What exactly is a sponsored post?  The simple answer is:  a company pays a blogger cash to blog about their product or service.  This is different than an advertorial since the blogger is paid cash to write the content as opposed to the sponsor creating the message.

An entire cottage industry of companies such as IZEA, Smorty and a slew of others have sprung up to offer a variety of methods to pay for sponsored posts.  Some require bloggers to say good things.  Others tell bloggers they are free to write what they wish.  But in either case, there are potential risks involved marketers should be aware of.

Many digital audiences appear to have an  issue with sponsored posts because they see it as a breach of unwritten editorial rules of the web.  It is for that core reason sponsored posts remain controversial.

For the purposes of this post, I am just talking about cash for blog posts.  This a different animal than offering sampling, trials or demos of products.

Let’s dig into why sponsored – aka cash for blog posts – are something you should measure the risk of carefully:

Sponsored posts may draw the eyes of the engines

Cash for blog posts could be risky behavior if the sponsored links are follow links.  Matt Cutts at Google has publicly stated that paid posts should not affect search engines.   A simple solution for companies brokering sponsored posts is to require the no-follow attribute added to links within the content.  Some pay-per-post companies offering this service state they require it.  Some bloggers may adhere.  But many bloggers have no idea what a no-follow attribute is and may not follow this guideline.  Additionally, bloggers and marketers engaging in outright cash-for-play are involved in risky behavior even with no-follow links.  This is due to halo effect of linking in the social web, and may walk a thin line with the engines who are paying attention to these campaigns.

Before engaging in sponsored posts, consider organic outreach

More than 80% of bloggers are already writing on products and brands.  In other words: be remarkable, have great marketing/PR and you’ll be talked about.  Learn the intersection of social media and PR, begin content marketing and engage in strategies that inspire natural coverage, conversation and influence.  The organic approach yields the highest results: since sponsored posts must have no-follow links, the SEO and PR intersection does not exist.

Sponsored posts may train audiences to expect cash to write about you

By engaging in sponsored posts, you may succeed in training audiences to expect a return every time they mention your brand or product.  Instead of growing in an organic fashion, sponsored posts may keep your brand out of the natural conversations and put you on a treadmill of having to pay cash for coverage.  And that’s not a sustainable way to grow a web community.

May be seen as inauthentic

Due to FCC rules, all sponsored content must be disclosed.  With this disclosure and transparency, readers see the content was influenced by cash, not the author’s true perception of the product or brand.  This potentially destroys the true power of word of mouth.  It affects the blogger as well:  they may lose the trust of a carefully built audience.  Audiences may not believe a blogger thought a product was great because that blogger was paid to talk about it.

Sponsored posts are advertising – not social media

Companies who pay bloggers cash to write about them are engaging in advertising, not social media.  Would you pay someone cash to talk about your company or product at a party?  What would everyone else at the party think?  That’s exactly what happens on the social web when users see bloggers taking cash to write up products.  So if you think it’s a risky play to pay people cash to talk about your brand or product in person, it’s equally so online (perhaps even more so since the web is referential).

Organic push methods do exist

Newswires, article submissions, advertorials, syndication products, and other paid methods of gaining exposure amongst web audiences exist.  The social web as a whole has less issues with these services because they are not paying individuals directly to talk about them.  Rather, they are paying to have their messages added to areas they will be found – and then reacted to – without cash going directly to users or leveraging a personal brand for influence.  Communications professionals can use paid tools to cross the editorial line with less risk than directly paying cash to individuals.

Conclusion

Forrester research has been touting the positives of sponsored conversations.  Jeremiah Owyang says they are here to stay.  There are companies engaging in this tactic and doing fine.  I’m not ruling the tactic out entirely, but I do wish to caution marketing and PR professionals to weigh the risk carefully.  Sponsored posts may run counter to a social media marketing strategy focused on inspiring organic attention and building a community based on trust.  They do not provide the SEO benefits of organic outreach.  Consider your larger objectives and strategies carefully and ask yourself  if sponsored posts are the tactic for you.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Sponsored Posts – Measure The Risk Carefully |
No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

• 6 in 10 marketers plan to spend more on content marketing in 2010.
• 71% of bloggers who maintain blogs for a business – their own or one they work for – report that they have increased their visibility within their industries through their blogs (as just one example of content marketing in action).
• Content marketing plays an integral role in many of the top digital marketing tactics marketers implemented in 2009.

In this fast-paced panel, 3 content marketers each shared some quick tips, trends and strategies for content marketing.

Byron White, Chief Idea Officer, ideaLaunch

Byron ran through an overview of 10 tips to follow when fleshing out a content marketing plan:

1.  Develop a content marketing plan – many digital marketers just dive in without any type of plan.  This is always a mistake, before going any further, you need to get organized and understand next steps

2.  Use free and paid research tools to research terms – there are a slew of both free and paid research tools which can help you define keywords necessary to create a keyword glossary.  Use tools in conjunction with your own creativity to create an inclusive list of terms.

3.  Find the hot topics and keywords – by understanding the industry and leveraging tools, you can discover hot/trending topics and keywords to be a part of your mix in addition to the mainstay terms.

4.  Develop customer profiles for testing/research the competition – building customer profiles and competitive research allows you to draw upon a knowledge base when creating content to both stand out from competitors and connect with your audience.

5.  Develop an SEO plan with “keyword silos” – made up of long tail and short tail keywords – in addition to building a keyword list, group it into like terms in order for your content team to leverage it in an effective manner during content creation.

6.  Score content for SEO strength – either via an automated tool or manually, score existing content for SEO strength in order to gauge what to optimize first.

7.  Infuse your brand with great content – on the web, your content is your brand (and your brand is your content).

8.  Create stories – people connect with stories more than just product pages and lists of features.  Tell stories and connect with prospects at a much deeper level.

9.  Define great content – know what great content looks like before you develop it.  You can’t create something remarkable unless you have a vision in mind.

10.  Document content publishing date – this is a frequently forgotten, but important tip.  Only by documenting new content publishing date can you track/trend success of that content over time.

Of course, metrics are key – track interaction and engagement with content.  Get to a point you understand how your content, whether a blog post or a product page, is converting and working for your brand.

Heather Lloyd-Martin, CEO, SuccessWorks

Heather spoke on developing great content in the B2C and B2B space.

Why care about content?  The best SEO is good content, according to Seth Godin.  If you want people to convert, link to you or even visit your site you need quality content.

