Recently in Social Media Optimization Category

The number of new articles on these topics per day is at least 50... 50 good ones.  How do you keep up?  How do you know which ones to read?  How can you filter the god from the bad?

You don't have to.  We do that for you.

Josh Williams, Shannon Sell, and I (Brian Carter) post the best of the best SEO, PPC, social media, and online marketing articles in a special FriendFeed "SEM, SEO, PPC, social media, media placement links, articles" room.  (If you don't use FriendFeed, check that out too- it's a way to aggregate all your most important social networking feeds in one place.)

Get most useful, most relevant-to-the-real-business-world info there.  Check it out!

Fuel Interactive begins its series of man on the street interviews with Lauren, asking her about the perils of RSS, and how she feels about the government invading her privacy through blogs, logs, and twitter.

xx

Last week, Fuel Interactive's CEO Will McIntosh and I spoke to a small group of association executives at the South Carolina Society of Association Executives' 3rd Annual Conference about how they can use social networking to bring their communications with their membership into the 2.0 era.

Listen to the Social Networking and Web 2.0 for Professional Associations presentation mp3 (which is funny and fun with lots of laughs and learning too- and way better than this description of it) and view the PowerPoint while you listen.

I wasn't too aware of the whole "professional associations" world (also called professional bodies) before we were asked to speak at this conference, but every profession from lawyers to doctors to asphalt industry professionals has an association, they all have memberships, and they're perfect to make use of web 2.0- they already have people, they just need to connect them.

Here are some of the things we discussed:

• Web 2.0, Blogging, bunches of web 2.0 tools
• Blogs vs. forums vs. listservs

Sites and Services:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Ning- Overview and Features
• Examples of Ning networks, some of which are associations
• Blogger, Wordpress

Social Networking and Web 2.0

• The best 2.0 sites for associations with limited resources
• Matching your social networking platform and your membership demographics
• Age and demographics issues with usage of 2.0 networks
• Quantcast demographic data on social networking sites

Making Your Association More 2.0

• Incentivizing members members to use 2.0 sites and services
• Using your existing email list to get people involved
• Leveraging membership to do the work for you!

Issues Associations May Have with Web 2.0

• Privacy Issues with blogs, Ning, and LinkedIn
• Comment moderation, spam filtering
• Professional discussions, discussion of legislation

Listen to the Social Networking and Web 2.0 for Professional Associations mp3 (which is funny and fun with lots of laughs and learning too- and way better than this description of it) and view the PowerPoint while you listen.

Naturally, our star this time is not Ramses, but Moses... (Charlton Heston style)

If you read about my SEM 2.0 Pyramid, you may have noticed the references to and picture of Yul Brenner from the classic movie, The Ten Commandments.

It hit me a few days after publishing that, that there's a perfect way to extend the theme of the post and go into more detail.

That's right, it's...

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF SEM 2.0

1. Thou shalt test everything everywhere; test thy messages, offers, and appeals in social media, on thy site, in thy ads, and in thy search listings.
2. Thou shalt win friends and influence people via Social Media; thou shalt turn competitors into allies via networking and SM.
3. Thou shalt not beg, cajole, or threaten people to give you links for thy networking and value surely shalt bring thee more links (blessed are the poor in links who deserve more links)
4. Thou shalt create valuable content and useful tools that people will want to use, link to, and share.
5. Thou shalt use analytics to discover which keywords, placements, ads, offers, and audiences get thee the results thou needest most.
6. Thou shalt use lessons from each of these three channels: social media, SEO, and PPC to doest better in the other two.
7. Thou shalt use thy seo wisdom on landing pages to increase thy PPC quality score.
8. Thou shalt re-optimize and re-strategize based on clues provided to thee by thy analytics.
9. Thou shalt monitor what people are saying about thee, stay up to date on thy competition, and watch for new competitors.
10. Thou shalt attain wisdom from pre-internet marketing and PR books and teachers and test them in thy SEM efforts.

And finally, thou shalt not argue about whether there is any sense to the order of these 10 commandments.  Because there ain't.

SMM, SMO, and ORM hath heaved up my SEM department. 

As I wrote elsewhere, web 2.0 messed up my job title.  The crazy thing is how much SEO (search engine optimization) and SMO (social media optimization) and ORM (online reputation management) overlap.  Throw into the mix the PR department at our sister traditional agency, and you've got a logistical juggernaut.

