.

Social bookmarking is a way for people to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages. This way your bookmarks are available to you from any computer connected to the Internet. Social bookmarking systems, allow users to save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public. Most social bookmark services encourage users to organize their bookmarks with informal keywords called tags.

You find services online that swear the secret to getting a top ranking in Google today is social bookmarks. The argument they use is that sites bookmarked by real human users have been through a rather thorough review process. Of course this means that bookmarks can be interpreted as a vote for web page quality. In other words: the search engines may use data from the book marking service as a factor in its search engine algorithm.

The truth is this; the more popular any search engine optimization technique gets, the easier it is for spammers and tricksters to create false results for the sole purpose of inflating the ranks of chosen pages.

Sadly, the madness is upon us. The spammers have tools that allow them to post to tens of accounts at one time. One way to tell if a search engine optimization technique has run it’s course – to the point the Gods of Google know there is a problem and have either stopped giving credit for or have figured out how to penalize a “technique” is to see if anyone is selling it as a service on Ebay.

Social bookmarks will continue to generate traffic as humans use the social book marking sites as a search resource. Just don’t expect any bumps in your search engine rankings from it.

This is my favorite Ebay ad for the day.

One of the best ways to increase your pagerank is to have websites linking to your site. Social bookmarking sites are continuing to gain popularity and are a great way of getting free external links to your website.

This auction is for the service of submitting your website to 15 popular social bookmarking sites. Simpy.com, del.icio.us, and looklater.com are just a few of them. The sites have a range in pagerank as follows--PR8 to PR4.

Your site will be submitted to all 15 sites within 48 hours of payment. All I will need is a title to your site and the url, which I will ask for via email once payment is received.  US $9.99

Could you sell Tupperware from your blog?

Tupperware has never been one of the companies on my radar.  Sure, every time I open the bottom kitchen cabinet next to the stove at home and deal with “the rush to get out” of plastic storage containers I use the name Tupperware in vain. But other than that I just don’t think of them.

Years ago they were a company who’s distribution network was made up of people throwing parties. They partied to the tune of about $2.5 million per day in the early 90’s.

Recently, I read an article that compared promoting your blog to having a Tupperware party. They made some good points. On-line or off, you are leveraging a relationship to commercially benefit.

Is your house inviting? Is your kitchen sink full of dishes when you invite guests over? Are the side bars of your blog filled with distractions or does your blog have poor graphics?
Know your product. If you are going to sell a 25 piece a kitchen storage kit you better know how it works. If you are going to blog, you better know your subject and repeat your unique positioning statement early and often.
Ask for the order. At a Tupperware party handing someone an order form and asking for shipping details is the call to action. On your blog, you may be trying to get subscribers to your RSS feed. Make it clear that you want them to sign up.
Say thank you. After you party you would send out thank you cards. Send a free offer to new subscribers. Perhaps your new white paper or ebook.
Deliver what you promise. The party is not over until you deliver the products in a timely fashion. In your blog it is delivering a clear, consistent message of what you promise.

There is plenty of information and physiological details behind why this company was so successful. >>>Full story 

Web 2.0 marketing: What it can do for you

By Douglas Gantenbein

Today's Web technologies offer richer, more interactive methods for midsize companies to target new audiences and measure marketing results. But you must research the options — and caveats — carefully before jumping into this fast-paced new world of marketing.

In Summary:

• Compared to traditional methods, online marketing is increasingly flexible and affordable for small and midsize companies.

• Social networking advertising and blogs, in particular, require that you regularly update the content and concept.

• Software services that track customer behavior on the Web simplify the task of measuring results.

The advent of Web 2.0 characterizes the shift in the World Wide Web from a collection of static sites and experiences to a global space where broadband connections and multimedia applications deliver deeper content and richer interaction between individuals. Some of these Web 2.0 services and companies have appeared out of nowhere to quickly change the dynamics of Internet marketing and advertising. For example, the online video sensation YouTube was founded by two young California entrepreneurs in February 2005; less than two years later it was sold to Google (in October 2006) for $1.65 billion.

This is good news for midsize marketers, because new applications such as blogs, wikis, and online video advertising can level the playing field with larger companies, since these tools are far more affordable than traditional advertising methods. Yet, given the wide array of options, confusion reigns when it comes to selecting online marketing strategies.

A cool appraisal of the world of Web marketing can help ensure that your company spends its Internet marketing dollars wisely. The overview below provides some of the more popular online marketing methods and how you can take advantage of them.

1. Social networking sites

Characterized by YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace, these sites allow people to upload content such as videos or personal profiles. Wildly popular with young people, marketers are starting to invest in social networking advertising. (Microsoft provides the digital advertising technology for Facebook, the second-largest networking site.)