Main advantage of good content?  Control.  Great content allows you to gain control of your site.

Tip # 1:  Think about your target audience

Start by creating a customer persona.  The questions you need to answer to do this include:

• Who is your target audience?  (hint: it’s not everyone)
• Do you have multiple audiences?
• How old is your typical buyer/reader?
• What education level do they have?
• What are their average levels of income?
• What benefits are important?

Tip #2: Expand your keyphrase universe

Look for opportunities to build out new, unique content.  Reach both hit and long tail phrases, and create content that speaks to a broad mix of terms.  One way to do this is build out a resource section to answer both broad and ultra-specific, detailed questions.

Tip #3:  Free your content from “fake SEO rules”

“Party like its 1999…but don’t optimize your site that way.”  I.E. – there’s no need to follow a specific keyword density to rank.  Instead focus on quality first, keywords second.

General SEO content rules:

• Keyphrases in headlines/subheadlines
• Keyphrases in hyperlinks
• Keyphrases throughout the content (but not forcing it)
• Keyphrase-rich title
• Focus around 2-3 keyphrases per page

Tip #4:  Help your titles sizzle off the surface of SERPs

• When you’re on a SERP, there are 10 results and users need to pick one.
• Try to keep your titles to around 70 characters
• Include your main keyphrases
• Clearly explain what the landing page is about
• Include benefit statements (such as “free”) whenever possible

Tip #5 There is always something you can do

Beware the “website mullet.”  Check for outdated copy.  Some of the worst offenders can be press pages, conference/events pages, old articles, etc.  Where possible, update copy or add additional content if you have older areas of a website gathering cobwebs.

Also, if you want to build out a new section of the site to make your content friendlier but can’t change the template:  start a blog or create a new section of the site.  Don’t let technical issues get in your way.

Jonathan Allen, Director, Search Engine Watch

Jonathan spoke on the idea of using other people’s websites/social sites to gain rankings and an audience.  The theme  was on mash-ups – aka remixes of content.

Define your goal – is the goal of this content to persuade or sell people to take action or is it more long-term, to develop links to improve your search engine rankings/brand awareness. 

Develop personas – I.E. connectors, those hyper-connected individuals who will help your content spread.  By reaching them, you achieve the highest propensity for your content to spread.

Create content – it must be relevant and must be compelling.

Connect – once content starts to spread, connect with others and encourage them to share so it spreads further.

Rinse and repeat – when you find a formula that works, continue to leverage that to create additional content. 

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
How To Develop Great Content – SESNY |
11 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

During the past decade, PRWeb has reshaped the traditional press release and changed how companies large and small distribute news. Innovations of PRWeb over the years include:

• Search engine optimization (SEO) for press releases to increase the visibility of news in search engines like Google and Yahoo!
• Social bookmarking tools like trackbacks and bookmark links to take advantage of the explosion in social networking
• Really Simple Syndication (RSS) to increase the distribution potential of news and built the industry’s largest RSS network
• Allowing customers to include podcasts along with their news to increase the impact of their news release
• The “Feature Video” allowing customers to leverage the video content from popular sites like YouTube to bring their news to life

Meg Walker, Director of Online Marketing for PRWeb lead a session discussing how to optimize press releases to gain the strongest visibility in both search engines and media.

1.  Meet audience demand

Prior to drafting a release, you need to understand what your audience is demanding.  Meeting audience demand is integral to accomplishing your press release visibility objectives.

There are many times you don’t realize there may be a hook in to reach your target, and understanding audience demand allows you to tap into it.

The steps to meet audience demand include:

Knowing your audience – what is it potential prospects and media are interested in?  In what tone should they be spoken to?  Do they appreciate a certain angle over another?  Understanding is key and should drive the strategy behind the release.

Be relevant – more than just understanding your audience, give them content that is both relevant and timely.  By doing this, you’ll create the highest propensity your news gets picked up, shared and passed on.

Satisfy customer demand – to know what the demand is, first research popular trends in search engines and stay on the pulse of your industry.  By creating content that is related to hot topics you can create far more visibility for your releases.  Staying up to date, informed and on the pulse of your customers is vital to connect with them through press releases.

2.  Stay focused

By keeping your keywords and topics focused, your release can rank better in search engines and resonate more with media.  As you are writing releases, remember you are writing about one topic per release.  By segmenting the message or trying to say too much at once, you dilute your key points and take a risk prospects and media will walk away without taking next steps or remembering the point.  Keep it simple, focused and impactful.

3.  Use images for search

Images can increase the click through rate on releases in both regular and news search by 15 – 25%.  It’s a simple step, but can’t be stressed enough.    Additionally, using images creates more traction in media – journalists and bloggers both love images as it helps them tell their story.

At PRWeb, we have seen releases that used 3 images generate more than 50 articles.  We also find that many people are discovering images via image search, which then draws them back not only to the release, but to the customer web sites.  Because PRWeb hosts press releases forever, your images can continue to receive both organic and image search traffic indefinitely.

4.  Use videos to engage visitors

By using video in news releases, we have seen up to a 500% increase in time on pages.  As the web shifts to a rich media experience, bloggers, media and end users are becoming more accustomed to video.  In the future, it may be common that video is included with releases.  But since today it is not as frequently used, it’s a chance to make your news stand out.

5.  Optimize your release

Anchor text links – use 3

• One to homepage – direct visitors directly to your company website.
• One to product page – send media and consumers directly to the product they are reading about.
• One to blog post – this presents an opportunity to speak to readers in a less formal fashion.  With social web users and digital influencers continually expecting social content, a press release presents a great opportunity to spark interest in your social content.

Alt-tag – an alt tag helps your images get discovered in search engines – all release images should be tagged appropriately.

URL Keyword – top keywords can be used as part of the URL string, so be sure and include those during the release selection process.  PRWeb allows you to customize this.

Description Tag – add a keyword rich and compelling description tag (on PRWeb, that will become the meta tag).

Title of release – the title of the release will become the title tag of the page, which is a vital element of your on-page optimization.  If you have a target phrase, ensure your phrase leads the title of release. 

You can learn more about PRWeb at their website or follow them on Twitter.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
SESNY: 5 Tips To Optimize Press Releases For Search |
8 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Some companies and individuals appear to attract links without really trying. Others struggle and never break through to the point of building links at increasing velocity.