So I went to the cocktail napkin, actually the back of a printout of my previous best visual representation of our services, and started sketching out something new.

The more I thought about it, the more I saw that SEO, SMO, and PPC form an interdependent triangle, or pyramid, since pyramids are generally cooler (see Matt McGee's SEO pyramid). I thought, hey, that was a really successful concept, so I created...

The SEM 2.0 Pyramid:

(I threw in an Egyptian, which Matt somehow forgot, because I thought it was funny- well, at least Yul Brenner as an Egyptian is funny.)

I left out ORM, because I don't see ORM as marketing exactly, and it's a more occasional service- or you could look at SMM as the proactive part of ORM, so that takes care of it- and while you're doing SMM, you may notice ORM issues. 

Besides, the SEM 2.0 Square wouldn't be as cool as the SEM 2.0 Pyramid.

The serious explanation of the SEM 2.0 Pyramid:

It's all about relationships, and what each strategy/channel contributes to the others:

Search engine optimization is foundational, because the keyword approach you learn there penetrates everything;

• PPC uses keywords, and usage of keywords in SMO leads to SEO benefits. 
• Understanding of inbound links, keywords, and anchor text also helps SMO create more SEO value.
• SEO also can help determine which audiences, keywords, and messages lead to business results
• Analytics associating keywords with conversions gives you converting keywords to retarget, and
• Copywriting tests of meta descriptions also provide intel about which messages resonate with warm prospects. 
• These converting keywords and messages can then be tested in SMO and PPC.

Social media optimization is an educational process; conversing with your prospects and interested parties in various audiences leads to

• Discovery of placements you can target in PPC, and
• Alerts you to ORM issues. 
• SMO may also tip you off about why various keywords and messages do and do not work in PPC and SEO. 
• Good SMO inevitably leads to more backlinks for the sites you SEO.

Pay per click advertising:

• Placement targeting research may alert you of important domains to do SMO on- that is, blogs to have conversations on.
• And PPC provides a powerful test laboratory in which to try out messages, keywords, and audiences, which can then be tested in SMO and SEO.

Together these three strategies almost form Voltron, but not really.  They do create an incredible synergy in this new SEM 2.0 paradigm. 

Haha, I had to say synergy, didn't I?  Couldn't help it :-)

I think two things are shameful right now in social media:

1. Everyone is trying to define or limit Twitter- Twitter is for this or that or should be used in this way and not that.  You should have this kind of following:follower ratio.  Blah blah blah. 

Here's a prime example of a statement that's clearly false: "Twitter is not a sales channel"

• Dell has sold $500,000 of hardware using Twitter (from discounts/specials), and
• Other people are doing more modest things like selling t-shirts.

2. People are settling for and even justifying the use of engagement metrics instead of ROI metrics.

If your goal is branding exclusively, fine- maybe I can accept that.  But why not still try to find a way to track your results?

If you're responsible for the bottom line, don't give social media a pass on ROI metrics.

If you come from a PR background and haven't dealt with ROI metrics much, don't use that as an excuse not to learn to use them.

What Twitter is For?  Ridiculous.

I was wondering why I spent 30 minutes looking for proof that Twitter can be used as a sales channel. I think it's because I intuit that Twitter can be powerful for a lot of applications... as a communications tool, an engagement tool, a sales tool, a networking tool, to push news feeds... who knows what else.

To me, saying "Twitter is for this or that" would be like in, the early days of the telephone, saying "the telephone isn't for sales" or "the telephone is just for meaningless chatter"- you can't measure it on ROI".  Even to say "Twitter favors women" is near-sighted.

Come on!

And by the way, anyone can answer questions like "Can you sell stuff on Twitter?" for themselves with Summize: for example: http://summize.com/search?q=twitter+sales+-tax+-garage+-rummage+-soupy

The reason Twitter works for sales is, not only is it a communications tool just like a phone or email, but also you can use it to find customers at point of need. 

Here are is some amplification of that:

• http://www.smstextnews.com/2008/04/using_twitter_as_a_real_time_business_sales_marketing_service.html
• http://www.mediaphilosopher.com/2008/05/06/online-expressions-of-the-point-of-need

Easy SEO tips for Bloggers who aren't web designers.

This post was created for some of our clients who are blogging and needed guidance on how to start to SEO their own posts.  We still may end up going over their posts later, but it's better that they start off on the right foot.  For example, it's easier if they had some keywords in their blog post url from the very beginning, and usually that comes from putting the keywords in the blog post title.