The good: Marketing on such sites helps companies reach a younger, arguably more fickle audience that is beginning to ignore traditional advertising. Unilever, for example, promotes its Axe deodorant on a MySpace page dedicated to what it calls "Gamekillers" — people who interfere with a young man's efforts to find dates.

What to watch out for: Anyone can set up a MySpace page, but it pays to keep the concept fresh, as Volkswagen learned with its 2005 launch of a profile for a character in its commercials. Already, Volkswagen marketers told The New York Times, the "Helga" profile is losing appeal as other marketers have invaded MySpace. As well, recent reports in the San Francisco Chronicle and other media indicate that members of such sites are becoming disgruntled with the way advertisers are targeting them.

2. Blogs

Online journals of commentary and chat, blogs are everywhere on the Web. The corporate world is now using them to subtly market their products or develop a brand image. Microsoft engineers blog about Windows Internet Explorer and other products, for example, while General Motors runs a blog that discusses topics ranging from auto racing to car design.

The good: Executed correctly, blogs give marketers a chance to build an informal dialogue with customers. Companies can test new product ideas, for instance, to see how customers react. Blogs are generally inexpensive, too, costing perhaps $2,000 to $5,000 for design.

What to watch out for: To be successful, marketers must spend time regularly updating blogs, which makes them a high-maintenance option. As well, blogs must be honest. Wal-Mart posted a blog about a couple traveling across the United States and parking their motor home at Wal-Mart stores. But it was revealed that the blog was a fictional story written by Wal-Mart's public relations firm, and the retail giant wound up with a major credibility problem. With blogs so common — it's estimated that 35 million of them clutter the Web — it's tough to distinguish yours from all the others. Your best bet is to drive traffic to your blog by marketing it through other channels, such as within e-mail newsletters or online ads.

3. Podcasts

Podcasts are audio programs that can be downloaded and played anytime on an MP3 player, and they can hold a user's attention like a good book. Whirlpool, for example, has developed a series of 20-minute "American Family" podcasts that cover topics such as making Halloween costumes or managing a gambling addiction.

The good: While not directly "selling" Whirlpool products, the podcasts attempt to give consumers a reason to know and like the Whirlpool brand before they shop for a washer or dryer, says Audrey Reed-Granger, Whirlpool"s public relations director, who creates the podcasts. "These are people who want to listen to good programming while in their cars, or as background when they're working at home," she says.

What to watch out for: Since marketers can only measure the number of podcast downloads, it's impossible to know whether people actually listen to them, warns Eric Weaver, director of strategic marketing for the Seattle marketing firm Girvin.

4. Intelligent press releases

These "direct-to-consumer" press releases about products or company services can be written with search-friendly terms and then placed with online news sites that index or "aggregate" them and send headlines to subscribers.

The good: A company selling marketing tools or services, for instance, might write releases with terms such as "accelerate sales cycle" to direct search-engine users to company information. Windows Internet Explorer 7.0 will create opportunities in this area, as it has features that simplify subscribing to news feeds.

What to watch out for: News feeds and releases have saturated the Internet, and it can be difficult to make your release to stand out from the rest. Make sure to invest in high-quality copywriting services, so that your press release headlines and storylines are credible, compelling, and appropriate to your customer base.

5. Targeted advertising

Search-engine advertising — where companies pay to have their Web site displayed on search-engine results — has been big for several years. But now companies can target their ads within the context of what people are reading online.

The good: Using technology and services from companies such as AdValiant, Touch Clarity, and Pulse 360, for example, a mortgage company's ads might appear in articles about home improvement or real estate. It can also target ads to readers within a geographic area, such as states where the mortgage company operates.

What to watch out for: Most targeted advertising contracts stipulate that the advertiser pays a certain fee per click. In case an ad generates a surge in clicks, be sure to set limits on what you are willing to spend without notification from the marketing company.

Measure what you do

Web 2.0 marketing has one great advantage: Technology today makes it easy to measure results. For example, through conversion-tracking services, Web traffic can be analyzed to determine how many site visitors actually do what marketers desire — read about a product, order a product, or subscribe to a newsletter. ClickTracks, one online tracking service, charges $500 for a package that measures basic activity on a Web site, according to the company's site. For companies posting blogs, firms such as BlogPulse and Technorati can help them track who is linking to a blog site and what’s being said about it.

With so many options available — and most of them priced at a small percentage of the cost of television, print, or radio advertising — experts advise experimenting a bit to determine which method or combination of methods suits your customers. With the right approach, a company can take advantage of Web 2.0's incredible reach and the opportunity it affords to connect with customers in an entirely new way.

A journalist for more than 20 years, Douglas Gantenbein writes often on technology for Microsoft. His work has appeared in Business 2.0, Scientific American, Popular Science, and other magazines.