We’ve shared plenty of linkbuilding tactics at Online Marketing Blog, and it’s an ongoing popular topic for search marketers. In addition to direct and mechanical tactics, becoming a link magnet in your own right is an indirect yet powerful strategy to attract organic links.

The rise of the social web has set the idea of personal branding on fire. By developing a brand for yourself, your company and even the individuals within it, you can build an army of advocates ready to link to everything you post.

How can you develop your personal brand so that you only have to publish that sticky idea and links occur as a byproduct?

During SES New York 2010, Greg Jarboe, President & Co-Founder of SEO PR, moderated a notable group of linkerati:

• Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz.org
• Jennifer Slegg, CEO, JenSense.com
• Aaron Kahlow, Chairman & Founder, Online Marketing Summit

Jennifer Slegg, CEO, JenSense.com

Jen started things off by talking about the building blocks to creating a personal brand with the goal of link magnetism:

First, ask yourself, “What an I doing it for?”

• Rankings
• Clients
• Job opportunities
• Stardust
• Recognition

Figure out why you want to be a link magnet before anything else.

Next, consider your name.

Personal name

• Is your name fairly unique? If not, you may have a difficult time building a personal brand.
• Are there others with similar names? If so, there is the potential for confusion, and you’ll want to consider developing a handle.
• Is the domain name available? This is vital for your blog, and you’ll want your domain name to be your personal brand if possible.
• If you use a handle, does it narrow your focus too much? I.E., if your name was “content queen,” you may limit your appeal.

Company name

• This is potentially problematic in that you and the company brand are forever merged. This can create potential company marketing conflicts in the future.
• Consider using a spin on a company name (i.e., GoogleGuy or Company CEO).
• Remember company name and your name will always be tied together. What if the company gets sold?

Setting the groundwork

Whatever name you go with, register it everywhere. Then, set up your blog on your site – everyone who wants to develop a personal brand needs a blog. Create a unique design/logo and ensure it is just as brandable as the name you use.

Define your personality

People link to personalities as much as quality information. What do you want to be?

Helpful – Great way to start if participating in forums is key to your branding. If you show knowledge, people will follow and then link to you.

Informative/expert – The most important thing is, you need to know your stuff. If you don’t consider yourself expert quality, start researching and learning now. You’ll get called out if you post bad info. Try these ideas:

• Guest blogs
• Speak/participate in events (offline/online)
• Answer questions via Twitter

Controversial – Take the opposite stance on any popular industry topic. If everyone is singing praise about a company, look at the negative. If a company makes a move that everyone loves or hates, take the unpopular view and run with it. But tread carefully – you could develop a reputation for being “anti” or “pro” on a topic.

Being a jerk – This is very difficult to pull off, but those who are successful can be extremely popular. This gets you noticed, but you live with the rep. It could prevent you from being an authority. So if that’s your goal, this route may not be the way to go.

The key point to remember is the entire world is a stage – everything you say or do will help or hurt your brand.

Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz.org

Rand started his presentation with the notion that link magnets are the new paradigm of link acquisition.

How is a link magnet different than linkbait?

Linkbait = Content that’s built to attract links (but not necessarily reward their creation).

Link magnets emotionally or physically reward the linker, creating an incentive.

Why is this so powerful? Overall, the web has become jaded. Previously, we used to get plenty of legitimate blog posts/links due to great content. Now this has shifted. With a great post, we’ll get tons of Facebook status updates, Tweets, etc.

There was a golden era of linkbait where people loved and supported great content. Now we’re too sensitive; “The fish have figured out that there is a hook attached to our content.” This suspicion has created difficulties in attracting linkbait.

But people still link when it benefits them. Savvy marketers are rewarding linkers in non-financial ways.

For example, Yelp created a digital badge version of “People Love Us on Yelp” that restaurants could use on their websites. This made the most relevant pages on the web link back to the Yelp site.

There is the notion that great content earns links. According to Rand, this is a myth. You could post the absolute best piece of content on a subject on the web, and people will not link to it just because it’s good. It’s like saying, “The best ideas in politics are supported by the voters.” Instead, it’s branding and marketing to sell a concept that has an impact on where content goes.

The new bait is an emotional and obvious hook. Linking to content should do something for the people linking to it. Play to a linker’s psychology:

• Self-fulfillment
• Satisfaction
• Efficiency
• Effectiveness

One of the most beautiful things about the concept of link magnetism is that much of the time, especially when it’s embeddable, you have control of targeted links and anchor text.

You need a strategy for promotion & spreading of links. You need to create a distribution mechanism and a way to attract people, or it will never work.

Examples of great link magnetism:

Vimeo – When you click the “share” button on a video, it creates the overlay box to copy-paste the code and share it. By embedding the video, Vimeo also gains three links.

OKCupid – They create trends all the time using their data to help market the site. Their blog is frequently an example of both linkbait and a link magnet. By sharing the information on the blog, users are rewarded by sharing something interesting.

Techmeme – When they launched the learderboard, more than 30 of the top 100 bloggers linked to them.

Simply Hired – They publish the data/stats/salaries behind jobs. It is both interesting and useful data that frequently acts as a magnet for media.

Aaron Kahlow, Founder, Online Marketing Summit

Aaron decided to be interactive and not give a presentation. He gave just a few tips before turning over the panel to an audience Q&A.

Content – If you don’t have great content, there’s no reason anyone should link to you.

Personas/branding – If you don’t have a personality or aren’t comfortable with yours, you’ll never form the affinity necessary to gain links.

Social – Every time you create something, ask yourself if your colleagues/constituents would share.

Friends – Make sure you build relationships with those who are link magnets.

Suggestions:

1. Decide who your target market is, and then address them appropriately. For example, you can’t “geek out” and get technical if your audience is not.

2. Make sharing simple and easy. For example, if your audience is active on Twitter, leverage the Tweetmeme button on your blog.

3. When you find things you like, say something about it and link to it as opposed to always linking to the source.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
How to Become a Link Magnet – SES NY 2010 |
10 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

I gave the opening presentation to the MarTech part of the conference – a track of panels/sessions designed to help real estate professionals better integrate their marketing initiates with technology. Additionally, I spoke on two panels in the general sessions of the conference: one on online reputation management and one as an open panel Q&A answering marketing strategy questions.

For Online Marketing Blog readers, following is a wrapup of each of my sessions and some key takeaways.