Let's face it, there are bunches of bloggers who've never typed "<A HREF" and who start twitching if the code view accidentally appears.  Nothing wrong with that.  They can still do SEO that will significantly increase their blog traffic.

Here are 5 easy tips for how to make sure real eyeballs look at your amazing blog posts.


1. Use the Right Keywords

SEO is nearly impossible with the wrong keywords.  You may not do super in-depth competitive keyword research but you can at least choose terms people actually search for.  

To find those, use the free wordtracker search.
 

If you want to be sure you're not missing a more popular synonym or make sure you're not targeting a keyword only the 1000 lb gorillas of the web can conquer, you'll need our help with keyword research.  But a quick rule of thumb is try to use keywords (phrases) that contain at least two, if not three words.

In our analyses, the best conversion results have come from relevant keyword phrases containing three or four words.  However, in smaller, low traffic niches, you still may be able to dominate a two word keyphrase.

If you really want to do it yourself and want to get a sense of both demand and competition, buy a subscription to nichebot.com and check your keywords' KEI.

2. Put Keywords Where They Belong, and Don't Spam!

Put your keyword in the

• Title of your post
• Tags/labels
• Body test of your post

Make sure whoever set up your blog has it set so that the title of your blog post is the first thing in the TITLE tag of its webpage.  They should know what that means.  Send them a link to this article.  If you want the title of the blog or site also to be in the TITLE tag, put that after the blog post title.

You don't have to and shouldn't use it more than three times in a post- you want to avoid what's called an "overoptimization penalty", in other words avoid being a keyword spammer.

One other place to put keywords, albeit more general ones: your categories.

3. Use Synonyms and Lateral Keyphrases to Leave a Clear Semantic Footprint

You can and should use synonyms in your post. 

Google uses something called semantic indexing to understand what your page or post is about, so it groups related words and concepts.  

For example, if you write an article about about "online dating", some other highly related keywords include eharmony, personals, singles, match making, dating advice, and soulmates. 

Or for a keyword like "stand up comedy" there are a number of famous comedians' names that are popular searches. 

You might already plany to write about these lateral topics, but making sure you include the words means the search engines definitely get the signal about what semantic space your blog post occupies.

4. Use Keywords to Create Internal Links
 

You'll probably need a list of about 100 keywords guiding you in your blog post writing.  If any of the topics you've already blogged about come up in a new blog post, link to the old post with that other post's main keyword in the anchor text. 

That means use the other keyword and make a link out of that keyword to the other post.

Similarly, link to important pages on your main website.  Whenever you mention one of your products or services in a blog post, turn it into a link to the appropriate page on the main site.

5. Announce Your Posts to the World

When your post is done, do these things:

• Twitterabout it.  You are on twitter aren't you?  Find out why you should twitter.
• Bookmark it in digg, del.icio.us, and niche social sites like sphinn.com or ahlifemed.com; even better, wait to see if twitter or blogger friends submit them first, because then you get more authority and reputation in your industry- it looks better than submitting your own... but if no one will submit yours, go ahead and do it
• Thumbs up it in stumbleupon- your keywords are already in the title, you can copy in some text, choose very general tags- here you SHOULD use one or two word keywords
• Ping your blog to all services with pingmyblog.com

6. Get Social!

Start reading blog posts in your industry, and comment on them- I mean substantial, real comments.  When you comment, use your blog address as the url you're asked for when you post.

This gets you known by both humans and search engine bots.

To find blogs to read and comment on, try the Google Blog Search.

7. Track It!

You are using at least Google Analytics, aren't you?  Maybe your blogging platform has stats.  Watch for more traffic.  See what post topics people like.  Write more about them.

(Sorry to use so many buzz words.  Let me just finish purging by using the word "paradigm" as well....)

Is your blog stagnant?  Your blog traffic miniscule?  Your twitter account boring? 

I've discovered a whole new paradigm that can solve those problems as well as allow me to use one of Dick Vitale's favorite words, Trifecta. 

(Ok, now forgive me for all the buzzwords!)

We've had a recent explosion of traffic and comments on our corporate blog, a major increase in SEO equity (our blog's pagerank is suddenly greater than our homepage's) and my Twitter followers have grown into a massive, fascinating horde of tweeple.

In other words, some benefits of web 2.0 are:

• Traffic / prospects / contacts
• Engagement / comments
• Pagerank / backlinks / SEO improvements, which lead to more traffic and authority

It was clear to me that I'm doing something right- but what?

Here's what I think has been working so well....

The following web 2.0 technologies leverage one another's momentum...

Introducing, The Killer Trifecta:

1. Your blog
2. Your twitter account
3. Social bookmarking

These three distinct cyber-niches have different functions and benefits, and they can work together quite powerfully to increase your traffic, your network, and your influence.

1. Blog = Authoritative useful substantial (mass)

You've got to have a blog- this is where you get serious (haha) and provide big chunks of useful material- it's home.

2. Twitter = News excitement conversation buzz (velocity)

Part two, recently I've written a lot about growing your twitter cult: how to power network on twitter, how to get twitterfame, how to get UNfollowed, and conversely how to be more follower-worthy.  Enough of that.

3. Social Bookmarking = Socially agreed upon value (more velocity)

Right now, social bookmarking is still in its infancy- I think niche bookmarking sites are the future... judging from what happens on Sphinn for search marketing, and by the degradation in quality of other "all topics" bookmarking sites.  So in the future, say you're in realty, and you have a realty blog, you're going to need a realty social bookmarking site.  But you can use the extant ones until that comes around. 

I wish I could make a really cool physics equation out of that, like:

mv^2 = blog * twitter * social bookmarking = ENERGY

"Fine, Mr. Physics Nerd," you say, "Nice equation.  but how do I make all this happen for me?"

What you do is this.  Follow...

The 7 Steps to Leveraging the Killer Social Media Trifecta

1. Blog: Write some good blog posts.  If you don't have a blog, start one and write some.

2. Network: Find some twitter friends... network, interact, expand.  Interrupt interesting conversations with useful info and a positive attitude.

3. Wait: People discover your blog and learn about you.  Your blog is your business card now.  Twitter is how you hand out business cards.

4. Blog: Blog something new.  Make it good.

5. Tweet: Announce it on twitter.  Retweet it a few times over the next couple days.

6. Bookmark: Bookmark some of your own posts for a while, but then back off and let others do it for you- that gives you more credibility.  Participate by commenting on other people's bookmarked posts.  Also comment on their blogs.

7. Repeat: Go back to step two and repeat

Follow this process and you're creating constant momentum, authority, and interaction. 

You're visible, you have an impact, and you matter.

You're good enough, you're smart enough, and doggonit, people like your blog.

Assuming, then, you have something else to sell, you've already warmed up a bunch of prospects and created authority... half your selling job is done.

I just figured out a key reason why Twitter is so exciting...

In the past three weeks since I've really been using it, I've gotten to converse to some degree with some of the most respected and powerful people in my industry (SEM/Web 2.0).

I hate to list them, because I'll probably leave somebody out, but it's been thrilling to converse with some of the most influential people in the blogsphere, the twitterverse, and sphinn- people like (and they are not listed in order of importance, shoe size, or the number of pieces of bacon they can eat in one sitting):

• Rand Fishkin @randfish is CEO of SEOmoz, ranked 9,197 in Alexa.
• Maki @doshdosh his doshdosh.com 33,449 in Alexa.; As a sphinner, he has had 100+ sphinns go hot.
• Kevin Heisler @kevinheisler is Executive Editor of SearchEngineWatch, which ranks 7,637 in Alexa.
• Lee Odden @leeodden who runs SEM/SMO firm TopRank, and his TopRankBlog is 56,413th in Alexa.
• Danny Sullivan and Robert Scoble haven't said anything to me yet, but I talk to them when it's relevant ;-)
• Michael Arrington @techcrunch is one of Time's Top 100 most influential, and his site is ranked 1,784th in Alexa.  Hmm I thought I had talked with him but summize says otherwise.  Maybe it was an older direct message. 
• And unfortunately, I can't share some of the cool stuff said in direct msgs by others above.  Direct msgs are private, don't want to violate that understanding.

Here's some of the kind of conversation I mean:

In response to a thank you for posting our blog on his list of Top SEM Blogs:

And some conversation about one of my blog posts, retweeting, and of course, nostalgic moments for Gen X music-lovers:

This kind of conversation with VIP's would not have happened with email.  Email is too private.  How would I get their address?  What right would I have to it?  And if I could email them, I would be unwelcome because I was a stranger.  Even a short message would be intrusive. 

But not so on Twitter.

Let me be clear- I did not stalk these people or even expect to hear from them as much as I have.  I followed them along with several hundred other people, and I replied to what I thought was interesting when I thought I had something to contribute.  I didn't even know who some of these people were a month ago- actually Rand and Danny were the only ones of the bunch above that I knew about.