Architecting A Web 2.0 Marketing And PR Strategy

For this session, I took event goers through an overview of the process we at TopRank implement for companies seeking social media strategy: a social media roadmap. I took audience members through the essential elements of the roadmap:

1. Define an audience
Who is it you are trying to influence? Where are they participating, what types of content resonates with them? Understanding your audience comes first, and will drive the next pieces of the roadmap.

2. Identify objectives
What outcomes do you want from this audience? Only after you understand your digital audience should objectives be solidified, as research may uncover new opportunities not conceived initially. While many skip to objectives, audience research provides the current situation necessary to proceed to identify objectives.

3. Develop strategic approach
For a social media marketing strategy to be effective and not a cookie-cutter application, you must have a strategic approach unique and logical for your brand. Audience data + objectives + insight into your industry + strategic mindset as a marketer will enable you to formulate a strategic approach that delivers results and permeates the market.

4. Implement tools/tactics
Even more popular than skipping to step 2, most marketing and PR pros skip immediately to step 4. It’s a cliché to say “we need a Twitter account” or “we need a Facebook page.” You don’t know that yet. Nor do you have the proper roadmap elements to execute them successfully by skipping immediately to tactical elements. It’s like entering a battle by sending in the latest wave of ultra-sophisticated fighter jets but not having any sort of plan of how they work into your larger strategy. Yeah, they might be bigger/faster/stronger but it’s setting yourself up for failure without knowing how they integrate with other elements.

5. Measure results/metrics
What will your success metrics be? Formulate not just an ultimate objective measurement, but define the right KPIs that actually roll to those objectives. Understand how they all work together and stagger them in the right order in your marketing dashboard to keep your finger on the pulse of success.  It takes a comprehensive understanding of web analytics reporting before getting into this phase.

Online Reputation Management Panel

For this panel, I presented alongside Jennifer Baumann, Esq. of DLA Piper. As I am not a lawyer and cannot provide any legal counsel, it was a good idea for Eric Bryn, conference organizer for LeadingRE to pair us. I shared prevention and response strategies and Jennifer discussed legal issues.

In terms of online reputation management, the old adage of “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” could not be truer. I spoke mostly on prevention, but also response. Some key takeaways from this panel:

Negative PR gets referenced – The web is referential, and we are actively tagging brands to their actions. For example, the first thing many mom bloggers now think of when they hear the name Motrin is the Motrin Moms fiasco. We are constantly archiving and building upon events, news and essentially our lives digitally. This paints a larger picture of people and companies, and the scars of negative PR are not going to go away. By having a presence yourself and already established as a brand digitally, you get to be a part of that debate as opposed to silently sitting on the sidelines and allowing others to dictate how you are seen.

Additionally, if you foster a community of supporters, that negative PR might get hedged in the first place. If I wrote a blog post titled, “Apple Sucks,” almost immediately I’m going to get comments defending Apple – not just in my own comment section but on other blogs that debate and interact with me. Instead of a one-sided story, it will turn into a lively discussion and debate, with all sides being considered. A community of brand advocates is a powerful force for defending a brand or personal reputation.  In the case of Apple, whether by design or simply due to fanatical fans, they are now a part of the brand’s organic response.

Search engine brand awareness – If your brand has a large digital footprint with multiple domains/sub-domains, an authoritative presence across social channels and a fan-base, owning page 1 of Google for your brand name is possible. By doing this, you won’t let a negative (and let’s hope isolated) event or experience show up in branded searches.

Of course, in cases where negative PR spirals out of control (aka a Groundswell) a negative situation can acquire so many links/attention it ranks on page one for your brand. In those cases, buying search ads to help counter the negativity, posting responses on the offending site, adding a response on your own site, and strategizing ways to regain control of page one via organic SEO methods are just some potential steps you can take. But of course, it all depends on the specific situation what the response strategy should be.

Speaking of response strategy – for problems you anticipate may arise, having one is critical to be prepared for the worst.

Consult PR before engaging legal – The RIAA’s reputation is irreparably damaged by their continual treatment of their biggest fans as criminals. Whether they legally can do something is not necessarily a reason they should. When technology comes along that makes a previous model obsolete, the natural reaction of the incumbent is to rally against it to defend a previous world. Unfortunately, all this succeeds in is positioning the organization or industry as draconian and opens the door to innovators who are designing models that embrace the new.

When someone says something truthful but biting against your brand, the natural reaction might be to call your laywers to suppress that information. All this does is provide ammunition for that individual or media entity to succeed in gaining greater attention.

In 2003, Barbra Streisand tried to sue photographer Kenneth Adelman for $50 million for taking a photograph of her house as he documented the California coastline as part of a project. As a result of the case, the picture substantially increased in popularity – quickly attracting 420,000+ views of a photo that otherwise would have existed in relative obscurity. Mike Masnick reported on the situation and coined the phrase “The Streisand Effect.” The name stuck, and now even has its own dedicated Wikipedia page documenting multiple examples of companies suffering from the Streisand Effect by calling legal before consulting PR.

Of course, there are situations where legal should be consulted, but they should be considered carefully, with legal being used as a last resort.

Strategy Salon Panel

L to R: Matt Dollinger, Matthew Ferrara, Adam Singer, Steve Harney – image by Barbara Springer

This was an open Q&A discussion from the audience, where, Steve Harney, Matthew Ferrara, Matt Dollinger and I all riffed on answers to audience questions (moderated by Eric Bryn).  A few of the riffs from our discussion included:

Getting your company to buy in to social media – This needs to happen from the top. If your leaders aren’t fully bought in and driving forward the items you want team members participating in, you can’t expect them to succeed. As one example, if you have a company blog, someone up top should be leading and driving it if you want the rest of the team to contribute as well. To inspire people to stay motivated and engaged, create feedback loops within the organization to highlight success and nurture participation.

The perfect company website – There is no single archetype of the perfect website. Also, yours shouldn’t necessarily model competitors or one you think is pretty, rather it should resonate with prospects. Keep SEO in mind from the start and work with developers cognizant of search engines or consult an SEO firm to guide your development process. Site search matters, and is one of the most important features of any website according to Google. Leverage site search to gain data/insight into your customers and also tweak results to highlight fresh content or current specials.

The real estate company of the future – Instead of doing everything in-house, you may begin to outsource certain elements like design, marketing or IT. Why have generalists when you can have specialists in each field and work with them across distances and time zones via agile project management systems? Also, for smaller companies, it will be about more than just those within a small radius; recruiting top talent will be vital for performance. Of your full-time team members, leadership will be an integral role and not something simply relegated to management. You need to find and empower leaders at all levels within the organization if you want to succeed against competitors.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
2010 LeadingRE Conference: TopRank Digital Marketing Sessions |
2 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

[Last week, we shared some web analytics basics for small businesses or web site owners new to tracking website visitor data. Building on that, this post explores what you should do next to report that data.]

It’s an exciting time to be a small business owner or communications professional. Why? We’ve never had more data and metrics at our fingertips. Actually, we flew past merely having data to having real-time data.

Surprisingly some don’t initially like web metrics. Common concerns I’ve heard over the years include:

• It’s too confusing
• Information overload
• What am I supposed to do with all this data?
• Won’t all this tracking be expensive?

All understandable to someone new to digital marketing but ultimately unfounded. Web metrics are simple to interpret, can be parsed to provide just the information you need, and provide actionable insights for your products or marketing without requiring an expensive research firm. When introduced and walked through the process, most companies quickly fall in love with the accountability provided.

Getting web analytics setup is step one. Once you’re tracking, the next step is reporting in a way that is meaningful to stakeholders and using the data to provide actionable recommendations at the strategy table.

Beginning the reporting process:

1) Learn the basic and advanced functions of your analytics package

If you’re using Google Analytics and are new, learn both the basic and deeper functionality, such as creating advanced segmentation. It’s critical to understand your tool before you get into creating reports. Inevitably after making reports questions will arise asking for specifics, so you’ll want to know how to answer them. Smashing Magazine has a fleshed out guide to Google Analytics that will give you a crash course in the app.

2) Pull key data from your analytics package and document monthly in your own dashboard

While there’s little concern major web analytics services will lose data, you should (either automated or manually) pull metrics out monthly into a customized dashboard. Now here’s the critical part: just pull out the data relevant to your objectives and defined KPIs. You can always go back into your analytics package for more detailed metrics (and you should be doing that anyway). By pulling out the data relevant to your objectives, you are being your own best friend and making it simple to craft internal reports/memos, create presentations, share metrics with your team and have it in a malleable format.

3) Know the difference between KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and objectives

More traffic to a blog may be nice, but if your goal is to build subscribers traffic is just a KPI. More traffic will logically build more subscribers and it’s something you want to track, but it’s not your success metric. Most web pros are extremely conscious of this difference, however I’ve seen many businesses and marketers either confusing these or not bothering to define them in the first place.

4) Draft detailed insights and an executive summary

If you’re doing something like emailing a report with the monthly web analytics summary, don’t send just the data. It’s up to you to interpret what the data means to recipients. Remember, even though you’re taking the time to learn how to report on web metrics the digital divide is still very real. Many won’t even know basic web analytics definitions. If your company is still new to web reporting, it’s an opportunity for you to become the internal analytics evangelist and educate your team. The more they understand, the more valuable the web reports will become.

In addition to the detailed insights behind the data, create a brief executive summary each month outlining the major trends in a quick to skim format. If the summary is compelling – you may hook team members to read the whole report. With that said, many will never get past the summary no matter how interesting it is. So it’s a critical component to influence decision makers who don’t have time to read a 1,000 word report.

5) Create goals that push you, but are realistic

Great – you’re now not just tracking web analytics, you’re analyzing the data and creating insightful reports. A potential outcome is someone will say: “we want to increase X metric by Y %.” Goals are a good thing and will keep you focused, but make it a policy to keep them realistic. Growing organic web traffic is a long-term process which unless you’re a seasoned digital marketer you may not be able to project realistically (and even then there are too many variables for it to be predicted with 100% accuracy). If you’re new, stay on the conservative side so you don’t set unrealistic expectations.

Now that we’ve gone through some basic tips for web analytics reporting – let’s outline a skeleton of some SEO and social media specific metrics worth reporting on.

Basic KPIs to monitor relating to SEO

A healthy stream of search traffic is vital to the success of any business’ visibility. You’ll want to monitor some specific KPIs to provide insight into your organic search traffic.

With the rise of personalized search, it’s smart to set your objective as organic search engine traffic, not search rankings. In a world where search phrases are getting longer and we all see a different SERP for the same phrases due to personalized search, rankings should just be a KPI.

• Branded to non-branded keyword mix - if all you’re getting is branded search traffic, you’ll want to conduct a technical and content SEO audit of your site as something is probably not in order. A well optimized site (unless it’s a brand with strong marketing prowess or has broad terms in their name) should see a majority of traffic from non-branded terms.
• Total organic traffic – increases in search traffic can potentially impact your other organic referral sources as well (for example, more people find the site via search engines, share via social channels, which spawns more referral traffic).
• Search engine rankings – they still matter to keep an eye on. An unbiased report of rankings in search engines for priority terms is something to monitor as it relates to the SEO health of your site.
• Most popular phrases – keeping track of the popular phrases sending you traffic is important – this data allows you to show correlation between rankings and web traffic.
• Unique pages on your site – if you’re interested in more search traffic, you should be adding content to your site over time. By adding fresh content at regular intervals, you’re creating signals to the engines to crawl more often and also create more potential search phrases users can find your site for.
• Depth/length of visit – if you’re optimized for certain terms but traffic from those terms is bouncing or leaving the site quickly, you may want to adjust your glossary.

More advanced users will want to track things like conversion rate per keyword, most popular pages, backlink volume and quantity, etc. But don’t become a victim of KPI creep – start simple and add more as you get comfortable.

Basic KPIs to monitor relating to social media

Along with your small business website, do you have a blog or forum where you’re nurturing a community? Below are some social-media specific metrics to monitor.

Your objectives could vary quite a bit (and may even be one of the KPIs listed below) as social media application is as open as your creativity.