The networking came naturally.  If you're professional and you have people skills, it's easy.

Twitter is more open than email. Anybody can @reply you, jump into the conversation, respond to your thoughts, no matter how important you are.  You have to choose to be more closed off than that, and most people don't.

Twitter surprises you because as long as you're respectful, people are friendly.  Especially since what makes some of these people big in their industry is that they understand the value of connecting with people, of connections and openness and information flow.  Also, it's cooler than email, allows more of your personality to shine through, makes connections easier.

Whether some big name person responds to you or not is up to them.  How interesting are you, what mood are they in, how busy are they, etc.  But the point is, you have a shot.

Pithiness makes introductions, even self-introductions, more palatable. Almost anybody is ok with 140 characters of message from a stranger.  If you don't seem weird or spammy or rude, most people won't turn you off.

If you are polite, grateful, useful, funny, entertaining, etc., you might start an acquaintanceship with someone.  There's more to the best practices of networking, but that's not my point here.

My point is- Twitter's openness and pithiness makes it possible for you to give elevator speeches, of sorts- and your life, profile, website, previous tweets are all there for others to judge.  So if your body of work looks good to the VIP you're @-ing, you have a shot.

Here are some tips on how I've networked thus far- although really, you can't fake this- you have to be authentic- you can't be a spammer fake marketer and follow these tips and succeed- if you're not for real, please don't try:

1. Make friends by sharing interests
2. Compliment people on good blog posts
3. Make contrary points if you're sure you're right, but if you think you might make someone look bad, is it really worth it?  And what if you're wrong?  Get your facts straight, sleep on it, pick your battles
4. Comment on people's posts on social bookmarking sites like sphinn and digg
5. Read and comment on people's actual blogs- you may show up in their MyBlogLog and they'll start to get familiar with you- use the same avatar everywhere, I think I learned that from @spostareduro
6. Follow interesting people and have interesting conversations with them.
7. Be yourself, unless you're a jerk, in which case you should go somewhere and have a personal transformation.  Otherwise, just show off your sparkling personality.  Show what makes you different.
8. Be interested in other people and help them out however you can.

Thought I'd do a followup on my list of 14 ways to get unfollowed on Twitter.

@megfowler had an interesting observation:

She'll be happy to know we won't be talking about profile pics at all in this post ;-)

I asked my twitterfriends...

here's what they said:

Before I summarize these, I found via summize that @megfowler had stimulated a few more answers around the time she pointed out my photo-obsession (read bottom to top as usual for Twitter):

So let's summize all those opinions.  Things that get you unfollowed:

• Offensive or hurtful comments - @frankmartin wants you to be nice.
• Sometimes it's not personal, you're just not that person's favorite - @TWalk wants to keep the noise down.
• Your interests, or at least your tweets are irrelevant to the person unfollowing you - @captainstardust and @rogerbauer point out the importance of relevance.  Very Googlish.  @LLCobb reminds us that even your sick kid can be irrelevant.  Sounds harsh.  But true.  @eddings wants us to keep it positive.  @anntorrence wants you to talk about SOMETHING.
• Your tweets are annoying - @captainstardust wants you not to be.  @cfconcepts prefers that you be smart, not dumb.  @stefsull points out that twitter IS NOT IM and should not be that frequent.
• Your tweets are baffling - @captainstardust wants you to make sense.  You are, after all, communicating, so please try to make sense.
• 4 out of 5 tweeters agree with @LLCobb and @cfconcepts: don't spam.

What is spam on twitter? 

• @status_girl, @rogerbauer, @screwtheman and @stefsull point out there's a undefined but important acceptable frequency of tweets.
• 140 chars is the pithy nature of twitter.  So 10 tweets a minute is counter to the spirit of twitter.
• Don't tweet too often, too frivolously, too annoyingly, too irrelevant. 
• @mastermaq points out a specific type of twitterspam: affiliate links.

The lessons of what gets you unfollowed are:

• KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE and
• GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT.  Add:
• YOU CAN'T SATISFY EVERYBODY ALL THE TIME (you and your offerings and personality won't fit with everyone else) and I think we've got it.

Hey here's one more entry- and I'm happy to add more- just @briancarter on twitter about unfollows!

Moral of the story?  Attack selfishness, lie covertly, and talk to @SpostareDuro!