• Number of subscribers – how many people are reading your blog through RSS or email every month? You’ll want to pay attention to this, as subscribers are a vital element of an online marketing growth strategy.
• Branded searches/non-branded – again, it’s important to know how many people are actively seeking out a community or blog you are monitoring/marketing. This number should grow over time as a byproduct of all marketing activity, digital or otherwise.
• Overall unique visitors - how much traffic does your community generate?
• Search engine traffic – search traffic to a blog or web forum should increase month over month as more content is added, links are acquired and authority is gained. If you execute properly increased search traffic is a by product of your social destination.
• Visitor to subscriber conversion ratios – how many people are coming to your blog but not bothering to subscribe? Might it be worthwhile to experiment moving around the subscription CTAs or adding another below content? You can’t know unless you’re tracking this data. Just compare unique visitors monthly to new subscribers and reduce. I.E. – if your blog had 1,000 visitors last month and 10 new subscribers, you’re converting roughly 1 subscriber per 100 visitors. It’s a rough number because certain referral sources will send better traffic but over time you’ll see the trend emerge.
• Followers/fans in outposts – Chris Brogan talked about using outposts in his social media strategy. Darren Rowse went ahead and fleshed out a visualization behind this. Outpost is the perfect word to describe how many of us leverage social sites to feed self-hosted communities that live in the open web. Track the growth of these monthly, and remember to do things that actively bridge the connections between them to strengthen your presence.
• Referral traffic – is StumbleUpon your #1 referral source month over month but you’re not calling it out specifically as a sharing button on your site? Are certain types of blogs sending you highly relevant traffic you can form deeper relationships with? A social program should be extremely sensitive to referral traffic.
• Number and quality of conversations/posts inspired externally - as your blog starts to grow in popularity it will spawn organic conversations/posts externally. You’ll want to know both how many have been inspired and if they were high quality (score them). Knowing this data, you can line it up next to your blog posts published each month and see trends in the the kind of content that resonates.
• Number of shares of content across platforms – in addition to conversations/posts inspired externally, you’ll want to know how many people Dugg, Stumbled, Tweeted or otherwise shared your content. Same process – line this up with content and you’ll start to see what is resonating vs. falling flat.

Wrapping up

Web analytics reporting is a requirement for modern businesses.  It allows your marketing to be more accountable and enables you to support key decisions with data – a powerful selling tool.  If you’re new, don’t let perceived complexity or jargon scare you off:  start simple and get into a rhythm with reporting on the basics.  Over time as your team becomes fluent the process, then you can add additional depth.

As many of you reading are extremely savvy in web analytics – what advice would you add to help those who are new?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Small Business Tips For Reporting Web Metrics |
14 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

By embracing these two philosophies as part of their digital marketing DNA, small businesses can carve out a search marketing strategy that runs circles around larger competitors.

Today, we’ll briefly explore why creativity and agility are advantages small businesses have for search marketing, and some quick tips to activate each.

Creativity as a search marketing advantage

Large = more risk management – Small = creativity/individuality can shine

Larger corporations are naturally risk-averse. Most won’t create blogs that take sides on issues, create controversy or linkbait, push the envelope with snarky ideas or allow shining examples of individuality. Which is why individuals and smaller companies have a continued advantage: there are far less stakeholders so it’s easier to sell creative, controversial or compelling ideas. The more creative your content is, the more editorially earned, organic links you’ll attract from the web community that content builds.

Tips to activate for SEO benefit:

Develop creative linkbait – small, creative groups have the perfect environment to brainstorm linkbait. Where larger companies will mostly follow proven archetypes, a small business can break the mold with clever, catchy and outside the box linkbait ideas. It’s an opportunity to create the kind of linkbait social web influencers are looking for but larger competitors do not understand. By embracing this it’s possible to outpace those who can only engage in manual/mechanical linkbuilding efforts because the content they are working with is dry.

Create controversy – success in small businesses comes from dedicated team members passionate about their industry of choice. Due to this passion, they will naturally have strong feelings about the industry they are in. Why not turn that passion loose on the web to attract others who feel the same? It’s going to be more authentic, let you leverage an angle larger competitors can’t or won’t use, and more closely connect with an audience. Even those who disagree with you play into this strategy, because as they respond to you in droves, they bring an influx of links and referral traffic. Individuals in your niche are dominating the SERPs by leveraging this approach and it’s an opportunity if your small business can artfully direct controversy.

Leverage a creative CMS - where large competitors are stuck using SEO-unfriendly CMS platforms, your small business can take advantage of cheap/free SEO-friendly online publishing tools like Wordpress. Creative web developers can turn Wordpress into an entire CMS to power your site at an extremely reasonable cost. If you need something more powerful, a CMS like Expression Engine is both affordable and natively search engine friendly. Small businesses have a choice where larger companies frequently get locked into complex systems or dated technologies.

Agility as a search marketing advantage

Larger = slower moving – Small = the advantage of speed and agility

Agility isn’t just a factor for influencing the social web. It’s an effective way for a small businesses to create an SEO strategy disruptive to competitors. Because larger corporations naturally have complex layers of approval processes, lawyers and committees, smaller businesses have an opportunity to exploit this by being first. Many small businesses try to act like large corporations, however this is not embracing the advantage possible by being able to turn on a dime.

Tips to activate for SEO benefit:

Flip your mindset about web content from formal to improvisational – particularly with content published through a social channel such as a blog.  According to the recent TopRank Marketing survey on blogging and SEO 94% of bloggers reported seeing measurable SEO benefits from blogging within 12 months. A majority see benefit, since more content  equals more hooks in the water for search engines. Data from Hitwise showing search phrases are getting longer reinforces this, showing you should feed the tail now more than ever. By having an agile content development process, smaller companies can and do outpace larger competitors who have more resources, but can’t get out of their own way.

Embrace personal brands – when a company embraces their team members having personal brands, this will as a by-product provide a search marketing advantage. For example: in interviews, on their own blogs and through their own exposure, a company and the individual both benefit since both parties frequently get mentioned/linked together. It’s a win-win situation. Where larger corporations use their many partners as an advantage for links, small businesses can encourage and embrace their passionate, trusted team members to develop personal brands in their industry.

Break news – as we’ve noted previously in social media marketing applications (and also discussed by Brian Clark at Copyblogger): every company is now a media company. By breaking news right along with media, you’re going to attract links and referral traffic. Instead of relying on external entities for attention, your company will start to become a trusted source as its own brand of media. To embrace this in a way that matters, agility is essential.

The more small businesses take advantage of their ability to be more creative and agile than larger competitors, the more their online content marketing and SEO programs will succeed.

What other advantages do you think small businesses have for search marketing?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Two Biggest Advantages of Small Businesses SEO |
25 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Some statistics from Technorati’s 2009 state of the blogosphere back up the efficacy of content marketing:

• 15% of bloggers say they are paid to give speeches on the topics they blog about
• 71% of all respondents who maintain blogs for a business – their own or one they work for – report that they have increased their visibility within their industries through their blogs
• 56% say that their blog has helped their company establish a positioning as a thought leader within the industry
• 58% say that they are better-known in their industry because of their blog

And as powerful as blogs are – they are just one potential avenue for content marketing. Content marketing includes all marketing formats that involve the creation or sharing of content to engage potential prospects or current consumers. No matter how you’re engaged, continually sharpening your content creation skills is core to being an effective digital marketing or PR professional.

If you’re brand new to the idea of content marketing, the following points by Mike Masnick succinctly describe why it matters:

The captive audience is dead. There is no captive audience online. Everyone surfing the web has billions of choices on what they can be viewing, and they don’t want to be viewing intrusive and annoying ads. They’ll either ignore them, block them or go elsewhere.

Advertising is content. You can’t think of ads as separate things any more. Without a captive audience, there’s no such thing as “advertising” any more. It’s just content. And it needs to be good/interesting/relevant content if you want to get anyone to pay attention to it.

Content is advertising. Might sound like a repeat of the point above, and in some way it is — but it’s highlighting the flip side. Any content is advertising. It’s advertising something.

Hopefully we’ve got your buy-in to the idea of content marketing. TopRank Online Marketing as an agency embraces this for our clients and ourselves, as content marketing lives at the intersection of social media and SEO.

To help readers here, following are 10 tips to help make your content marketing efforts succeed:

1. Ensure all content passes the “So what?” test

A great quote from Chris Garrett sums this up nicely:

A much overlooked aspect though is “So what?”. What should the reader take away? Where is the benefit? Why should we listen to you?

Just churning out content for the sake of going through the process is setting yourself up for failure. Unless you’ve got a model like Demand Media and would benefit from being fast, cheap and profitable as hell, go the other route and refine all ideas to pass the “So what?” test. Especially if you’re in B2B – the goal of content marketing is usually to inspire trust, grow your reputation and influence your market. Throw-away content accomplishes none of these things.

2. Create remarkable content, take chances, stand out

With some 900,000 blog posts published every 24 hours, and more than 20 hours of video uploaded every minute to YouTube as just two examples, how do you expect to stand out with “vanilla” content? If you’re going to play it safe or regurgitate what is being done by others you’ve got almost no chance to succeed unless you already have a large community built you can tap. And even then, as we add layer upon layer of aggregation, sharing and filtering to the web it’s still possible to be ignored. You need to consistently break the mold, be an unmissable resource or in some way stand out to make your content heard.

3. Speed and agility are factors

If your content marketing efforts are agile enough to touch audiences in a timely manner, you’ll be top-of-mind for prospects vs. slow moving competitors who have complex approval processes. Again and again, the web rewards nimble companies far more than those who are restricted or micromanaged.

4. Personality is essential

We connect deepest with content that has a voice and personality behind it. No one enjoys reading the language on a corporate website. It’s cold and impersonal and in reality does not connect with audiences, it merely conveys information. Personality and emotion are lacking in most corporate and business communications, and this has carried over into the content marketing efforts of many. But, infusing these elements within your content marketing strategy can be a powerful way to not just speak to prospects but connect with them.

5. Content should forge connections

Your content marketing can also accomplish another valuable goal: building connections and relationships. This has both social and SEO returns. Connections can help build inbound links, increase shares in social channels and ultimately help your content gain visibility. Incorporation of these connections should be worked into the content artfully and naturally. Readers may not even realize what is happening, but those you are trying to forge connections with will.

6. Worry less about perfection, more about tone

Be less concerned with being perfect and more concerned with being earnest, thoughtful and genuine. Perfection is severely overrated and minor flaws are forgivable, while the wrong tone can be as detrimental as causing online reputation management issues.

7. Make content scan-able (and attractive)

Make no mistake, your prospects are busy. To treat them as if anything else were true is disrespecting their time. By making your content scan-able, you increase the propensity they will not just scan that content, but if the parts that catch their eye during the scan are worthwhile they will go back to read it. Use headlines, bold text, get creative with your formatting, get designers involved – do whatever it takes to make content attractive and scan-able.

8. Draft sticky headlines

Follow basic headline writing tips and work to create headlines that entice potential visitors to your content in the first place. Without strong headlines, your blog post will get skipped over in a cluttered RSS reader or inbox, your white paper or PDF won’t get passed along and you’ll never penetrate social news sites.

9. Consistency and quality

As we’ve noted here before, every company is now in essence a media company. The quality of your content is how prospects will imagine your service or product to be, and the consistency you produce that content is a signal to how dedicated you are.  Both are required.

10. Realize promotion can’t help bad content

It’s tempting to try to put a band-aid on bad content with things like advertising or push promotions. But if you have to advertise your content, in a sense you’ve already failed. Content marketing should be an organic process, and by advertising your content you’re admitting failure of creating something worth sharing. Push promotion on the social web is similar to this – you’re ultimately going to have to face the fact that your content isn’t working on its own to naturally connect with people. Now, that’s not to say you can’t help good content travel (this is one of the 16 rules of social media optimization) but by trying to force bad content to spread you’re wasting resources.

As many readers here are engaged in content marketing on a daily basis, we’d love to hear your thoughts. What content marketing tips have you found most helpful?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
10 Tips For Content Marketing Success |
31 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

As someone who has been successful with creating content that goes hot across social channels I’ve come to appreciate the art and challenge of crafting sticky headlines. In fact, crafting headlines is equally if not more challenging than leads and even content itself.

Something many bloggers have down, but communications professionals aren’t always fluent in, is the art of crafting headlines specifically for social news sites/users. While there is no one formula for success, I’m going to share 5 things I’ve learned from experience as a blogger, social news user, PR pro and marketer.

1. Work backwards - content first, then headline

If you’ve got an idea for a piece of content you think will be popular or if you’v done your homework and researched the types of content that resonate on social channels, great – the hardest part is done. Now jot down a title as a work in progress and create your content. After completion, bearing you know you’ve knocked out a winner, challenge yourself to re-create the headline specifically to resonate with your key audience. You’d be surprised at how much easier this is than working on the perfect headline up front. Having great content in front of you, then selling it through a sticky headline is always easier than writing it staring at a blank screen.

2. Leverage archetypes/formulas which work for others (especially outside your niche)

Smashing Magazine has made page one of Digg more than 200 times, frequently using the same headline formula (number + adjective + design-related item + sticky message – i.e. 83 Beautiful Wordpress Themes You (Probably) Haven’t Seen). Why would they change something which is causing users to instinctively share posts like crazy? Also, don’t be afraid to use archetypes that work in categories external of yours – especially if no one in your niche is using them.

3. Headlines should be outrageous, engaging, emotional, useful, counter-intuitive or remarkable – not to the world, but to your community

Your headline doesn’t have to make sense to everyone. There isn’t enough space to do that and still fit within something like a Tweet (only 140 characters + 20 character tiny URL) or Digg headline (60 characters). What it should do is conjure one or more of the adjectives listed above to the influencers – or 1%’ers as Jackie Huba calls them – of your community. To achieve this you must first understand your community – ideally by being a member yourself and able to empathize with them.

4. Don’t just create content, actually use social news sites

You can’t understand social communities at the level necessary to permeate them consistently with your content/headlines without being a member of those communities. This is not optional, and if you’re a blogger or marketer who merely creates content but doesn’t participate you’re missing half the picture. Learn the hot buttons of the popular, macro communities and you’ll get a general sense of how to craft headlines for social news. Then, drill down and become a member of more targeted communities relevant to your niche to learn what resonates with specific groups.

5. SEO intersection – frequently forgotten, always vital

A by-product of news stories which go popular on the social web is links. Content created goes popular, gets a ton of links up front and as a by-product the engine juice delivered helps create authority for that page. If the content is really good, it will continue to receive organic links months or years after it’s been posted due to visibility from search engines (and create a ranking that’s self-reinforcing). In other words, social news success can be long term: a story that’s successful has the potential to be a high visibility entry point to your site for years to come even after the initial wave of buzz.  Craft two headlines for your stories to help achieve this: 1 for search engines (title tag) and one for users (page title).

Conclusion

As social Diva Liz Strauss has pointed out, it’s not just about the headlines – you also need equally remarkable content to back it up in order to achieve any kind of worthwhile goal such as attracting subscribers or sales leads. But the importance of using clever headlines to help your content stand out in the first place is vital.

As the firehose of real-time social content speeds up, the value of well-crafted headlines will increase. And the truth is, tips can only help so much. Writing headlines is more art than science. The best path is to consider it an iterative process, experiment with different structures, study your analytics and find what works for you.

What are your tips for writing effective social news headlines?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
How to Write Compelling Social News Headlines |
16 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Dan Zarrella, a self-described “social media marketing & viral marketing scientist” lives at the intersection of social marketing and web development.  He’s known for conducting experiments with Twitter, compiling data behind the social web, creating interesting web applications and blogging.  And now, he has released a book.

Dan’s book is called “The Social Media Marketing Book” and is aimed at helping those who are new to social media marketing learn the basics.  The content is well-written and outlined into clear sections.  Those just getting into digital marketing will find it to be a good starting point in their journey.

To learn more about the topics discussed in the book, Dan was nice enough to answer a few questions for Online Marketing Blog readers.

1)  You’re a self described “Social Media And Viral Marketing Scientist.”  Can you tell us the story behind that title and define it for us?

In the current social and viral marketing landscape there’s a lot of what I call unicors-and-soft-focus-rainbows advice. “Experts” telling people what feels right or sounds good. Suggestions like “engage in the conversation” which sound great as soundbites, but aren’t based in real hard data or evidence. I take a much more analytical approach to marketing and strive to answer questions with science, statistics, experimentation and real data.

2)  The Social Media Marketing Book is tailored to those new to digital marketing and is a great intro for those just getting involved.  As someone fluent in social media marketing strategies, any reason you chose to reach out to this audience as opposed to seasoned pros?

Its not going to be my last book, so I think a book for beginners was a good start. And I noticed that with a lot of the other introductory books theres a lot of “theory” and high-level thinking, this book is designed to be much more tactical and hands-on. Its like a cookbook that will teach you the basics of how to actually get started marketing your brand or product in social media.

3)  Much of the book outlines how to use social web tools effectively.  As both a developer and a marketer you have a unique perspective:  do you think that social media applications don’t do a good enough job of showing users (and marketers) how to use their products?

A lot of the work that goes into good web apps is around making them intuitive, so that the interface itself explains how to use it, rather than requiring seperate documentation or teaching. I think this is a great approach, but with my book I wanted to give people a baseline understanding of what these tools are used for and how they’re used, so that readers know what they’re trying to get out of the tools before they really dig in and learn the intricacies of any system.

4)  You mention Digg in the book as a channel for marketers to promote the right kind of material (tech-oriented content, specifically).  But you don’t mention that Digg is a highly-gamed network with a majority of front page content controlled by top 100 users.  Even with some of the tips you mentioned, do you think marketers have a chance of making page one of Digg without relationships with power users?

You raise a great point, and you’re right, relationships with power users is key. Of course even better than that is to get a piece of your content on a well-known and trusted site and they try to get that site to the frontpage. I didn’t want to give new social media marketers a roadmap that pointed them at 100 power users with the instructions to go beg them for submissions, it felt wrong and dangerous to do that. Instead I tried to give them an understanding of how Digg and sites like it function in general, which are lessons that can be applied to a bunch of different communities.

5)  Say you’re a new digital marketer and just read the Social Media Marketing Book, have experimented a bit, and have the basics down.  What do you see as the next challenge they will face, and how can they overcome it?

The biggest challenge, I think they’ll face is learning how to incorporate social media into their daily work and life. With Twitter for instance, I know plenty of good marketers, who don’t Tweet that much, or do for a little while and then stop. Its a marathon, not a sprint and you’re going to have the best results when you can learn to integrate social media with what you’re already doing.

6)  Do you see social media as closer to PR, (influence) direct marketing, (ROI) or something else?

Interesting question. I think the debate comes down to semantics really. In my head, I think marketing should be the  driver of “influence” and PR is concerned with crisis-mangement and old-school earned media. On the web, most great earned media comes from practicing a hybrid skill set of making cool stuff and then getting it in front of the right people, and neither can be ignored. I consider myself a marketer and I think its easier to outsource marketing than traditional PR. As far as results and metrics go, I think people should see influence as a means to an end (ROI) and both are important to measure and undertand, but only one pays the bills.

Be sure and visit Dan’s blog or connect with him on Twitter.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. |
Dan Zarrella Interview On The Social Media Marketing Book |
6 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com